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On these grounds, I am glad to see our Government making friends with America and abandoning the militaristic Anglo-Japanese Alliance. But I do not wish this to be done in a spirit of hostility to Japan, or in a blind reliance upon the future good intentions of America. I shall therefore try to state Japan's case, although, for the present, I think it weaker than America's.
It will also be seen that this Memorandum was obviously composed for purpose of public record, the fifth group being dealt with in such a way as to fix upon Japan the guilt of having concealed from her British Ally matters which conflicted vitally with the aims and objects of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance Treaty. Read by the Minister of Foreign Affairs to Mr.
Her policy in the Far East, as in Europe, is thus on the whole a commercial one; she seeks there as elsewhere new markets, not new territory. Accordingly she supports the principle of the status quo in China, and therefore raised no objection to the Anglo-Japanese Agreement of 1902 which, among other objects, secured it.
The inclusion of Germany in the Anglo-Japanese compact proving to be impossible, the two Island Powers signed a treaty of alliance at London on January 30, 1902.
That is to say, the treaty was not communicated to the other Allies, or even to Great Britain, in spite of Article 3 of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, which provides that "The High Contracting Parties agree that neither of them will, without consulting the other, enter into a separate agreement with another Power to the prejudice of the objects described in the preamble of this Agreement," one of which objects was the preservation of equal opportunity for all Powers in China and of the independence and integrity of the Chinese Empire.
He had no time to find out what Japan wanted, but had time to conclude a secret agreement with Japan in February 1917, promising that whatever Japan wanted in Shantung we would support at the Peace Conference. By the terms of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, Japan was bound to communicate the Twenty-one Demands to the British Government.
At the opening of the twentieth century Russia was still pursuing the policy of Eastward expansion at the expense of China, which the other Western powers had been compelled to abandon by the formation of the Anglo-Japanese alliance.
The real quid pro quo for the termination of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance was the agreement of the United States not to construct naval bases or new fortifications in Guam and the Philippines, and the clause terminating the Anglo-Japanese Alliance might just as well have been attached to the Naval Treaty, but this would not have satisfied Japanese public opinion.
But in Tokio this affair was entered on the credit side of the Anglo-Japanese ledger, offsetting the debt of gratitude for August 10, 1904, when the English fleet constituted the shifting scenery behind Togo's battleships.
Her Press was, and had been all through the war, violently pro-German, and however much the Tokio Cabinet might wish to remain true to the Anglo-Japanese Treaty, it was forced to make a seeming obeisance to popular feeling in Japan.
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