ant as a
moral document. It is not."[259]

All that may be perfectly true, but it sounds odd that the discovery
should not have been made until Japan's claim was admitted formally to
take over Shantung, after she had solemnly promised to restore it to
China. The Covenant was certainly transgressed long before this, and
much more flagrantly than by President Wilson's indorsement of Japan's
demand for the formal retrocession of Shantung. But by those infractions
nobody seemed scandalized. _Quod licet Jovi non licet bovi._ Debts of
gratitude had to be paid at the expense of the Covenant, and people
closed their eyes or their lips. It was not until the Japanese asked for
something which all her European allies considered to be her right that
an outcry was raised and moral principles were invoked.

The Japanese press was nowise jubilant over the finding of the Supreme
Council. The journals of all parties argued that their country was
receiving no more than had already been guaranteed to it by China, and
ratified by the Allies before the Peace Conference met, and to have
obtained what was already hers by rights of conquest and of treaties was
anything but a triumph. What Japan desired was to have herself
recognized practically, not merely in theory, as the nation which is the
most nearly interested in China, and therefore deserving of a special
status there. In other words, she aimed at the proclamation of something
in the nature of a Far Eastern doctrine analogous to that of Monroe. As
priority of interest had been conceded to her by the Ishii-Lansing
Agreement with the United States, it was in this sense that her press
was fain to construe the clause respecting non-interference with
"regional understandings."

That policy is open. The principles underlying it, always tenable, were
never more so than since the Peace Conference set the Great Powers to
direct the lesser states. Moreover, Japan, it is argued, knows by
experience that China has always been a temptation to the Western
peoples. They sent expeditions to fight her and divided her territory
into zones of influence, although China was never guilty of an
aggressive attitude toward them, as she was toward Japan. They were
actuated by land greed and all that that implies, and if China were
abandoned to her own resources to-morrow she would surely fall a prey to
her Western protectors. In this connection they point to an incident
which took place during the Conference,