America’s Policy in China
In the note of July 3, announcing to the world the policy of the United States in regard to China, it is declared:— The policy of the government of the United States is to seek a solution which may bring about permanent safety and peace in China, preserve Chinese territorial and administrative ENTITY, protect all rights guaranteed to friendly Powers by treaty and international law, and safeguard for the world the principle of equal and impartial trade with all parts of the Chinese Empire. Study that statement clause by clause, and you will get a glimpse of the mighty task which this nation has assumed in Asia. As a leading journal remarks:— Here the administration has conceded that its policy means the entrance of the United States into Asiatic politics. For no one can suggest how America can work actively for the ends outlined, without plunging into the politics of Asia up to the neck. The United States can no more preserve the “entity” of China without being a force in the complications of Oriental politics than it could set out to preserve the “entity” of Turkey without entering the politics of Europe. That the program is somewhat colossal will not be seriously disputed. In the first place, the United States is to seek for “permanent safety and peace” in China. Now a state of “permanent safety and peace” is manifestly an impossibility in the most advanced and well-governed of Western nations. The alien nation that seeks to keep China in a condition of perpetual peace must always be in China, prepared to prevent or put down civil war. To preserve Chinese “entity,” you must be ready to do a great many other things, such as enter foreign alliances that mean business. To keep China’s territorial domain as it is, you must be prepared to oppose the Slav coming down from the north, and the German pushing in from the sea. And when you “safeguard for the world,” instead of for the United States alone, the principle of equal and impartial trade, you pass beyond the realm of national interests, which alone concern properly the statesman. Just why the United States should set out to “safeguard the world’s” trading interests in China is a mystery. If the United States safeguards its own trade, it will do its full duty. It is not enough now to say that the United States is one of “the kings of the East;” but that she is, or at least proposes to be, the very chiefest of these. And so there are now no kings of the East, except the kings of the West; and these are “the kings of the earth and of the whole world.”