Amenities and Responsibilities

I

IN the course of a morning walk while waiting for my friends in the little Japanese inn to be ready for breakfast, I climbed a neighboring hill for its view over the Inland Sea. Suddenly my attention was arrested by a rustling noise, accompanied by little squeaks, in the grass near by. Looking in the direction indicated, I saw a beautiful snake with markings such as I had never seen before, making his way through the grass with a frog he had seized, who was uttering the squeaks that I had heard. As the frog’s legs were spread wide on either side, the snake found it impossible to push him ahead through the grass, and so he was wriggling backward and dragging the frog after him. I had never seen a snake move backward and had never heard a frog squeak, so I watched them with interest for the brief moment before they disappeared from view. Then I returned to the inn and recounted my adventure to the little group of friends with whom I was traveling. They listened with such interest as the incident merited, but the reaction in one case was unexpected. A charming young woman said with tears in her voice, ’Did n’t you help the frog?’

We smiled at this exhibition of sympathy, but liked her the better for it. Yet no one seconded her suggestion or seemed to think that I ought to have helped the frog. They seemed to realize that sympathy should be tempered by discrimination. The impulse to help the under dog is universal among associated beings. There can be no human society, not even a wolf pack, without a certain mitigation of the competitive struggle. Hence the impulse to take the side of the weak against the strong. But the strong may have the right of it. Nay, in the long run theirs is manifestly the better case. For it is not for the interest of the race that the weak should inherit the earth.

I am prompted to these suggestions by recent developments in our international relations. Our situation as a nation is peculiar. We are, or believe ourselves to be, the most powerful nation in the world. We are at the same time the most detached. We feel international responsibilities less than any other nation and our criticisms of national policies are restrained by neither experience nor fear. The facetious advice to young debaters always to debate questions they know nothing about, as they would thus be less hampered by facts, quite fits our case. In foreign affairs America is the paradise of the doctrinaire and the sentimentalist, the champion of the under dog.

China seems for the moment to be the under dog. Foreign Powers have compelled her to open her doors to their commerce, they have restricted her right to tax their imports, they have compelled her to set aside districts in which their nationals may live and which they may develop and govern as they see fit, and they have compelled her to grant them within these areas, and in a measure wherever they go, the privilege of living under their own laws and of administering these laws through courts of their own creation. In other words, foreign Powers have moved into China, bag and baggage, and have carried their national cultural establishments with them. While they avoid the term ‘annexation,’ and recognize in Chinese sovereignty a certain reversionary right to these territories when they are through with them, that sovereignty is for the present entirely in abeyance in the ‘concessions,’ those marvelous settlements which the Western Powers have created on Chinese soil. Even outside the concessions the foreigner, in a sense, plants his national flag on the spot where he stands. And all this he seems well content to continue, and shows no sign either of leaving or of surrendering his privileges. Such is the Chinese indictment, which, barring certain large omissions, fairly states the facts.

All this went on comparatively unnoticed for half a century simply because our attention was not called to it. But of late this attitude has changed. China has found a voice in a small but growing class impregnated with Western ideas that deeply resents the unreciprocal relation and demands for China the same recognition of sovereignty which is accorded to other nations. This means the recognition of no other law or police authority than that of China in Chinese territory. It means the end of consular courts and of restrictions upon taxation. And generous impulse among us is prompt to respond to the appeal. We are exhorted to stop bullying China.

There is not one of the Western nations to-day that is not willing and eager to do that very thing.

How do we know this? Because in an analogous case they did it, and did it without coercion or exhortation; because, further, the system is costly and vexatious. The Powers do not establish concessions and organize a police force and maintain consular courts for the fun of it. They have no more desire to do these things in Shanghai than they have to do them in New York. It is a burden to maintain these establishments. Only the uninitiated regard it as a privilege. If the Powers hesitate to abolish them it is for reasons of historic import which it behoves us to consider.

II

The system did not originate in China. It is much more ancient — how ancient we cannot say. I suspect that the Greek quarter in Memphis on the banks of the Nile three thousand years ago was much like a Chinese concession. Japan, too, had similar settlements in Korea centuries ago. We have little knowledge of the arrangements governing these settlements, but we may safely assume that they were under the control of their own inhabitants and governed by their customs and laws.

The system first appears in clear outline in connection with the Venetian empire. When Venice joined the crusades she made it a condition of her coöperation that a portion of every city captured should be placed under her jurisdiction. Here she established a Venetian quarter, building warehouses, docks, and all the essentials of commerce. Here, too, her law was established with all the machinery for its administration. It became a Venice in miniature, sometimes more. The Venetian quarter in Constantinople, a concession voluntarily granted, is said to have contained two hundred thousand inhabitants, a population equal to that of Venice herself. Eventually these settlements dotted every island and coast of the Mediterranean.

Whatever may have been the motive for establishing these settlements, their justification is to be found in the fact that Venice had developed a body of commercial law and a system of administration which was infinitely superior to that of the countries with which she had to deal. Many of them had no body of law and were ruled by edict — that is, by autocratic caprice tempered by ill-defined custom. Even with good intentions such procedure was incapable of regulating the complex relations which the highly developed commerce of Venice involved.

When the Turks fell heir to the East, they had no thought of abolishing this system, but sought rather to encourage and extend it. With the long-coveted Constantinople now in their possession, but shrunk to a tenth of its former size and with grass growing in its streets, they turned to this system of privileged settlements as the means of restoring its commercial supremacy. Not at all under compulsion, but with eagerness and an eye to commercial advantage, they renewed and enlarged these privileges of self-government. It did not seem at all an unreasonable thing that commercial communities of highly developed peoples should live under their own laws and regulate their affairs in a manner suited to their needs. These privileges were therefore in the strictest sense concessions granted by a Power, perhaps the strongest in Europe, in the interest of its own convenience and advantage. These concessions were eventually extended to all foreigners as well as to the subject Christian populations, all in the interest of the State. It allowed these populations to live under laws with which they were familiar, and saved the Turks the trouble of regulating affairs which they did not understand. Above all it gave the merchant the necessary inducement to restore the prosperity of the State.

The system continued with little change until its abolition during the World War. But changes in the nations themselves greatly modified its character. Turkey decayed, while the Western Powers grew strong. As the gulf widened between the unadaptable Turk and the progressive West, the foreigner increasingly prized his independence and exploited his privileged position. The ‘capitulations,’ as the system was called, thus came to be recognized as the normal relation between nations whose social and legal systems were widely divergent.

When, about the middle of the nineteenth century, China and Japan were brought within the orbit of Western commerce, the system of exterritoriality was adopted as a matter of necessity. I shall not recall the incidents of this transaction, which involved several wars and a naval demonstration on our part which failed of becoming a war only because it cowed the Japanese into submission. If I were to challenge the policy of the Western Powers I think I should choose this point for attack. If we ever wronged the Eastern nations it was when we insisted upon trading with them at a time when they were unwilling that we should do so. But to discuss the legitimacy of a commercial expansion which no power on earth could have prevented and to which all peoples are now reconciled is as futile as to discuss the ethics of the solar system. I will pass this period with but the single remark that there never was an opium war properly so designated — that is, a war in which the use of opium by the Chinese was either the object aimed at or the chief object attained. It is unfortunate that Britain was obliged to establish the most fundamental of all commercial principles, the right of property against confiscation, in connection with a commodity since fallen into deserved discredit, but the principle was worth the struggle, worth even the obloquy and inevitable misrepresentation.

If commercial relations were to be established there was but one possible way to do it. China and Japan had a highly developed civilization, but one whose whole orientation was unsuited to the new relation. In Japan, commerce was tolerated but despised. Gifts from a merchant, though accepted by a shrine, would not be admitted inside the temple. Foreign commerce was practically unknown, and no laws existed for its regulation. Conditions in China, though different, were no more favorable. The trader had no rights and found no body of law or custom to regulate his dealings with the people. More fundamental still, he found the physical conditions of life such as he could not accept. Permanent commercial relations involved, then as always, resident agents and ultimately a large foreign community. Wives and children followed their husbands and legitimately sought the decencies of European life. Was it too much for Europe to ask — was it too much for China to grant — that they should have the privilege of peaceably creating these conditions?

The privilege was granted, albeit but grudgingly, and in the ocean seaports, up the mighty Yangtze, and in strategic sites all over the empire, some of them previously uninhabited, appeared these oases of alien civilization. Harbors were dredged, docks and warehouses built, broad streets laid out, schools established, churches erected, and the whole fabric of our civilization created. The fisher hamlet of Yokohama grew into a handsome city of half a million. On vacant ground, along a sluggish tributary of the lower Yangtze, rose Shanghai, model city of the East. Outside the walls of ancient Tientsin appeared its modern double, with miles upon miles of broad streets and modern homes surrounded with shrubbery and flowers. The desert islet of Hong-Kong, a barren rock haunted by pirates, became an earthly paradise where, under the Midas touch of British justice, two thirds of a million Chinese have risen to an affluence undreamed of under their own government a few miles away. And at Kiukiang, the city of porcelain, at Ichang where the foaming river pours through the gorges the melted snows of the Himalayas, at Chungking beyond the gorges, and at scores of other spots we find these far-flung outposts of civilization.

I wish that every American could visit one of these settlements, perhaps Hankow, the centre of recent disturbances and of antiforeign agitation. It is six hundred miles up the Yangtze, one of the most majestic of rivers. Great ocean steamers from London sail up these six hundred miles and anchor at Hankow. It is as central as Chicago and almost as accessible as New York. Here, at the confluence of the Yangtze and the Han, are the three ‘Wu-Han’ cities, Hankow, Hanyang, and Wuchang, the last a provincial capital and the recently chosen Cantonese or nationalist capital of China. All are essentially one city, no more separated than Brooklyn and New York, except that there are neither bridges nor tunnels nor steam ferries.

Few things will impress the traveler more than the ‘Bund’ of Hankow. It stretches, a magnificent esplanade perhaps two hundred feet wide, for a couple of miles along the river facing the concessions — British, French, Russian, German and Japanese. Imposing buildings succeed one another for a mile or more — not crowded together, nor yet of the traditional commercial type, but broad-spaced and mansion-like, their deep verandahs filled with flowerpots and the whole set in spacious lawns and shrubbery. When I saw them first I thought of Euclid Avenue as I knew it in my youth. Yet these buildings bore the names of steamship companies, banks, commercial agencies, and other enterprises that I had not hitherto associated with lawns and flowers. Farther on, two splendid American structures were nearing completion, the property of well-known New York banks. They were more ambitious and, I am sorry to say, more commercial in appearance than the others, but I found they were fundamentally the same. Indeed it was from them that I learned the secret of the domestic appearance of the others. Fine housekeeping suites were being finished off in the upper stories, where the young married employees not only could find protection against coolie mobs and social disturbances, but could preserve the integrity of the Anglo-Saxon home. For business has learned in China, if not at home, that its interests are rooted in something deeper than salaries and contracts.

Behind the Bund are other streets with stores that would do honor to any American city. There are schools and churches, too, in familiar guise. On the edge of the concession I found a country club, a model institution of its kind, where I saw assembled the beauty and the chivalry of Hankow.

And then I visited ‘Chinatown’ and crossed over to venerable Wuchang, whose temple-crowned hill had beckoned enticingly. It seemed to embody the romance of the dreamy East. Perhaps it did, but we did n’t find it. We climbed from the landing place through the slops of the water carriers who, in endless procession, supplied the coffeecolored, germ-laden water to the householders for domestic use. We saw the squalor of the homes, the littered streets, and the human offal borne open through the city. We heard the firecrackers exploded to scare away the demons from a wedding or a funeral. What we had taken for temples proved to be gambling dens, while a gay kiosk near by was occupied by a fantastically clad diviner or luck man whose lucrative occupation it was to find the lucky places to dig graves, the lucky time to start building or to undertake a journey. We saw — but why continue? I could not describe what one sees in a Chinese city, nor would the reader thank me if I did. It is but fair to add that behind it all is the battered wreck of much that once was great; that hidden from the traveler’s view there is much of present elegance and of comfort for those who are wonted to Chinese ways. Finally it is to be noted that all this is changing, especially where the Chinese are in contact with the concessions. But, when all is said, it remains true that between the two modes of life a gulf is fixed which the Westerner cannot cross without hardship and demoralization.

III

I have dealt only with the outward aspect of the concession, the aspect most easily seen and portrayed. Its more vital aspect — its soul, so to speak — is in the system of law and administrative procedure, the product of centuries of struggle with the problems which here have found so large a measure of solution. This legal framework, and still more this body of instincts, habits, and ideals which are the essence of our Western civilization — these are not indigenous to Chinese soil. Reared under hothouse protection in the concessions, it remains to be seen whether they will survive with this protection removed. Let us hope so, but those of us who have seen their present flower and fruit may be pardoned if we face the transfer with misgivings.

And now that the transfer seems imminent let us ask somewhat carefully just what China wants and what are the grounds for hesitation in granting her request. The demand is for complete sovereignty as accorded to other nations. As accorded to other nations! Just what do we accord to other nations?

The most fundamental obligation devolving upon any government is to protect the lives and property of its citizens. These are the two basic interests. All else derives from these or is subordinate to them. Nothing can absolve government from this obligation except action of the individual in contravention of government authority. In an age when foreign trade and industry are universally recognized as legitimate, the need and the obligation of protection are not limited by national frontiers. Wherever the citizen goes the duty to protect him goes with him. Government may fail in its efforts. In so far it fails as government. But it can never repudiate the obligation.

The modern comity of nations to which China aspires rests upon the recognition of this obligation. As a matter of convenience and economy of effort, governments exchange these trusts with one another when assured that they can do so safely. If we do not establish an American concession in London and demand the right of setting up our own courts and police protection for our citizens there it is because we are perfectly sure that Britain will protect them quite as well as we could, and we find it much more economical to protect her citizens residing here in exchange. It is a perfectly reciprocal arrangement based on identical principles and fairly equivalent facilities.

There is not a nation in the world that does not prefer this reciprocal arrangement wherever possible. When Japan and China were opened to Western trade it was obviously impossible. Neither country had recognized for centuries the obligation to protect foreigners within its limits. In both countries there was a prejudice against their presence which it was doubtful if the government could control. In both countries the attitude and good faith of the government were in question. No reciprocity was possible. The Western Powers did not delegate their responsibilities, but followed their citizens abroad and built about them and their belongings the home safeguards. To have done less would have been a breach of trust.

The arrangement was provisional. Its abrogation depended on the development of the conditions of reciprocity. With amazing energy and wisdom Japan set about the task. Her entire legal system, devised for a hermit nation with no dealings outside her borders, had to be reconstructed. This entailed political, military, and economic reorganization, the abolition of long-sanctioned class distinctions, and ultimately the complete reconstruction both of Japanese society and of the mentality of the Japanese people. The task was an heroic one and it involved unparalleled sacrifice and determination. The result was apparent when, a generation after the great resolve, Japan successfully resisted mighty Russia, and astonished Europe discovered that a Western nation had arisen in the East. The demand for recognition on the basis of reciprocity was promptly granted. There were misgivings, but they were few and brief. The sneer is sometimes heard that Japan obtained the coveted recognition only when she had sharpened her sword and made herself feared. Possibly. The imputation of cowardice as the sole motive of seeming justice and generosity is a favorite with those whose temperament suggests such explanations. The fact would seem to be that the successful prosecution of a great war against a superior enemy implies not only military power but national unity, discipline, and organization. These were the guaranties that laws promulgated and promises made would be carried into effect. They have been, and no one now regrets Japanese recognition.

Why has not China followed suit? Simply because she was not like Japan. Though alike unprepared at the outset for the new relation of reciprocity with Europe, the two nations were otherwise totally unlike. Ever since the sixteenth century Japan has enjoyed one of the most perfectly organized governments on record. For two centuries and a half this government, the work of two superlative statesmen, maintained unity and order with a minimum of tyranny and corruption, establishing the traditions of discipline and obedience to central authority which have since rendered such remarkable service. Though reluctant to come out of her seclusion, she emerged with herself perfectly in hand and ready for the crisis.

China had no such background. Never closely organized, she was in full decadence when confronted with the new situation. With a central government devoid of authority, and an almost complete lack of the organs of modern government, China faced the exigencies of the commercial era with the government machinery of the primitive clan. Her military impotence but reflects her helplessness in every department of the social organism. Imagine a people whose soldiers, when taken prisoners, unhesitatingly enroll in the other army on assurance of food and pay. Think of a country without roads opening its doors to commerce. When the rain gullies the peasant’s precious field he goes out into the narrow path which does duty for a road and digs up the earth needed to repair the damage. The traveler who later finds a mud hole in his path gets his vengeance by making a new path through the peasant’s field. More completely than any other people the Chinese have gotten along without government, without machinery, without national organization. Said the headman of a Chinese village to the interpreter of an invading army in the Boxer Rebellion: ‘We pay taxes to the Manchus. We would just as soon pay taxes to you if we can get the same thing in return. We pay taxes to be let alone. If you can guarantee that we will be let alone we would just as soon pay to you.’ That is thoroughly Chinese. The ideal is nonintervention. That government is best that governs least. Taxes are paid to bribe the government to inaction.

It is not asserted that these are altogether the ideals of to-day, least of all the ideals of that limited nationalist element which of late has made itself the vocal exponent of China’s demands. It is rather the historic attitude, the mute instinct of the uncounted millions with whom the inertia of habit so far outweighs all reasoned choice.

IV

The generous-hearted demand that we accord to China the recognition due to a modern nation is sometimes made in oversight of the fundamental elements in the problem. We do not recognize peoples or countries, but governments. Recognition of peoples is a private affair. There is nothing to prevent Americans recognizing Chinese to any extent that they choose. But governments can only recognize governments. Where is the Chinese government? It is an open secret that there has been difficulty for some years in locating that important entity. There is much reason to believe that no Chinese government exists. The foreigner in China deals chiefly with local authorities not recognized, perhaps, ten miles away. At the port of entry he deals with the Maritime Customs, an institution imposed by treaty and presided over by foreigners. In the capital he deals with the municipal government, largely controlled by the foreign legations. Finally and chiefly, in various centres he deals with a military free lance who exercises within his sphere of influence the unauthorized authority of force. The alleged government at Peking is the puppet of one of these chieftains. That of to-morrow will be the puppet of another. Present recognition could only be of one of these self-constituted authorities. Recognition of each would be a powerful influence in favor of the partition of China. Effective recognition of one would be a potent interference in domestic affairs. Under these conditions does not that very deference to the Chinese people which is so feelingly invoked require us to withhold rather than to grant recognition?

Further, it is not always remembered that recognition is not an amenity, but a trust. Recognition such as is demanded implies a mutual delegation of the basic responsibilities of government. For a government to delegate its responsibilities to those who lack either the will or the authority or the facilities to discharge those responsibilities is a violation of trust. The present relation is condemned as unreciprocal. Would a mutual arrangement without effective guaranties on China’s part be any less so ?

It is inevitable that the present system should pass away. Provisional in its very nature and involving an essentially abnormal exercise of foreign power, its perpetuation would prevent that development of Chinese responsibility which is the recognized need of the world. The harassed governments of the West are more than willing to rid themselves of these remote jurisdictions. But there is a lively realization on their part, as there is a slumbering, instinctive conviction in the minds of their peoples, that these fundamental responsibilities of government must not lapse. Whatever the cost and whatever the delay, the transfer must be made only to trustworthy hands. Great principles and great interests, interests as legitimate as any in the homeland, are at stake. These settlements, if aggregated, would make a modern nation equal in population and superior in wealth and intelligence to nations now members of the League and eligible to a seat on its Council. No American municipality is governed so well as Shanghai. The wealth that these men have won they have created, and more, very much more, which has inured to the benefit of their Chinese neighbors, millions of whom owe them both livelihood and fortune.

By what right are these things adjudged less sacred here than elsewhere? Who stands to profit by the precipitate surrender of all this to a government whose identity is unestablished and whose existence is doubtful, a government whose only certainty is its incompetence? The rising tide of race consciousness in China at a time when her people are as yet unequipped with adequate organs of government renders extremely difficult the safeguarding of these interests during this trying period of transition. But if the Western Powers are forced to precipitate action, and the great structure of civilization so laboriously reared in the East by missionary and merchant goes down in ruin and possibly in blood, I fear the chief responsibility will rest, not with Young China, but with her doctrinaire partisans in the West.