'I v The Conditions of Peace Between the East and the West* BY J. H. DEFOREST, D. D. Missionary of the American Board in Japan. Address at the Annual Dinner of the American, Peace Society, May 1'2, 1908. It is easy enough for the average mind to say that, since public opinion against war is increasing from age to age, since peace societies, humanitarian sentiments, arbi- tration and the Hague tribunal are well to the front, that these and similar conditions that make for peace may be relied upon to carry us successfully through this new experiment of vast dimensions — the coming together of the East and th#e$i£est -without the curse of great wars. Very well, T '^t us give thanks for all the growing conditions t*^"^ "''or peace and friendship among all nations, Bt«(^ ^ umbly bear in mind two facts : (1) All these^%, ^med are not yet powerful enough to insure evt called Christian West from the danger of war among o elves, Europe is armed to the teeth and the voice of p ce is yet powerless to win disarmament, (2) If in a great civilization like ours, based on a common history, a common religion, a common body of laws and customs, we are still armed for possible conflicts among ourselves, what can we expect when two great civilizations, hitherto comparatively ignorant of each other, come in mutual contact — civilizations with wholly different languages, laws, governments; with religions whose differing sacred traditions are a potent cause of misunderstandings ; and the whole problem yet more complicated by race prejudice and by vast economic disturbances ? DSs\? . 114- We have a great unfinished problem in our own west- ern hemisphere as to how we can secure a century of peace at home ; and now to this is added another, every way more complex and difficult: how to bring the two halves of the human race into relations of permanent peace based on permanent friendship. It is this last prob- lem I will try to discuss, though briefly and imperfectly, limiting myself to certain phases of the political and re- ligious conditions under which the West meets the East. THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. In the political meeting of the East and the West there are many things that rasp the feelings of the people out there, and these we ought to study with great care. Politically we meet them as superiors, relegating them to the place of inferiors. This we call in international law exterritoriality. I do not think the ordinary man or woman of the West has any idea of the ceaseless friction and discord and hatred that this system of exterritoriality enforced on the East breeds in the minds of the people out there. You cannot take up a daily paper in the Eastern ports, or enter into a piazza talk at the hotels, or watch the conduct of men in the foreign settlements, without running up against some form of exterritoriality that is offensive and hateful to the people of the land. THE GOOD OF EXTERRITORIALITY. Of course, I know that the system of exterritoriality has its good side; that it is the only way our ablest and best jurists have discovered by which commerce and international intercourse are possible on peaceful lines with the East. In the case of Japan it was the spur that hastened her adoption of Western codes of laws, and enabled her to enter among world powers as a political equal many decades sooner than might otherwise have been possible. And under this system those splendid emporiums of Yokohama, Kobe, Shanghai and others have risen from nothing to be counted among the most prosperous centres of world commerce, and, better yet, centres for the distribution of world knowledge. THE BAD OF EXTERRITOEIALITY. But all the same, exterritoriality at its best is an in- fringement of territorial sovereignty, and that is what no independent nation will permit, unless gunboats force it. Its very definition carries a sting in it, for, as Woolsey says, it is "to protect the citizens of civilized nations against the unsuitable laws of more barbarous countries." There it is ! We are civilized, they are semi-barbarous ! One illustration will show how it works. Yokohama, fifty years ago, was a small plot of ground ceded to the foreign powers, whereon their nationals were permitted to live and do business. It grew rapidly to be a com- mercial city of world significance. But the foreigners there were cooped up within a few acres, and could not spend a night, or do business, outside of these narrow limits. On the other hand, Japan had no authority within the foreign settlement. If a foreigner struck, robbed or killed a native, the Japanese could not arrest and try and punish him, but each of the sixteen foreign consuls had his own court for his own nationals. And there were always foreign warships in Japanese waters as delicate reminders of our purpose to maintain our ex- territorial privileges. A NATIONAL HUMILIATION. You can easily see how all this must have exasperated a great and sensitive people with a history and traditions and literature and art and religions. One of my first dis- coveries thirty years ago was that the Japanese felt hu- miliated over their loss of territorial sovereignty, and would do everything possible to regain complete authority over everybody within their empire. " We must hasten the abolition of exterritoriality," was the burden of a stirring address that I heard soon after going to Japan, by a principal of a high school to his graduating pupils. And four years ago, when Professor JST. Hozumi, of the Im- perial University of Tokyo, spoke at the St. Louis Expo- sition about Japanese law, he frankly acknowledged the good side of exterritoriality, saying that it had made his government hasten the revision and codification of their civil, criminal and commercial codes. Yet you can see how humiliating this system was, from the Professor's added confession : " At the same time, we felt that the existence of such a legal anomaly was a disgrace to our country and wholly incompatible with that scrupulous regard for the integrity of territorial sovereignty which ought to characterize the intercourse of independent nations. So attempts were repeatedly made to revise the treaties and expunge from them the abominable exterritorial clause." ABOLISHED IK JAPAK. Fortunately Japan's new codes of laws, which cost her fifteen years of serious work, satisfied Western powers, and in 1899 what a wave of joy went over the empire when the revised treaties recognized Japan's judicial and tariff autonomy and her full political equality! Ever since the feelings of Japan toward the West have been as equals with equals. There are no longer any conces- sions in which foreigners are cooped up, and where they have their consular courts. The Japanese alone have authority, and their police and courts are everywhere. The whole empire is open for foreigners to travel or do business as they like, only always under Japanese law and protection. That is, there is no difference between Japanese and foreigners, so far as travel and business and residence are concerned. Now this political equality with Japan is one of the greatest of steps in the prevention of war. It is a great thing that Japan had such splendid self-control under repeated provocations as to endure forty-five years of exterritorial disgrace without an appeal to arms. Japan is the only nation that has done that, and I am glad to say that, during these hard years of trial, the govern- ment and people of the United States, of all the sixteen treaty powers, were the most sympathetic and helpful towards Japan's political ambition. It is because our legation stood for Japan's rights when representatives of other powers were inclined to ignore them ; it is because our nation was the only one that returned an indemnity wrung from her in an hour of weakness ; it is because our minister was the only one, when the joyous day of Japan's release from exterritoriality came, to issue a proclamation congratulating Japan and exhorting all Americans to obey all laws and do everything possible to cement cordial relations with the people, — it is for this political sympathy that Japan loves America as she does no other nation, and is one of our warmest friends. And, I may add here, that for us to regard lightly this sincere friendship, or to permit a section of our press and poli- ticians to weaken it by their shameful insinuations and wicked misrepresentations, is the greatest political mis- take we can make towards the East. Let us as a gov- ernment and as a people stand true to this historic friendship with Japan. EXTBKRITORIALITY IN CHINA. If exterritoriality was a real peril to peaceful relations with Japan, it is much more a source of hatred and even of wars with China. For China, with its enormous popu- lation and extent of territory, wakes up more slowly than did compact Japan to the necessity of adopting codes of law that fit world intercourse. Moreover, China has not been nearly as skillful in handling exterritorial problems as Japan was, and unscrupulous foreigners have taken ad- vantage of her ignorance and political weakness to exploit her mercilessly. So that now we see, what Japan never would have allowed, China's customs under foreign con- trol, and railroads under foreign construction and owner- ship, and foreign steamships running hundreds of miles into her most populous and wealthy regions, while for- eign gunboats follow. What I saw in Shanghai a year ago may throw a little light on this subject. Aggressive Westerners have made a wonderful city there, where but a few decades ago were nothing but paddy fields. They have built wide solid roads running out in the country in every direction, and they were laying trolley tracks in the most substantial manner, so that Chinese mobs could not tear them up. I learned that the Chinese authorities were opposed to the building of these lines outside of the concession, yet the foreigners were pushing on regardless of the govern- ment's refusal to grant them permission. I saw those tall fierce-looking turbaned sikhs from India used as police in the city, and I heard that they were hated and feared by the Chinese. I also found that some lawless Americans had been running the worst kind of gambling hells, opium dens, and prostitution houses, which our shiftless consular court had not prevented. And but shortly before that there had been such a miscarriage of justice in the arrest and detainment of a Chinese woman by the foreign police that a threatening Chinese mob necessitated the foreigners living under arms for a while, and the assembling of the gunboats of Western powers. In addition to these irritating facts is the ever-present opium question, the solution of which, fortunately, we may hope is in sight. Now I do not say that, under existing circumstances, all these things are necessarily wicked and unjust, but this much is plain to the man on the street, that no self- respecting government, with power to make others re- spect it, would stand these things ; no, not for an hour. SOME EVIL RESULTS OF EXTERRITOEIALITY. If the evils of this system were felt only in the very small concessions, it still would be humiliating to any government to have to endure them. But they are felt all through the empire. China, as everybody knows, has been exploited by foreigners in various ways : by getting concessions for railroads, by forcing unwelcome commerce, and even by seizing territory, until now there is a bitter anti-foreign sentiment growing through the eighteen provinces and among the 400,000,000 of China.. That disastrous Boxer movement that imperilled all the legations; that cost the lives of so many missionaries and their converts ; that sent a destructive allied army to Peking which enriched itself by looting the palaces ; that forced from humiliated China another huge indem- nity ; that compelled her to erect, in honor of a murdered German official, a monument which must anger every Chinese who sees it; and the boycott of American goods, — these and their like are some of the recent results, direct and indirect, of this system of exterritori- ality. EXTERRITORIALITY A NINETEENTH CENTURY NECESSITY. Now I do not see how this offensive system can be wholly abolished, and foreigners be left under the laws of China, so long as those laws permit torture, and so long as bribes are believed to be a power in her courts. At the same time, it is notorious that we "civilized" Westerners have pushed exterritorial privileges far be- yond their original intent, until we have stirred up among those whom our international law terms " semi- civilized " wide and bitter hatred and even wars. And the question I want to raise is, Is not one century of this enough ? Is there not a better way of politically meet- ing the peoples of the East that would not be a perpetual humiliation ? And should not Western governments be as eager to limit the aggressions of their nationals in China as we are to repel any such aggressions upon our- selves? POLITICAL SYMPATHY WITH CHINA INCREASING. Now I believe that some of our Western powers are getting tired and ashamed of our nineteenth century treatment of China, and really want to do something that shall make a happier twentieth century for her and thus for the world. Some brief illustrations will show the beginning of a better political sympathy with her. We of the United States are improving the quality of our consular officers. President Cleveland, seeing the in- justice to Japan of sending incapable consular agents there, selected Mr. Mclvor for the office of Consul Gen- eral at Yokohama and said to him : " We have deprived the Japanese of their right to govern Americans living in Japan, and therefore it is our duty to Japan to place over our nationals there a man who is a trained lawyer, one who will maintain there the high traditions of our courts." I have just referred to the recent lawlessness of some Americans in Shanghai whom the Chinese government, of course, couldn't touch. Well, President Roosevelt sent Judge Wilfley there to drive out those authors of vice and crime, and he did. But they were so firmly in- trenched that they resisted, and actually attempted to impeach the Judge. And you have all read, with delight, in the recent papers, the fiery, indignant words of our President concerning these vicious Americans in Shang- hai : " Judge Wilfley was attacked solely because of the fearlessness and integrity with which he had stamped out vice and crime in Shanghai. If this attempt to impeach him were to succeed, the beneficiaries would be every keeper of a house of prostitution, every swindling law- yer, every man who lives by corruption and blackmail in the cities of the Far East." And he truly adds: "It is not too much to say that this assault on Judge Wilfley in the interests of vicious and criminal classes is a public scandal." Perhaps the greatest political sympathy ever shown to China was when our righteous Secretary Hay called a halt in any partition of China, and put a stop to under- handed plans of European powers by his policy of the open door throughout the East. Great Britain also is growing more honorable and sympathetic with China, as you all know, by her willing- ness at last to put an end to the opium trade. This is a great step towards international justice. And in this connection I may say that we of the United States may well praise our government for having forbidden our nationals to engage at all in the sale of opium. One more act of political kindness Great Britain has recently done which I wish the other powers would imitate. Some of our Western papers published in the open ports of the East have persistently taken an attitude of hostile criticism and even of defiance of the authorities of the land. They have in several instances done every- thing they could to stir up ill-will and hatred and strife between the East and the West. It is bad enough to have yellow journals at home, but it is far more insulting to permit them on exterritorial soil. So Great Britain has decreed that both the editor and proprietor of any English newspaper on exterritorial ground that publishes 9 anything calculated to stir up international hatred shall be severely punished. These illustrations show how our governments are waking up to the necessity of limiting some of the abuses that have sprung up. THE MISSIONARY PROBLEM. But I must hasten to state briefly how the missionary movement, which is now a great world movement, is complicated with this exterritorial problem. Having been a missionary for a third of a century in Japan, the most of which time 1 was under exterritoriality, I have been compelled to raise the question, How can the great body of some four thousand missionaries in the East help to lessen the friction of exterritoriality and possibly to hasten its entire abolition ? Perhaps a brief comparison of Japan with China may give some clues. The treaties with Japan have never contained the phrase " Merchants and missionaries," while those with China have it. This is a very significant point. Japan was quick to see the greater danger to her territorial integrity if one class of foreigners were permitted to go into the interior, while another class was confined to con- cessions in the open ports. She saw clearly that the privileges of exterritoriality must be strictly confined to the foreign concessions, where the consular courts were, and that no foreigners should be permitted to live even a rod outside of those narrow limits. Of course this didn't suit us missionaries, who were eager to go to Tokyo, Kyoto and other cities, and there build schools and hospitals and churches for the extension of Chris- tianity. But, all the same, we got there ; yet every one of us who went outside those five little concessions of a few acres had to go as an employee of a responsible Japanese, and the only occupation permitted us was that of teachers. Wherever we built our homes and schools and churches, it was always done in the name of a Japa- nese, who held all legal titles, in which no foreigner's name appeared. No foreigner could legally own a foot of soil, or even a brick or tile of his own house. Nor could he travel from place to place without a passport 10 furnished by the central government through his legation, which passport was given to merchants and missionaries alike for only two reasons, — for purposes of health or science. You can see at once that Japan, by this regulation, which we missionaries didn't like at all, virtually prevented one large class of difficulties — those arising from disputes over property. Yet flourishing Christian schools and hospitals and asylums and churches were built up with mission money in the interior, all, however, under the names of Japanese only. ONE REASON AVHY MISSIONARIES ARE MURDERED IN CHINA. But in China, in some shady way, and because France was the political protector of the Catholic priests, it hap- pened that the treaties recognize two classes of foreigners — merchants and missionaries. The merchants must stick to their narrow foreign concessions, and have no liberty of living or doing business in the interior, while missionaries can freely go pretty much everywhere, and can even buy land in their own name and build every- thing they want to. And the most astonishing thing of all is, that Catholic missionaries accepted a sort of official status, so that they ranked with prefects and even vice- roys, and wore the insignia of native officials, Protes- tant missionaries were wise enough to refuse this rank, but they carried with them all the privileges of exterri- toriality, and were exempt from Chinese authority. At times, like the Catholics, the Protestants have, on the grounds of humanity, interfered in lawsuits, and have come in for their share of political indemnities, none of which things we in Japan could do. Thus, in China, the doors of friction and misunder- standings and hatred and martyrdom were opened as- they never were in Japan. Of course, this is not be- cause the missionaries in Japan were wiser and better than those in China, On the contrary, we wanted to do just as they did. But the Japanese government was- vastly wiser than the Chinese, and by preventing u& 11 from getting the least political advantage, they unwit- tingly made all the better missionaries out of us, for which I, for one, am profoundly grateful. I believe it is because of this, in the main, that no missionary was ever assassinated in Japan ; that no native Christians were ever massacred ; and that no imperial edicts were ev^r issued warning the people not to hurt the missionaries. Japan is the only non-Christian nation in which modern missions have been truly successful without stirring up bloody strifes ; it is the only nation in which there is no martyr blood ; and of the growing naturalized church there it cannot be said, and probably never will be said, that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. But in China how different ! Our missionaries there have indeed done a wonderful work. No more magnifi- cent men and women, in character, in scholarship, in heroic action and noble suffering, can be found any- where on earth than among the thousands of the self- effacing missionaries in China! Yet, caught in the frictions of exterritoriality, and because they were easy to attack, they have been murdered by the dozen, and the infant church of Christ in China, both Catholic and Protestant, is built on the blood of martyrs, both foreign and native. EXTERRITORIALITY A MISFIT FOR THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. You, friends, have asked me for some of the condi- tions of peace between the East and the West. I have tried to show you that, although exterritoriality is in- tended to prevent strife and to be a real condition of peace, it is in teality a heavy strain on international re- lations. No nation has ever warded off its dangers so skilfully as Japan did, and by its abolition one vast irri- tant between her and the nations of the West has been removed. And I may add that it is also for the peace of the world that Japan has taken over Korea, and thus removed that weak and utterly incompetent people from the sphere and perils of exterritoriality. It cannot be emphasized too much that the real per- sistent peril to peace between the East and the West is 12 the nineteenth century system of exterritoriality. We are talking of universal arbitration, yet we forget that this exterritoriality exercised towards 400,000,000 of people — the greatest and oldest nation on earth — makes general arbitration impossible with them. So loqg as territorial sovereignty, the very heart of national honor, is infringed, how can China as a free agent gladly consent to a treaty of arbitration that can touch only those minor matters outside of our exterritorial rights ? Arbitration, to mean anything good and lasting, must be based on mutual respect between political equals. We have just concluded a treaty of arbitration with Japan as a political equal, but we can't do it with great China, where it is needed far more for the peace of the world. GOVERNMENTS MUST DISCOVER NEW METHODS. What then can be done ? Something surely is wrong when such a historic, civilized, moral nation as China is ready and willing to join in equal treaties of arbitration, yet is disqualified because of our exterritorial system im- posed by force upon her. If the love of peace is grow- ing ; if the spirit of international justice is on the in- crease ; if it is our duty to minimize the causes of international friction, — then it seems to me that it is up to our governments to find some method of intercourse with China that shall abolish the most of the evils that have grown up during the last century, and that shall be worthy of this, more moral twentieth century. And is it not possible that this splendid principle of arbitration may be extended and gradually substituted for this one- sided and hated exterritoriality? And in s«me such way of recognizing the political and territorial sovereignty of China, is it not possible to make an atmosphere in which the friendship of the East, instead of its hatred, may be rationally cultivated ? The spirit of justice that has led us to return in- flated indemnities ; that stamps out the lawlessness of Americans by sending out fearless judges and righteous consular officers ; that prepares for a better understand- ing of the East by raising up a body of competent 13 linguists to be responsible interpreters of Eastern prob- lems ; that has led Great Britain to try to abolish the opium trade, and to put an end to press agencies that stir up international ill-will, — this growing spirit of in- ternational justice we may confidently trust will find vastly better ways of meeting the great historic peoples of the East than was furnished by the too-shameful ex- territoriality of the nineteenth century. THE PEOPLE ALSO CAN HELP. Let UP, the people, change our attitude towards the East. We have too long looked down upon them as in- feriors, and even in our churches we have sweepingly characterized them as heathen and pagan. Our prayers, our preaching, our hymns, and our missionary literature have contained altogether too much of these terms which to the cultured peoples of the East are most highly of- fensive. I am astonished that a recent memorial, other- wise splendid in its spirit, signed by five secretaries of five great missionary societies, should have on nearly every page these slighting words, "the heathen world." I have heard again and again in the East sentiments of deep resentment at this insulting manner of sweepingly char- acterizing the people there. It does seem as though the churches of Christ, sending out their messengers of peace and goodwill through the great East, might at least be as polite and considerate as the agents of our govern- ments have to be in all their diplomatic utterances and correspondence. It is hard to estimate the damage to the cause of goodwill between the East and the West that is done by the careless and persistent use of these belated and offensive terms on the part of those whose deepest and sincerest purpose is to do good in the spirit of Christ. WHAT MISSIONARIES WILL DO. No one can fail to see that the missionary movement is now a recognized world movement, and it is impossible that a body of three thousand missionaries in China should not be a potent factor in uniting the East and the 14 West. We of Japan, living in the interior, came to see that Japan was worthy of political equality and could be trusted to do right towards us, and so we drew up memorials to our ministers, virtually saying that in our opinion the time had come to trust Japan ; and I believe our representations were of political value. Some such missionaries are also in China. One said to me last year : " I am perfectly willing to come under Chinese authority. I am sure they never would harm me." Already boards are most careful in selecting men for China, men who understand the Gospel of Christ as big enough to be sympathetic with all that is good in international and interdenominational relations. Already some boards have instructed their missionaries to have nothing whatever to do with native lawsuits, and the Chinese government, we are glad to say, has recently deprived Catholic priests of their political rights and privileges. Already Protestant missions have agreed to encourage the formation of one great Chinese church that shall be fitted to give Christian standards to the family and to society, instead of trying to plant the vari- ous Western denominations on Chinese soil, which would be nothing better than exterritorial Christianity. With this great body of missionaries becoming sympa- thetic with China's political ideals, with their noble pur- pose to make a Chinese Church, instead of teaching Western forms of our religion, with their growing schools and colleges teaching world knowledge and world move- ments, we may confidently expect they will more and more be heard in favor of some more righteous and friendly method of international intercourse that shall not be a perpetual humiliation to the government and people of China. MEECHANTS WILL GIVE VALUABLE AID. The great and powerful body of foreign merchants in the East contains some of the noblest men and women in the world. Yet we are forced to say that the influence of our merchants in the past century has been strong for the perpetuation of exterritoriality. In Japan they 15 resisted its abolition to the utmost, and we may expect that those merchants, by whose indomitable energy such cities as Shanghai were built, will do the same. Yet the spirit of universal justice is growing among the merchants of the world. It is a significant sign of the times that some Chambers of Commerce in the United States sent resolutions of enduring friendship to Japan, a sort of merchants' protest against the senseless jingo hostility to Japan. Commerce is one of the bonds that unite nations with golden cords, and in spite of local frictions, boycotts and even wars in the past, we are confident it will be a most valuable aid in deepening and enriching the friend- ship between the East and the West. THE WEST NEEDS THE SYMPATHY OF THE EAST. There is one very important point, in conclusion, that we in our overstrong sense of superiority are continually overlooking, and that is : we need the sympathetic co- operation of the East in the solution of the most difficult problem the world has ever seen. The complex and try- ing problem of this century — one laden with untold consequences of good or evil — is the coming together of the millions of the East with the millions of the West, two mighty civilizations with different languages, cus- toms, institutions, religions. Wherever the lines have hitherto met, there have been frictions, suspicions, strife, war. The burden of the peaceful solution of this im-^ mense world problem, so far as the West is concerned, falls on the Anglo-Saxon race. Great Britain saw per- fectly well that the West alone could never do it, and hence that splendid first alliance between the East and the West. We of this Republic cannot have such a political alli- ance, but we need the moral and sympathetic alliance with the nations of the East, without which arbitration treaties will be of little avail. To think that we of the West are going to solve this problem without the warm, sympathetic cooperation of the East as equals is a thought born from our traditional thinking of them as heathen, and their religions as false, and their future as hell, while we pride ourselves on being Christian, with the only true 028 326 111 6 16 religion, and our destiny as heaven. To think that we can solve it by gunboats and repression is Hobsonian in the extreme. We can only solve it by the practice of that universal righteousness and justice which are as nec- essary among nations as between individuals, both sides being givers and both sides receivers. In this vast complex world- work every individual may contribute something, by right habits of thought, polite and considerate ways of speaking, and by doing to others as we would they should do to us. Thus we all can help bridge what is mistakenly called the impassable gulf between the peoples of the East and the West, both of which are, at bottom, God's children, and therefore of necessity brethren. AUBURNDALE, MaSS. American Peace Society, •313-314 Colorado Building,' washington. d. c. LIBRARY OF. CONGRESS f 028 326 111 6 Hollinger Corp. pH8.5