IX Where Japan Is Absorbing an Empire
“The Open Door in Manchuria—of what concern is it to me any more than the revolution in Portugal or the Young Turks movement in Constantinople?” With some such expression the average American is likely to dismiss the question—a question whose determination may prove the pivot on which will swing the greatest world-movements of our time as well as the prosperity of many European and American industries, and that of the labor dependent upon them.
I
Concerning Manchuria and all the issues involved in the present struggle for its possession, all kinds of misconceptions are rife. That it is a small country; that it is an infertile country; that it must be already well developed in point of population and consumption of goods: this is only the ABC of Manchurian misinformation.
In answer, it need only be said that Manchuria is larger than all our New England, Middle, and South Atlantic States from Maine to Georgia inclusive, and that into its borders all of Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales), together with all of the German Empire, could be crowded, and still leave a gap so big that Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland would lack thousands of square miles of filling it: while as to population Manchuria has only 18,000,000 people as compared with 118,000,000 in the European countries just mentioned. And after having travelled in all of them as well as in Manchuria I should say that the Asiatic area is the more fertile.
The possibilities of such an empire situated in the fairest portion of Asia’s temperate zone are simply illimitable. No one who has been through the fruitful lands of the American Corn Belt and Wheat Belt and goes later through Manchuria can fail to note the similarity between them in physical appearance and natural resources, and it may well be that what the settlement of the West has meant in America these last fifty years the development of Manchuria will mean in Asia these next fifty.
In itself the sheer creation of such a country—larger far than Great Britain and Germany, as rich as Illinois and Manitoba—would appeal at once to American commerce and industry, but you have only begun to grasp the significance of Manchuria when you compare it to the creation of such an empire in some favored portion of the sea.
Manchuria means all this, but it means more: Its possession would give such vastly increased influence to any Power possessing it as to make that Power a menace to the commercial rights of all other nations in Asia—rights of almost vital importance both to Europe and America. England and Germany, of course, are already dependent upon foreign trade for their prosperity, and President McKinley was never so seerlike as when, in his last speech at Buffalo, he reminded the American people that their own future greatness depends upon the development of trade beyond the seas. And it was to Asia, the greatest of continents, and especially to China, the greatest of countries on this greatest of continents, that he looked, as we must also look to-day. In Secretary Hay’s memorial address on McKinley, which I had the good fortune to hear, the dead President’s determined efforts to maintain the ancient integrity of the Dragon Empire were fittingly mentioned as one of his most distinguished services to his people and his time. To keep the immense area of China from spoliation by other nations and to preserve to all peoples equal commercial rights within boundaries are absolutely essential to the proper future development of both European and American commerce and industry.
II
This is why the Open Door in Manchuria is a matter of very real concern to every Occidental citizen; this is why the other nations after the ending of the Russo-Japanese War were careful to see that these belligerents guaranteed a continuance of the Open Door policy; this is why it is of importance to us to know whether this pledge is being kept.
In centering my attention upon Japan in this article let me say in the outset, I am not to be understood as being one whit more tolerant of Russian than of Japanese aggression in Manchuria—I am not. In the Russo-Japanese War my sympathies were all with Japan, my present friendships with numbers of her sons I prize very highly, but I cannot blind myself to the fact that she is apparently “drunk with sight of power” in the Orient.
As conditions are to-day, the reason for giving primary attention to Japan’s position in Manchuria rather than Russia’s must be self-evident. In the first place, the territory embraced in her sphere of influence is more important and contains two thirds the population. Then again: Northern Manchuria being cold and inhospitable, Japan’s sphere not only covers the fairer and more favored section agriculturally, but from the standpoint of military strategy (as a mighty war taught all the world) Japan is vastly better placed. With Port Arthur in her possession, and the new broad-gauge line from Antung and Mukden enabling her to rush troops across the Sea of Japan and through Korea to Manchuria without once getting into foreign waters or on foreign soil, she could ask nothing better. And finally and most significant of all, Russia has suffered perhaps the greatest humiliation in her history by reason of Manchurian aggression; she has learned Japan’s point of vantage; and whatever advance she makes in the near future will be only by Japanese sufferance and connivance.
LIKE SCENES FROM OUR WESTERN PRAIRIES.
Manchuria is a vast empire—one of the most fertile portions of the earth’s surface. The great money crop is the soy bean, and the lower picture shows miles of beans and bean-cake awaiting shipment at Changchun.
MANCHURIAN WOMEN (SHOWING PECULIAR HEAD-DRESS),
CHINESE WASTE-PAPER COLLECTOR.
Everything in China is scrupulously saved—except human labor. That is wasted on a colossal scale through the failure to use improved machinery or scientific knowledge.
{83 continued}
Whatever may be the meaning of the alleged secret treaty between Japan and Russia, the great truth which all nations need to remember is this: Whatever scotches Japanese aggression in Manchuria scotches Russian aggression at the same time—automatically and simultaneously. To the Open Door in Manchuria Japan carries the key.
III
Japan’s primary commercial advantage over all other nations in South Manchuria, her railway monopoly, together with the use she is making of this monopoly and her plans to maintain it, we must now consider more in detail.
When the war with Russia ended, Japan succeeded Russia in the control of what is now the South Manchurian Railway, running from Dairen (formerly Dalny) to Chang-chun, 438 miles, through the very heart of the country, and she also obtained from China the right “to maintain and work the military line constructed between Antung and Mukden and” —as if of secondary importance—“to improve the said line so as to make it fit for the conveyance of commercial and industrial goods of all nations.” The stipulation with regard to the South Manchurian Railway was that China should have the right to buy it back in 1938, and with regard to the Antung-Mukden line, in 1932, by paying the total cost—“all capital and all moneys owed on account of the line and interest.” And just here Japan is playing a wily game.
Consider, for example, the Antung-Mukden line just referred to, now regarded as a part of the South Manchurian system. Although running through a very mountainous and sparsely settled area, it is of immense importance to Japan from a strategic standpoint, connecting Mukden as it does with the Japanese railway in Korea leading directly to Fusan, and thus enabling Japan to transport troops across her own territory to Manchuria without taking any of the risks involved in getting out of her own waters and boundaries. The paramount military importance of the line is further indicated by the fact that no one had thought of a commercial line here at all. Simply as a matter of war-time necessity Japan stretched a 2-1/2-foot narrow-gauge line across these mountain barrens to transport her troops in 1905. It is interesting to see, therefore, how she has now interpreted her right to “work, maintain and improve”—especially “improve”—this line. In October I spent two days travelling over its entire length (188 miles), most of the time on the narrow-gauge part, and I was amazed to see on what a magnificent scale the new broad-gauge substitute line is now building. In striking contrast to the traditional Japanese tendency to impermanence in building, this line is constructed regardless of expense as if to last for a thousand years. Tunnel after tunnel through solid rock, the most superb masonry and bridges wherever streams intervene, the best of ballast to make an enduring roadbed—all these indicate the style of the new, not “improved” but utterly reconstructed, line which is building for Japan’s benefit at China’s expense—at China’s expense directly if she buys it back in 1932, at China’s expense indirectly if she doesn’t.
It will be remembered, of course, that according to her agreement with China, Japan was to begin the work of “improving” the Antung-Mukden line within two years. Whether she was strangely unable to make any sort of beginning in the period, or whether she purposely delayed it in order to show her contempt for Chinese sovereignty in Manchuria, it is difficult to say; what is known is only that the Mikado’s government let its treaty rights lapse, and then when China objected to a renewal, defied China, and proceeded with the work of “improvement” by what was euphemistically termed “independent action.”
Incidentally, it may be recalled just here that in the Portsmouth Peace Treaty Japan and Russia jointly promised the rest of the world “to exploit their respective railways in Manchuria exclusively for commercial and industrial purposes and in no wise for strategic purpose.”
That Japan (in the event no other method of getting control of Manchuria appears) hopes to make the railroads too expensive for the hard-pressed Peking government to buy back is self-evident. She is looking far ahead, as those interested in the continuance of the Open Door policy must also look far ahead. The real Open Door question is not a matter of the last four or five years or of the next four or five years, but whether after a comparatively short time the Door is to be permanently closed as in Korea. If it be said that Japan is only human in laying many plans to gain so rich an empire, let it also be said that other nations are only human if they wish to protect their own interests.
IV
For one thing, as has been suggested, Japan has a perfectly obvious plan to make the railways too expensive for China to purchase when the lease expires, and just here some comparisons may be in order. In Japan proper the government-owned railway stations are severe and inexpensive structures in which not one yen is wasted for display and but little for convenience. When I was in Tokyo, for example, Ex-Premier Okuma, in a public interview, called attention to the disreputable condition and appearance of the leading station (Shimbashi) in the Japanese capital, declaring that foreign tourists must inevitably have their general impressions of the country unfavorably influenced by it, so primitive and uninviting is its appearance. But when it comes to the South Manchurian Railway, also under the control of the Japanese Government (five sixths of the investment held by the government and one sixth by individual Japanese), one finds an entirely different policy in force. Handsome stations, built to accommodate traffic for fifty years to come, have been erected. In Dairen, “virtually the property of the railway company,” the system has built a magnificent modern city—street railways, waterworks, electric light plants, macadamized roads, and beautiful public parks. More than this, the railway company, not content with the best of equipment for every phase of legitimate railway work, including handsome stations and railway offices, such as Japan proper never sees, has also erected hotels which, for the Orient, may well be styled sumptuous, in five leading cities of Manchuria. Comparatively few travellers go to Mukden, and yet the hotel which the South Manchurian Railway has erected there, for example, is perhaps not excelled in point of furnishing and equipment anywhere in the Far East.
In buying back the railroads, therefore, China will be expected not only to pay for the railways themselves but for all the irrelevant enterprises—hotels, parks, cities—in which the railway companies have embarked; for lines “improved” beyond recognition, and for lines built not even with a view to ultimate profit, but for their strategic importance to a rival and possibly antagonist nation! As an Englishman said to me: “It’s much the same as if I, a poor man, should rent you a $1000 house, agreeing to stand the expense of some improvements when taking it back, and you should spend $10,000 in improving my $1000 house—and largely to suit your own peculiar business and purposes.”
More than this, Japan, as I have said, is determined to keep her absolute monopoly on South Manchurian railway facilities. In Article IV of the Portsmouth Peace Treaty Japan and Russia reciprocally engaged not to “obstruct any general measures, common to all countries, which China may take for the development of the commerce and industry of Manchuria,” but in December of the same year Japan caused China to yield a secret agreement prohibiting any new line “in the neighborhood of and parallel to” the South Manchurian Railway or any branch line that “might be prejudicial” to it. Japan, under threat of arms, forced China to abandon the plan for the Hsinmintun-Fakumen line after arrangements had been made with an English syndicate, and later Japan and Russia on the same pretext prevented the proposed Chinchow-Aigun line across Mongolia and Manchuria, although a hundred miles or more away from the South Manchurian line.
V
That Japan, then, holds the whip hand in Manchuria, and expects to continue to hold it, is very clear. With China as yet too weak to protect herself, Japan is virtually master of the situation. Let us ask then—since this is in an American book—whether the Open Door policy is being enforced even now; to ask it of any one in Manchuria is to be laughed at. I tried it once in a Standard Oil office and the man in front of me roared, and an unnoticed clerk at my back, overhearing so absurd a question, was also unable to contain his merriment. It is not a question of the fact of the shutting-up policy, Chinese and foreigners in Manchuria will tell you; it is only a question as to the extent of that condition.
The truth is that the ink was hardly dry on the early treaties before the discriminations began. The military railroads, which Japan was in honor bound to all the world to use only for war purposes, were used for transporting Japanese goods before the military restrictions with regard to the admission of other foreign goods were removed. The Chinese merchant and his patrons were famishing for cotton “piece goods” and other manufactured products, and the Japanese goods coming over were quickly taken up and a market for these particular “chops” or “trademarks” (the Chinaman relies largely on the chop) was established. By the time European and American goods came back their market in many cases had already been taken away. In some cases, too, their trademark rights had been virtually ruined by the closeness of Japanese imitation. Even on my recent tour, among consuls of three nations, at Manchurian points, I did not find one who did not mention some recent case of trademark infringement.
Then came the period of freight discriminations and rebates, when the Japanese (principally the Mitsui Bussan Kaisha, the one great octopus of Japanese business and commerce) secured freight rates that practically stifled foreign business competitors. The railway company now asserts that rebates (formerly allowed, it alleges, because of heavy shipments) are no longer given; but in many cases the evil effects of the former rebating policy remain in that Japanese traders were thus allowed to rush in during a formative period and establish permanent trade connections.
Meanwhile, too, the relations between the Japanese Government and the Mitsui Bussan Kaisha are so close that competitors are virtually in the plight of having to ship goods over a line owned by a rival—without any higher tribunal to guarantee equality of treatment. As was recently declared:
“Two directors of the South Manchurian Railway are also directors of Mitsui Bussan Kaisha. The traffic manager of the railway is an ex-employee of Mitsui. The customs force at Dalny is not only entirely Japanese—no other foreigner in charge of a Chinese customs office employs exclusively assistants of his own nationality—but a number of the customs inspectors are ex-employees of Mitsui. The Mitsui company also maintains branches all through Manchuria in and out of treaty ports. In this way they escape the payment of Chinese likin, or toll taxes. The Chinese have agreed that these taxes—2 per cent, on the value of the goods each time they pass to a new inland town—shall not be paid so long as they remain in the hands of the foreigner. American piece goods often pay likin tax, two, three, or four times, while the Japanese—sometimes legitimately by reason of their branch houses, sometimes illegally by bluffing Chinese officials or smuggling through their military areas—manage to escape likin almost altogether.”
It may not be true that the Japanese customs officials at Dairen (the treaty provides that China shall appoint a Japanese collector at this port), ignorantly or knowingly, allow Japanese goods to be smuggled through to Manchuria—although consuls of three nations a few months ago thought the matter serious enough to suggest an investigation—but the evasion of likin taxes in the interior is an admitted fact.
More flagrant still is another violation of international treaty rights. Under Chinese regulations foreign merchants are not allowed to do business in the Manchurian interior away from the twenty-four open marts, but it has been shown that several thousand Japanese are now stationed within the prohibited area, and Japan’s reply to the Chinese Viceroy’s protest is that he should have objected sooner and that it is now too late. Meanwhile, many Chinese merchants both in the interior and along the South Manchurian Railway, themselves paying the regular likin and consumption taxes, are finding themselves unable to compete with the Japanese, who refuse to pay these taxes. Thus Japan is gradually rooting out the natives who stand in her way, and, day by day, tightening her grip on the country.
She is advancing step by step as she did in Korea.
On the whole, the Mikado’s subjects seem already to count themselves virtual masters of the country. Inside their railway areas and concessions they have their own government; in the majority of cases while in Manchuria I found it more convenient to use the Japanese telegraph or the Japanese postal system than the Chinese; and where I stopped at the little towns along the line it was a Japanese officer who came to inquire my name and nationality. When I was in Mukden the German consul there had just had two Chinese meddlers arrested for spying on his movements, only to find that they were acting under the direction of Japanese officials who claimed immunity for them! The fact that they have their soldiers back of them, and that they can be tried only in their own courts, also gives the Japanese unlimited assurance in bullying the natives. At Mukden the Japanese bellboy struck my Chinese rickshaw man to get his attention. At Taolu some weeks ago some Japanese merchants who were there doing business illegally (for it is not an open mart) were interfered with, with the result that the Japanese authorities when I was in Mukden were preparing a formal demand for satisfaction, including indemnity for any injury to an unlawful business!
Manifestly, the new masters of Manchuria propose to teach the natives their place. “If a Chinaman is killed by a Japanese bullet,” as a Chinaman of rank said to me in Manchuria, “the fault is not that of the man who fired the bullet: the Chinaman is to blame for getting in the way of it!”
VI
Those who apologize for Japanese aggressiveness in Manchuria, those who excuse or sympathize with her evident purpose to make Manchuria walk the way of Korea, have but one argument for their position—the pitiably abused and threadbare plea that the Japanese have won the country by the blood they shed in the war with Russia. The best answer to this is also a quotation from the distinguished and witty Chinaman just mentioned. “The Japanese,” said he, “claimed they were fighting Russia because she was preparing to rob China of Manchuria; now they themselves out-Russia Russia. It is much as if I should knock a man down, saying, ‘That man was about to take your watch,’ and then take the watch myself!”
The aptness of the simile is evident. My sympathy, and the sympathy of every other American acquaintance of mine as far as I can now recall, was with Japan in her struggle because of our hot indignation over Russian aggressiveness. But if Japan had said, “I am fighting to put Russia out only that I may myself develop every identical policy of aggrandizement that she has inaugurated,” it is very easy to see with what different feelings we should have regarded the conflict.
Moreover, Japan’s legitimate fruits of victory do not extend to the control or possession of Manchuria. As one of the ablest Englishmen met on my tour in the Far East pointed out, Japan’s purposes in inaugurating the war were four: (1) to get a preponderating influence in Korea; (2) to get the control of the Tsushima Straits, which a preponderating influence in Korea would give her; (3) to drive Russia from her ever-menacing position at Port Arthur; and (4) to arrest (as she alleged) the increasing influence and power of Russia in Manchuria.
All these things she has gained. Furthermore, she now has actual possession of Korea. The menace of a great Russian navy has been swept away. Again, she has become (with the consent of England) the commanding naval power in the eastern Pacific; and she has gained an influence in South Manchuria at least equal to that which Russia had previous to the war.
And yet one hears the plea that unless she gets Manchuria her blood will have been spilt without result! Unless she can do more in the way of robbing China than she went to war with Russia for doing, she will not be justified!
Among representatives of five nations with whom I discussed the matter in Manchuria I found no dissent from the opinion that Japan will never get out of Manchuria, unless forced to do so by a speedily awakened China or by the most emphatic and unmistakable attitude on the part of the Powers. Chinese, English, Americans, Germans—all nationalities—in Manchuria agree that thus far the way of Manchuria has been the way of Korea and that only favoring circumstances—a rebellion fomented in China or whatever excuse may serve—is needed for the same end to be reached.
Then with Japanese customs duties to complete the shutting out of foreign goods, now made only partially possible by the discrimination of a railway monopoly, and with the entire Chinese Empire and foreign trade rights within it menaced by the added preeminence of Japan, the people of Europe and America may wake up too late to find out at last that the Open Door in Manchuria is a matter of somewhat more general importance than the disturbances in Turkey or the change of government in Portugal.
Be it said, in conclusion, however, that if the white nations take heed in time all this may be prevented. China’s waking up may serve the same purpose, but it is doubtful whether she will develop sufficient military strength for this. In any case there need be and should be no war, and in describing conditions as I found them my purpose is to help the cause of peace and not that of bloodshed. For if the Powers realize the seriousness of the situation and give evidence of such feeling to Japan that she will realize the bounds of safety, there will be no trouble. But a continued policy of ignorance, indifference, or inactivity means that Japan will probably go so far that she cannot retreat without a struggle. Truth is in the interest of peace.
Mukden, Manchuria.