was finally compelled to yield by an ultimatum. There was a modification as regards the Hanyehping mines on the Yangtze, presumably to please us; and the specially obnoxious fifth group was altered into an exchange of studiously vague Notes.[1] In this form, the demands were accepted by China on May 9, 1915. The United States immediately notified Japan that they could not recognize the agreement. At that time America was still neutral, and was therefore still able to do something to further the objects for which we were supposed to be fighting, such as protection of the weaker nations. In 1917, however, after America had entered the war for self-determination, it became necessary to placate Japan, and in November of that year the Ishii-Lansing Agreement was concluded, by which "the Government of the United States recognizes that Japan has special interests in China, particularly for the parts to which her possessions are contiguous." The rest of the agreement (which is long) consists of empty verbiage.[2]
I come now to the events leading up to China's entry into the war.[3] In this matter, the lead was taken by America so far as severing diplomatic
- ↑ The demands in their original and revised forms, with the negotiations concerning them, are printed in Appendix B of Democracy and the Eastern Question, by Thomas F. Millard, Allen & Unwin, 1919.
- ↑ The texts concerned in the various stages of the Shantung question are printed in S.G. Cheng's Modern China, Appendix ii, iii and ix. For text of Ishii-Lansing Agreement, see Gleason, op. cit. pp. 214–6.
- ↑ Three books, all by Americans, give the secret and official history of this matter. They are: An American Diplomat in China, by Paul S. Reinsch, Doubleday, Page & Co., 1922; Democracy and the Eastern Question, by Thomas F. Millard, Allen & Unwin, 1919; and China, Captive or Free? by the Rev. Gilbert Reid, A.M., D.D. Director of International Institute of China, Allen & Unwin, 1922.
