These are important points in our policy towards China
and the result depends on how we carry them out. Can our
authorities firmly make up their mind to solve this Chinese
Question by the actual carrying out of this fundamental principle?
If they show irresolution while we have this heaven-conferred
chance and merely depend on the good will of the other Powers, we
shall eventually have greater pressure to be brought against the
Far East after the European War is over, when the present
equilibrium will be destroyed. That day will then be too late for
us to repent of our folly. We are therefore impelled by force of
circumstances to urge our authorities to a quicker sense of the
situation and to come to a determination.
The first point which leaps out of this extraordinarily frank
disquisition is that the origin of the Twenty-one Demands is at
last disclosed. A perusal of the ten articles forming the basis of
the Defensive alliance proposed by the Black Dragon Society,
allows us to understand everything that occurred in Peking in the
spring of 1915. As far back as November, 1914, it was generally
rumoured in Peking that Japan had a surprise of an extraordinary
nature in her diplomatic archives, and that it would be merely a
matter of weeks before it was sprung. Comparing this elaborate
memorandum of the Black Dragon Society with the original text of
the Twenty-one Demands it is plain that the proposed plan, having
been handed to Viscount Kato, had to be passed through the
diplomatic filters again and again until all gritty matter had
been removed, and an appearance of innocuousness given to it.
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