e positive
and detailed policies? If there was in existence at the present time
any such thing as a diplomacy of peoples as distinct from a diplomacy
of governments, the question would mean something quite different from
what it now means. As things now stand the people should profoundly
distrust the _politicians'_ love for China. It is too frequently the
reverse side of fear and incipient hatred of Japan, colored perhaps by
anti-British feeling.

There should be no disguising of the situation. The aggressive
activities of other nations in China, centering but not exhausted at
this time in Japan, are not merely sources of trouble to China but
they are potential causes of trouble in our own international
relationships. We are committed by our tradition and by the present
actualities of the situation to attempting something positive for
China as respects her international status, to live up to our
responsibility is a most difficult and delicate matter. We have on the
one side to avoid getting entangled in quasi-imperialistic European
policies in Asia, whether under the guise of altruism, of putting
ourselves in a position where we can exercise a more effective
supervision of their behavior, or by means of economic expansion. On
the other side, we have to avoid drifting into that kind of covert or
avowed antagonism to European and Japanese imperialism which will only
increase friction, encourage a combination especially of Great Britain
and Japan---or of France and Japan--against us, and bring war
appreciably nearer.

We need to bear in mind that China will not be saved from outside
herself. Even if by a successful war we should relieve China from
Japanese encroachments, from all encroachments, China would not of
necessity be brought nearer her legitimate goal of orderly and
prosperous internal development. Apart from the question of how far
war can now settle any fundamental issues without begetting others as
dangerous, China of all countries is the one where settlement by
force, especially by outside force, is least applicable, and most
likely to be enormously disserviceable. China is used to taking time
to deal with her problems: she can neither understand not profit by
impatient methods of the western world which are profoundly alien to
her genius. Moreover a civilization which is on a continental scale,
which is so old that the rest of us are parvenus in comparison, which
is thick and closely woven, cannot be hurri