conceive that she would be so foolish as to attempt it?

NO DESIRE FOR PHILIPPINES

The alarmists, however, do not confine themselves to that argument. They assert that Japan could take the Philippines. But Japan does not want them, nor does she want Hongkong, or French Indo-China and other Eastern possessions of the Western nations. Japan does not want them, and although she could well consider them a threat against herself if they were in the hands of enemies, she is content with the assurance that none of those nations has designs against her.

Japan's unfriendly critics, however, also charge her with a plan to control and organize China into an immense yellow threat. That vicious phrase, "the Yellow Peril," was, if you remember, coined by Wilhelm II. of Germany in his abortive attempt to stir up antagonism between our countries and to turn America's eyes from his war. If that idea still survives in America, the fact proves that you do not realize, what Japan recognizes clearly, that such a project is impossible of attainment.

First, an attempt to carry it out would bring us directly into conflict with all the other nations already holding great interests in the Far East. Next, we should have not only to organize and train, but to control China politically. There are centuries of history to show the impossibility of it. China has been invaded and conquered, and the unvarying end of the adventure has been the absorption of the "conqueror" into the mass of China. Besides, a conquered people can never be an asset in war; and Japan needs peace and friends, not war and enemies.

The big blessing for Japan would be a prosperous, stable China, organized to produce and able to buy. The Open Door and equal opportunity in China mean economy, if not actual salvation, for Japan. Every million of dollars or pounds sterling or francs that goes into the development of

Chinese resources is a direct saving of the equivalent in yen. It means prosperity to China-increase of her purchasing and producing powerwithout expense to Japan. It means good business for Japan.

JAPAN'S AIMS IN CHINA

But equal opportunity to help China and in that way to help ourselves is not to be denied us. We are not self-sustaining, rich in natural resources, like the United States. Nor have we an empire like the British, broadcast over the world, to supply our needs. We have an area about equal to your State of Montana, and a population of 60,000,000. Like England, we must obtain our sustenance abroad, and our products must. go to foreign markets. China's markets and materials mean to other countries only more trade; to Japan they are vital necessities.

We have reached the stage of development where we must industrialize in order to preserve our existence. Continental Asia has the materials for our trade. We demand the right to equal opportunities there, secure in the knowledge that in competing with other countries we need no advantages beyond our geographical position. position. We ask only an adoption by all concerned of the "live and let live" policy.

In developing these resources and markets of China we should deprive

according to our opponents-the Chinese of their native rights. But the contrary is true. By such development, whether it should be the result of Japanese, British or American enterprise and capital, the chief gainer would be China. There are, it must be confessed, unscrupulous rogues among the traders in China as on any trade frontier. There is keen competition in dishonesty among many nationals; it is not a Japanese monopoly. An unorganized and backward country is invariably victimized by such persons, either of its own or other nationalities. But the Asian Continentals are always the first to benefit by any industrial or agricul

tural development made possible by foreigners.

Along the line of the South Manchurian Railway, for example, in a region where the native population was so harassed by brigands-before the Japanese control of the railwaythat it was being driven out of the country, a régime of law and order has now so stabilized conditions of life and property that the Chinese have flocked to the new prosperity. A district that was threatened with extinction as a human habitation, with becoming a part of the barren Mongolian Desert, has become a place of prosperity, producing crops so great in volume that there is an influx of farm laborers each harvest season. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese cross over each year from the Provinces of Shantung and Chi-li to gather the crops and then go back with their wages to winter at home in comfort.

Wherever development is undertaken the resulting activities benefit the whole world. At present America does with Japan many times the volume of business that she does with China, whose size and natural wealth are so vast. In China, America may have lost part of her piece-goods trade to England, but she has taken in exchange a business in textile machinery.

REGARDING SHANTUNG

Japan is charged with having deprived China of the Province of Shantung. What are the facts in that case?

When Japan, in the great war, assumed the duty of protecting allied interests in the Far East, she was obliged to remove the existing threat of the German military base in Tsingtao. She made the necessary military effort together with a British contingent-and took the place. Japan then occupied Tsingtao and the Tsingtao-Tsinan-fu Railway, formerly held by Germany under a ninety-nine-year lease, in order to prevent a recrudescence of enemy influence from that focus. This leased

territory of Kiao-Chau is about two hundred square miles in extent-the Province of Shantung is two hundred times greater-and contained about fifty or sixty thousand persons who had gathered there to trade with the Germans and who remained there to do business with the Japanese. population of the Province of Shantung is estimated at forty millions.

The

Japan had no intention of retaining the former German leased rights, and after the war she repeated her original offer to turn them back to China, suggesting that the former leased territory be made a free port for the trade of all nations on equal terms, and that the section of the German railway which she held be made a joint Sino-Japanese enterprise.

China has refused this offered arrangement, contending that ail the former German rights automatically reverted to China when she declared war against Germany. But that declaration of war was made a full year before China arranged with Japan a loan-and accepted payment under it -recognizing the principle of the joint working of the former German railway.

Japan maintains troops along the railway line in Shantung to police the line. Together with the contingent in Tsingtao-the port the detachment numbers about two thousand officers and men. Twice that number of troops are maintained by the great powers, including the United States, in the neighboring Province of Chi-li to police the railway from the coast to the capital and to guard the legations in Peking. Moreover, the former German preferential rights, to supply capital for further railway development, are to be turned over-if the Japanese suggestion is followed-to the present International Financial Consortium composed of American, Belgian, British, French and Japanese banking groups, supported by their Governments.

So it is evident that there is really little truth to support the charge of

Japanese aggression in Shantung. Now all this has to do with naval armament limitation. For if it can be demonstrated that there is no vital conflict of interest among the conferring nations, and therefore no threat of aggression to arm against, the solution becomes merely a matter of degree.

And again, frankly, Japan comes to the conference recognizing that there is in America suspicion and distrust to be overcome, though Japan feels no such distrust regarding America; her delegates come hoping and trusting that this cloud will be cleared away when the facts are made known. She hopes to demonstrate the facts, her needs, and the justice of her policies. She is ready to har

ken to advice and to co-operate with the others to her utmost.

As Admiral Baron Kato, the Minister of Marine, has stated, Japan is prepared to agree to limitation of naval armament so far as may be consistent with her national security. Details of proper proportionate reductions of building programs belong to the technicians.

Japan is an island empire dependent on sea-borne commerce, but she believes that relief can be obtained by armament limitation, and that armament limitation can be achieved by a genuine co-operation based on mutual knowledge. She is here prepared to spread her facts on the table, knowing that she has nothing to conceal and much to gain.

HINA gave immediate and wholehearted acceptance to the invitation of the United States to participate in the conference for the parcussion of political questions in the Pacific, for no nation is more desirous than is China that world peace-especially peace in the Pacific-should be preserved.

The Chinese Government is convinced that it is possible to establish and maintain, by friendly agreement among the nations, a régime in which the legitimate interests of every nation may be recognized and advanced. In other words, the Chinese Govern

ment believes that there is an essential harmony between the true interests of all nations, and that the Washington conference offers an opportunity to determine, as far as the Pacific is concerned, the basis upon which such harmony may be more securely maintained.

China is all the more glad to enter this conference because she is in the fortunate position of seeking only a full recognition of her rights as a member of the family of nations. She has no acts of aggression on her part to explain to anybody. She will ask only that the conference give its for

mal recognition to principles of international conduct which the world will recognize as just and calculated to advance the interests of all the peoples of the Far East and of those nations of the West which have political or economic interests in the Pacific.

At the same time that China is thus able and disposed to co-operate for the attainment of the common ends for which the conference has convened she is confident that her own interests will be greatly advanced. She expects that as the result of the conference she will be freed in future from the assaults that in the past have been made upon her territorial and administrative integrity, and that thus she will be able to concentrate her efforts upon the improvement of her domestic conditions-the extension of her railways, the reorganization of certain of her public services and the adoption of a permanent Constitution whose provisions will meet the political needs of the country as they have been disclosed since the establishment, ten years ago, of a republican form of Government.

We must all admit that the world is poorer because of the World War through which we have just passed. Untold destruction was wrought in the fields of wealth and man-power, and many years will be required for various nations to get on their feet again. Many nations are so impoverished that it may require half a century for them to return to the condition of prosperity that existed before the war, and, to make matters worse, the war has left in its wake problems of social readjustment that make the economic readjustment much more difficult. Even the nations of the American continents have not escaped the consequences of six years of destruction in Europe.

CHINA IN THE WAR

The Republic of China took part in the World War. It broke off relations with the Central Powers, largely because of the fine example of the United States of America. China

did not send soldiers to the western front, but she did send an army of more than 150,000 laborers, artisans and mechanics, and these men did yeoman service for the allied cause. In France they mingled with the American and British and French and Belgian soldiers, and their enthusiasm for the cause was just as patriotic as the spirit that animated the doughboy, the Tommy and the poilu. In Archangel and Murmansk several regiments of Chinese volunteered for the firing line, donned British and French uniforms and helped to hold the trenches against Bolshevist advance. Chinese laborers were also found with British expeditionary forces to Southern Russia and Mesopotamia.

China was affected by the World War in other ways: Two great and powerful nations of Europe, Germany and Russia, both of which at various times in the past constituted a menace to China, were eliminated as military powers and placed in a new position in respect to their relations with China. China was also affected vitally by the territorial arrangement growing out of the war settlement-a territorial arrangement that must be righted to the just consideration of our people before we can ever have permanent world peace. And then there was another change wrought in China by the World War—a change in the minds and thoughts of our people that may ultimately be the most far-reaching of all. I believe I am stating the case exactly when I say that the people of China were more deeply stirred by the war and its consequences than by any other event in our recent history, with the poss:ble exception of the change from a monarchy to our present republic.

The Republic of China has a territory approximately one-sixth larger than the continental United States, and we have a population about four times as great as the United States. We have always been an agricultural people, producing largely for our own needs, with a small surplus for export.

In recent years we have had the beginnings of industrial development, and this process of transition was hastened by the war. In may ways we are going through the same transition stages that the United States passed through in its industrial development. You found a virgin, undeveloped land. First, you conquered the land to agriculture. You borrowed large sums of money abroad, and with the money you developed your railroads, waterways and industries. We are trying to do the same thing, and in our new development we are trying to benefit by your experience.

UNDEVELOPED RESOURCES

We see a great deal in the press these days about the financial situation in China. The Banque Industrielle de Chine, one of the largest banks in China, recently failed after many years of operation. This was not a Chinese failure, but was a part of the financial stress that all countries are feeling. The Banque Industrielle de Chine had always been managed by foreigners, never by Chinese; and when it failed it was the Chinese bankers who came to the rescue and averted a general financial collapse.

Our difficulty has been that we have not had the free opportunity for development that you have had. Our great, undeveloped resources, coupled with our weakness in national defense, have made China the object of the covetous eyes of more powerful nations. This has handicapped our development and has produced a situation in China that is generally recognized to constitute a menace to the world's future peace and prosperity. Whether this condition is to continue or not depends largely upon the attitude of the various nations now gathered in Washington to consider the limitation of armaments and the settlement of the Far Eastern problems.

The World War produced tremendous changes in the relative standing of nations-changes which we are only now beginning to realize. China, although weak economically, is in the position of a going concern. China at the present time constitutes a market for practically everything that the Western World produces. Although our country is the most densely populated section of the earth, we have vacant spaces in the hinterlands of China that are unmatched by any other world areas save the great western part of the United States, which you have made so productive. It has been stated by competent authorities that Germany, in order to carry her after-the-war burdens, will have to produce six or eight times as much as she did before the war. In relation to the problem of German production, think what it would mean to the present prosperity of the world if China could be helped to produce just twice as much as she now does. It would set your factories to going almost overnight, and your problem of unemployment would disappear as if by magic.

China comes to this conference with confidence that her own sovereign rights and legitimate national interests will be recognized and respected. Her delegates will gladly support any conclusions which may be reached, the purpose and result of which will be to enable the other nations of the Pacific to maintain their sovereign rights and legitimate interests.

So far as China will ask for a correction of conditions which she deems unjust and burdensome, she will not do so solely or primarily for her own benefit, but in order that thus the relations of other powers with herself may be simplified and harmonized, and that thus international concord and co-operation may be maintained and international peace made more certain.