Source 2

Transcript

My Lord,

One of the controversies which arose during the framing of the Peace Treaty with Germany related to the course which ought to be pursued with regard to German rights in Shantung. The Chinese contended that as Shantung was Chinese territory, and as China was a belligerent, she was entitled to claim the direct surrender of all the rights which Germany had obtained in the leased territory.

Japan, on the other hand, held the view that, as the Germans had been expelled from Shantung by forces which were in the main Japanese, and which in any case contained no Chinese contingent, the surrender of German rights in Shantung should be made to her, and that only after this surrender was accomplished should those rights be re-transferred to China.

The difference may seem rather a matter of form than of substance, but the Japanese Delegation represented the issue as one involving national honour, on which it was impossible for the Japanese government, in face of public opinion in their own country, to make any concession.

As your Lordship is aware, Great Britain and France pledged themselves early in 1917, before either China or America had entered the War, to support the Japanese claims; but, quite apart from this Treaty obligation, my sympathies up to this point in the controversy were entirely with the Japanese.

…

With these statements everybody but the Members of the Chinese Delegation appeared to be content. These gentlemen, however, do not seem to deserve much sympathy. … They never could be got to understand that, whatever might be said of the Treaty of 1915, the Treaty of 1918 between China and Japan was a voluntary transaction between sovereign states, and a transaction which gave important pecuniary benefits to China; nor did they ever adequately realise that, by the efforts of Japan and her allies, China, without the expenditure of a single shilling or the loss of a single life, had restored to her rights which she could never have recovered for herself.