Ida M. Tarbell

“ Japan must have her army, her navy, her war loot; her security required it.
That is, no one of the allied nations was ready to make a sacrifice to carry out the plank of disarmament they had adopted. They insisted on applying the plank to the enemy they had beaten, but not to themselves. This was not in any large degree because of greed or revenge, it was because of fear—fear of the vanquished. There was utter lack of confidence in the plan of peaceful international coöperation which they had written into their program. Force alone spelt security in their minds. ”

“ The very fact that the League of Nations lives—the divers ways in which its adventures in world unionism come to us—only makes the idea of association stronger in the minds of the peoples of the earth.
The Conference might limit armaments, naval and land, in the nine nations that were here gathered. It might make settlements of the Far Eastern questions, but there still would remain the rest of the world. It is a part of things. The world is one. It has come to a consciousness of its oneness. Nothing can dull that consciousness, stop the determination to realize it. ”

“ You began to see growing in Paris among Americans what we have seen growing here at home since the war—the revival of that old, old hate of England. What hope is there of the world, one felt sometimes like asking, when some man or woman who literally had given his life to good works or good causes poured a vial of vitriol on the English nation? ”

“ Taken as a whole the milieu in which the Paris Conference operated, furnished the most perfect example the world has ever seen of the arrogance of the one who calls himself liberal, of the irresponsibility of him who calls himself radical, of the unutterable stupidity of him who calls himself conservative, of the universal habit of saving your face by crying down what others are attempting to do, and of the limitations which the laws of human nature and human society put upon the collective efforts of human beings. ”

“ Is there a surer way to awaken an ambition for liberty, to spread ideals than to share what you have with those that seem to you—and yet never in all respects are—backward nations? Is there any brotherhood of man worthy the name which does not include all men?
225However we may feel about it as a nation to-day, though we may ruin the present program for limitation of armament by rejection of its underlying pacts, the day will surely come when we shall realize and admit the fullest international association and coöperation. ”

“ THE FRENCH AT THE CONFERENCE The morale of an international conference is easily shaken in the public’s mind. Seeming delay will do it. Those who look on feel that whatever is to be done must be done quickly, that things must go in leaps. They mistrust days of plain hard work—work which yields no headlines. It must be, they repeat, because the negotiators have fallen on evil times, are intriguing, bargaining. ”

“ What we have to remember is that Japan is, like all nations to a degree, a dual nation; there are two Japans—the one clinging to the old militaristic, autocratic notion of government, the other struggling to understand and realize the meaning of a united, coöperating world in which each man and each nation shall have a chance at peaceful, prosperous living. ”

“ There are bound to be periods in all human undertakings when the way is obscure, when failure threatens, when it is obvious that certain things on which we have set our hearts are unobtainable. Irritation and discouragement always characterize these periods. It is here that we fall back on a scapegoat. An international conference usually picks one or more before it gets through—a nation which everybody combines to call obstinate, unreasonable, greedy, a spoke in the wheel. ”

“ It makes a superhuman effort, is valiant beyond words, practically the whole civilized world rallies to its help. It comes off victorious, and when it gathers itself together and begins to examine its condition it finds the ghastly wounds of a devastated region; the work of centuries so shattered that it will take centuries to restore the fertility, beauty, interest. It finds itself with an appalling debt; with a population depleted at the point most vital to a nation, in its young men, threatening the oncoming generation. ”

“ There are many Japanese saying openly in the press and in public assemblies that the future of Japan depends upon an entire change of policy, that the hard dealings in Korea, the wresting of the twenty-one demands from Peking, the methods in Shantung have all been a mistake, that Japan must deny them, correct the wrongs done under them if she is to have the sympathy and enjoy the coöperation of the outside world. It is most important that the people of the United States particularly should understand these liberal leanings in Japan, should give them all the support within their power. ”

“ Perhaps the greatest achievement of the Conference on the Limitation of Armament is its demonstration that disarmament means a union of the nations that disarm, that in no other way, the world being what it is, can it be accomplished. ”

“ We will not recognize the rights that Japan claims through her treaty made in 1915. It really was a treaty with Old China, still alive in our Republic. It was wrested from us by cunning and bribery. There are twenty million Chinese in Manchuria. They have made that province grow more rapidly in wealth in recent years than any other part of the land. They are converting the wilderness, raising such a crop of soy beans as no other part of the earth has ever seen. We propose to stand by our people. We cannot give Manchuria to Japan, nor can we give her Mongolia. ”

“ When England and Japan at once agreed it became possible and practical. If they agreed, why, then—it must be—the difficulties could be settled which many had doubted. The Conference thus at the start gained what it needed most, popular faith that it meant to do a concrete, tangible thing. The proposition that England, the United States, Japan, France and Italy should adopt a naval ratio of 5–5–3, 1.75—1.25 and agree not to build for ten years was a big, substantial, stirring fact. To have them accept, as they did, strengthened the faith of the world. ”

“ It was a fine, generous, convincing answer to the ugly rumors, and the beauty of it was that you believed Mr. Hughes. You knew that he was not lying to you. I believe this to have been the general conviction of the newspaper men. He convinced them and they were all for him. This was a real achievement for any man, for the press craft are hard to convince and quick to suspect. Many of them have been for years in the thick of public affairs, watching men go up and down; seeing heroes made and unmade; the incorruptible prove corruptible. ”

“ People believe what they read, unhappily, and have little or no way of verifying. There was much of this reproving talk going on and some of those who handled it most vigorously belonged to the Washington press. It had its effect at once.
Then, too, it was hard to be continuously violent and suspicious in Washington. The lovely days, the wide streets, the freedom from the turmoil of business and industry, the very absence of exciting night life—all tended to calm the spirit. How different from Paris in 1919! ”

“ I could not help feeling in Paris that Japan must have been bewildered a little by the contradictions of the Occident she had tried so faithfully to follow. She saw the doctrine of force she had accepted grappling with the gospel of the brotherhood of man. There are many who think that the brotherhood got the worst of it in Paris. That gospel was driven into the world as never before there. More people were committed to it than ever before. More people realized that it is a power that you must count with in the affairs of nations as well as of individuals. ”

“ Great Britain and the United States had had the good will and the wisdom to recognize that Japan’s feeling about the Mutsu was genuine.
One has only to read the revised agreement to understand what pains the two countries took to readjust the calculations of the United States in such a way that the desired ratio would be preserved and Japan’s pride and sentiment saved. When nations come to the point that they are willing to try to understand and to consider one another’s feelings as well as one another’s force, there is some hope for the peace of the world. ”

“ It was a fine example of the stabilizing effect of a daily task regularly followed. They went on for four weeks and then again stirred the world to enthusiasm by their Four Power Pact; their removal of the Yap irritation; their consent to the Japanese mandate in the Pacific; their acceptance of the Five-Five-Three naval ratio. At one swoop the war with Japan that a part of the American public has so sedulously cultivated for a good term of years was wiped off the map—unless the United States Senate prefer to restore it to its position. ”

“ Savage instincts came to the top, and no contradiction, in all this sea of contradiction, stared at you more hatefully than that of announced pacifists lending all their efforts to a May Day riot, almost panting to see blood run, and perching themselves on possible vantage points, to cheer on any possible disorder at a time when tormented authorities had ordered the public to stay indoors, and had taken taxis and omnibuses from the streets. ”

“ And if France and Italy must, or thought they must, secure themselves against these possibilities, could England weaken herself disproportionately? When you began to consider the question of armament in terms of the world and not simply of nine nations, you could not if you were candid find any peaceful solution but by bringing everybody in—Germany, Turkey, Russia. ”

“ The nations in adopting the principles that they did in regard to China, in insuring her a protecting ring within which they promise to see that she has the chance to develop and maintain effective and stable government, and to give all nations an equal opportunity of carrying on commerce and industry with her, are attempting something that has never before been done in this world—they are insuring a great weak, divided nation its chance. ”

“ If the representatives of the United States are to work successfully with other nations in international conferences, they must learn that diplomats can no more afford to overlook the feelings of other nations than an engineer can afford to overlook the susceptibilities of the iron and steel which he employs. France’s acute sensitiveness, her black imaginations, may irritate Americans who know nothing of invaded and devastated territory, who have not had to sit through five long years with the sound of bursting shells continually in their ears ”

“ It is the one real asset humanity has carried from this war—the sense of the oneness of the world, the impossibility of order and progress and peace except as each is allowed to develop its individuality, in a free continuing union of all. ”

“ It was Russia’s problem to take care of the Far Eastern Republic. She must be free, as China must be free, to work out her own destiny.
Then “give” Japan Manchuria! She already had important recognized rights in Southern Manchuria, rights that came from old wars; the territory borders on Korea which Japan holds and governs, and undoubtedly the Conference would not dispute her claim to Korea, since that claim stands on about the same kind of a bottom as England’s claim to Hongkong and France’s to Tonkin. It was the fruit of the nation’s dealing with Old China. ”

“ Those who know the Orient best all agree that its future peace, and therefore the future peace of the world, depends largely upon Japan. She is the one strong, stable, unified nation in the East. She has, it is true, a powerful militaristic party, but opposed to that is a great liberal group. Prince Tokugawa, who played so fine a part in his delegation during the Conference, is a man who has taken keen interest in labor questions, education of the people, the development of industry, and has thrown all his great interest against the military spirit. ”

“ You built up distrust, dislike, suspicion, until you had created an enemy in the minds of the mass of the people so hateful that it became an almost religious duty to overthrow it. We have had this sort of thing going on in this country in regard to Japan for years, a calculated, nation-wide, extremely able effort to make the American people fear and despise the Japanese, to bring them to a point where they would gladly, as a relief to their feelings, undertake a war against Japan. ”

“ Is an international conference to be declared a farce because it selects one set of problems instead of another, and believes it more practical to give exclusive attention to one side of the globe than to the entire surface? ”

“ France has held up the peace of Europe, delayed its reconstruction, lessened her own chances of reparation, alienated her best friends by her persistent militarism. Go back to the peace treaty of 1919 when disarmament was one of the fundamental principles adopted by the allied nations. From the start France’s argument in regard to disarmament was that for her it was impossible unless England and the United States would guarantee her against aggression from Germany—if they would do that she would disarm. ”

“ Japan’s right to Shantung was questioned now because of the new code we are trying to put in force. That is, men are trying to prove that it shall be no longer by blood and treasure that we progress, but by good will, fair dealing, superior efficiency of mind and hand. The practical question now seems to be, When is this new code to begin to operate? In 1922, as Japan wished, or with the first entrance of the foreigner into China, as radical Chinese wished? And if it is to be adopted, is it to apply only to China? ”