FOREIGN POLICY, FACT AND FICTION
Haward, Harry P.
Foreign Policy, Fact And Fiction By HARRY P. HOWARD AMOST DANGEROUS illusion underlies much of the current discussions of the post-war world. In one imaginative work after another, it is calmly...
...The State Department is responsible to the President, not to Congress...
...What was Stimson's reply to Simon, when newsmen brought the matter to his attention at Washington...
...But we cannot disclaim responsibility for the Washington treaties, drawn up at the conference called by the American government to decide the future of the Far East...
...So the real question is not what the feelings of the American people are, but what the actual conduct of the American government has been...
...This was simply old fashioned power politics...
...He has, indeed, no direct control of them...
...It was this complete reversal of our attitude which resulted in war...
...A further attempt from London also elicited no response...
...Russo-American conflict in China...
...We know from the State Department's official publication, termed Peace and War, that "the United States Minister to China reported to Secretary of State Stimson, in a telegram dated Sept...
...Was the note justified...
...It is not necessary to attribute any high-flown idealism or pacifism to the British government...
...Its refusal to cooperate with France to prevent Hitler's remilitarization of Germany was a disaster...
...This was identical with the attitude taken by the Japanese delegates at Geneva at the time, who had Stimson's full support...
...Russia versus Britain in China...
...It is impossible, in a brief article, to deal with any considerable field of American foreign policy for the past 12 years—the years during which the forces were developing and forming which led us to the terrible crisis of today...
...Who was telling the truth and who was lying ? The matter is as simple as that...
...The "common man" has little information on these things...
...Russo-Japanese cooperation and conflict in China...
...Following the publication of Stimson's book, with his assertions that "we wanted to take action...
...They did not aim to do so...
...The Japanese move was one of unprovoked aggression...
...This belief has no basis in facts...
...Stimson's Cooperation With Japan This issue was clear...
...Stimson even vetoed the investigating commission...
...They simply do not accord with the facts of recent history...
...Stimson declined to contradict Simon...
...But then, on Nov...
...It is the President and his State Department that decide foreign relations, that make their decisive contributions to the issues of war and peace in the world...
...British And American Motives Had the American government felt the Japanese invasion to be justified, it should have continued its policy of collaboration with the Japanese...
...In the circumstances, there could be no reasonable doubt as to who was telling the truth and who was lying...
...Stimson is suffering from loss of memory...
...In one imaginative work after another, it is calmly assumed or as calmly alleged that American foreign policy has been "idealistic," aiming at high ideals of peace and democracy, etc...
...In the opinion of some historians—including the present writer—the conduct of Theodore Roosevelt in 1898 and 1904-5, and that of Woodrow Wilson in 1917...
...If this is true, it is an excellent basis for world peace...
...It did not...
...Such assertions, however, are demonstrably untrue...
...But if it is not true, we are building upon most treacherous foundations...
...Secretary Hull subsequently stated that he expected the Japanese reply to our note of Nov...
...It was well informed...
...It was not...
...But we must consider not merely the generally well-meaning but little informed "common man," but also the American government...
...Stimson's own italics...
...Did the Department make his communication public at the time, or did it take action to check the aggression...
...Johnson's report was not made public until this year...
...22, his opinion that this was 'an aggressive act by Japan,' apparently long-planned, and carefully and systematically put into effect...
...But what is true with regard to Manchuria is true of our government's foreign policy as a whole...
...Their aim was to open the way for the expansion of American financial power and ascendancy in the Far East, through the American-organized Consortium...
...Our government was adequately informed of the situation...
...I have given a single excerpt from it—Minister Nelson Johnson's report on the invasion of Manchuria, and the significance of it...
...We have our choice...
...He was convinced that the Japanese military operation in Manchuria 'must fall within any.definition of war,' and that this act of aggression had been deliberately accomplished in 'utter and cynical disregard' of Japan's obligations under the Kel-logg-Briand Pact...
...Its economic collaboration with London, Berlin, and Rome in the war against the Spanish republic, when German and Italian forces invaded the struggling republic and London and Washington clapped an arms embargo on it, reeks to high heaven...
...If anyone doubts this, let them read the State Department's recent "White (Wash) Book," Peace and War...
...We need not, at this moment, go back half a century to consider whether Theodore Roosevelt, as Undersecretary of the Navy, was wise and good in getting us into the Philippines in 1898, or whether his actions as President on behalf of the Japanese in 1905 were either well-intentioned or intelligent...
...If they were, then everything our government had done to aid and finance and supply the Japanese militarists since September 1931 was low and dishonorable...
...But let no one believe that the advice of intelligent and liberal diplomats such as Johnson, Dodd, and Grew was ever followed at Washington...
...26 would be war...
...It is not that our government was ignorant of what was transpiring in the world...
...American failure to adhere to the League of Nations weakened that body, but this in itself was not fatal...
...We were not wholly responsible for the Versailles Treaty, which had such tragic results in Europe...
...If we look back to the newspapers of that time, we find that with Minister Johnson's report in its hand, the State Department was announcing publicly, through the press, that "the reports from China do not offer grounds for noting any violation of the Kellogg Pact...
...When the American government, in 1921-'22, succeeded in breaking up the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, it meant a disastrous break among the powers that had defeated Germany a few years previously...
...We cannot get away from this...
...Stimson has made this clear in his own book, Far Eastern Crisis, describing his response to the British and League suggestions for cooperation to tell the Japanese to go no further, and immediately to send an investigation committee to Manchuria to see that these decisions were carried out...
...It has not pursued the aims of peace, or democracy, or non-aggression...
...Secretary Stimson, however, advised the League Secretary that "it would be wise to avoid action which might excite nationalistic feeling in Japan in support of the military and against Shidehara...
...Japan was then our ally...
...It did not aim either at peace or democracy...
...And we cannot disclaim responsibility for our intervention to divide Japan from Britain, to break up the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 21 years ago...
...Here is a clear question of veracity, since the Kellogg Pact was specifically referred to both by Minister Johnson in his report and by the State Department in its public statement...
...Were its motives high and honorable...
...The Washington Treaties We need not, however, go so far back...
...26, 1941, Secretary Hull delivered to Japan a virtual ultimatum, demanding that Japan "withdraw all military, naval, air and police forces from China and from Indo-China," and "not support any government in China other than the National Government of the Republic of China with its capital temporarily at Chungking" a government which was and is, in effect, an American dependency, dependent almost wholly upon American subsidies for its continued existence...
...Simon did not ask for "time out," but replied at once, coolly and calmly: "I fear Mr...
...It was...
...Fact Versus Fiction There is a widespread belief in this country, promoted by Stimson himself (in 1936), that "we wanted to take action to stop Japan and the British wouldn't cooperate...
...Their reports were quietly filed away, and every aid was given to the forces of reaction, fascism, and war...
...And to gain such ascendancy, it was useful to divide Britain from Japan...
...The Anglo-Japanese Alliance, as fitted into the League, was a powerful instrument for the maintenance of the status quo...
...Japanese Parliament versus Japanese militarists in Japan...
...To understand the British attitude towards the Japanese aggression in 1931, we must understand that they feared both for the fate of white prestige—with immediate repercussions upon the British Empire in Asia—and for their own position in China, where Britain had been the leading power for the greater part of a century...
...It continued to supply the material means of warfare, fuel oil, scrap-iron, and other things, right down to 1941, when the Japanese militarists had been engaged in an "all-out" invasion of China for four years...
...nationalism versus imperialism in China...
...Thus Minister Johnson had fully informed the State Department...
...But they did not do so...
...was a terrible disaster to the world, and contributed decisively to the state of the world as it is today...
...The American people, as a whole, have not desired war, nor have they felt ill-will to their neighbors...
...But Japanese assistance to Britain in 1917-18 contributed to the defeat of Germany...
...For a time, indeed, it did, enabling the Japanese to get their firm hold on Manchuria...
...Our government knew...
...In his own words: "I deprecated the proposal of sending by the League at that time an investigating commission to Manchuria over and against the objection of Japan...
...The writer is no apologist for the Anglo-Japanese Alliance...
...Neither need we consider whether President Wilson's taking us into the European war in 1917, successfully encouraging the Russian Provisional Government to carry on the war instead of making peace—thus enabling the Communists to rally popular hatred of the war in such form as to seize power themselves—was to the interest of democracy or of peace...
...The nine years that followed the Washington Conference were years of complicated shifts and balances among the now disunited powers in the Far East: Japan versus the Western powers in China...
...It is clear and simple, fact, however, that its desire for firm cooperation to check Japan in Manchuria in 1931 coincided with the interests of peace, and continuation of a degree of international order in the world...
...The time had come for a showdown...
...Russians and Chinese versus "capitalist powers" in China...
...Platform speakers have alleged that the American government is completely innocent of the tragic developments of the past two decades...
...The fact is, as established" by official documents and by Stimson's own book, that the British were most anxious to prevent the Japanese aggression...
...It was a virtual alliance with Hitler and Mussolini for the crushing of democracy in Spain...
...But the statements given out in Washington were mere window-dressing for something far more serious —our refusal to cooperate with Britain and the League to check the Japanese aggression...
...To this the British government responded affirmatively and at once, but heard nothing further from Washington...
...the British wouldn't cooperate," the matter was raised in the British House of Commons, and the question directed to Sir John Simon...
...He added, specifically, that on one occasion (in February, 1932) the American government did propose joint action—to call together the signatories of the Nine-Power Treaty...
...Had the Washington treaties offered some better form of security, this would have been wholly justified...
...It had been so long- ago, said "Wrong Horse Harry," that there was really no reason to bring up the matter now...
...And then, in 1931, the Japanese militarists moved into Manchuria...
...It was an alliance between two imperial powers for mutual aggression against other parties...
...British, Americans, and Japanese versus Russia in China...
...It was Secretary Stimson that refused to cooperate to halt this aggression...
...If permitted to succeed, it meant the beginning of break-up of the post-Versailles world—the beginning of a new World War...
...Its action with regard to Manchuria was a disaster...
Vol. 7 • October 1943 • No. 43
