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From The Autobiography of James T. Shotwell, 1961
While I was so deeply engaged in the effort to make real the organization of peace, without which the Briand-Kellogg pact would remain mere wishful thinking, a wholly new world—new to me—opened up in the problems of Japan and China. There were, first of all, the problems raised by the sudden modernization of Japan. Naturally, perhaps inevitably, it followed the path of the imperialist policies of European powers in their exploitation of China in the nineteenth century. But, while they applied pressure on the decadent Chinese empire from a distance, Japan waged war with it over the tributary kingdom of Korea (1894-1895), which by a humiliating defeat for China it took over, along with Formosa and the Pescadores islands. The supreme prize, however, Manchuria, was won by Russia, which held its railways and coastal regions until Japan defeated it in the war of 1904-1905. This defeat was so great a triumph for both army and navy that it still further militarized a militarist nation.
In China, meanwhile,
a rising tide of discontent over the humiliations forced upon a proud, self-centered people was galvanized into a revolutionary force, and in 1911 the Manchu dynasty made way for a republic. But, instead of a unified nation, the new China suffered from civil wars, treachery of war lords and inexperience in government, of which Japan took full advantage, making demands which would have virtually put China in the place of a tributary nation. Then, in 1924, Sun Yat-sen, the father of the revolution, offered an inspiring program in his book of lectures, The Three
Principles (San Min Chu I)—Nationalism, Democracy and Welfare [Livelihood]—which the Party of the Republic, the Kuomintang made into a national creed. The venerated leader died the next year, a national hero, but he left unsolved the final issue, whether China should go communist (he used communism as a revolutionary force but was not a communist himself) or follow the strong non-communist lead of the young military officer who now headed the Kuomintang, Chiang Kai-shek. By 1929, Chiang Kai-shek had not only established his ascendancy in most of China, but had made surprising progress toward emancipation from the �unequal treaties� with the European Powers. The end of �extra-territoriality� was in sight, so far as the British were concerned. But, Japan, with its hold on Manchuria, still a Chinese province, took the opposite course by seizing the German-held province of Shantung and pushing on into Mongolia.
Indianapolis and New York : Bobbs-Merrill, 1961, pages 236-7.
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