t its essence is time. The evils and troubles of China are real
enough, and there is no blinking the fact that they are largely of her
own making, due to corruption, inefficiency and absence of popular
education. But no one who knows the common people doubts that they
will win through if they are given time. And in the concrete this
means that they be left politically alone to work out their own
destiny. There will doubtless be proposals at the Pacific Conference
to place China under some kind of international tutelage. This chapter
and the events connected with the tendency which it reports will be
cited as showing this need. Some of the schemes will spring from
motives that are hostile to China. Some will be benevolently conceived
in a desire to save China from herself and shorten her period of chaos
and confusion. But the hope of the world's peace, as well as of
China's freedom, lies in adhering to a policy of Hands Off. Give China
a chance. Give her time. The danger lies in being in a hurry, in
impatience, possibly in the desire of America to show that we are a
power in international affairs and that we too have a positive foreign
policy. And a benevolent policy of supporting China from without,
instead of promoting her aspirations from within, may in the end do
China about as much harm as a policy conceived in malevolence.

July, 1921.

VII

A Parting of the Ways for America

1

The realities of American policy in China and toward China are going
to be more seriously tested in the future than they ever have been in
the past. Japanese papers have been full of protests against any
attempt by the Pacific Conference to place Japan on trial. Would that
American journals were full of warnings that America is on trial at
the Conference as to the sincerity and intelligent goodwill behind her
amiable professions. The world will not stop with the Pacific
Conference; the latter, however important, will not arrest future
developments, and the United States will continue to be on trial till
she has established by her acts a permanent and definite attitude. For
the realities of the situation cannot be exhausted in any formula or
in any set of diplomatic agreements, even if the Conference confounds
the fears of pessimists and results in a harmonious union of the
powers in support of China's legitimate aspirations for free political
and economic growth.

The Conference, however, stands as a symbol of the larger sit