Britain, Japan, and America.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17259, 24 September 1921, Page 10

Britain, Japan, and America.

We are left to conjecture for ourselves whether Baron Kato'B statement, reported to-day. concerning the Washington Conference was critical or purely expository. The prime motive of the Conference, he said, lay in the common desire of Great Britain and America to seek some agreement between themselves, and between themselves and Japan, in the hope of replacing the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. In whatever context this statement appeared, it is simply a statement of fact. Mr Harding's summoning of a ,disarmament conference which should also discuss Pacific problems was an intimation that in the judgment of America defence preparation and expenditure should be! governed by international conditions. It is only in the Pacific that there are conflicting interests and nascent disputes which make preparedness advisaffle, and if the conditions in the Pacifio can be transformed from a se.ed-bed of war into a foundation for peace, tlhe only perils that attend disarmament will have been swept away. Special alliances in the Far East are manifestly unfavourable to such a transformation, and the ending of all special alliances is recognised by America as imperative. So far as Britain and tho Dominions are concerned tney are equally eager for the removal of all real obstacles to peace. During the months preceding the Imperial Conference there was a strong drive for the renewal of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, and it was witih the purpose of doing our small part, as others in other Dominions were doing their part, to counteract this drive, that we devoted a considerable part of our space to discussions of the folly of going after such an alliance without reference to the viewpoint of America and China. It has been a great satisfaction to ua that the Conference ended with tfhe renewal of the Alliance still up f in the air, and that the result of the Conference's deliberations waß as stated by Mr Lloyd George to the House of Commons a few weeks ago. In his statement the Prime Minister said that the Conference was "amriotis "that for the Anglo-Japanese agree"ment should be substituted some '• larger arrangement between the tihree " Great Powers concerned, namely, the "United States of America, Japan, and "Great Britain." It is possible to hope that the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, although still running, is for all practical purposes at an end. Its supporters never give us any solid ground for the maintenance of it, for the sufficient reason that the • only advantage the Alliance can give us is one which diplomaoy cannot mention, namely, security against Japanese aggression. Like "The Press," the London "Spectator"- has for many months been dealing with the Alliance in a manner very little to the taste of tho Mandarins. Mr Strachey's thoughtful and conservative journal has gone further than ourselves, for he has urged the extinction of the Alliance sans phrase. He realises that the Englishspeaking race is now face to face with a golden opportunity, which may never return—an opportunity for the establishment of relations between Britain and America which may make all the difference between light and darkness in the history of the world that now faces the future full of hopes and fears. So he urges that all stumbling blocks ought to be removed, and especially the Angle-Japanese Alliance. There axe in America thousands of people, capable of influencing millions, who desire to create the impression that Britain is so essentially hostile to the United States that it is encouraging and sustaining the Prussia of the Far East. It is folly, as Mr Strachey points out in an article in the August ''Nine"teenth Century," to say "Rubbish T and to assume that Americans know perfectly well that Buch a charge against Britain is nonsense. Remember (he says) that America, or a large part of America, holds a perfectly different view of Japan from that which is popularly, and no doubt justly, entertained here. For the Americans, and especially for the vast population of America which lives on the Pacific Slope, Japan means the one menace, the one peril which cannot be laughed at or forgotten. Japan for them is not an interesting Power, as oho is so largely for us, a Power with great artistic and literary gifts, possessed of a singular dignity and charm, a Power capable of proving that the East can be as efficient and progressive, as the West, a Power whose martial ardour and knightly courage have never been dimmed by luxury nor by those enchanting arts in which her people excel. Japan to America means danger, and danger of an acute kind. Alaska and the Pacific seaboard, now covered with its great cities and possessed of a splendid agriculture, are believed in America's pessimistic moods to be entirely open to Japan. Though there are so many miles of rolling seas between men remember that the seas do not sever but unite. Still nearer are America's new acquisitions, the Philippines and the Sandwich Islands. That this is a true account of the , viewpoint of America everyone knows who has discussed the question with any thoughtful American, or who has paid attention to the attitude of the leading American newspapers. How easy it is for the enemies of Britain in America to U3e the Alliance for antiBritish purposes in these conditions, anyone can imagine. To those who are unable to realise that an An^do-Ameri-can Entente is the greatest need of the Empire and the world, all that we have written will be as a tinkling cymbal. But these are a minority, and a diminishing minority* ,I£. th&r .affi

anxious about Japan—about the result of "hustling our Ally out of the circle "of our friends,'' about the possibility of a hostile alliance between Japan and (the name is never filled in, because there is no name to fill it with), and about all the other undefined consequences of the lapsing of. the alliance —they -will ultimately, if statesmanship collars the bowling at Washington, come to perceive that their alarm has been baseless. Kipling, in one of his poems, speaks of the misadventures that wait upon any attempt "to hustle the East." But in the present case all the 'difficulties arise from Japan' 3 attempt to hustle and "bluff" the West.