T

HE conclusion of a treaty between Russia and Japan for the protection of their joint interests in the Far East is a natural and logical outcome of the great change in international relations brought about by the European war. Russia for centuries has been trying to get an ice-free outlet to the oceans of the world. At the end of the war with Turkey in 1878 success seemed to be almost within her grasp; but her legitimate aspirations were baffled at that time by a combination of the central and western European Powers against her, with Great Britain at their head.

Seeing no prospect of getting access in the near future to the Mediterranean, Russia turned her attention, in the early eighties, to the Far East, where there seemed to be a chance of securing an ice-free port in China or Korea. By the construction of the TransSiberian Railway she greatly strengthened her position on the coast of the Pacific, and the aggressive and acquisitive policy that she soon adopted there threatened the vital interests of Japan, and finally brought about the Russo-Japanese War. In that conflict Russia was disastrously defeated; but there is good reason to believe that as soon as she had reorganized her army and improved her means of communication with the Orient she would have found a pretext for renewing the struggle. In another war, as in the first one, her chief object would have been to acquire an ice-free port on the Pacific, which she could use as a naval and commercial base, and thus extend her power and develop her commerce on that ocean.

The breaking out of the war with the Teutonic Powers in 1914 and the participation of Turkey as a combatant suddenly changed the whole aspect of world affairs. Not only did it make Japan an ally of Russia, but it removed at once the principal reason for an aggressive Russian policy on the coast of the Pacific. Expansion in the Near East was infinitely more important for Russia than expansion in the Far East; and from the moment that Turkey took the side of Germany the Czar and his advisers saw, and the Monarch himself frankly said, that the time had come, at last, for "a final settlement of certain long-standing questions connected with the outlet of the Black Sea." A suc

cessful war with Turkey, under the conditions that existed in 1914, seemed likely to give Russia (1) possession of Constantinople and the Dardanelles; (2) free entrance to the Mediterranean; and (3) a preponderating influence in Asia Minor and the Balkans. With such a prospect as this in view, Russia lost her keen interest in the Far East and abandoned the plans that conflicted with the interests of Japan. Then, when Russia was in desperate need of munitions, and Japan proved her friendliness by rendering invaluable assistance to her former enemy, the way was cleared for just such a treaty as that which the two Powers have recently concluded. If the Japanese had shown in Manchuria the ruthlessness and ferocity that the Germans have displayed in Belgium and France, the feeling of bitterness and hatred that would have been left might have prevented a reconciliation; but, as the leading Russian newspapers said in explanation of their change of attitude toward Japan: "It was easy to make friends again with the Japanese, because they always fought us like gentlemen."

The disposition of Russia and Japan to get together for the protection of their joint interests in the Far East was greatly strengthened by the proposal to neutralize the Manchurian railways, which was made by Secretary Knox in 1909. Both Powers regarded this as an attempt on the part of the United States to deprive them of their legitimately acquired advantages; and in July, 1910, they entered into another treaty, whose avowed object was to "maintain the status quo in Manchuria," and thus to prevent any such interference as that which Secretary Knox's proposal threatened.

Affairs remained in this state until 1916, when it seemed desirable to revise the treaty of 1910 and widen somewhat its scope. Which of the two Powers proposed the revision we have no means of knowing; but. under the changed conditions brought about by the European war, it was clearly in the interest of both that there should be a written understanding with regard to their attitude toward each other in the Far East, as well as their future attitude toward Germany and China. In the convention of July 4, 1910, they agreed to confer on methods to be

taken with a view to mutual co-operation in maintaining the status quo in Manchuria." In the new treaty the form of expression is almost exactly the same, except that, instead of the maintenance of the status quo in Manchuria," the object of the agreement is said to be" the defense of their Far Eastern territorial rights and special interests."

Nothing in the new convention suggests unfriendliness towards us, and none of its provisions seems to be aimed at us, but a few of our people are predisposed to regard with suspicion every move that Japan makes on the Asiatic mainland, and as soon as it became known that she had concluded a treaty with Russia for the better protection of her Far Eastern rights and interests our alarmists saw in it an attempt to close the "open door" of China against us. Senator Lewis, of Illinois, at once introduced a resolution in Congress calling on the Secretary of State for information with regard to the object and effect of the new treaty, and in a speech supporting his resolution he expressed the belief that Russia and Japan intended to "eliminate the United States from the Oriental sphere." Then Mr. Charles Denby, ex-United States Consul-General at Shanghai, took the field with a statement, or interview, in which he said that "the Japanese are an intensely ambitious and selfish race;" that they are the "propagandists of a new yellow civilization;" that the alliance with Russia is going to be of the greatest value to them only when they come into open breach with the United States ;" and that "if we should, by some circumstance not yet revealed, become the object" of the "preparations" which they are now making, such preparations would be terribly effective against us." (New York "Sun," July 10.)

Now what foundation is there, if any, for this distrust of Japan and Russia? What good reason is there for believing that they intend first to oust us from the Chinese markets, and then combine against us if we resist the establishment of a "yellow civilization" for the domination of Asia?

In the first place, it may be remarked that this cry of "Wolf !" whenever Japan moves (and often when she does not move) is very old. For eight years at least we have heard it semi-annually, if not oftener. In a long series of alarms, beginning with the San Francisco public school troubles, the Japanese have been accused of preparing for war with us by buying 750,000 rifles from the Crucible

Steel Company (1908); of plotting against us in Hawaii and the Philippines (1909); of excluding Americans from the Manchurian mining fields (1909); of discriminating against our commerce by means of transportation rebates on the Manchurian railways (1909); of seeking to monopolize the truck-farming lands in California (1909); of sinking the dry-dock Dewey in Manila Bay (1910); of planting mines in that same bay (1910); of taking soundings and making charts of Californian harbors (1910); of secretly conspiring with Mexico against us (1911); of attempting to secure Magdalena Bay, in Lower California, for a naval base (1911); of secretly taking photographs and making maps on the coast of Alaska (1911); of trying to get supreme control in Manchuria under pretense of fighting the bubonic plague (1911); of conspiring with Mexican insurgents against us (1912); of persecuting the American missionaries in Korea and trying to abolish Christianity there (1912);of conspiring with Germany to overthrow the Monroe Doctrine (1912); of attacking the American Consul in Newchang (1912); of forming an alliance with our west coast Indians against us (1912); of threatening to attack Java, and thus compelling the Dutch to seek our support (1912); of trying to buy Lower California from Huerta (1914); of attempting to get spies into the fortifications of the Panama Canal (1915); of seeking to secure a foothold in Lower California by running a vessel ashore there and sending war-ships to assist in salvage operations (1916); of conspiring with Germany to get control of the San Blas Indian lands in Panama (1916); and, finally, of conspiring with Russia against us at least two or three times in the last ten years.

Were any of these statements true? Not one, so far as could be ascertained. Many of them were officially contradicted by our Government; some, including the Magdalena Bay story, were disproved by Congressional investigation; and all eventually fell to the ground for lack of support. And yet now come Senator Lewis and Mr. Denby with the assurance that we are about to be

eliminated from the Oriental sphere;" that the "preparations" which Japan is making will be "terribly effective against us;" and that the ultimate result of the Russo-Japanese alliance will be the establishment of a yellow Asiatic civilization which will dominate the Ear East and leave no room

1916

whatever there for us. Is it not time, at last, to stop this irrational and childish misrepresentation of a friendly Power?

A moment's consideration of the recently concluded treaty in connection with the situation created by the present war will show, I think, the extreme improbability of the assumption that Russia and Japan intend to "eliminate the United States from the Oriental sphere."

Russia at the end of the war will be urgently in need of the very things that the United States, and only the United States, can give her, namely, money, manufactures, and organizing brains. Before the war her commercial and industrial life was largely influenced, if not controlled, by the Germans. who handled her foreign trade to the extent of nearly half a billion dollars, and who also managed through their agents a large part of her domestic business. After her recent experience Russia will hardly care to let Germany play again within her boundaries the part that she played there in the first thirteen years of the present century. As far as possible, therefore, she will look elsewhere for the things that Germany has hitherto supplied. But where can she find them? In the past she has drawn vast sums of money from Belgium and France in the shape of loans for governmental, industrial, and railway enterprises; but Belgium and France will not be in condition to furnish great sums of money after the war. For capital to develop her resources and for manufactured goods to supply her needs Russia will hereafter be dependent to a much greater extent than ever before upon the United States. She is already conscious of this, and is making every possible effort to improve her trade relations with us and to interest us in her territory and its possibilities. Is it reasonable, then, to suppose that for the sake of making a little more profit in the Far East she would join Japan in an attempt to shut us out of that field, and thus incur our hostility at the very time when she most needs our good will and help? The supposition is too improbable for belief or serious discussion.

As for Japan, she can easily enough hold her own in the Chinese markets without excluding us therefrom. She already has seventeen per cent of China's whole foreign trade, as compared with our seven, and she is gaining on us every day. Why should she close the "open door" when we so seldom

151

enter it, and accomplish so little when we do go in? Outside of kerosene, tobacco, and certain manufactures of cotton, what does our Chinese trade amount to? A few million dollars in flour, lumber, and manufactures of iron and steel, but not enough, certainly, to make a fuss about. We ourselves, moreover, have done more to restrict our Far Eastern business than Japan and Russia have ever done or are likely to do. By our Sherman Law we threatened to punish our exporters and manufacturers they ventured to combine for the purpose of extending their business in the Chinese field; by our action, through our President and Secretary of State, we discouraged our financiers when they proposed to make investments in China; and by recent legislation we have practically driven our steamship lines from the Pacific and thrown most of the carrying trade into the hands of the Japanese. Of what use is an open door" when we can hardly get access to it, and when, even if we do reach it, we have to limp through it with our feet in legislative shackles ?

66

If Russia and Japan succeed in getting the greater part of the Chinese trade, it will not be because they have barred us out, but because they have carried on their business in the Far East with intelligence and vigor. According to the latest report of the Chinese maritime customs, Russia and Japan now have in China 3,596 commercial firms, with 157,819 clerks, agents, or individual traders. We have there only 157 firms, with clerks, agents. or individual traders to the number of 4,716. Russia and Japan together, therefore, have twenty-two times as many firms engaged in the Oriental trade as we have, and thirty-three times as many selling or buying agents. And yet some of our alarmists would have us believe that these two Powers intend, by their recent treaty, to exclude us from the " Oriental sphere" because they are afraid of our competition!

We own the Philippines, and we think we are entitled to say something about Oriental affairs. If Japan had asked us, instead of Russia, to enter into a treaty with her for the protection of her and our territorial rights and special privileges in the Far East, would we have consented? Certainly not. Our Congressional statesmen would have seen in such a proposal only a deep-laid scheme of the wily Japanese to involve us in hostilities with our "great and good friend" the Czar-" our best friend in Europe." But just as soon as

Japan makes such a treaty with Russia, our great and good friend suddenly becomes a hostile conspirator who aims to "eliminate us from the Oriental sphere" in order that his people and the Japanese may get rid of our insignificant competition.

Japan and Russia have greater and more vital interests in the Orient than has any other Power except Great Britain. Japan's interests are military and political, as well as commercial, because China is now in the transition stage of her national life, and is comparatively powerless to resist aggression. If, in her present weak condition, she should fall under the domination of a strong military Power, or group of Powers, she might become a serious menace to Japan's very existWe think that our geographical relation to Mexico, and our special interests in

ence.

that country, entitle us to take any measures that seem to us necessary for the maintenance of her integrity and the protection of her soil from invasion. If we doubted our ability to defend her against two such Powers as Germany and Japan, for exaample, we should think we had a perfect right to form a treaty combination with the Power whose Mexican interests stood next to ours in importance; and we might, naturally enough, make such an alliance without intending to monopolize the resources of Mexico or exclude other nations from that commercial field. The cases, of course, are not exactly parallel, but they are similar. China, in a certain sense, is Japan's Mexico; and in judging Japanese policy we should think for a moment what our policy would probably be if we were in Japan's place. GEORGE KENNAN.

H

AVE you, my amiable male reader, felt secretly annoyed when your friends-probably your wife, and certainly your physician-have suggested that you cut your daily diet of Havanas in two, feeling that your intimate acquaintance with yourself constituted you a better judge of such matters than they? Have you felt that your physician's advice to spend at least threequarters of an hour at lunch was good advice for somebody else, but that you had neither the time nor the inclination for it? you felt that you would like to take a month's vacation, but with so many "irons in the fire" things would go to smash if you did? Do you know what it is to lie awake at night and plan your campaign for the following day? Then you are getting ready for an enforced vacation.

Have

One fine morning Dame Nature looked me over and said to herself: "This cheerful idiot is more interested in the checker-game of life than in the real thing, life itself. Others can't seem to change his methods; I'll take a try."

Said she : If I knock his legs out from under him, I guess he'll slow down; if I hit him in the stomach, he'll probably do a little thinking on that score; and, to make a thoroughly good job of it, I'll just give his nerves a few jolts to shake them up. If this treat

ment doesn't change his view-point, let him die; he is of no further interest to me."

After Dame Nature got through with her playfulness, her victim, like a bedraggled pollparrot that had just been ducked in a water bucket to improve his manners, looked around him, somewhat dazed, and his wife took him by the ear and led him away out of the scheme of things, and he dropped out of life. That was seven months ago.

Have you ever been in the depths of the Maine woods, where the only sound you hear that savors of civilization is the occasional whistle of a tiny locomotive operating on a little narrow-gauge railway that works its way up through the woods? Have you? Then you'll agree with me that it's a long distance away from Wall Street, La Salle Street, and State Street; from the club with its extra sirloin and mushrooms; from the theater and all those other "indispensable" things that nowadays go to make up the life of man.

The transition from civilization, from markets that cater to your palate, to a little camp in the woods too far away to make possible either milk, eggs, or meats, is quite a jump.

In the early part of your enforced vacation in the woods you will find it hard to crowd out of your thoughts the things left behind. It's well to make a clean break, even if you

1916

do fidget and fuss for a short time for the things that are missing. Don't take any of the latest magazines with you, and don't arrange to have them sent to you. Take a few books that you wouldn't read at home because you were "too tired to read that heavy stuff." You'll enjoy them after a time.

Pick out one publication that gives you all that's really worth while. This isn't a sop to the editors, but the magazine link that binds us to civilization is The Outlook.

It really doesn't matter who are appearing at the theaters, or who has just made $10,000,000 shipping supplies to the Allies.

Until you can begin to get dog tired physically by doing something constructive in the woods-building a dock, making rustic furniture, making a bean pole, cleaning out and blazing a trail-your mind will complain frequently at the "raw deal " you are giving it by taking away the food on which it feeds; but this is all necessary in getting a new view-point.

How well do you know your boys? Do they like you? I don't mean respect you. We will hope they do that, though I am not altogether sure of it. But do they like to stay around where you are, and do you like to have them? Or are they willing for you to go your way if you'll let them alone so they can go theirs?

You know, your boys are very apt to have a lot of horse sense, and can teach you a lot if you'll climb up, not down, to their level.

If you don't know the different birds and their voices, if you are unacquainted with the habits of animals, if you don't know the best places in the waters near you to look for fish, if you have been too indifferent to watch his majesty the sun wake up the world in the morning, and carefully bank his fires and put out his lights at night, you haven't half lived, do you know it?

Picture a tight little camp, set back in the trees about three hundred feet from the lake, with a comfortable sleeping-porch which the boys and I have built along its front.

Inside the best-natured and most willing little cook-stove you ever saw-after the boys and I manufactured a damper for it.

At the other end of the camp, and facing the stove from various angles, are parlor, dining-room, and library, with no intervening partitions to make passage from one room to another difficult. Upstairs we sleep in very bad weather, for flanking the camp on either side at a respectable distance are the

153

tents, where sleep waits for you on the pillow. And sleeping out of doors is the rule.

Rustic chairs of home manufacture, a big stone fireplace, a dining-table in a shady spot under the trees, complete the outdoor equipment. Oh, I forgot the dock with its "approaches," which the boys and I think. was quite a piece of work.

The other morning at daybreak I went to the boys' tent and whispered to one of them, after shaking him awake: "Let's go out and try a fly. I think the fish will rise."

Putting some crackers in our pockets and without waking the rest of the sleepers, we put out onto the lake. I know there is one accomplishment I possess that my boys respect. I can cast a fly better than they can, but they are rapidly catching up. This prompts me to say: If you haven't got a hobby, get one. It doesn't so much matter what it is, but your hobby will come in mighty handy if you have to quit business for a time.

Out on the lake discussion followed as to the relative merits of a Silver Doctor, a Professor, a Parmachenee Belle, and other flies as each were tried with indifferent success on that particular morning. A few trout, and, in the hope that enough could be added. through the forenoon for dinner, we were back at seven to build a fire and make toast and chocolate, which, with black mission figs, is all they'll give us for breakfast, no matter what protests we make.

Really wives and mothers have more sense in some things than we men have.

After breakfast two of us tackled a dead tree in the woods. Cut down, sawed, and split, we need not worry for dry wood when the next rainy day arrives. There is exhilaration and sport in swinging an ax; but if you are ever asked to define hard work, just say, "Sawing wood with a buck saw." It's one thing in the woods there's no romance in, and you can't put it in.

Sometimes we go "plug-fishing." I have long had a secret contempt for plug-fishing as a sport, as compared with the art of casting a fly; but I have found this year that plug-fishing has its virtues. I can hardly imagine anything that will better teach patience. You simply sit and wait.

Unless trout are on the table at dinner time for the midday meal in the woods is always dinner, never luncheon-the meal is all vegetables. Think of it, all vegetables!