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copies thereof shall be transmitted by that Government to each of the other contracting powers.

In faith whereof the respective plenipotentiaries have signed the present agreement.

Done at the city of Washington the sixth day of February, one thousand nine hundred and twenty-two.

PART III

THE RIDDLE OF CHINA

PART III

THE RIDDLE OF CHINA

CHAPTER XIII

CHINA'S "BILL OF RIGHTS"

Washington, November 17, 1921: Yesterday the Chinese delegation placed upon the conference table a memorandum setting forth China's hopes and expectations at this Conference. Some of my American colleagues of the Fourth Estate call it China's "Bill of Rights." Let us hope that such it will prove to be.

Gossip has been current as to the authorship of the memorandum. Some say Mr. Lansing wrote it, others credit Dr. Reinsch with its authorship. Still others think that the document is a joint work of Messrs. Thomas Millard and Putnam Weale. The more common gossip is that Dr. John C. Ferguson is responsible for it. For China is a country where foreign advisers are "in flower." But the authorship question is trivial. We must dismiss foolish gossip and consider the memorandum upon its own merits. We must approach it, moreover, in a friendly feeling and in the spirit of candor and fairness. (The full text of the memorandum will be found at the end of the chapter.)

At the same time we must ask the Americans to purge themselves of the mawkish sentimentality which they are prone to entertain in discussing China. That

we must be sympathetic toward her, goes without saying, but sympathy, divorced from frankness and critical observation, contributes nothing towards the clarification of the Chinese question, much less towards its solution.

It is commonly conceded that one of the principal objects of the Chinese memorandum is to forestall the conclusion of any treaty affecting China without consulting her. It carries with it an unmistakable expression of displeasure over various treaties which vitally affect her, but which have been concluded without consulting her. Evidently, the Chinese delegates have in mind especially the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902 and 1905, the Russo-Japanese entente of 1907 and 1910, and the Franco-Japanese agreement of June,

1907.

No fair-minded man can be callous to China's contention that no treaty, affecting her interest, be concluded between Powers without first consulting her. At the same time, we must, in the name of candor and fairness, ask China to examine herself, and especially her past. We must ask her to consider her own condition in the past several decades, and see whether she can find reason to appreciate those instruments concluded over her head.

Toward the end of the nineteenth century China stood upon the verge of dismemberment. St. Petersburg, Berlin, Paris, Vienna, and London were seriously talking of the partitioning of China. When the curtain rose upon the twentieth century, the condition was going from bad to worse.

Only by the deadly blow Japan dealt to the imperial ambition of Russia in the titanic war of 1904-5, was the disruption of China prevented. But for that war where would China have been today? America was

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