f international relations out of
the rut worn deep by centuries of practice is one of the deplorable
consequences of the peace negotiations. So much might have been done;
nothing was done.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE SHANTUNG SETTLEMENT

The Shantung Settlement was not so evidently chargeable to secret
negotiations as the crisis over the disposition of Fiume, but the
decision was finally reached through that method. The controversy
between Japan and China as to which country should become the possessor
of the former German property and rights in the Shantung Peninsula was
not decided until almost the last moment before the Treaty with Germany
was completed. Under pressure of the necessity of making the document
ready for delivery to the German delegates, President Wilson, M.
Clemenceau, and Mr. Lloyd George, composing the Council of the Heads of
States in the absence of Signor Orlando in Rome, issued an order
directing the Drafting Committee of the Conference to prepare articles
for the Treaty embodying the decision that the Council had made. This
decision, which was favorable to the Japanese claims, was the result of
a confidential arrangement with the Japanese delegates by which, in the
event of their claims being granted, they withdrew their threat to
decline to sign the Treaty of Peace, agreed not to insist on a proposed
amendment to the Covenant declaring for racial equality, and orally
promised to restore to China in the near future certain rights of
sovereignty over the territory, which promise failed of confirmation in
writing or by formal public declaration.

It is fair to presume that, if the conflicting claims of Japan and China
to the alleged rights of Germany in Chinese territory had been settled
upon the merits through the medium of an impartial commission named by
the Conference, the Treaty provisions relating to the disposition of
those rights would have been very different from those which "The Three"
ordered to be drafted. Before a commission of the Conference no
persuasive reasons for conceding the Japanese claims could have been
urged on the basis of an agreement on the part of Japan to adhere to the
League of Nations or to abandon the attempt to have included in the
Covenant a declaration of equality between races. It was only through
secret interviews and secret agreements that the threat of the Japanese
delegates could be successfully made. An adjustment on such a basis had
nothing to do with