TOPICS OF THE DAY.
EUROPEAN POLICY IN THE FAR EAST.
THE new Agreement between France and Japan, and the Agreement which is coming between Japan and Russia, undoubtedly tend to secure immediate peace in the Far East. When the arrangements are concluded, Great Britain, France, Russia, and Japan will for certain pur- poses be allied. One of those purposes is to guarantee each other's possessions in Asia, and another is to guarantee the integrity of China, thus preventing, so far as the Treaties extend, any war of territorial ambition. That is excellent as indicating the ideal to be sought, but it does not go quite so far as many of our countrymen seem to imagine. To make a peace which can be trusted for a long period the arrangements need expansion. The Treaties do not cover either Germany or America, and both Germany and America have serious interests in the Far East which may in certain quite possible contingencies endanger the continuance of peace. The adhesion of both these Powers is, in fact, necessary to the permanence of the plan which Great Britain, France, and Japan all desire to see realised, and it is by no insane certain that this adhesion can be readily obtained.
The Government of Germany, to begin with, will extremely dislike being left out in the cold. 'Apart from their suspicion that Great Britain wants to leave Germany isolated everywhere in the world—a suspicion which is entirely baseless—the ruling idea of that Government is that they are now entitled to a prominent place, if not indeed to the first place, in that Comtaittee of seven—Great Britain, America, Germany, France, Austria, Russia, and Japan—which now holds the general control of the world in its hands. Germany is certain sooner or later to make this idea manifest in some peremptory way. She did so in Morocco, and the Far East is much more important than Morocco. The Japanese notion that Germany should be excluded because she possesses no territory in the Far East is not strictly sound, for she owns the long lease of Kiao- chow ; and, if it were sound, would be irrelevant, every Great Power being interested, if only for reasons of trade, in the attitude and condition of every other. China interests the traders of Berlin as much as those of London. Germany ought therefore to be asked to join the combina- tion, and it is by no means certain that Germany will agree. The astute persons who are now guiding her Welipolitik may think it more expedient for her to remain free in a posi- tion which tempts her to ask China for special commercial privileges, and which might enable her in conceivable con- tingencies to represent herself at Peking as the one Power free to protect China from the effect of the commercial greed of which other Powers are nearly certain to be suspected. The Chinese, as We all know, are beginning exceedingly to resent and distrust European commercial pressure, and Germany has learnt at Constantinople that to pose as the one disinterested adviser is often a very paying attitude. Germany may hold aloof from any pledges, and when Germany holds aloof from any great arrangement the arrangement can hardly be accepted as a final settlement. The difficulty of including the United States will be even greater. Washington dislikes all alliances. The Americans have vast separate interests in the Pacific, where when the Panama Canal is cut they may become—will become—the predominant Power ; and they have besides an obstacle in their Constitution which has hitherto proved insuperable. They dislike the idea of Chinese and Japanese competition ; they will not grant to an Asiatic Power that condition of equality without which Japan will make no Treaty ; and they are still possessed with a popular contempt for the coloured races which makes the execution of equal Treaties between Asiatics and Europeans extremely difficult. The workers of the Pacific slope dread com- mercial competition ; the Democratic Party is devoted to State Rights ; and the great Republic has not as yet the machinery necessary to overcome peacefully State resist- ance. She acknowledges that a Treaty is the supreme law, but supreme laws are occasionally very hard to enforce. The central Government may in the end overcome all these obstacles, but it will unquestionably hesitate to make them worse by new Treaties which will be at
least as much for the benefit of Europe as of the Western world.
Moreover, the great source of danger, the unrest which is evidently spreading in China, cannot be removed by any Treaty. The immense population of that Empire is waking up to a new consciousness. The national pride has been irritated by the events of this generation, and the people have been penetrated with a sullen suspicion, not only as to the perfection of their own organisation, which clearly has failed as against the external world, but of all white men, whom they now regard as persons engaged in great schemes for exploiting and plundering the sacred land. All reforming movements in China tend, therefore, to become anti-foreign movements, and the Treaties, how- ever well constructed, may any day be found useless in the face of a popular explosion. One at least of the objects of the Treaties now in process of completion is to ring in China, so that Europe plug Japan may press its advice on her with irresistible weight ; and the latent desire of every Chinaman is not to be pressed upon, but to make his country as independent as he sees the great States of Europe already are. This motive, in fact, is the one which enables the reformers of China to appeal to the masses behind them for their support.. The issue, moreover, of the war between Japan and Russia has liberated the Chinese from many of their fears, and has exaggerated that conceit of themselves and their civilisation which for ages has made arrangements with them so difficult and so unstable. Europe no doubt is stronger than China, and has nothing in the worst event to dread more dangerous than local massacres; but to make this proposition politically true, Europe must be united. While it is not true, Germany, Austria, and France cannot art with the necessary strength, and even America may, till the Panama Canal is cut, hesitate to abandon an isolated line of policy.
The deduction from all this, which to many of our readers may appear somewhat dreamy, is that to maintain a peaceful asceudency in the Far East, Europe must, as regards Far Eastern politics, be sufficiently united to act in emergency with rapidity and decision. That condition has as yet been scarcely secured, and though the adhesion of Japan, or, rather, her inclusion among European Powers, is an enormous assistance, the interests and the policy of Japan in China are not yet so clearly defined or so in- capable of change that Europe can afford, in dealing with the Far East, to throw away any of her self-contained strength. Germany should be courteously asked to enter the European ring, and an inquiry addressed to Washington asking whether it intends to await events or to join Europe and Japan in a scheme for securing to the Far East a .long period of opportunity for peaceful and fruitful advance. This universal understanding perhaps goes rather further than the ordinary conception of a working alliance, but it would be a great mistake to think that .a quadrilateral agreement introduces the millennium, though, as we have admitted, it is a distinct step towards the maintenance of peace in the Far East, and has already removed the principal objections to the Auglo-Japanese Alliance.
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