Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [210]
While the others were speaking, House slipped a note to Wilson, who was chairing the meeting: “The trouble is that if this Commission should pass it, it would surely raise the race issue throughout the world.” Wilson knew that any reference to racial equality would alienate key politicians on the West Coast, and he needed their votes to get the League through Congress. He urged the Japanese to withdraw their amendment. It was a mistake, he said, to make too much fuss about racial prejudice. That would only stir up flames that would eventually hurt the League. Everyone in the room knew that the League was based on the equality of nations. There was no need to say anything more. He was speaking in the most friendly possible manner to the Japanese. He knew that they meant well, but he felt that he had to warn them that they were going about things the wrong way.
The Japanese delegates insisted on a vote. When a majority voted for the amendment, Wilson, with the dexterity he had no doubt learned as a university president, announced that because there were strong objections to the amendment it could not carry. The Japanese chose not to challenge this dubious ruling and so the racial equality clause did not become part of the covenant.37
The Japanese press was bitterly critical of the “so-called civilized world.” Liberal, internationally minded Japanese were dismayed. They had played the game, they had shown themselves ready to participate in the international community, and yet they were still treated as inferiors. If nations were denied just and equal treatment, Makino warned a plenary session of the Peace Conference on April 28, they might well lose faith in the principles that guided the League: “Such a frame of mind, I am afraid, would be most detrimental to that harmony and co-operation, upon which foundation alone can the League now contemplated be securely built.” He was right. The failure to get the racial equality clause was an important factor in the interwar years in turning Japan away from cooperation with the West and toward more aggressively nationalistic policies.38
In the short term, however, Japan was able to use its defeat to its advantage. “The Japanese told me with all oriental courtesy,” Wilson reported to his fellow peacemakers toward the end of April, “that, if we didn’t take their side on this article of the treaty, they couldn’t sign the rest.” Lloyd George appeared unperturbed. “Dear! Dear!” Clemenceau added, “If that doesn’t bother you any more than that, I can’t seem to be more bothered than you.” In fact, they were all worried. The conference could not afford another defection. Wilson, desperate to save the League of Nations but unable to accept the racial equality clause, now faced giving Japan what it wanted in China. What made his position difficult was that China also had a strong case.39
24
A Dagger Pointed at the Heart of China
WHEN THE NEWS that the Great War was over reached China, the government declared a three-day holiday. Sixty thousand people, many of them nationalist students and their teachers, turned out for Peking’s victory parade. To popular rejoicing, a monument put up by the kaiser’s government to a German diplomat who had been killed during the Boxer Rebellion two decades earlier was torn down. The Chinese press was full of articles about the triumph of democracy over despotism and of enthusiasm for Wilson’s Fourteen Points. Among young Chinese especially, there was an uncritical admiration for Western democracy, Western liberal ideals and Western learning. Many Chinese also hoped that the peace would bring an end to interference by the Great Powers in China’s affairs.
China had declared war on Germany in the summer of 1917 and had made a substantial contribution to the Allied victory. The trenches of the Western Front required an enormous amount of digging and maintenance. By 1918 about 100,000 Chinese laborers had been shipped to France, where they freed valuable Allied soldiers