Book: The Fight For The Republic in China

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There was one notable exception, however, Japan. Never relaxing her grip
on a complicated problem, watchful and active, where others were
indifferent and slothful, Japan bided her time. Knowing that the hour
had almost arrived when it would be possible to strike, Japan was vastly
active behind the scenes in China long before the outbreak of the
European war gave her the longed for opportunity; and largely because of
her the pear, which seemed already almost ripe, finally withered on the
tree.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] It is significant that Dr. Goodnow carried out all his
Constitutional studies in Germany, specializing in that department known
as Administrative Law which has no place, fortunately, in Anglo-Saxon
conceptions of the State.




CHAPTER V

THE FACTOR OF JAPAN

(FROM THE OUTBREAK OF THE WORLD-WAR, 1ST AUGUST, 1914, TO THE FILING OF
THE TWENTY-ONE DEMANDS, 18TH JANUARY, 1915)


The thunderclap of the European war shattered the uneasy calm in China,
not because the Chinese knew anything of the mighty issues which were to
be fought out with such desperation and valour, but because the presence
of the German colony of Kiaochow on Chinese soil and the activity of
German cruisers in the Yellow Sea brought the war to China's very doors.
Vaguely conscious that this might spell disaster to his own ambitious
plans, Yuan Shih-kai was actually in the midst of tentative negotiations
with the German Legation regarding the retrocession of the Kiaochow
territory when the news reached him that Japan, after some rapid
negotiations with her British Ally, had filed an ultimatum on Germany,
peremptorily demanding the handing-over of all those interests that had
been forcibly acquired in Shantung province in the great leasing-year of
1898.

At once Yuan Shih-kai realized that the Nemesis which had dogged his
footsteps all his life was again close behind him. In the Japanese
attack on Kiaochow he foresaw a web of complications which even his
unrivalled diplomacy might be unable to unravel; for he knew well from
bitter experience that wherever the Japanese sets his foot there he
remains. It is consequently round this single factor of Japan that the
history of the two succeeding years revolves. From being indisputably
the central figure on the Chinese canvas, Yuan Shih-kai suddenly becomes
subordinate to the terror of Japanese intervention which hangs over him
constantly like a black cloud, and governs every move he made from the
15th August, 1914, to the day of his dramatic death on the 6th June,
1916. We shall attempt to write down the true explanation of why this
should have been so.

It is extremely hard to discuss the question of Japan for the benefit of
an exclusively Western audience in a convincing way because Japanese
policy has two distinct facets which seem utterly contradictory, and yet
which are in a great measure understandable if the objects of that
diplomacy are set down. Being endowed with an extraordinary capacity for
taking detached views, the Statesmen of Tokio long ago discerned the
necessity of having two independent policies--an Eastern policy for
Eastern Asia and a Western policy for Western nations--because East and
West are essentially antithetical, and cannot be treated (at least not
yet) in precisely the same manner. Whilst the Western policy is frank
and manly, and is exclusively in the hands of brilliant and attractive
men who have been largely educated in the schools of Europe and America
and who are fully able to deal with all matters in accordance with the
customary traditions of diplomacy, the Eastern policy is the work of
obscurantists whose imaginations are held by the vast projects which the
Military Party believes are capable of realization in China. There is
thus a constant contradiction in the attitude of Japan which men have
sought in vain to reconcile. It is for this reason that the outer world
is divided into two schools of thought, one believing implicitly in
Japan's _bona fides_, the other vulgarly covering her with abuse and
declaring that she is the last of all nations in her conceptions of fair
play and honourable treatment. Both views are far-fetched. It is as true
of Japan as it is of every other Government in the world that her
actions are dictated neither by altruism nor by perfidy, but are merely
the result of the faulty working of a number of fallible brains and as
regards the work of administration in Japan itself the position is
equally extraordinary. Here, at the extreme end of the world, so far
from being in any way threatened, the principle of Divine Right, which
is being denounced and dismembered in Europe as a crude survival from
almost heathen days, stands untouched and still exhibits itself in all
its pristine glory. A highly aristocratic Court, possessing one of the
most complicated and jealously protected hierarchies in the world, and
presided over by a monarch claiming direct descent from the sacred Jimmu
Tenno of twenty-five hundred years ago, decrees to-day precisely as
before, the elaborate ritual governing every move, every decision and
every agreement. There is something so engaging in this political
curiosity, something so far removed from the vast world-movement now
rolling fiercely to its conclusion, that we may be pardoned for
interpolating certain capital considerations which closely affect the
future of China and therefore cannot fail to be of public interest.

The Japanese, who owe their whole theocratic conception to the Chinese,
just as they owe all their letters and their learning to them, still
nominally look upon their ruler as the link between Heaven and Earth,
and the central fact dominating their cosmogony. Although the vast
number of well-educated men who to-day crowd the cities of Japan are
fully conscious of the bizarre nature of this belief in an age which has
turned its back on superstition, nothing has yet been done to modify it
because--and this is the important point--the structure of Japanese
society is such that without a violent upheaval which shall hurl the
military clan system irremediably to the ground, it is absolutely
impossible for human equality to be admitted and the man-god theory to
be destroyed. So long as these two features-exist; that is so long as a
privileged military caste supports and attempts to make all-powerful the
man-god theory, so long will Japan be an international danger-spot
because there will lack those democratic restraints which this war has
shown are absolutely essential to secure a peaceful understanding among
the nations. It is for this reason that Japan will fail to attain the
position the art-genius and industry of her people entitle her to and
must limp behind the progress of the world unless a very radical
revision of the constitution is achieved. The disabilities which arise
from an archaic survival are so great that they will affect China as
adversely as Japan, and therefore should be universally understood.

Japanese history, if stripped of its superficial aspects, has a certain
remarkable quality; it seems steeped in heroic blood. The doctrine of
force, which expresses itself in its crudest forms in Europe, has always
been in Japan a system of heroic-action so fascinating to humanity at
large that until recent times its international significance has not
been realized. The feudal organization of Japanese society which arose
as a result of the armed conquest of the islands fifteen hundred years
ago, precluded centralizating measures being taken because the Throne,
relying on the virtues of Divine Ancestors rather than on any
well-articulated political theory, was weak in all except certain
quasisacerdotal qualities, and forced to rely on great chieftains for
the execution of its mandates as well as for its defence. The military
title of "barbarian-conquering general," which was first conferred on a
great clan leader eight centuries ago, was a natural enough development
when we remember that the autochthonous races were even then not yet
pushed out of the main island, and were still battling with the
advancing tide of Japanese civilization which was itself composed of
several rival streams coming from the Asiatic mainland and from the
Malayan archipelagoes. This armed settlement saturates Japanese history
and is responsible for the unending local wars and the glorification of
the warrior. The conception of triumphant generalship which Hideyoshi
attempted unsuccessfully to carry into Korea in the Sixteenth Century,
led directly at the beginning of the Seventeenth Century to the formal
establishment of the Shogunate, that military dictatorship being the
result of the backwash of the Korean adventure, and the greatest proof
of the disturbance which it had brought in Japanese society. The
persistence of this hereditary military dictatorship for more than two
and a half centuries is a remarkable illustration of the fact that as in
China so in Japan the theocratic conception was unworkable save in
primitive times--civilization demanding organization rather than
precepts and refusing to bow its head to speechless kings. Although the
Restoration of 1868 nominally gave back to the Throne all it had been
forced to leave in other hands since 1603, that transfer of power was
imaginary rather than real, the new military organization which
succeeded the Shogun's government being the vital portion of the
Restoration. In other words, it was the leaders of Japan's conscript
armies who inherited the real power, a fact made amply evident by the
crushing of the Satsuma Rebellion by these new corps whose organization
allowed them to overthrow the proudest and most valorous of the Samurai
and incidentally to proclaim the triumph of modern firearms.

Now it is important to note that as early as 1874--that is six years
after the Restoration of the Emperor Meiji--these facts were attracting
the widest notice in Japanese society, the agitation for a Constitution
and a popular assembly being very vigorously pushed. Led by the
well-known and aristocratic Itagaki, Japanese Liberalism had joined
battle with out-and-out Imperialism more than a quarter of a century
ago; and although the question of recovering Tariff and Judicial
autonomy and revising the Foreign Treaties was more urgent in those
days, the foreign question was often pushed aside by the fierceness of
the constitutional agitation.

It was not, however, until 1889 that a Constitution was finally granted
to the Japanese--that instrument being a gift from the Crown, and
nothing more than a conditional warrant to a limited number of men to
become witnesses of the processes of government but in no sense its
controllers. The very first Diet summoned in 1890 was sufficient proof
of that. A collision at once occurred over questions of finance which
resulted in the resignation of the Ministry. And ever since those days,
that is for twenty-seven consecutive years, successive Diets in Japan
have been fighting a forlorn fight for the power which can never be
theirs save by revolution, it being only natural that Socialism should
come to be looked upon by the governing class as Nihilism, whilst the
mob-threat has been very acute ever since the Tokio peace riots of 1905.

Now it is characteristic of the ceremonial respect which all Japanese
have for the Throne that all through this long contest the main issue
should have been purposely obscured. The traditional feelings of
veneration which a loyal and obedient people feel for a line of
monarchs, whose origin is lost in the mists of antiquity, are such that
they have turned what is in effect an ever-growing struggle against the
archaic principle of divine right into a contest with clan-leaders whom
they assert are acting "unconstitutionally" whenever they choose to
assert the undeniable principles of the Constitution. Thus to-day we
have this paradoxical situation; that although Japanese Liberalism must
from its very essence be revolutionary, _i.e._, destructive before it
can hope to be constructive, it feigns blindness, hoping that by suasion
rather than by force the principle of parliamentary government will
somehow be grafted on to the body politic and the emperors, being left
outside the controversy, become content to accept a greatly modified
rule.

This hope seems a vain one in the light of all history. Militarism and
the clans are by no means in the last ditch in Japan, and they will no
more surrender their power than would the Russian bureaucracy. The only
argument which is convincing in such a case is the last one which is
ever used; and the mere mention of it by so-called socialists is
sufficient to cause summary arrest in Japan. Sheltering themselves
behind the Throne, and nominally deriving their latter-day dictatorship
from the Imperial mandate, the military chiefs remain adamant, nothing
having yet occurred to incline them to surrender any of their
privileges. By a process of adaptation to present-day conditions, a
formula has now been discovered which it is hoped will serve many a long
year. By securing by extra-legal means the return of a "majority" in the
House of Representatives the fiction of national support of the
autocracy has been re-invigorated, and the doctrine laid down that what
is good for every other advanced people in the world is bad for the
Japanese, who must be content with what is granted them and never
question the superior intelligence of a privileged caste. In the opinion
of the writer, it is every whit as important for the peace of the world
that the people of Japan should govern themselves as it is for the
people of Germany to do so. The persistence of the type of military
government which we see to-day in Japan is harmful for all alike because
it is as antiquated as Tsarism and a perpetual menace to a disarmed
nation such as China. So long as that government remains, so long must
Japan remain an international suspect and be denied equal rights in the
council-chambers of the Liberal Powers.

If the situation which arose on the 15th August, 1914, is to be
thoroughly understood, it is necessary to pick up threads of
Chino-Japanese relations from a good many years back. First-hand
familiarity with the actors and the scenes of at least three decades is
essential to give the picture the completeness, the brilliancy of
colouring, and withal the suggestiveness inseparable from all true
works of art. For the Chino-Japanese question is primarily a work of art
and not merely a piece of jejune diplomacy stretched across the years.
As the shuttle of Fate has been cast swiftly backwards and forwards, the
threads of these entwining relations have been woven into patterns
involving the whole Far East, until to-day we have as it were a complete
Gobelin tapestry, magnificent with meaning, replete with action, and
full of scholastic interest.

Let us follow some of the tracery. It has long been the habit to affirm
that the conflict between China and Japan had its origin in Korea, when
Korea was a vassal state acknowledging the suzerainty of Peking; and
that the conflict merited ending there, since of the two protagonists
contending for empire Japan was left in undisputed mastery. This
statement, being incomplete, is dangerously false. Dating from that
vital period of thirty years ago, when Yuan Shih-kai first went to Seoul
as a general officer in the train of the Chinese Imperial Resident (on
China being forced to take action in protection of her interests, owing
to the "opening" of Korea by the American Treaty of 1882) three
contestants, equally interested in the balance of land-power in Eastern
Asia were constantly pitted against one another with Korea as their
common battling-ground--Russia, China and Japan. The struggle, which
ended in the eclipse of the first two, merely shifted the venue from the
Korean zone to the Manchurian zone; and from thence gradually extended
it further and further afield until at last not only was Inner Mongolia
and the vast belt of country fronting the Great Wall embraced within its
scope, but the entire aspect of China itself was changed. For these
important facts have to be noted. Until the Russian war of 1904-05 had
demonstrated the utter valuelessness of Tsarism as an international
military factor, Japan had been almost willing to resign herself to a
subordinate role in the Far East. Having eaten bitter bread as the
result of her premature attempt in 1895 (after the Korean war) to become
a continental power--an attempt which had resulted in the forced
retrocession of the Liaotung Peninsula--she had been placed on her good
behaviour, an attitude which was admirably reflected in 1900 when her
Peking Expeditionary Force proved itself so well-behaved and so gallant
as to arouse the world's admiration. But the war with Russia and the
collapse of the Tsar's Manchurian adventure not only drew her back into
territory that she never hoped to see again, but placed her in
possession of a ready-made railway system which carried her almost up to
the Sungari river and surrendered to her military control vast
grasslands stretching to the Khingan mountains. This Westernly march so
greatly enlarged the Japanese political horizon, and so entirely changed
the Japanese viewpoint, that the statesmen of Tokio in their excitement
threw off their ancient spectacles and found to their astonishment that
their eyes were every whit as good as European eyes. Now seeing the
world as others had long seen it, they understood that just as with the
individuals so with nations the struggle for existence can most easily
be conducted by adopting that war-principle of Clausewitz--the restless
offensive, and not by writing meaningless dispatches. Prior to the
Russian war they had written to Russia a magnificent series of documents
in which they had pleaded with sincerity for an equitable
settlement,--only to find that all was in vain. Forced to battle, they
had found in combat not only success but a new principle.

The discovery necessitated a new policy. During the eighties, and in a
lesser degree in the nineties, Japan had apart from everything else been
content to act in a modest and retiring way, because she wished at all
costs to avoid testing too severely her immature strength. But owing to
the successive collapses of her rivals, she now found herself not only
forced to attack as the safest course of action, but driven to the view
that the Power that exerts the maximum pressure constantly and
unremittedly is inevitably the most successful. This conclusion had
great importance. For just as the first article of faith for England in
Asia has been the doctrine that no Power can be permitted to seize
strategic harbours which menace her sea-communications, so did it now
become equally true of Japan that her dominant policy became not an
Eastern Monroe doctrine, as shallow men have supposed, but simply the
Doctrine of Maximum Pressure. To press with all her strength on China
was henceforth considered vital by every Japanese; and it is in this
spirit that every diplomatic pattern has been woven since the die was
cast in 1905. Until this signal fact has been grasped no useful analysis
can be made of the evolution of present conditions. Standing behind
this policy, and constantly reinforcing it, are the serried ranks of
the new democracy which education and the great increase in material
prosperity have been so rapidly creating. The soaring ambition which
springs from the sea lends to the attacks developed by such a people the
aspect of piracies; and it is but natural. In such circumstances that
for Chinese Japan should not only have the aspect of a sea-monster but
that their country should appear as hapless Andromeda bound to a rock,
always awaiting a Perseus who never comes....

The Revolution of 1911 had been entirely unexpected in Japan. Whilst
large outbreaks had been certainly counted on since the Chinese
Revolutionary party had for years used Japan as an asylum and a base of
operations, never had it been anticipated that the fall of an ancient
Dynasty could be so easily encompassed. Consequently, the abdication of
the Manchus as the result of intrigues rather than of warfare was looked
upon as little short of a catastrophe because it hopelessly complicated
the outlook, broke the pattern which had been so carefully woven for so
many years, and interjected harsh elements which could not be assigned
an orderly place. Not only was a well-articulated State-system suddenly
consigned to the flames, but the ruin threatened to be so general that
the balance of power throughout the Far East would be twisted out of
shape. Japanese statesmen had desired a weak China, a China which would
ultimately turn to them for assistance because they were a kindred race,
but not a China that looked to the French Revolution for its
inspiration. To a people as slow to adjust themselves to violent
surprises as are the Japanese, there was an air of desperation about the
whole business which greatly alarmed them, and made them determined at
the earliest possible moment to throw every ounce of their weight in the
direction which would best serve them by bringing matters back to their
original starting-point. For this reason they were not only prepared in
theory in 1911 to lend armed assistance to the Manchus but would have
speedily done so had not England strongly dissented from such a course
of action when she was privately sounded about the matter. Even to-day,
when a temporary adjustment of Japanese policy has been successfully
arranged, it is of the highest importance for political students to
remember that the dynastic influences in Tokio have never departed from
the view that the legitimate sovereignty of China remains vested in the
Manchu House and that everything that has taken place since 1911 is
irregular and unconstitutional.

For the time being, however, two dissimilar circumstances demanded
caution: first, the enthusiasm which the Japanese democracy, fed by a
highly excited press, exhibited towards the Young China which had been
so largely grounded in the Tokio schools and which had carried out the
Revolution: secondly--and far more important--the deep, abiding and
ineradicable animosity which Japanese of all classes felt for the man
who had come out of the contest head and shoulders above everybody
else--Yuan Shih-kai. These two remarkable features ended by completely
thrusting into the background during the period 1911-1914 every other
element in Japanese statesmanship; and of the two the second must be
counted the decisive one. Dating back to Korea, when Yuan Shih-kai's
extraordinary diplomatic talents constantly allowed him to worst his
Japanese rivals and to make Chinese counsels supreme at the Korean Court
up to the very moment when the first shots of the war of 1894 were
fired, this ancient dislike, which amounted to a consuming hatred, had
become a fixed idea. Restrained by the world's opinion during the period
prior to the outbreak of the world-war as well as by the necessity of
acting financially in concert with the other Powers, it was not until
August, 1914, that the longed-for opportunity came and that Japan
prepared to act in a most remarkable way.

The campaign against Kiaochow was unpopular from the outset among the
Japanese public because it was felt that they were not legitimately
called upon to interest themselves in such a remote question as the
balance of power among European nations, which was what British warfare
against Germany seemed to them to be. Though some ill-will was felt
against Germany for the part played by her in the intervention of 1895,
it must not be forgotten that just as the Japanese navy is the child of
the British navy, so is the Japanese army the child of the German
army--and that Japanese army chiefs largely control Japan. These men
were averse from "spoiling their army" in a contest which did not
interest them. There was also the feeling abroad that England by
calling upon her Ally to carry out the essential provisions of her
Alliance had shown that she had the better part of a bargain, and that
she was exploiting an old advantage in a way which could not fail to
react adversely on Japan's future world's relationships. Furthermore, it
is necessary to underline the fact that official Japan was displeased by
the tacit support an uninterested British Foreign Office had
consistently given to the Yuan Shih-kai regime. That the Chinese
experiment was looked upon in England more with amusement than with
concern irritated the Japanese--more particularly as the British Foreign
Office was issuing in the form of White Papers documents covering Yuan
Shih-kai's public declarations as if they were contributions to
contemporary history. Thus in the preceding year (1913) under the
nomenclature of "affairs in China" the text of a _dementi_ regarding the
President of China's Imperial aspirations had been published,--a
document which Japanese had classified as a studied lie, and as an act
of presumption because its working showed that its author intended to
keep his back turned on Japan. The Dictator had declared:--

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