Diplomacy in No Man's Land

LORD SALISBURY once said that the commonest error of statesmanship was to cling to the carcasses of dead policies. The world has had a demonstration of this truism in regard to the new diplomacy of collective responsibility. The new diplomacy took the defense of other countries’ interests under its wing, on the ground that they affected the entire community of nations. Its venue was the League of Nations; and even the United States, though not a member of the League, sought participation in the system through the Pact of Paris, better known as the Kellogg Pact.

The Pact, to be sure, had no habitation or secretariat; not even a system of appeal for action in case the pledge was violated. No other method of presenting the instrument to the Senate would have obtained the ratification of that august body. At the hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, Senator Walsh’s question, ‘Supposing some other nation does break this treaty, why should we interest ourselves in it?’ was met by the Secretary of State with ‘There is not a bit of reason.’ Thus the Pact started its career as a self-denying ordinance by each nation acting individually, sans consultation, sans sanctions.

Nevertheless the Pact was destined for a different purpose. The administration wanted it for use as a key to collective diplomacy by the back door. This was apparent within a year of ratification. In 1929, Secretary Stimson assumed the rôle of convener of the Kellogg Pacters against the Russo-Chinese ‘warriors’ in North Manchuria. His ad hoc test, however, yielded no results beyond a tart defiance from Maxim Litvinov. Accordingly the administration moved the Pact closer to its parent instrumentality at Geneva because of the League’s equipment in organization. And the United States, in the wars in Manchuria and Ethiopia, became a pacemaker of coercionist action against violators of the dual peace machinery.

It was the Hoare-Laval deal of 1935 that gave the new diplomacy its coup de grâce. And its moribundity was revealed glaringly when the present ChineseJapanese clash broke out. There have been resolutions, but no action; words, but no deeds. Last October 5, the President uttered a threat at Chicago that made a possibility of the quarantining of Japan as a Pact violator. But the threat died almost on his lips, and, if Walter Lippmann is any guide, it is now history, not policy.

The result was that, till the Panay outrage, the world remained in a no man’s land of diplomacy, clinging to the carcass of a dead policy. The chancelleries were too afraid to go on with the new diplomacy of protecting other people’s interests, and they were too paralyzed, or not resilient enough, to turn back to the old diplomacy of protecting their own. It almost seemed as if the world of diplomacy went into a coma in 1937, as it did, according to former Chancellor Brüning, in 1931.

In that interval, ordinary prudence — which, after all, is what the old diplomacy amounted to — was sacrificed, and the world is now paying for the lapse.

I call as witness the lack of pre-action on the present Japanese threat to the International Settlement of Shanghai, that needlepoint of land 82/3 square miles in extent which, leased a century ago from the Chinese, is now the gateway to China and one of the first five ports in the entire world. Old diplomacy would have foreseen such an eventuality; and, foreseeing it, would have tried to ward it off. Its preoccupation as soon as the Japanese and Chinese fell on each other just outside the Settlement boundaries would have been to obtain pledges from both sides guaranteeing the neutrality of international Shanghai. For the Shanghai Settlement is international territory. As such, it is a national interest of all the powers to turn their diplomacy to the task of defending it if they mean to stick to it, as Secretary Hull on December 21 declared, in the first definite reassertion of the old diplomacy, was America’s intention.

There is no statutory provision allowing for the neutrality of the Settlement. Neutrality is merely a tradition. Nevertheless it is as sacred to Shanghai as the laws of the Medes and Persians, and, like a gentleman’s agreement, has carried the same force as if it were written. For it is the obverse side of the medal of selfdefense, which has been assumed for a century past as part of the privileges of the leasehold. A century ago the original foreign land renters naturally formed a ‘committee of residents.’ The committee evolved into a council. The council hired watchmen. The watchmen became policemen. The policemen were aided by a local volunteer force. And, brooding above all, the powers extended their right arm, the evidence riding at anchor in the Whangpoo in the shape of menof-war.

In due course the neutrality of the Settlement came to be recognized implicitly by the Chinese people. In 1853, during the Taiping (Great Peace) Rebellion, native Shanghai was captured by a band of armed insurgents. But the presence of a British squadron in the river prevented any attack upon international Shanghai. Accordingly the helpless Chinese, hitherto scornful of the foreign traders, flocked to the Settlement for protection. From that day to this they have always found sanctuary in this foreign ‘ghetto.’

Gradually Chinese officials, too, took advantage of its hospitality. Indeed, in the turbulent history of the Republic the Settlement became a regular health resort, to which the ‘outs’ repaired during every civil war and after the overturn of every government, and which has been used as a safe-deposit box for the government’s cash reserves and a venue for government customs, tax, communications, and other establishments. The Japanese, in demanding the expulsion of ‘undesirable Chinese’ and in threatening to take over government establishments as if they had succeeded the Chinese as lessors of Settlement territory, now seem to have doomed Shanghai as an asylum for the Chinese.

Nor has the neutral zone reserved for protection hitherto been limited to the Settlement boundaries. Such an oasis is difficult to defend from its confines, and in these circumstances the scheduled plan of defense covers a short area outside the Settlement boundary. Even this extended schedule, however, has been overreached for protective purposes when the Settlement has been under dire threat.

The first occasion was during the Taiping Rebellion, which, lasting from 1851 to 1865, so far belied its name ‘Great Peace’ that it took a toll in life of twenty million people. For the protection of international Shanghai the British Admiral Hope, principal officer in command in Shanghai waters, suggested the creation of a neutral zone for a thirtymile radius. A neutral zone of these dimensions was required, as a Far Eastern report of the times says, ‘ as a necessary adjunct to our neutralized abiding place.’ Shanghai and the world accepted the Hope scheme. But the Shanghailanders had to wage war with the civil warriors before the neutral zone could be carved out. It took nine months of bloody carnage to clear out the zone; during which, incidentally, a New England soldier of fortune, Frederick Ward, who died in battle and who created the nucleus of the ‘Ever Victorious Army’ which General Gordon of Khartum fame subsequently commanded, did valiant service.

In the course of the Taiping war the Shanghailanders again had to defend the neutrality of greater Shanghai. In 1860 the rebel leaders, badly in need of a seaport, entreated the neutrality of the Settlement while they infested the adjacent native city. No attention was paid to their appeal, for the foreign legations felt in duty bound to avert the anarchy which would result from the capture of native Shanghai. British troops and French marines, therefore, went outside the Settlement, manned the native city walls, and repelled the murderous Taipings.

Admiral Hope’s neutral zone was forgotten for seventy years. Resurrection of the plan came from Mr. C. T. Wang, now Ambassador in Washington, when Chinese Nationalist hordes were advancing on Shanghai in 1927 with the fell intent of overrunning the Settlement. Mr. Wang — then on the other side from the Nationalists, Left, Right, or Moderate — was defending the old republican militarism which Nationalism overturned. He made a proposal to the powers similar to the Hope plan, but in view of Secretary Kellogg’s attitude toward the Settlement, — namely, that American marines had no right even on the barricades of international Shanghai, — and in view also of the unwillingness of the powers unduly to extend their defense of Shanghai, nothing came of it.

Nevertheless, when the cyclone did arrive down the Yangtze, protection was carried into Greater Shanghai, though not to the extent of the Hope scheme. In this operation British forces, whose dispatch to China for this purpose was reported beforehand to the League of Nations, took the leading part, and outside the Settlement, in Chapei itself, actually disarmed a body of Chinese troops whose activities were particularly endangering the Settlement. Major General Sir John Duncan, who commanded the allied forces, surmounted those difficulties with a rare combination of diplomacy and military vigor. Subsequently, in the British journal International Affairs, General Duncan, writing of the Japanese difficulties in 1932, commented on his own difficulties in 1927: —

In Chapei in 1927 I had two men killed and six or seven wounded in a couple of days. When you have a foreign garrison and an excitable and hostile population you may very easily have a flare-up, and once shooting starts, one incident leads to another; and when there is a question of ‘face’ as there is to-day, it becomes extremely difficult to draw back. I can tell you that I was terrified that in consequence of the outrages in Chapei I should have been compelled to use force, as the Japanese have used it, however much I disliked doing so. I say that on behalf of the Japanese.

Thus there was nothing particularly heinous when the Japanese first sallied outside the Settlement in their first war with China in 1932. The 6000 Japanese residents of Chapei, which abuts upon the Japanese sector of the Settlement defenses, were in danger from Chinese agitation over Manchuria. Chinese troops, the famous 19th Route Army, had arrived. They were as excited as the populace. Incidents had already resulted in assaults on Japanese, ending fatally in one case, and on January 28 the Shanghai Municipal Council declared the existence of a state of emergency, though not till after the first Japanese sortie outside the Settlement.

In emergencies the protection of international Shanghai is in the hands of an International Settlement Defense Committee, composed of the Garrison Commanders, the Chairman of the Shanghai Municipal Council, and the Commandant of the Shanghai Volunteer Defense Corps, of which the senior garrison commander is chairman. While in an emergency this committee is not entitled to give orders to the various commanders about the details of defense measures, nevertheless it allots the sectors and fixes the main principles of defense. And during the defensive measures the senior commandant naturally gathers power over the allied forces in the interests of coördination and direction. In 1927, for instance, General Duncan’s authority was so acknowledged, save by the Japanese, who, however, were then concerned with conciliating the Chinese, not with acquiring freedom to go on the rampage.

What a long time ago in modern Far Eastern history is ten years! In 1927 Japan was trying to tickle the Nationalist snake with a feather. It felt that to have joined General Duncan’s defense would have made Japan look too offensive to China. In 1932, too, Japan elected to ignore the precedent of joint defense, but not, this time, for the purpose of lying low — rather for the purpose of dealing with the problem itself. The Japanese navy on its own decided to quell the Chapei disturbance. It was hoped to do so with a single stroke. But the operation misfired, and, by misfiring, lapsed into an aggressive war on the Chinese forces, which never received any cloak of respectability from the Settlement powers as defensive operations. The Chinese resistance in 1932, incidentally, made 1937 inevitable, for it turned Japanese invulnerability into a myth to the entire Chinese people.

In 1932 the great powers other than Japan made no effort to come to grips with the Shanghai neutrality problem. The reason lay in the overclouding of Shanghai by Manchuria. The five-point programme of peace on February 2, 1932, which the powers presented to Japan and China, showed this subordination very clearly. The fourth point provided for neutral zones, and Japan accepted it. But the five-point plan stood as a whole, and Japan could not accept point five, reading: —

Upon acceptance of these conditions prompt advances to be made in negotiations to settle all outstanding controversies between the two nations in the spirit of the Pact of Paris and the resolution of the League of Nations of December 9, without prior demand or reservation and with the aid of neutral observers or participants.

By adding this fifth point (said to have been President Hoover’s idea) to their formula, the powers acted like a landlord who, on being told of a fire in his own house, delays attending to it until he has settled an argument he is having in his back garden with his tenant. The powers apparently thought that Shanghai provided an opportunity for a showdown about Manchuria — this in spite of the separate provision that had already been made for readjustment about Manchuria. For on December 9, 1931, the League, with American acquiescence, had disposed of the Manchurian problem, pending the return to China of the Lytton Commission. So the Japanese decided to pursue their futile war to the bitter, and ignominious, end.

The winding up of the Shanghai trouble left its lesson for any future emergency. The lesson was underscored by writers acquainted not only with the distinction between international Shanghai and China, but with Shanghai’s history. Again, however, it has been forgotten, as Hallett Abend reminds the world in the first dispatch to the New York Times, November 24, on the Japanese threat to international Shanghai, after the windup of the ‘war’ with the Chinese in the vicinity of that great port: —

This condition was foreseen last August when the foreign authorities of Shanghai made urgent representations to Washington, London and Paris, stressing the necessity for an immediate formal agreement to neutralize the foreign refugee area in Shanghai, but the home governments ignored these recommendations, and nothing was done, although three months ago Japan doubtless was willing to agree to the neutralization projects.

It would seem as if the sagacity and forehandedness of the old diplomacy have been forgotten amid the confusion of worrying about the moribundity of the new.

The surprising thing is that the United States, while refusing to take such precautionary action, insisted upon assuming a much more exposed position as a protector of international Shanghai. This was just the opposite of what happened in 1927. In 1927 Secretary Kellogg, while urging a written agreement by the contending Chinese forces to respect Shanghai’s neutrality, insisted that American troops should not man the outer Settlement barricades, but should keep inside the Settlement for the protection of American lives and property.

In Kellogg’s mind a fine distinction existed between the protection of the Settlement as such and the protection of American lives and American property within. Nobody else had been able to see the distinction. In fact, it made the whole Kellogg move a reductio ad absurdum. But at least this kind of action did put primary emphasis on precautionary diplomacy. In 1932, and again in 1937, the administration chose to put marines side by side with the other defenders on the outermost Settlement boundaries, but without at the same time making an effort to ensure neutralization by agreement among the belligerents battling just outside international Shanghai. How dangerous has become this protection unsupported by guarantees was illustrated last December when Colonel Price ‘moved on’ Japanese soldiery who had usurped positions in the American defense sector — an incident which escaped being ‘a land Panay’ only by a hair.

Since this case study of diplomacy in no man’s land was written, a postscript has been provided in Europe. Chancellor Hitler has wrung a ‘cold Anschluss’ out of Austria. And Anne O’Hare McCormick, New York Times special representative in Europe, cabled from Rome, on February 21, that the general opinion of informed observers is that if ‘an understanding between Italy and Britain could have been reached a year ago, perhaps even six months ago, the Austrian surrender would have been postponed indefinitely.’ On Britain’s part such an understanding, it is now revealed, has hitherto been blocked by the paralysis resulting from the dualism in British foreign policy symbolized by Premier Chamberlain, exponent, of the old diplomacy, and Foreign Secretary Eden, exponent of the new. With Mr. Eden’s resignation the world of diplomacy is more than ever advanced out of no man’s land.