April 28, 1919

The Shantung affair is res adjudicata, at least temporarily, like everything else. The President and Balfour have agreed to accept the personal promise of Makino and Chinda to the effect that Japan will withdraw from the province of Confucius once they are assured that she will not be discriminated against; that her people will retain the same rights and privileges that the Great Powers of the West enjoy—that is, consular jurisdiction under the capitulations, treaty port extraterritoriality, and so on. My Colonel approves, but most certainly he is not elated over the solution that has been arrived at. The settlement, such as it is, certainly reveals that the system of power politics is not dead but indeed very much alive.

Japan today is a great military power and China, despite her four hundred millions, as a fighting nation for the moment is negligible. Her army has been modernized only superficially and many of her troops are still drilled to fight in the “infuriated tiger formation” that I witnessed from my perch on the wall of the Forbidden City as far back as 1896. Of course, the argument that has prevailed, although never spoken, is that with Italy withdrawn from the court of the Great Assizes that was to settle all pending questions, with Russia absent and the Central Empires at least temporarily excluded, should the Rising Sun Empire withdraw, our World Congress, or whatever it is, would dwindle to the proportions of a rump parliament.

Baron Makino has given his word of honor that the withdrawal from Shantung will be carried out as soon as it can be done with dignity, and there is no one here whose honor is held in higher esteem than his. But this is not a personal matter. It is an international problem of vital and far-reaching importance. Makino may be disavowed by his Emperor, the son of the Sun Goddess, or he may be thrown out and his commitment disavowed by the Diet. None too cheerfully it has been decided to incur these obvious dangers. At least a majority, if not all, of the delegates are cheered by the thought that for the moment the League has escaped the danger of complete collapse which has been so apparent for the last four weeks.

The Chinese have my sympathy, but how badly they have managed their case! They have spent millions in publicity to prove that the Japanese army is a big bad wolf and a menace to the peace of the world—which everybody knew. Unwisely, too, the Japanese envoys have been vilified in a manner that even I think is unfair and above all clearly a tactical mistake. Certainly the revelations in regard to Japanese behavior in Korea and other submerged countries and the low standard of political morality which prevails in Nippon has not been a surprise to anyone who, like myself, has lived for three years in Japan. Many here think, and I regard them as the more intelligent friends of China, that had not the whole nation been placed in the pillory and covered with abuse, the decent element in Japan, men like Shidihara, would have triumphed and the army of occupation in Shantung would have been withdrawn without too much delay. Now these same people say that the army clique and free-booters assert, “As we are condemned as scalawags and bandits, let us at least hold onto the booty.”

The truth as to the wisdom or the “unwisdom” of the decision reached will not be apparent for months, perhaps not even for years. Some console themselves with the thought that the League has survived a critical moment fraught with many dangers. The realization of another one of the President’s ideals has eluded him, but the League, while battered, does survive, and the President hopes to fight more successfully another day.

[1943. Very slowly and most reluctantly the Japanese did withdraw from Shantung, but only after the Anglo-Japanese Alliance had been abrogated and the Pacific Conference in Washington, 1921, had insisted upon compliance. Today Tojo and his militarists are back in Shantung; they are not there to pay respect to the sage who gave Analects to the children of Han. They are there for the coal and the iron so greatly needed to give life and substance to the East Asian co-prosperity dream.]