imperialism of the German Empire, and for the
purpose of arranging a lasting peace in the Far East? Yes or no, was
Kiaochow captured by the English and Japanese troops in 1914 with the
sole object of destroying a dangerous naval base? Yes or no, was China's
co-operation against Germany, which was advocated and offered by
President Yuan Shi Kai in August, 1914, refused at the instigation of
Japan?"[254]

The Japanese catechism ran thus: "Yes or no, was Kiaochow a German
possession in the year 1914? Yes or no, was the world, including the
United States, a consenting party to the occupation of that province by
the Germans? Why did China, who to-day insists that that port is
indispensable to her, cede it to Germany? Why in 1914 did she make no
effort to recover it, but leave this task to the Japanese army? Further,
who can maintain that juridically the last war abolished _ipso facto_
all the cessions of territory previously effected? Turkey formerly ceded
Cyprus to Great Britain. Will it be argued that this cession is
abrogated and that Cyprus must return to Turkey directly and
unconditionally? The Conference announced repeatedly that it took its
stand on justice and the welfare of the peoples. It is in the name of
the welfare of the peoples, as well as in the name of justice, that we
assert our right to take over Kiaochow. The harvest to him whose hands
soweth the seed."[255]

If we add to all these conflicting data the circumstance that Great
Britain, France, and Russia had undertaken[256] to support Japan's
demands at the Conference, and that Italy had promised to raise no
objection, we shall have a tolerable notion of the various factors of
the Chino-Japanese dispute, and of its bearings on the Peace Treaty and
on the principles of the Covenant. It was one of the many illustrations
of the incompatibility of the Treaty and the Covenant, the respective
scopes of which were radically and irreconcilably different. The
Supreme Council had to adjudicate upon the matter from the point of view
either of the Treaty or of the Covenant; as part of a vulgar bargain of
the old, unregenerate days, or as an example of the self-renunciation of
the new ethical system. The majority of the Council was pledged to the
former way of contemplating it, and, having already promulgated a number
of decrees running counter to the Covenant doctrine in favor of their
own peoples, could not logically nor politically make an exception to
the detrim