Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [222]
Wilson did what he could to limit the damage, and the effort nearly finished him. “Last night I could not sleep,” he told his doctor, “my mind was so full of the Japanese-Chinese controversy.” Grayson reported that he had never seen him so tired. Wilson insisted on detailed descriptions of what Japan was getting in China, right down to the composition of the railway police in Shantung. (They were to be Chinese with, where necessary, Japanese instructors.) When the Shantung clauses of the treaty came up for their final consideration at the meeting of the Council of Four on April 30, he also got a verbal assurance from the Japanese delegates that Japan would eventually give back sovereignty in Shantung to China. The Japanese steadfastly refused to put this in writing on the grounds that any appearance of giving way would inflame public opinion at home.40
By this point, the news that things were going badly for China had leaked out. Paris was full of rumors, which the press picked up. On the evening of April 29, Chinese students in Paris held a very stormy meeting in a hall in the Rue Danton. Speaker after speaker denounced the West. Wang Chingwei, who later won fame as the head of a Japanese puppet government in China, warned in fluent English of the reaction among the Chinese. A young woman art student called for an end to talk of peace: “We must go in for force.” Eugene Chen, a journalist who was later to be China’s foreign minister, introduced a resolution condemning the Big Four and singling out Wilson for particular mention. It was passed unanimously. That night Wilson’s security was stepped up.41
The Chinese delegation got the full details of the settlement on April 30. One member threw himself to the floor in despair. When Baker arrived at the Hôtel Lutétia late that evening to convey Wilson’s excuses and his sympathy, he found a very depressed group who blamed the president for letting them down. Some of them wanted to leave Paris at once rather than sign the treaty. (Koo later told Bonsal that he would sign only if his government gave him a direct order: “I hope they will not make me sign. It would be my death sentence.”)42
The negotiations in Paris had been followed with intense interest on the other side of the world. The Chinese delegation had been bombarded with telegrams, from Chinese student organizations, chambers of commerce, even unions, all expressing their faith in Wilson’s Fourteen Points and their confidence that the Peace Conference would respect China’s claims.43 By the first weekend in May, newspapers in China’s major cities were reporting that the Shantung rights were going to be handed over to Japan. Chinese nationalists were bitterly critical of their own government but they were even angrier, if possible, with the Western powers.
On the night of May 3, a Saturday, students at Peking University, always a center of nationalist agitation, called together representatives from all the city’s universities and colleges to plan a demonstration for the following morning in the great square of Tienanmen. The meeting was packed and highly emotional. The students agreed to send telegrams to the Chinese delegation in Paris asking them not to sign the treaty. One young man cut his finger and wrote on the wall in blood demanding the return of Tsingtao.44
The fury of the Chinese nationalists, significantly, went beyond merely condemning the Shantung decision. As one student recalled:
When the news of the Paris Peace Conference finally reached us we were greatly shocked. We at once awoke to the fact that foreign nations were still selfish and militaristic and that they were all great liars. I remember the night of May 2nd and very few of us slept. A group of my friends and I talked almost the whole night. We came to the conclusion that a greater world war would be coming sooner or