tack them, but also to have any dealings
with them. This policy was much criticised as being purely negative,
but toward the end of Mr. Wilson's Administration both England and
France were tending to follow it through the force of circumstances,
England's effort to find a basis of trade relations with Bolshevist
Russian being as futile as France's support of anti-Bolshevist
revolutionary movements.

The Republicans and their Irish supporters in the 1920 campaign revived
the old demand for the exemption of American shipping from the Panama
Canal tolls, but this and various other differences with England which
arose toward the end of Mr. Wilson's Administration were left over for
settlement by the new President. More urgent, however, was another
ancient issue now revived--the California land question. In 1917, when
America was just entering the war and could not afford any dangerous
entanglements on the Pacific, the Lansing-Ishii agreement was
negotiated with Japan. By this the United States recognized Japan's
"special interests" in China, particularly in "the parts to which her
territory is contiguous," while both powers professed agreement on the
principles of Chinese independence and territorial integrity, and the
open door. However necessary this concession in order to protect an
exposed flank in time of war, it was regarded with much alarm by
friends of China, whose wrath was later aroused by the action of the
President at the Peace Conference in agreeing to the cession of
Shantung to Japan. There was a renewed antagonism between American and
Japanese interests in certain quarters, and the American Army in
Siberia, if it did nothing else, at least kept the Japanese from
seizing Vladivostok until the Americans had left.

With this background, the situation created by the revival of
anti-Japanese agitation in California seemed more or less disquieting,
but when a more stringent land law was enacted by the Californians in
November negotiations between the two Governments began at once and are
still going on at the close of the Administration with good prospect of
agreement.

The President's unpopularity had been so violently expressed by the
election of November 2 that it was bound to be mitigated soon after,
and this natural reaction was aided by the failure of the Republican
Congress to accomplish anything in the short session and by
President-elect Harding's slowness in deciding among candidates offered
for the C