ina gives this argument great
force among the Japanese, who for the most part know nothing more
about what actually goes on in China than they used to know about
Korean conditions. These considerations, together with the immense
expectations raised among the Japanese during the war concerning their
coming domination of the Far East and the unswerving demand of excited
public opinion in Japan during the Versailles Conference for the
settlement that actually resulted, give an ironic turn to the
statement so often made that Japan may be trusted to carry out her
promises. Yes, one is often tempted to say, that is precisely what
China fears, that Japan will carry out her promises, for then China is
doomed. To one who knows the history of foreign aggression in China,
especially the technique of conquest by railway and finance, the irony
of promising to keep economic rights while returning sovereignty lies
so on the surface that it is hardly irony. China might as well be
offered Kant's Critique of Pure Reason on a silver platter as be
offered sovereignty under such conditions. The latter is equally
metaphysical.

A visit to Shantung and a short residence in its capital city, Tsinan,
made the conclusions, which so far as I know every foreigner in China
has arrived at, a living thing. It gave a vivid picture of the many
and intimate ways in which economic and political rights are
inextricably entangled together. It made one realize afresh that only
a President who kept himself innocent of any knowledge of secret
treaties during the war, could be naive enough to believe that the
promise to return complete sovereignty retaining _only_ economic
rights is a satisfactory solution. It threw fresh light upon the
contention that at most and at worst Japan had only taken over German
rights, and that since we had acquiesced in the latter's arrogations
we had no call to make a fuss about Japan. It revealed the hollowness
of the claim that pro-Chinese propaganda had wilfully misled Americans
into confusing the few hundred square miles around the port of
Tsing-tao with the Province of Shantung with its thirty millions of
Chinese population.

As for the comparison of Germany and Japan one might suppose that the
objects for which America nominally entered the war had made, in any
case, a difference. But aside from this consideration, the Germans
exclusively employed Chinese in the railway shops and for all the
minor positions on the railway