ed in its development
without disaster. Transformation from within is its sole way out, and
we can best help China by trying to see to it that she gets the time
she needs in order to effect this transformation, whether or not we
like the particular form it assumes at any particular time.

A successful war in behalf of China would leave untouched her problems
of education, of factional and sectional forces, of political
immaturity showing itself in present incapacity for organization. It
would affect her industrial growth undoubtedly, but in all human
probability for the worse, increasing the likelihood that she would
enter upon an industrialization which would repeat the worst evils of
western industrial life, without the immunities, resistances and
remedial measures which the West has evolved. The imagination cannot
conceive a worse crime than fastening western industrialism upon China
before she has developed within herself the meaning of coping with the
forces which it would release. The danger is great enough as it is.
War waged in China's behalf by western powers and western methods
would make the danger practically irresistible. In addition we should
gain a permanent interest in China which is likely to be of the most
dangerous character to ourselves. If we were not committed by it to
future imperialism, we should be luckier than we have any right to
hope to be. These things are said against a mental protest to
admitting even by implication the prospect of war with Japan, but it
seems necessary to say them.

These remarks are negative and vague as to our future course. They
imply a confession of lack of such wisdom as would enable me to make
positive definite proposals. But at least I have confidence in the
wisdom and goodwill of the American and other peoples to deal with the
problem, if they are only called into action. And the first condition
of calling wisdom and goodwill into effective existence is to
recognize the seriousness of the problem and the utter futility of
trying to force its solution by impatient and hurried methods.
Pro-Japanese apologetics is dangerous; it obscures the realities of
the situation. An irritated anti-Japanism that would hasten the
solution of the Chinese problem merely by attacking Japan is equally
fatal to discovering and applying a proper method.

More specifically and also more generically, proper publicity is the
greatest need. If, as Secretary Hughes has intimated, a settle