THE PACIFIC WORLD AS IT WAS LESS THAN A CENTURY AGO

When we include within it that part of our own domain which lies west of the Mississippi, it is hard either to grasp or to portray the vast transformation that has taken place in the Pacific world during the last 75 years. As late as 1850 the great territory stretching from the Mississippi to the Pacific was still almost an unknown land; in that year there was no railroad track (excepting 80 miles in Louisiana) or telegraph line west of the Mississippi, in the United States; nor in any of the other countries in or surrounding the Pacific. As late as 1860 there were only 23 miles of railroad west of the Rocky Mountains, and not until 1861 did the first telegraph line from the east reach the Pacific, in many parts of which steamships were still a curiosity. Not until 1867 was a regular steamship service established between San Francisco and the Atlantic coast, and not until 1870 was steam communication established between San Francisco and Australia. As late as 1852 the only States west of the Mississippi were Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Missouri, and California, the last named a string of mining camps which had just entered the Union with a population of little over 90,000.

The Pacific States of South America, Central America, and Mexico, which had emerged successfully from their wars of independence with Spain, were still hampered with internal dissensions and traditionally incompetent commercial methods inherited from the old Spanish colonial system; Hawaii was known chiefly as a supply station for the whaling fleet owned almost exclusively in New England; New Caledonia, New Guinea, Samoa, the Fijis, and the other islands composing "no man's land," were still under the almost absolute sway of savages and cannibals, while the Australian colonies were just beginning to give a suggestion of the wealth, commerce, and development they have since achieved: China had but recently been forced at the cannon's mouth reluctantly to open a few of her ports to foreign commerce; from the "sealed mystery," known as Japan, foreigners were rigorously excluded, it being a capital offense for any native to leave the country; not until 1857-58 were the ports of Kanagwa, Nagasaki, and Hakodadi opened to foreigners; British Columbia, then an obscure British colony, remained so until the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railroad; Alaska, destined to become one of the brightest jewels in our crown, and the Siberian coast of Asia still remained in the undisturbed possession of the seal and the Eskimo, save when the awful solitude was broken by a few adventurous traders who came to purchase furs in exchange for firewater and trinkets.

In the light of what has gone before, it will be possible to visualize, to some extent at least, the vast and growing greatness of the Pacific world as it appeared to William H. Seward, when, from his place in the United States Senate, he looked out upon it with a prophetic eye in July, 1852. While debating at that time a bill providing for the "survey of the whaling grounds and routes of commerce on the Pacific," he said: "Even the discovery of this continent and its islands, and the organization of society and government upon them, grand and important as those events have been, were but con

ditional, preliminary, and ancillary to the more sublime result, now in the act of consummation-the reunion of two civilizations, which having parted on the plains of Asia 4,000 years ago, and having traveled ever afterwards in opposite directions around the world, now meet again on the coasts and islands of the Pacific Ocean. Certainly no mere human event of equal dignity and importance has ever occurred upon the earth. It will be followed by the equalization of the condition of society and the restoration of the unity of the human family.

As to those who cannot see how this movement will improve the conditions of Asia, I leave them to reflect upon the improvements in the condition of Europe since the discovery and colonization of America. Who does not see, then, that every year hereafter European commerce, European polities, European thoughts, and European activity, although actually gaining greater force, and European connections, although actually becoming more intimate, will, nevertheless, ultimately sink in importance, while the Pacific Ocean, its shores, its islands, and the vast regions beyond will become the chief theater of events in the world's great hereafter.”

Fifteen years after this prophet-statesman had thus forecasted the inevitable aftergrowth of the Pacific world he made our stake in it vastly larger when, as Secretary of State, he purchased in 1867 from Russia, for a song, the princely domain of Alaska, one-third greater in size than the Atlantic States from Maine to Russia had claimed in 1822-1825, but such claims were Florida. After the purchase we stood out for all that overruled by the international tribunal that sat at Paris in 1893, which held that Bering Sea, as a part of the high seas, was no one's preserve; that the seals, fera naturæ, were no one's property. As with the growth of the American navy there was an increasing need of coaling stations and positions advantageous to our sea power in the Pacific, by a tripartite treaty made in 1889 the Samoan Islands were placed under the joint control of the United States, England, and Germany, and in 1898 the Hawaiian Islands were annexed.

THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR AND THE TREATY OF DECEMBER 10, 1898

The commercial importance of Cuba, its commanding position with reference to the Gulf of Mexico and the approaches to the Panama Canal, its menace as a breeding ground for yellow fever, had made it for a long time. an important factor in the foreign policy of the United States. Jefferson, who said that "the control which, with Florida, this island would give us over the Gulf of Mexico and the countries and isthmus bordering on it, as well as all those whose waters flow into it, would fill up the measure of our political well-being," had declared that if Spain relinquished it, it must not fall into the hands of another European power. American intervention, which for many years had been imminent, became inevitable in the course of the revolt which broke out in 1895, involving, as it did, grave commercial injury to the United States.

The war which followed President McKinley's intervention was terminated by the treaty of Paris in December, 1898, under which Porto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines were for a certain consideration ceded out

right to the United States. By that large acquisition in the Pacific we became immediately involved in the diplomatic situation created by the efforts of certain European nations to divide China into spheres of influence or of actual possession. That policy, to which our new position in the Philippines, as well as our interests in China's trade, made us hostile, drew from Secretary of State Hay his best efforts as a diplomatist and statesman. In order to preserve the integrity of China and the "open door" for trade, he drew such replies from the aggressive nations as compelled them to moderate their demands; and when the Boxer Insurrection broke out in 1900, and the legations were besieged at Peking, it was largely through his efforts that China received a less rigorous treatment.

THE WORLD WAR AND THE MEANING OF OUR REJECTION OF THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES Such, in general terms, was the nature of our diplomatic relations with the Atlantic world, the Pacific world, and the rapidly growing Latin American world to the south of us when the earthquake, known as the World War, began to shake the earth as a whole. No attempt will be made herein to discuss either the abnormal and temporary conditions produced by the World War in the internal policy of the United States, or the abnormal and temporary conditions produced by the World War in the foreign relations of the United States. Suffice it to say that at its close the American people, true to their conservative instincts, were mastered and overcome by the desire to return to what President Harding has been pleased to call "normalcy." Everybody, the romantic as well as the practical, understood that we had been suddenly swept, in a moment of great excitement, into an unprecedented adventure whose costs had been stupendous and whose unsettling influences had been profound. There was, therefore, a universal desire to return as quickly as possible to "normalcy"— that is, to the old systems of policy, internal and external, which had made us happy and great.

The most startling outcome of that World War with which we were first brought face to face was embodied in the fact that the old European diplomatic system, based upon the balance of power as a fundamental concept, was a total wreck. By the elimination of Germany, Austria, and Russia the Concert of Europe, which had existed in various forms since the Peace of Westphalia, had been forced to yield to a new Holy Alliance, composed, as its predecessor had been, of only three European powers Great Britain, France, and Italy. That triumphant combination proposed to reorganize the diplomatic system not only of Europe, but of the world, by reviving the old idea of a League of Nations, first formulated by St. Pierre in 1713, and then revised by Bentham in 1786-1789 and by Immanuel Kant in 1795. That long-discarded scheme was made the basis in 1911 of Dr. Timothy Richards' "League of Nations to Enforce Peace with Arms," elaborated by Viscount Grey in 1918, and completed by Lord Robert Cecil in 1919. THE SUPERSTATE WHICH AMERICAN PEOPLE REJECTED BY A POPULAR MAJORITY OF 7,000,000 The builders of the superstate, first designed by St. Pierre in 1713 and completed by Lord Cecil in 1919,

began by denying absolutely that physical geography is the primary basis of the world's politics and diplomacy. After eliminating the mighty oceans by which the hemispheres are divided from each other, the builders of the new fabric saw in their mind's eye all of the nations of the earth, great and small, huddled together in a narrow area as the Greek States were huddled together in the days of Thucydides and Polibius. Under such conditions it was hoped that the old pride of nationality, which has ever been the mainspring of patriotism, would be greatly weakened if not extinguished. Under such conditions it was certain that our peculiar American system, our Gibraltar known as the Monroe Doctrine, would never again be permitted to plague the world. In the great superstate the American Commonwealth was to be submerged; it was curtly asked to bow its head and vote along with Canada, Australia, and the other British colonies. For a moment the American people were stunned by the immensity of the indignity thus offered them; and in that moment they stooped to consider whether such a condition of servitude would be tolerable, if mitigated by certain reservations. Then it was that the national conscience awoke; then it was that the reaction came like the thunderclap at Marengo. During the storm that ensued President Harding was swept into power upon a tidal wave of 7,000,000 popular majority. But the battle is not over; the end is not yet. ernor Cox, the defeated candidate for President in 1920, is now giving public notice that the fight is to be fought over again. He says that the American Commonwealth must abdicate the proud and commanding place in the family of nations which fortune and our own efforts have given us; he says that it must inevitably bow its head and pass beneath the yoke which the League of Nations has prepared for us. He even contends that we must, in any event, accept the Permanent Court of International Justice, set up and controlled by the League, which is to be armed with a coercive jurisdiction which would enable European judges to annihilate those international rights which are especially dear to us. So long as we are menaced by such threats, every patriotic American must sleep with arms in his hands.

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OUR NORMAL DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS WITH
EUROPE AND ASIA RESUMED

The results of the last presidential election made it plain, even to the man in the street, first, that the American people have irrevocably resolved not to become a member of the new political and diplomatic fabric devised for the government of Europe and known as the League of Nations; second, that they have resolved to resume their normal diplomatic relations with Europe and Asia with the Monroe Doctrine intact in all its parts. Such resolves do not imply, however, that we are to become a hermit nation, or that we are to shirk any of the vast responsibilities that manifest destiny has cast upon us. We could not, if we would, eliminate the fact that nature has placed us midway between Europe and Asia in a vast and fruitful land which stands out like a fortress guarded against both by two inviolate oceans which make a successful attack from either impossible. With ever-increasing and intimate relations with Europe and Asia, seething with tumults and difficulties that invite the interposition of a neutral and independent

jority and minority leaders of the Senate as delegates. Certainly it was of paramount importance that in the first international conference in which the American people were to exercise their arbitrating power in the family of nations its representation should be, in the highest sense of the term, American and national, and not sectional or partisan. It was eminently proper that the North and the South, now irrevocably united in the bonds of a mutual love, a mutual interest, and a mutual honor, should have been represented by a Republican from Massachusetts and a Democrat from Alabama. Par nobile fratrum. As no practical result could have been reached without the approval of the Senate, the President was wise in taking into his confidence the leaders of the two great parties who compose it. In asking the Senate's approval of the completed work of the conference the President said:

"I had occasion to learn of your very proper jealousy of the Senate's part in contracting foreign relationships. Frankly, it was in my mind when I asked representatives of both the majority and minority to serve on the American delegation. It was designed to have you participate. And you were ably represented. We have no rivalries in our devotion to things we call American because that is a common consecration."

THE SIX TREATIES IN WHICH THE WORK OF THE CONFERENCE WAS EMBODIED

The completed work of the conference was embodied in six treaties with the following titles:

(1) A treaty between the United States of America, the British Empire, France, Italy, and Japan with respect to the limitation of naval armament.

(2) A treaty between the same powers in relation to the use of submarines and noxious gases in warfare.

(3) A treaty between the United States of America, the British Empire, France, and Japan relating to their insular possessions and insular dominions in the Pacific Ocean. An explanatory declaration accompanies this

treaty.

(4) A treaty between the same powers supplementary to the above-mentioned treaty in relation to insular possessions and insular dominions in the Pacific Ocean.

(5) A treaty between the United States of America, Belgium, British Empire, China, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, and Portugal relating to policies in matters concerning China.

(6) A treaty between the same nine powers relating

to the Chinese customs tariff.

All of the above-mentioned treaties were signed on February 6, 1922, with the exception of the treaty between the United States of America, the British Empire, France, and Japan relating to their insular possessions and insular dominions in the Pacific Ocean, which was signed on December 13, 1921.

Why was that treaty, generally known as the "fourpower pact," signed nearly two months in advance of the five that followed it? Until that question of questions has been answered, it is impossible to grasp the real meaning of the proceedings of the conference viewed as a connected whole.

EARLY ADOPTION OF FOUR-POWER PACT MADE POSSIBLE THE SUCCESS OF THE CONFERENCE

Everybody understood that the primary purpose of the conference was to arrive at such "a common understand

ing with respect to principles and policies in the Far East," or, in other words, to make such sacrifices and to arrive at such rearrangements as would so reduce the possibilities of war in that quarter as to justify the great powers in limiting their armaments without jeopardizing themselves or those dependent on them. Or, to state the matter in a still narrower compass, unless some way could be found, in advance, by which the probabilities of war in the Far East could be materially reduced, there was no chance whatever of inducing the great powers specially concerned to make any reduction in their armaments. The vital Far Eastern question most likely to cause war was embodied, of course, in the grievances which China had suffered through a military weakness. that had resulted in her being stripped of her chief seaports, in "spheres of influence" being established in her richest provinces, in the extortion of monopolies for building railroads and exploiting her coal and iron ores, and in the subjection of the administration of her postoffices, her customs duties, and to a considerable extent even the administration of justice itself, to foreign control. In order to rescue China from such conditions, threatening little less than complete dismemberment of the country, it was necessary that certain powers represented in the conference should undertake radical action.

What was actually done, with the avowed purpose of removing the causes of war in the Far East, was embodied in the four-power treaty, supplemented by the other treaties, especially the two between the nine powers relating to policies in matters concerning China and the Chinese customs tariff. The four-power treaty itself, which, with the formal parts eliminated, contains but little more than 200 words, rests upon the basic assurance that "the high contracting parties agree as between themselves to respect their rights in relation to their insular possessions and insular dominions in the region. of the Pacific Ocean," an assurance which simply reaffirms the primary principles of international law. In the two supplementary treaties relating to China the nine powers express a purpose "to adopt a policy designed to stabilize conditions in the Far East, to safeguard the rights and interests of China, and to promote intercourse between China and the other powers upon the basis of equality of opportunity." The contracting powers, other than China, then agree, "(1) to respect the sovereignty, the independence, and the territorial and administrative integrity of China; (2) to provide the fullest and most unembarrassed opportunity to China to develop and maintain for herself an effective and stable government." Strong declarations were then made in favor "of the open door or equality of opportunity in China for the trade and industry of all nations," and in favor of increasing the revenues of the Government of China through the making of a treaty providing for "the revision of the Chinese customs tariff and cognate matters."

BRILLIANT SUCCESS OF THE HUGHES PLAN FOR REDUCTION OF ARMAMENT

Only in the light of the foregoing is it possible to understand that not until after the adoption of the fourpower treaty, supplemented as it was by the special agreements designed to remove the causes of future wars as to China, did the Hughes plan for the reduction of

armament have any chance of success whatever. That fact is put beyond all question by the report of the American delegation submitted to the President February 9, 1922, in which it is said that "competitive armament, however, is the result of a state of mind in which a national expectation of attack by some other country causes preparation to meet the attack. To stop competition it is necessary to deal with the state of mind from which it results. The negotiations which led to the four-power treaty were the process of attaining that new state of mind, and the four-power treaty itself was the expression of that new state of mind. It terminated the Anglo-Japanese alliance and substituted friendly conference in place of war as the first reaction from any controversies which might arise in the region of the Pacific; it would not have been possible except as part of a plan including a limitation and a reduction of naval armaments, but that limitation and reduction would not have been possible without the new relations established by the four-power treaty or something equivalent to it." Thus we know for certain that not until the hope of peace in the Far East had been assured in advance by the four-power treaty was it possible for the bold and self-denying Hughes plan to be driven on to victory. But before that end was reached that plan had passed through a crisis to which a brief reference must be made. At the very outset its author cut off all debate as to the size of a navy each nation was theoretically entitled to by assuming that all calculations must be based on actual navies as they existed on the day of meeting, November 12. That basis gave to Japan a navy whose strength was as compared to 10 for Great Britain and 10 for the United States. Against that ratio of "1010-6," or its equivalent. "5-5-3," Japan protested. But after a struggle, in which Great Britain and the United States stood side by side, Japan yielded, with the proviso that she should be permitted to retain, for sentimental reasons, her brand-new 38,800-ton Mutsu, while earmarking her 20,800-ton Settsu for the scrap heap. That concession was the only change made at any time in the Hughes plan as to capital ships. He had proposed that the United States should join with Great Britain and Japan in destroying or suspending the building of nearly 2,000,000 tons of capital ships, more than half of the combined capital-ship tonnage of their existing navies. As that plan was carried out without material change, it may be said, in the words of an able critic, that "Mr. Hughes may claim to have destroyed more warships in tonnage than all the sea fighters from Themistocles to the German and British admirals in the Jutland fight."

It is hard to overestimate the grandeur of the achievement. When we pause to meditate upon the far-reaching effects of an international agreement, suddenly made, under which the three greatest of the world's sea powers are to eliminate, by destruction or suspension of

ment.

building, more than half of the combined capital-ship tonnage of their existing navies, it is hard not to be mastered and overcome by the grandeur of the achieveWho can measure its effects upon the world's great hereafter? What patriotic American, no matter what his party politics, will be so narrow-hearted as to deny to the President and Secretary of State the praise

due to them for an achievement which in the time to come must be viewed as the crowning triumph of American diplomacy? The importance of such an act cannot be estimated as an isolated event; it cannot be severed from the century and a half of progressive diplomatic history out of which it has been evolved and of which it is a fitting consummation.

NO UNWORTHY PRICE PAID FOR WHAT HAS BEEN ACHIEVED

Every form of democratic government necessarily implies an "opposition," whose never-ending duty it is to present for public condemnation every measure of the ruling majority to which even plausible objections can be made. After exhausting their efforts to find even plausible objections to the outcome of the Limitation of Armament Conference, its critics have been able only to intimate, rather than assert directly, that the price of it all has been the making of an entangling alliance with three European powers entirely at variance with the national tradition.

Devoted as the writer has always been to that part of our policy first defined by Washington, by whom all such alliances were so justly condemned; devoted as he has always been to our peculiar American system known as the Monroe Doctrine, which must survive so long as this Republic endures, he would be the first to condemn, in no uncertain terms, the outcome of the conference if any such crime could be laid at its door. The fact is there is no basis whatever for the charge that has been made; it loses even the semblance of plausibility the moment we pause to consider the nature of an "alliance" as defined by international law.

AN "ALLIANCE" AS DEFINED BY INTERNATIONAL LAW

Naturally enough, "alliances" are defined with the greatest fullness by Vattel (bk. 3, ch. 6), the famous Swiss publicist, whose treatise on the law of nations appeared in 1758, at a time when alliances, "offensive and defensive," were leading factors in European diplomacy. It was to such military alliances as Vattel defines that Washington and Jefferson were specially opposed. The Cyclopedic Law Dictionary has thus condensed the views of Vattel into a narrow compass: "Alliances are defensive or offensive. (1) Defensive alliances are those in which a nation agrees to defend her ally in case she is attacked. (2) Offensive alliances are those in which nations unite for the purpose of making an attack, or jointly waging war against another nation. Alliances may be at the same time offensive and defensive; and most offensive alliances are of this character." According to Grotius (II, ch. 15, sec. 13) and other textwriters, the casus fœderis of a defensive alliance does not arise in the case of an unjust war of aggression begun by the power who has only stipulated for aid in