"
Now there is not the slightest doubt in the writer's mind--and he
can claim to speak as a student of twenty years' standing--that
this definition of Japanese aims and objects is a very true one;
and that the subsequent invitation to China to join the Allies
which came from Tokio after a meeting between the Japanese
Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Allied Ambassadors was simply
made when a new orientation of policy had been forced by stress of
circumstances. Japan has certainly always wished German influence
in the Far East to be uprooted if she can take the place of
Germany; but if she cannot take that place absolutely and entirely
she would vastly prefer the influence to remain, since it is in
the nature of counterweight to that of other European Powers and
of America--foreign influence in China, as Mr. Hioki blandly told
the late President Yuan Shih-kai in his famous interview of the
18th January, 1915, being a source of constant irritation to the
Japanese people, and the greatest stumbling-block to a permanent
understanding in the Far East.
Chinese suspicion of any invitation coming by way of Tokyo has
been, therefore, in every way justified, if it is a reasonable and
legitimate thing for a nation of four hundred millions of people
to be acutely concerned about their independence; for events have
already proved up to the hilt that so far from the expulsion of
Germany from Shantung having resulted in the handing-back of
interests which were forcibly acquired from China in 1898, that
expulsion has merely resulted in Japan succeeding to such
interests and thereby obliterating all trace of her original
promise to the world in 1914 that she would restore to China what
was originally taken from her.
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