ment has officially refused to
validate the agreement.

These considerations not only throw light on some of the difficulties
of the functioning of the Consortium, but they give an indispensable
background for judging the actual effect of the renewal of the
Anglo-Japanese alliance. By force of circumstances each government,
even against its own wish, will be compelled to wink at the predatory
policies of the other; and the tendency will be to create a division
of spheres of influence between the north and south in order to avoid
more direct conflicts. The English liberals who stand for the renewal
of the alliance on the ground that it will enable England to exercise
a check on Japanese policies, are more naive than was Mr. Wilson with
his belief in the separation of the economic and political control of
Shantung.

It cannot be too often repeated that the real point of friction
between the United States and Japan is not in California but in China.
It is silly--unless it is calculated--for English authorities to keep
repeating that under no circumstances does the alliance mean that
Great Britain would support Japan in a war with the United States. The
day the alliance is renewed, the hands of the militarists in Japan
will be strengthened and the hands of the liberals--already weak
enough--be still further weakened. In consequence, all the sources of
friction in China between the United States and Japan will be
intensified. I do not believe in the predicted war. But should it
come, the first act of Japan--so everyone in China believes--will be
to seize the ports of northern China and its railways in order to make
sure of an uninterrupted supply of food and raw materials. The act
would be justified as necessary to national existence. Great Britain
in alliance with Japan would be in no position to protest in anything
but the most perfunctory way. The guarantee of such abstinence would
be for Japan the next best thing to open naval and financial support.
Without the guarantee they would not dare the seizure of Chinese
ports. In recent years diplomatists have shown themselves capable of
unlimited stupidity. But it is not possible that the men in the
British Foreign Office are not aware of these elementary facts. If
they renew the alliance they knowingly take the responsibility for the
consequences.

May 24, 1921.

IV

A Political Upheaval in China

Even in America we have heard of one Chinese revolutio