Secretary to Senator

Japanese shot & shell dropping into Shanghai have done more during the last month than spread death & destruction among luckless Chinese. They have also dropped into the lawyer-like mind of Secretary of State Stimson a mass of new and anxious thoughts on the peace of the Pacific. Last week Statesman Stimson was ready to take out these thoughts and put them down on paper. There was a sharp buzz of diplomatic excitement when Washington heard he was writing "something." Some correspondents predicted it would be a "stiff note" to Japan, protesting her aggression in China. Others forecast an "important statement of U. S. policy." When Mr. Stimson finished his composition, he summoned Senator William Edgar Borah, Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, read him what he had written. Senator Borah nodded his head in grave assent, departed in silence. Next day he was not in the least surprised when he received from Secretary Stimson a public letter, addressed to him but directed at Japan. Secretary Stimson undertook at legal length to answer Senator Borah's question as to whether Japan's hostilities against China meant that the Nine-Power Treaty had become "inapplicable or ineffective." He went back to the Washington Conference of 1921-22 to recall that Belgium, Britain, France. Italy. Japan, The Netherlands, Portugal and the U. S. then and there had joined with China in this pact to respect Chinese sovereignty and integrity and to establish the "Open Door" to China trade as a diplomatic fact. Wrote the Secretary to the Senator: "At the time this treaty was signed it was known that China was engaged in an attempt to develop the free institutions of a self-governing republic . . . that she would require many years of both economic and political effort to that end and that her progress would necessarily be slow. . . . The treaty was thus a covenant ... in deliberate renunciation of any policy of aggression which might tend to interfere with that development." Had Japan by its actions in Manchuria and at Shanghai violated this Nine-Power Treaty? Secretary Stimson apparently thought it had for he wrote: "Recent events . . . have tended to bring home the vital importance of the faithful observance of the covenants. . . . Regardless of cause or responsibility a situation has developed which cannot under any circumstances be reconciled with the obligations of these two treaties [i. e. Nine-Power and Kellogg-Briand]. If the treaties had been faithfully observed such a situation could not have arisen." But in Statesman Stimson's argument lay larger undertones than the Nine-Power Treaty. Rehearsing the fact that the Washington Conference also produced the pact which limited capital ships to a 5-5-3 ratio and kept the U. S. from further fortifying Guam and the Philippines, he contended that all these agreements were "interrelated and interdependent" and were designed to produce a "general understanding and equilibrium" in the Pacific. Continued his letter:

"The willingness of the American Government to surrender its then com- manding lead in battleship construction and to leave its positions without further fortification was predicated upon, among other things, the self-denying covenants contained in the Nine-Power Treaty . . . against military aggrandizement at the expense of China. One cannot discuss the possibility of modifying or abrogating the provisions of the Nine-Power Treaty without considering at the same time the other promises upon which they were really de-pendent." In these carefully guarded words lay Secretary Stimson's most potent threat against Japan and its Shanghai gesture. In non-diplomatic language what Mr. Stimson was really saying was this: Japan has violated the Nine-Power Treaty; if that pact is scrapped, the U. S. would be justified in scrapping the capital ship treaty, fortifying Guam and the Philippines and putting an invincible fleet of battleships into the Pacific. How would Japan like that? Repeated in the Stimson letter was the announcement by the U. S. Government last January that it would recognize no treaty-violating spoils which Japan might wring from China as the result of current fighting. Now, however. Secretary Stimson invited other governments to take a similar position so that "a caveat [warn-ing] will be placed upon such action which, we believe, will effectively bar the legality hereafter of any title or right obtained by pressure or treaty violation . . . and will eventually lead to the restoration to China of rights and titles of which she may have been deprived." Few of the things Secretary Stimson put into his Borah letter were altogether new. Most of them had been said before by lesser men. But when Mr. Stimson said them, he made them part of the Government's foreign policy and hence important. Likewise his left-handed method of transmitting his views to Tokyo was a cause for comment. Why, it was asked, had he not dispatched a formal note to Japan, frankly telling that government it was violating a treaty? Apparently Mr. Stimson adopted the letter-to-a-Senator method because it would serve his purpose of warning Japan and yet spare her the necessity of making any diplomatic reply. Aware of the enormous national strength and sentiment behind him, the Secretary may have preferred to "pull" his first punch in the hope that no more would be necessary.

Vhen Japan and China a few days later agreed "in principle" to withdraw their forces around Shanghai (see p. 21), Secretary Stimson's friends and admirers were confident that his letter had played a potent part in lifting the war clouds, opening the way to peace.

Historically harking back to the Washington Conference a decade ago made good legal sense though many a citizen might be hazy as to the actualities of that parley. On its agenda were two major and co-equal subjects: disarmament and Pacific peace. Friction between the U. S. and Japan in the Far East had to be eliminated before navies could be cut. The Conference opened Nov. 12, 1921 with Secretary of State Hughes's dramatic proposal for naval reduction of capital ships. Simultaneously the Far Eastern problem got under negotiation but was generally eclipsed in press headlines by excitement over limiting capital ships. Japan held out for Far Eastern concessions for a month and it was not until Dec. 15 that Tokyo agreed in principle to the 5-5-3 ship ratio. A week before that, however, the Far East Committee of the Conference had pledged the nine powers not to enter into any agreements impairing China's Open Door. The capital ship treaty was completed before the Nine-Power Pact but they were born in the same diplomatic atmosphere and were formally signed together on Feb. 6, 1922 amid flowery speeches and general goodwill. Technically they were separate documents; practically, psychologically they were regarded as an entity. And never for a moment was China treated at the conference as anything but a sovereign state.

The Stimson-to-Borah letter caused much commotion in Tokyo. Vehement denials that Japan was breaking the Nine-Power treaty were coupled with hot arguments that, treaty or no treaty, what Japan was doing at Shanghai was a national necessity. Secretary Stimson was accused by the Foreign Office of "ignorance" about the history of the Washington Conference. Japanese officials denied that there had been any bargain between China's sovereignty and naval reduction by the other powers. Mocked one: "This is the first time an official statement has suggested that America sacrificed her right to fortify Guam in return for concessions [i. e. the Open Door] regarding China." Loud was the argument that the Washington conferees never regarded China as a sovereign State but merely hoped she would some day become one, that Japan was tired of waiting for Chinese chaos to become a Chinese cosmos. Mr. Stimson was told that "to face the facts is the first requisite of statesmanship." Tokyo's reaction was not surprising. Of greater interest to Statesman Stimson was the sentiment elsewhere. In the U. S. his letter, he found, produced a good impression.

Even California's Senator Johnson, chief Stimson critic, had high praise for it. In Germany it was called the "most significant declaration in American foreign policy in the last ten years." Though Britain's Government and Press, already divided on the Far Eastern issue, were quietly reserved, individual Britons were described as agreeing that "Secretary Stimson has written a masterly letter, showing great courage, a high degree of statesmanship and not entirely devoid of a touch of quixotic chivalry on behalf of the Chinese." France, with her eye cocked on the Versailles Treaty, agreed with Mr. Stimson as to the sanctity of all international agreements. There was, however, no rush by Europe to follow Secretary Stimson's lead and stipulate that whatever war spoils Japan took from China would be outlawed by the Nine-Power Treaty. Perhaps these foreign powers felt that the U. S. did not always match policy with practice, as in its dealings with turbulent Latin-American republics. Most of them were holding back their ideas and intentions for use at the League of Nations Assembly meeting March 3 when the Far Eastern situation was to come up for full consideration and possible action.

Boycott. Though the U. S. was not to participate in that League gathering, Secretary Stimson prepared to follow its deliberations closely for possible effects on U. S. policy. Last week the move for an economic boycott of Japan, sponsored by an American Committee on the Far Eastern Crisis (TIME, Feb. 29), had the endorsement of some 4,500 professional and business men. Chain letters to the same end flooded the State Department. In Japan itself the possibility of such a blockade had received attention from the War Office which a month ago started a survey to determine how the empire would survive such economic isolation, at the hands of what it called "blood-thirsty pacifists." But President Hoover and every member of his Cabinet were resolutely opposed to invoking such severe sanctions. An independent boycott by the U. S., as they saw it, would be an unfriendly act tantamount to War. Congressional sentiment was no less strongly opposed to such a measure. But at Geneva there lurked a possibility that the League might stiffen its attitude and attempt to penalize Japan economically. If it did, the U. S. would undoubtedly be asked to join the world blockade. Last week the State Department dropped a vague hint that the U. S. would probably have to comply with such a request for the sake of international unity against war.

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