ntirely of the Eastern question, and say "it's none
of our business, fix it up yourself any way you like," or else it ought
to be as positive and aggressive in calling Japan to account for every
aggressive move she makes, as Japan is in doing them. It is sickening
that we allow Japan to keep us on the defensive and the explanatory, and
talk about the open door, when Japan has locked most of the doors in
China already and got the keys in her pocket. I understand and believe
what all Americans say here--the military party that controls Japan's
foreign policy in China regards everything but positive action, prepared
to back itself by force, as fear and weakness, and is only emboldened to
go still further. Met by force, she would back down. I don't mean
military force, but definite positive statements about what she couldn't
do that she knew meant business. At the present time the Japanese are
trying to stir up anti-foreign feeling and make the Chinese believe the
Americans and English are responsible for China not getting Shantung
back, and also talking race discrimination for the same purpose. I don't
know what effect their emissaries are having among the ignorant, but the
merchant class has about got to the point of asking foreign intervention
to straighten things out--first to loosen the clutch of Japan, and then,
or at the same time, for it's the two sides of the same thing, overthrow
the corrupt military clique that now governs China and sells it out.
It's a wonderful job for a League of Nations--if only by any chance
there is a league, which looks most dubious at this distance.

The question which is asked oftenest by the students is in effect this:
"All of our hopes of permanent peace and internationalism having been
disappointed at Paris, which has shown that might still makes right, and
that the strong nations get what they want at the expense of the weak,
should not China adopt militarism as part of her educational system?"

NANKING, May 18.

There is no doubt we are in China. Hangchow, we are told, was one of the
most prosperous of the strictly Chinese cities, and after seeing this
town we can believe it. It has a big wall around it, said to be 21 miles
and also 33--my guess is the latter; nonetheless there are hundreds of
acres of farm within it. This afternoon we were taken up on the wall; it
varies from 15 to 79 feet in height, according to the lay of the ground,
and from 12 to 30 feet or so wide; ha