The Fight for the Republic in ChinaPutnam Weale, B. L. (Bertram Lenox)
History
The Fight for the Republic in China
Putnam Weale, B. L. (Bertram Lenox)
China -- History -- Republic, 1912-1949; China -- Politics and government
Once the legitimate aspirations of the Korean people have been
satisfied, the whole Manchurian-Mongolian question will assume a
different aspect, and a true peace between China and Japan will be
made possible. It is to no one's interest to have a Polish
question in the Far East with all the bitterness and the crimes
which such a question must inevitably lead to; and the time to
obviate the creation of such a question is at the very beginning
before it has become an obsession and a great international issue.
Although the Japanese annexation may be held to have settled the
question once and for all, we have but to point to Poland to show
that a race can pass through every possible humiliation and endure
every possible species of truncation without dying or abating by
one whit its determination to enjoy what happier races have won.
The issue is a vital one. China by her recent acts has given a
categorical and unmistakable reply to all the insidious attempts
to place her outside and beyond the operation of international law
and all those sanctions which make life worth living; and because
of the formal birth of a Foreign Policy it can be definitely
expected that this nation, despite its internal troubles and
struggles, will never rest content until she has created a new
nexus of world-relationships which shall affirm and apply every
one of the principles experience elsewhere has proved are the
absolute essentials to peace and happiness. China is already many
decades ahead of Japan in her theory of government, no matter what
the practice may be, the marvellous revolution of 1911 having
given back to this ancient race its old position of leader in
ideas on the shores of the Yellow Sea. The whole dream Japan has
cherished, and has sought to give form to during the war, is in
the last analysis antiquated and forlorn and must ultimately
dissolve into thin air; for it is monstrous to suppose, in an age
when European men have sacrificed everything to free themselves
from the last vestiges of feudalism, that in the Far East the cult
of Sparta should remain a hallowed and respected doctrine. Japan's
policy in the Far East during the period of the war has been
uniformly mischievous and is largely responsible for the fierce
hatreds which burst out in 1917 over the war issue; and China will
be forced to raise at the earliest possible moment the whole
question of the validity of the undertakings extorted from her in
1915 under the threat of an ultimatum. Although the precise nature
of Anglo-Japanese diplomacy during the vital eleven days from the
4th to the 15th August, 1914, [i. e. from the British declaration
of war on Germany to the Japanese ultimatum regarding Kiaochow]
remains a sealed book, China suspects that Japan from the very
beginning of the present war world-struggle has taken advantage of
England's vast commitments and acted ultra vires. China hopes and
believes that Britain will never again renew the Japanese
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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