The Pittsburgh Press (September 3, 1941)
Background of news –
SELLING OUT OR JACKING UP CHINA?
By editorial research reports
In the negotiations at the White House between the United States and Japan, China is an unseen participant. One set of observers believes that the U.S. is willing to recognize much of Japan’s present occupation of China and Indochina in return for guarantees that Japanese aggression in the Far East will go no further and, even more important, that Japanese neutrality can be counted upon in case of hostilities between the United States and Germany.
Another set of observers believes that the United States is now getting really tough with Japan and, in return for the benevolent neutrality of Japan, will go no farther than to resume unrestricted exports to Japan and perhaps to recognize the Japanese occupation of Manchukuo.
It is no new experience for China to be sold out by the Western powers, but the United States has a better record in protecting China than has Great Britain, for instance. It is true that in 1895, the United States did not join the European powers in forbidding Japan to take all the Chinese territory which Japan demanded as a result of victory in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95. But at that time, the United States had not yet annexed islands in the Far East, and so had no place in negotiations concerning the Far East. In 1915, on the other hand, the United States, still a neutral in World War I, made strong diplomatic representations to Japan against the latter’s Twenty-One Demands on China.
In all the negotiations concerning the Far East, Japan has always insisted strongly on recognition of her special rights or interests there, or at least in China. Tokyo claims that this is no more nor less than a Monroe Doctrine for Japan.
In 1917, the United States accorded such recognition, in the Lansing-Ishii Agreement. This stated that, in view of “territorial propinquity,” the United States recognized that:
Japan has special interests in China, particularly in the part to which her possessions are contiguous.
China protested vigorously that thus she was being sold out. Secretary of State Lansing, on the other hand, maintained that the words did not mean anything in the absence of specific acts, and that thus the United States had prevented Japan from pressing the Twenty-One Demands.
In 1931, the United States tried to thwart the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, but Great Britain refused to join in any positive steps which the United States would take. After the outbreak of the present war in Europe, China felt further let down by the British withdrawal of garrisons in both China and at Shanghai, and by the closing of the Burma Road for three months.
For a time, China also felt sold out by shipment from the United States of iron and steel scrap, oil, and other war supplies to Japan. But later, the United States swung over to support of China by restricting or ending shipments to Japan, by inducing Great Britain to reopen the Burma Road, by making a war loan to China, by freezing Japanese funds and credits in the United States, and now by dispatching a war mission to China.
In view of Japan’s violation of treaties in the last ten years, any agreement now between the United States and Japan might well be embodied in a “gentlemen’s agreement” rather than in a formal treaty.