MR. H. G. WELLS ON JAPAN.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4362, 6 January 1922, Page 4

MR. H. G. WELLS ON JAPAN.

THE QUESTION IN THE FOREGROUND.

Of all the national delegations assembled here .at Washington the most acutely scrutinised, the most discussed, and probably the least understood is the Japanese. The limelight gravitates towards it, moved, one feels not so much by an extreme respect as by an Inordinate curiosity.

Of only one other people—l write as a spectator from overseas —does one feel the same sense of the possibility of dramatically unexpected things, and that is the Americans. The Japanese we feel we have not found out, and the Americans we feel have not found out themselves. Already the Americans have sprung one great surprise upon the Conference. ' Great Britain, France,' Italy, and the other Powers in attendance are comparatively calculable —so far as their representative goes. But Japan is different. It is not built upon the same lines. It follows different laws.. I went ofi Sunday night to the Press reception at the Japanese headquarters. The Ambassador is a buoyant man of the world, speaking excellent. English and thoroughly acclimatised to an American Press gathering. But many of the Japanese faces about him set my imagination busy putting them back into the voluminous robes and the sashes holding the double sword with which I had first met them long ago in Japanese prints, and which would have become them s.o much better.

Admiral Kato spoke in Japanese and Prince Tokugawa in English. Tliey welcomed the Hughes proposals amid warm generalities and hopes foi peace, as -we all hope fori peace with insufficient particulars. I got no conversation with any Japanese. They Were not taiking to us; they d,id not want to talk. It was a reception of hearty politeness and no exchanges. I found myselfl falling back upon an earlier impression.

Some weeks ago I had a very illuminating talk in my garden at home with two Japanese visitors, Mr Mashiko and Mr Negushi, who had come to discuss various educational ideas with me. And they told me things that seem to me to be fundamentally important in this question. “We build up our children,” said Mr Mashikp, “upon a diametrically different plan from yours. We turn them the other way round. Obedience and devotion are our leading thoughts. All pur sentiment, all our stories and poetry, traditions of centuries, teach loyalty, the blind, unquestioning loyalty of the wife to the husband, of the man to his lord, of everyone to the Monarch, The loyalty is religious. So .far as political and social questions go it is fundamental.. But your training cultivates independence, free thought, and unsparing criticism of superiors, institutions, and relationships. Perhaps it is better in the end and more invigorating, but it seems to us wild and dangerous. We begin to have a sort 0(f public opinion, but it is still diffident and timid.” The American and the Englishman, he said, cared for his country because he believed it belonged to him. Tne Japanese cared for his country be-, cause he believed he belonged to it. One could not pass from one habit of mind to the other, he thought, without grave risks and dangers. It is easier to destroy obedience than to create responsibility. I was reminded of that conversation the other day by a remark made by a fellow-journalist in the train to Washington. “A Chinese will tell you what he thinks, like an American, but a Japanese always feels he is an agent, even if he isn’t an accredited one.” Now this is a very interesting and probably a very fundamental comparison. This difference in spirit will make the Japanese people a very different instrument from the American and English and French people. It will make the Japanese Government a different thing from the Gov-t crnments it will be meeting in Washington. A people built up on obedience can be held and wielded as no modern democratic people can be held and wielded. It is different in kind. Unless this point is kept in mind there are certain to be great and possibly dangerous misunderstandings in the Washington discussion. There have probably been very dangerous misunderstandings already < European Powers by the Japanese. The Japanese are likely to think the Atlantic Governments were more free to decide than they really are and that what they say is more conclusive than it really is, and the AH lantic peoples are likely to think top much of the appearance of a liberal

public opinion in Japan and, imagine that a Japanese Goverumenf'may be thrown out and its policy changed much more easily than is the case.

But, indeed, Japan is a Government, a military Government, holding its people in its hand like a staff or a weapon, while America and France and Britain are peoples operating their Governments more or less imperfectly. In no relationship is conclusion upon this point more probable and more dangerous than between Japan and Britain or France at the present time, and in no connection is there greater need of a perfectly plain statement. Seeing that Britain is still a Monarchy with many aristocratic forms, it is fatally easy for the Japanese statesman to fall into the belief that title British Government is completely in control, and its officials as able to bind or loose as the Japanese Government and its official*, and, because of this belief, to trust to private assurances and to the general attitude of personages in high places far more than they are 'justified in. dping. The British democracy is very like the American democracy in its inability to keep watching what is happening overseas.

It is preoccupied by domestic questions and things that are near to it. You cannot expect a Wiltshire farmer or a Lancashire cotton spinner to keep up day by day with the conces-sion-hunting game in. Persia or South China. But if that game of conces-sion-hunting piles up to sufficiently serious consequences, these democracies are likely to wake up in a manner quite outside the Japanese range of possibilities. And to a large extent the same is true of France. It is the blessed privilege pf|the irresponsible journalist to say things that no diplomatist could ever say, and upon the relations of Japan and America and Engalnd there are certain truths that seem tp need saying very plainly at the present time. But though I am an irresponsible journal-! ist it is also to be noted that I am a very English Englishman, and that I know the way off thinking of my people.

The British people have been sleeping happily upon the belief that war with America is impossible. And for them it is impossible. In this matter the British have a special and extraordinary instinct. They will not fight the United States of America. I ■ will riot go into the peculiar feelings that produce this disposition. They are feelings great numbers of Americans do not understand, and have, indeed, taken great pains not to understand. But to the common British fighting the Americans would have much the same relation to fighting other peoples as cannibalism would have to eating meat. I hear a certain type of American slowly and heavily debating the Hughes proposals on t'he assumption that there may be a war of America against Britain and Japan. Such an assumption is—ifl I may be permitted the word —idiotic.

As a people the British have not been thinking very much about the Pacific question. They have been preoccupied by Ireland and their eco>nomic troubles. But if that question presently moves towards a level of intensity where war is possible, ler thorp be no mistake about it in Japan. The ordinary English will begin thinking with Americans. They will read much the same stuff because they have the same language and think the same way,' because they have kindred h,abits otf thought. It will not matter then what assurances or sentiments the Japanese may have had from official personages in Great Britain. For we are dealing here not with a matter of agreements but with a kind of moral gravitation. If tnere is a conflict the British masses will want to come in on the American side, and if it seems likely to be in the least an inconclusive conflict they .will certainly come in. If the rulers cf the Japanese dream that any other combination is possible in the Pacific they are under as dangerous a delusion as ever lured a great nation to disaster.

But there are many signs that, if ever the ruling people ofl Japan entertained this delusion, they are being disillusioned and that they begin to realise that war with America in the Pacific will mean war with America and Britain—and possibly, to judge from the recent astonishing remarks by that able writer Pertinax .France. France may use her influence at Washington on behalf of Japan in

certain matters, but that is all Japan will get from France. The Japanese, I believe, now fully realise this, and the trend of recent Japanese utterances is all in the direction of the discussion and disavowal of any belhi gerent dreams. Yet Japan continues to arm, and though she now disavows war as her method she sits very proudly anl stiffly in her weapons at the parley. She may have limited and restrained her dreams, but there is still some minimum in her mind beyond which she will not retreat without a struggle . What is that minimum which will satisfy her without war ? Will it satisfy her for good ? Will it seem so permanently satisfactory to her that she will be willing not only to set r aside all thought of a preparation for immediate war, but —what is of far more importance—enter into such a binding contract for her future international relationship as will enable her to beat the swords of her Samurai into ploughshares for good and all ?

Is Japan peculiarly the obstacle to a practical if informal federation of world to which we all hope that things are moving ? When I try to frame a hopeful answer to that question it occurs to me with added force that Japan is not a people trying to express itself through a Government as we Atlantic peoples are, but a Government-by a small ruling class in effective i isession of an obedient-loving people. And I rememi her that that small ruling class has a long tradition of romantic and chivalrous swordsmanship. Is that ruling class going tp keep its power, and is it going to preserve its traditions ? No one could be more urgent than I for the complete disarmament of the entire world . But no one could be more convinced of! the unwisdom of a disarmament by America or any other Power while any single country in the world maintains a spirit thai must lead at last to the resumption of warfare.

To disarm in such a situation is *o leave trouble tp accumulate upon our grandchildren. To patch up a temporary peace based on the permitted “expansion” of such a Power is simply to prepare for expanded war jn the future.

But is that Japanese ruling class resolved at any cost, even at the cost of another world war and at the risk of destroying Japan, to hold on to its present power and adhere rigidly to its traditions 1 In the last hundred years Japan, because of her aristocracy and because’ of her general obedience, has achieved feats of adaptation to new conditions that are unparalleled ia history. As we have noted, there have recently been indication ofl further changes in the spirit of Japan. She is said to be pressing (forward with the education of the common people and the liberation of thought and discussion. In the long run what is happening ip the schools of Japan is of more importance to mankind than what is happening in her docki yards. But at present we dp not know what is happening in the schools of Japan.

One hears much of the new Japan, the Liberal Japan, and there is even an unofficial representative of the Japanese Opposition in Washington. Eut so far as we can judge at this distance we must be guided by the policy and methods of the Japanese Government,

Before we can judge these, we must consider the nature of the field in which they seem to clash most with American ideas and with American and European interests, namely, China and Eastern Asia generally. In my next paper I will ask, What is China ? and consider the nature of the needs and claims of Japan in regard to China and the prohibitions and- renunciations the Western Powers want to impose upon her. For it is on account of these restrictions and prohibitions that Japan has been building her battleships. Her fighting fleet is to secure her a free hand in China and Siberia. It can have no other purpose. And I shall take up the question whether the prohibitions and renunciations we want to force upon Japan are not prohibitions and restrictions that we ar.e bound in fairness to impose equally upon all the Powers concerned with China and the Far East.

If other Powers are not prepared for extreme general retractation and renunciation in Chinai, if they want

Continued in next Column.

Continued from previous Column, to bar out Japan from aggressive practices and exclusive advantages that other Powers retain, if we cling to any sort of racial distinction in these matters, then I shall submit we are asking Impossible things from Japan, and we are forcing her towards what must be, indeed, a very desperate gamble for her—a refusal to enter into this proposed disarmai ment agreement—and that means war.