of the Americas. To give it the oneness we have attempted to get by the assertion of the republican tradition, Japanese statesmen tried to call in the equally unsound declaration of racial unity. As for the political parallel, the typical Japanese diplomacy of indirection was trusted to build up the undisputed primacy of Japan in the East.

All this, of course, is the product of that group of leaders in Japan committed to what they call "continentalism"-expansion into Asia politically, removing Japan's dependence on sea power. The foresighted men behind the Mikado's government saw Japan a spokesman for the rest of the mute Asiatic peoples. China's weakness, they appreciated, would lend itself readily to this policy of state; they realized they could always fall back on the sinister side of the European Powers' relations with the Middle Kingdom - even though the Manchus were gone and many things had changed-for a plausible justification of Japanese policy, making opposition to Japanese efforts appear in the light of the psalm-singing righteousness of jealous fellow-criminals. Siberia, these Japanese leaders knew, was then a problem which would take care of itself. With their correct contempt for the occidental miserliness toward time, i. e., the feeling that our generation is the pinnacle of importance, these men in the high places in Japan knew the unhurrying East for what it was in terms of centuries. Southward and to the westward, they saw Siam sandwiched between a French

Indo-China and the trans-Indian territories of the British Empire in the Malay Peninsula; they knew they could wait their time.

Japanese spokesmen were quite right about their East. Indian revolutionists found a not unsympathetic asylum. Chinese malcontents leaned on this group of Japanese leaders, who, at the same time, abetted the betrayals schemed in Peking to China's ruin. Russia had learned since 1904 that it was better to share with Japan than have nothing at all. The militarist oligarchy espousing continentalism in Japan believed with one of its spokesmen that at bottom "the spirit of western civilization is plunder." This produced the Japanese adherents of the Great Asia Policy, based on the independence of the East, because of the bankruptcy of the West. As one diplomat told me: "It was a choice between peaceful or aggressive Pan Asianism."

What Japanese statesmen could not understand was the inherent, abiding capacity for idealism underneath the cynicism of European diplomacy. That may have been a fatal over-sophistication on the part of Japan.

DEVELOPMENT OF JAPANESE PRIMACY

The fundamental stumbling-block in the way of Japan has been the conditions precedent in the Far East; in other words, the vested interests already long built up by the Powers prior to Japan's attempt to establish a kind of Monroe Doctrine. It should be grasped at the start

that it was not an attempt to ward off a threatening danger. Japan had to constrict the movement of something already fastened on the Extreme Orient.

The Great War gave her that opportunity. Japan proceeded in her interest to redress the Oriental balance presumably forever and chiefly at the expense of her Allies. In the beginning, she moved politically; the power behind the throne in Japan forced the Mikado's Land into the Sino-Japanese negotiations of 1915, subsequently embarking her on the tortuous financial - political diplomacy which persists in one form or another down to the present moment.

The diplomatic chessboard thereafter saw many Japanese moves, those of major importance being the agreements Japan negotiated with the Entente in 1916 and the IshiiLansing Understanding reached with the United States the next fall. The Russo-Japanese Alliance formed the extreme advance of the Japanese policy, just as her agreement with America in 1917 represented her minimum.

ENUNCIATION OF THE DOCTRINE

Probably the first authoritative diplomatic expression of the Great Asia Policy occurred in 1915. Suitably enough, it happened in Peking during the time China was fighting off the first open manifestation of Japanese intents. One of the Japanese diplomats remarked that the 1915 Demands were really a part of this program for the amalgamation of Asiatic interests, China being the

primary step. Needless to say, had the Great War gone as Japan then anticipated, this would have been fait accompli.

During this period, Sun Yet-sen and certain other Chinese revolutionary leaders espoused the scheme. Even the more solid Tang Shao-yi— now representing the Southern faction at the Shanghai conference to settle China's domestic troublespublicly committed himself to the effect that the fulfillment of India's independence aspirations depends on a "strong united Sino-Japanese Alliance."

The latter months of the Great War saw the sending out of semiofficial feelers. In this, the utterances of Viscount Ishii especially have been important, America being the chief point of attack. Of course, the diplomatic alignment ensured this Japanese move, for we were not involved as were the European Powers. The Paris Conference, with its attenuation of "open covenants openly arrived at," has put a probably not unwelcome reticence upon the Japanese maneuvers. That, however, becomes the story of Article Ten of the covenant-from the first of the British dominions' opposition over Japan's retention of the Pacific islands to the insertion of that most equivocal phrase, "regional understandings like the Monroe Doctrine, for securing the maintenance of peace."

JAPAN AND THE LEAGUE

There are three ways of testing this Asiatic doctrine advanced by

Japanese statesmen, doubtless, as such a "regional understanding."

First, let us consider the time of promulgation. Japan's efforts cannot be said to head off a threatening danger, for the outcome of the Great War-if not the events immediately previous to 1914 in the Far East-has made certain that there could be no threat against China's integrity such as an Asiatic Monroe Doctrine must predicate for its very foundations. The European Powers have long been ensconced in the Orient; historically, Japan is nothing more than a newcomer on the Asiatic continent seeking to upset the status quo in its own interest.

Which brings up the second consideration, i. e., Japan has been advancing this Pan Asian policy as one of altruism which should appeal to America especially, whereas in practice it has become a weapon of diplomatic assault on her neighbor. The Japanese course in China cannot be squared with the only American Monroe Doctrine which can stand the Pan American ideal which fortunately has most frequently found expression, especially in recent years.

Finally, is there no other agency which can preserve to the East its heritage without making one Power dominant, with the right of unrestricted eviction in its own favor?

Under the League of Nations, the Monroe Doctrine of the United States must inevitably change its fiat character. Even were the sinister forces in America to come into

power, no longer could it be an instrument of aggression. That day is passed, but the Japanese statesmen are not yet sure of it. They do not see that the vitality of the Monroe Doctrine in the United States lies in the passion of the people for democracy, an idealism which must remain a closed book to

all save the younger liberal elements in the Japanese Empire.

Its retention at the present time marks the shadowy ground between the purpose and achievement. The American Monroe Doctrine will have a vitality in an inverse ratio to that of the League of Nationsit will decline as the latter grows in effectiveness. Its only sanction has come from a century of development, Pan American in tendency.

NOT AMERICAN

Japan's contentions come down to two propositions which the United States and the Powers will have to face because of Article Ten in the Covenant.

First. Do agreements of the Lansing-Ishii type, such as Japan negotiated with the United States and the Entente, give her an exclusive position in China and thus in the East by reason of territorial propinquity?

Second. Does Article Ten by implication connect the Japanese diplomatic structure built by those statesmen in Tokyo looking Asiaward with "other agreements," identify it with the Monroe Doctrine of the American democracy?

This would make the League of

Nations what it is not: an association of aggression to undermine instead of build up. Though only the discussions of the delegations, the minutes of the in camera meetings, can remove this obscurity, we may trust that no American representatives could ever pledge themselves to a line of action along which the United States as a democracy cannot go. We have obligations toward

China which must be met, too-fundamental expressions of our world purposes uttered with China in mind and a full sense of their import.

A CORRECTION.-In the chronology of Chino-Japanese treaties and agreements published last month on page 178 two errors appeared in the dates of China's rupture of relations with and declaration of war on Germany. Instead of February, 1917, and July, 1917, the dates should read March, 1917, and August, 1917.

S

PEAKING unofficially, without in any degree committing the Governing Board of the Pan American Union, or commenting pro or con on the general plan and principle of a World League of Nations, I base what I have prepared, first, on historical facts not generally appreciated regarding the actual work and record of the Pan American Union as a powerful and practical American League of Nations; second, on views officially expressed and recorded not only of the leading statesmen and diplomatic representatives of Latin America, but of such distinguished North Americans as James G. Blaine, Grover Cleveland, Richard Olney, William Mc

Kinley, Elihu Root, Theodore Roosevelt, Andrew Carnegie, William H. Taft, Philander Knox, Cardinal Gibbons, Charles E. Hughes, Henry Cabot Lodge, Champ Clark, William J. Bryan, Robert Lansing and President Wilson himself, as shown definitely in his address of January 6, 1916, before the Second Pan American Scientific Congress; and, third, on my own experience and observation, not only as United States Minister for many years in Latin America, but as executive officer for thirteen years of this existing American League of Nations. The original memorandum is summarized as follows:

First: The twenty-one American

Republics-the United States and the twenty Latin American countries -have, in the International Union of American Republics, officially known as the Pan American Union, a practical, peace-preserving, and successfully working, although limited and voluntary, American League of Nations.

Second: Since it was originally organized at the first Pan American Conference, held at Washington in 1889-90, attended by plenipotentiaries of all the American governments and presided over by James G. Blaine, then Secretary of State of the United States, there has been no serious actual war between any two or more American Republics, and its moral influence has undoubtedly been the main factor in preventing six, and possibly eight or more, wars among them.

Third: The American Republics believe so thoroughly in the efficiency and influence of this League that they have unanimously voted' to continue and enlarge its scope at three successive successive conferences; namely, the second at Mexico in 1901, opened by President Porfirio Diaz; the third at Rio de Janeiro in 1906, attended by Elihu Root, then Secretary of State of the United States; the fourth at Buenos Aires in 1910, when Henry White, now United States Peace Commissioner at Paris, was chairman of the United States delegation.

Fourth: The fifth Pan American conference will meet at Santiago, Chile, as already agreed upon by the American governments, within a rea

sonable time after the adjournment of the Peace Conference at Paris. The great question before it will be the enlargement of the scope and responsibility of the Pan American Union as their official international organization, and of the authority of the Supreme Council, or Governing Board, in relation to the peace and progress of the western hemisphere, to the World League of Nations, if that is created, and to Pan American solidarity and the Monroe Doctrine.

Fifth: This American League has a Supreme Council of the American governments and peoples in the form of its Governing Board (composed of the Secretary of State of the United States, who is chairman ex officio, and the Latin American diplomatic representatives in Washington), which holds regular monthly meetings in the Pan American Building to consider and take action on questions and matters involving the preservation of Pan American peace and friendship and the promotion of Pan American commerce and intercourse, but whose present actual authority as to the settlement of disputes between the American nations is solely moral and voluntary and not authorized by international agreement.

Sixth: It has in complete working order a great practical peace plant and organization not only in the form of a beautiful building, but in a trained and skilled staff of experts in international affairs, with sections of correspondence, commerce, information, statistics, education,