powers signed a treaty pledging themselves not to build or maintain
submarines of any kind or description, we would have every reason to
expect them to live up to it. But when a nation is engaged in war and
has a large flotilla of submarines which it has agreed to use only for
certain purposes, there is apt to come a time when the temptation to
use them for wholly different purposes will be overwhelming.

The Committee on Pacific and Far Eastern Questions held its first
meeting November 16. This committee was primarily concerned with the
very delicate situation created by the aggressive action and expansion
of Japan during the past twenty years. In 1905, by the Treaty of
Portsmouth, Japan succeeded to the Russian rights in southern
Manchuria; in 1910 she annexed Korea; in 1911, during the Chinese
Revolution, she stationed troops at Hankow and later constructed
permanent barracks; in 1914, after the defeat of the Germans at
Kiao-chau, she took over all the German interests in the Shantung
peninsula; in 1915 she presented the Twenty-one Demands to China and
coerced that power into granting most of them; and in 1918, in
conjunction with the United States, Great Britain, and France, she
landed a military force in the Maritime Province of Siberia for the
definite purpose of rescuing the Czecho-Slovak troops who had made
their way to that province and of guarding the military stores at
Vladivostok. The other powers had all withdrawn their contingents, but
Japan had increased her force from one division to more than 70,000
troops. The eastern coast of Asia was thus in the firm grip of Japan,
and she had secured concessions from China which seriously impaired the
independence of that country.

It was commonly supposed that the United States delegation had prepared
a program on the Far Eastern question, and that this would be presented
in the same way that Hughes had presented the naval program. If this
was the intention there was a sudden change of plan, for between one
and two o'clock at night the Chinese delegates were aroused from their
slumbers and informed that there would be an opportunity for them to
present China's case before the committee at eleven o'clock that
morning. They at once went to work with their advisers, and a few
minutes before the appointed hour they completed the drafting of the
Ten Points, which Minister Sze read before the committee. These Points
constituted a Chinese declaration of independ