§ THE EARL OF GOSFORD had given Notice to call attention to the situation in China, and to move for Papers. The noble Earl said: My Lords, I rise with some diffidence to address your Lord ships on so difficult and so complex a question as that of China. The present situation, as will have been apparent to your Lordships from a study of the 715 current news, is one of extreme gravity, affecting as it does the security of many of our fellow-countrymen in a distant land, and vast political and material interests of wide Imperial import. I crave the well-known indulgence of your Lordships for one who has not previously had the honour to address this House, and who labours under all the disabilities of prolonged absence from England. All that I can hope to do is to describe the situation in China as I have seen it, after a personal experience of six years' work and travel, during which I have been in constant and direct touch with the notabilities and affairs of China and its neighbouring countries.
§ China is going through a period of intense political and intellectual disturbance. Civil war has been incessant for the last few years; and now strikes extending over a wide area, and a boycott of British goods, are paralyzing communications, industry, and trade. The China market, which is the one market in the world which could offer a real and immediate outlet for our harassed industries—if only peace and security could be established—is practically dead. Before we can find a remedy for this state of affairs we must understand the underlying causes of unrest. The seat of the trouble lies in the prolonged insecurity and economic losses of the Chinese people. They are an essentially practical folk, hard-working farmers, shopkeepers, merchants, and bankers. During the last few years there have been incessant interferences with their crops, their trade and transport at the hands of irregular troops, brigands and tax-gatherers. There is no security for life or property, there is no incentive to produce, and the channels of credit are drying up. Those are the underlying causes of unrest.
§ In such circumstances it is easy to stir up trouble. The ground has been prepared for an outbreak of feeling against foreigners, by deflecting attention from the internal dissensions to the foreigner, his Treaties and his privileges, some of which certainly afford a pretext for legitimate grievance and require reconsideration. A very real spirit of nationalism has been growing up in recent years, and it is fed and inflamed by attributing all the ills of China to foreign privilege and foreign influence. In such an atmosphere the most trifling incident may cause a 716 nation-wide conflagration. That, indeed, is what has just happened. A strike occurred in a Japanese cotton-mill. The strike led to a demonstration, directed primarily against Japan. The shooting of some of the demonstrators by the Municipal Police Force of the International Settlement at Shanghai directed the agitation against the British, because the handful of police immediately concerned happened to be British subjects. This incident at Shanghai on May 30 was the match which started the conflagration.
§ The fundamental causes of the present trouble do not lie in anti-foreign feeling, or in Bolshevist propaganda, or in labour unrest. All those factors are involved and have appeared conspicuously upon the surface. But the seat of the trouble lies far deeper—in the sufferings of a great people caused by constant unrest, and in a sense of grievance at the attitude of the Treaty Powers since the Washington Conference. If we are going to help China we must at least understand the real cause of her troubles. The disruptive influences in China have become so acute, and China's administrative machinery is so ill-equipped for action covering the whole of that vast country, that, the situation, both as regards the immediate troubles and the deeper causes, has slipped beyond the control of any Chinese Party. They recognise them selves that friendly help and co-operation from the Powers is essential to any real settlement of the present troubles.
§ A genuine effort to remedy outstanding grievances in China was made at the Washington Conference in 1922, but the Treaties then concluded have not yet been enforced, partly owing to France's delay in their ratification. In the three intervening years matters have gone from bad to worse, and British interests in China are now in desperate straits. The Treaties, on which the smooth working of foreign trade has long depended, have become a dead letter. The railways, in which large British investments are involved, are in a state of disrepair and chaos and are constantly subjected to military interference; it is almost impossible to get a car on any of the lines without heavy bribes to local military authorities. Taxes are levied on every branch of trade by any military adventurer with a small force behind him. The various provincial Armies spend their time in harrying one another, and the 717 brigands are left free to harass the farmers and traders. Six weeks ago it looked as if there was no coherence in China, no hope of unity or agreement on any single issue.
§ But the unexpected often happens in China, and the incident at Shanghai—the collision between the students and the police has created a sudden unanimity of thought and emotion throughout the country. This incident must be investigated and settled, promptly, publicly and impartially, before we can hope for the restoration of tranquillity, a stoppage of the strikes and boycotts and the rehabilitation of our good name in China. As soon as this incident is closed we must settle down in earnest to the task of dealing with China's outstanding problems. The special Conference promised at Washington in 1922 must be convened without delay, with extended and, indeed, the fullest possible powers to help China and to re-establish foreign prestige.
§ There is one initial difficulty to negotiation—the refusal of the various factions in China to recognise, to support and to stand by the decisions of the central Government. But that is their own affair. We cannot dictate what body of men in China shall speak with the responsible voice of the, Chinese people. But, if we announce our readiness to negotiate, experience suggests that the real forces in China will find some way of making their voice heard, and of securing representation on the body which will be gathered together to meet our delegates. We are bound to recognise the body which is put forward, by the Chinese themselves as their chosen representatives. Should such a body fail to materialise we must, of course, be guided by events. But it is not safe to assume that no responsible Government will be forthcoming. There is, indeed, every hope that the good sense of the Chinese will prevail and force them to sink their minor differences, when once they are convinced that we are approaching them in good faith and good will.
§ As soon as we are in touch with a recognised and responsible body we should hold ourselves ready to co-operate with them in any way they may desire. It is greatly to be hoped that they will speedily regain and maintain effective control of the national railways, which 718 are a most important factor in the situation, for, on the one hand, the railways facilitate the constant military operations, and, on the other, they help or hinder vitally the orderly processes of trade. The special Conference will be empowered to arrange an increase in the Customs Tariff in such a way as to justify the abolition of all illegal taxation on trade in the interior. The question of the unsecured Debt, the domestic loans, and all outstanding foreign loans and debts for railway and other Government material, should be dealt with in a spirit of equity. They are a separate issue, entirely distinct from and outside of the question of trade. China can well afford, and will certainly wish, to deal with them in an honourable way, but it would be most impolitic to meet such obligations from the Customs revenue and the taxation of trade.
§ His Majesty's Government have expended an immense amount of trouble and energy in trying to help British industries and to foster British trade with the Dominions overseas, with Central Europe and with Russia; but it is only too clear that each of these markets is capable of showing only a slow response to their efforts. China stands waiting, the greatest producer of raw material and the greatest potential customer for manufactured articles of any market in the world—rich, productive, enterprising and eager for development.
§ Your Lordships may ask how the assembling of the Special Conference promised under the Washington Treaties can possibly help to settle the political troubles of China. This is a difficult question, but I will try to answer it. China had existed for thousands of years as a group of practically independent provinces, held together very lightly by a super-imposed Court, a theocracy, speaking with divine authority through the Emperor, the Son of Heaven. Theocracy exists with difficulty under modern conditions of thought and education, and China's theocracy has recently collapsed together with many others. As a result China has been thrown back upon her fundamental form of governing machinery—the family, the village and the province; that machinery, fortunately, remains more or less intact.
719§ But nations cannot exist nowadays without some centralised Government. There are problems of national communications, national revenue and expenditure to be dealt with, and national defence and foreign relations must be cared for. And so, ever since the Revolution of 1911, the Chinese provincial leaders have been struggling among themselves for the supreme power, for the creation of a national government in which each hopes to play a dominant part. But the country is so big that unification is practically impossible. The first object of our policy is to co-operate with the forces of law and order in China, so far as they may desire our co-operation, in re-establishing such conditions as will bring about a peaceable situation in that country. An increased Customs revenue, provided that it is apportioned in such a way as to give a square deal to each Province, will help a good deal. Peace on the railways will help quite as much. Both revenues and railways are a vital concern of all trade, both Chinese and foreign, and therefore fit subjects for a Conference. We promised a Conference three years ago, and we ought to show our good faith by getting to work without further delay.
§ Will your Lordships bear with me if I say one word about labour in China? A considerable and very natural interest has been shown in this country in regard to the attitude of Chinese labour to the present trouble, and the effect of investing British capital in the development of Chinese industries. It has even been suggested that one of the root causes of the present trouble, lies in the fact that Chinese labour, especially in the Treaty Ports, is subject to such unfair treatment that it was bound to rise in revolt against the inhuman conditions of modern industry in China. And it has been argued that the use of British capital for the development of Chinese industries is contrary to the best interests of our own workers. I believe that these arguments are based on a misconception of the facts and the issues.
§ It cannot be denied that labour conditions in China are not good and that they call for the most careful consideration at the hands of all employers of labour in that country. A vast and undigested mass of workers has drifted into the great industrial centres, and has 720 thus become divorced from the restraining influences of family and village life, which are the real governing forces in China. The tendency of the Chinese is always directed towards the formation of guilds and societies for mutual protection; and the industrial workers are forming such organizations at every centre of industrial activity. Such organizations have received sympathetic support from British employers when they have concerned themselves with industrial problems. It is regrettable that they have occasionally been used for political purposes and have worked with purely political ends, to the detriment of the workers' interests. Those organizations have established themselves as a power in the land.
§ We cannot overlook the fact that labour conditions are bad in some factories in China, that children are sometimes unduly exploited, and that conditions of work and pay are sometimes bad. But I can assure you that in the large majority of British factories in China labour is very well cared for. You have only to watch the stream of workers, men, women and children, emerging from their shifts to see that they are happy, well-fed and well-clothed, and that their general condition compares favourably with that of the industrial worker in any country.
§ But the Chinese are essentially an agricultural people. The Chinese industrial workers miss their traditional village life, and they hanker after the life of the field—with its intense pressure at periods of seed-time and harvest, but with its long rests. Every Chinese has a real sense of the quiet pleasures of life, for which no material, well-being entirely compensates him. But I could name many factories, both under British and Chinese control, in which the welfare of the Chinese is as well cared for as in any English factory, and in which conditions of work and relative conditions of pay are quite as good as they are in England. The real burden on the worker occurs in the small factories in the interior, which are far removed from the limelight and the competition and the public opinion of the larger centres. The burden on the children must be sought in social conditions over which it is often difficult to exercise any control. In many parts of the country the women refuse to be separated from their children, and insist on bringing them to the factories. These 721 problems are receiving the most earnest Attention from British employers in China. But it is not just to attack general industrial conditions in China on humanitarian grounds, or to attribute to them an undue influence in a political struggle in which they have actually taken little part.
§ Let me now turn to the economic side of the Chinese labour problem. There are indications in the papers that have come under my notice that labour in this country feels a certain resentment at the development of industry in China with British capital. On the face of it there may appear to be something to be said for this argument. But I do not think that it goes to the heart of things. The products of industry in China do not now compete, and in my opinion will never be in any real competition, with the industrial products of this country. It is, on the other hand, of the greatest importance to British industry that China should be encouraged to produce such articles as she can produce with relative economy and efficiency. She must have something to sell if she is going to buy from us. Undue insistence upon the hardships of labour in China will not help the Chinese; it ambarrasses both employer and employee. I can assure your Lordships from experience that, in the majority of recent strikes, the workers have left their work with the greatest reluctance, and that they have generally gone back gladly and without any pressure for material changes. They have admitted in almost every instance that strikes have been caused not by economic but by political pressure.
§ Labour in this country has a vast interest in the welfare of China. If peace could be restored in China that market would offer the greatest and the quickest conceivable outlet for the products of British industry. It is the one market in the world which could offer an immediate solution for our unemployment problem. China can absorb, she wants and she can pay for, an immense volume of cotton goods, steel work, railway material, bridges, electric plant, and practically every type of article which is produced in bulk in this country. British labour has one real interest in the Chinese problem and should play a leading part in impressing upon our Government the need for the greatest possible effort in restoring peace in China, in opening the 722 channels of trade, and in developing a market such as is unparalleled in the history of the world. If once it were realised how immense an outlook for our industries and our trade would be available if only we could help China to get on to her feet again, it would be clear that the solution of the China problem is one of the greatest problems of British statesmanship of our day. That realisation can only be brought about if the political and industrial and commercial interests in England face the situation with a strong and united front, and insist on decisive action, not in the interests of international finance, but in the interests of China, which are, fortunately, concurrent with the interest of British trade and industry.
§ Our fellow-countrymen in China are faced with a grave situation. The Chinese have been inflamed by an insidious propaganda and, as so often happens in nervous crises, the brunt of bitterness has been directed against China's best friends. For we are friends of China and I believe that they have the fullest recognition of that fact. Our people have been in the closest relations with them in every sort of business enterprise; we have learned to work with them on a basis of real co operation; and millions of Chinese now enjoy an amazing prosperity and security in those countries adjoining China that are under the British flag.
§ But, whilst recognising that the Chinese as a people are far from unfriendly to the British, we cannot overlook the fact that, for one reason or another, the present attack is directed primarily against Great Britain. The interests of the British in China are conspicuous, and therefore apt to bear the brunt of any sudden agitation. And British policy will decide the issue. The rights and wrongs of the actual shooting incident at Shanghai can only be decided by impartial investigation; but whatever the results, every Englishman, whether in China or elsewhere, will deeply deplore the loss of life that occurred at a moment of intense nervous pressure on both sides. We must convince the Chinese that we are determined that the actual incident shall be decided on a basis of strict justice. But we must equally convince them that we cannot permit reckless interference with the security of our people. On the quiet 723 sanity of our policy at this moment of crisis depends the health of all our future relations with China.
§ We have now been forced into a position in which we must declare ourselves openly and firmly on the side of the forces of law and order. It is impossible to ignore the disastrous effects of the propaganda issuing from the headquarters of the Soviet at Peking. But that is, after all, only a side issue, an irritating factor; the main problem is a Chinese problem and must be dealt with as such. China herself must deal with Bolshevism, and she will do so in her own way, as soon as she is on her feet again. We can help her to gain that strength by insisting on the personal responsibility of each and every Chinese authority for the safety of the British lives and property within their zone of influence. We must aid them to fulfil that responsibility by the co-operation of adequate naval patrols. And we must make it clear that those patrols are protective, not aggressive. We are fortunate in having able and experienced representatives, not only in Pekin but in the consulates which are established at every vital point in China. Our consuls speak Chinese, and are in intimate touch with all the Chinese leaders. I doubt indeed whether there is any country in the world where we have such good official representation as we have in China. If our representatives on the spot are assured of solid backing from home, they can exercise considerable moral influence in the interest of order, through co-operation with the Chinese authorities. Every recognised Chinese authority would welcome co-operation and support on such lines. Chaos is just as harrowing to them as to us.
§ The Chinese authorities, however, have not the strength in the present situation to cope with troubles such as now exist, especially when they are aggravated from outside. It is unthinkable that we should attempt to intervene in Chinese internal affairs, and we have maintained the view, consistently and wisely, that it would be impolitic to back one Chinese leader or one Chinese Party against another; in their Party struggles they must work out their own salvation. But we can and must stand solid behind each responsible authority to the extent of insisting that they protect effectively the lives, the 724 property and the interests of our people. Protection of our interests means incidentally the protection of Chinese interests, and security for all.
§ This may sound too simple to be true, but I am convinced that the simple policy of open justice and an insistence on security will go a very long way towards settling the immediate trouble in China. And the immediate crisis, this orgy of intimidation and boycott, must be settled before we can deal with the greater problems now outstanding by the normal processes of negotiation; though we can well afford to take the broad and generous line of proclaiming even now our readiness to proceed with preparations for negotiation. Before I leave the story of the crisis I should like to pay my tribute to our countrymen and countrywomen on the spot. In the full ardour of a tropical summer they are standing to their task of maintaining order, and doing their work in their communities with a devotion, self-sacrifice and courage which is beyond all praise and worthy of the best tradition of our race. Their good-natured tolerance has averted worse disaster and won the admiration of all the better thinking classes in China. But they cannot hold out indefinitely. We must come to their support without hesitation and without delay.
§ It will restore confidence if the Chinese know that we are pushing forward the fulfilment of the promises made at Washington. Our good faith has been brought in question; and our good faith must be unquestioned if we are going to succeed. We should appoint immediately our representatives to a Conference in China, and we should proclaim our readiness to clear up all outstanding difficulties generously, and with a determination to meet legitimate grievances. The Chinese are asking for increased revenue from the Tariff; it is a legitimate demand. They are asking also for a square deal, and discussion on a basis of frankness and equality in regard to all outstanding Treaty problems. They ask for the removal of abuse of privilege—in the method of interpreting our extra-territorial rights, in municipal representation and in the control of the Mixed Court at Shanghai. They are a reasonable people; they know as well as we do that Treaty privilege when not abused acts as much in their 725 interest as in our own. But they know as well as we do that there are abuses. We have promised to remedy them and we should do so without delay. The promised Conference in China offers the best possible machinery for such an effort. It will afford an opportunity to examine and solve outstanding problems, not only with the Chinese, but with our American and Japanese and other friends who have interests in China similar to our own—security and freedom on their lawful occasions.
§ If I have stressed unduly the material interests of our country in China it is not because I underestimate the deeper interests that link the two great civilisations, the two great political entities of Great Britain and China. If I have underestimated the difficulties of the settlement it is not because I have been sheltered from personal experience of those difficulties. But all my experience impresses me with the need for common sense and sympathy in dealing with the immediate and critical situation. The immediate problem is the stoppage of the strikes and the boycott. That can only be accomplished if we realise that boycotts and strikes are the Chinese method of making a protest against what are, in their view, remediable grievances. The Chinese will stop boycotts and strikes if we can convince them of our good faith and our desire to meet them in a spirit of justice and equity. After that will come the major effort, the readjustment of the conditions under which we live and trade in China. To meet that major situation we need a new attitude of mind in regard to China, a fuller appreciation of their point of view. If once we can convince them that we do appreciate their point of view, that we have a sincere desire to meet them in a spirit of comradeship and fair dealing, we shall find them a reasonable and kindly people, equally alive to our common difficulties and equally desirous of living together on neighbourly terms.
§ If I may add one last word it is this. It is not possible to over-estimate the value of personality in China. Personality will count above all things at the coming Conference. If I have succeeded in convincing your Lordships that this country and our Empire have a vast interest at stake in China, I trust that the influence of this House will be exercised to ensure that British representation on that Conference 726 is entrusted to a statesman of the very highest standing, ability and reputation, to one who can speak with full authority, and who can bear the full weight of the reputation of our country and our race. Prestige is strength in China, and strength is greater than force. At this moment of crisis, when our problems in Asia are undergoing reconstruction, we owe it to the Chinese, we owe it to ourselves, to convince China that this is no Party question in England, that every Party, every class in England stands united in a determination that justice shall be done in China, and a desire to re-establish our relations on a basis satisfactory to both sides and thus holding some hope of permanence. I beg to move.
§ THE LORD PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL (THE EARL OF BALFOUR)My Lords, I am quite sure that you have all listened to the speech of my noble friend with the greatest sympathy and much admiration. Not only has he spoken well, but he has spoken with all the authority of an observer who has had many years intimate experience of the problems about which he speaks. He comes here fresh from China and intimately acquainted with the feelings of our countrymen in China, and he has shown a very sympathetic comprehension of the feelings in China towards our own country and other countries concerned in trade with that ancient and mysterious civilisation. I have frankly to admit that, while I listened to my noble friend's speech with great admiration, with great sympathy, and I will add with a very large measure of agreement, I could not help feeling that he was more successful, perhaps, in explaining to your Lordships in what the difficulties of the Chinese problem consisted than in giving us a clear lead as to the path that he would see pursued in order to extricate the Treaty Powers from the difficulties in which the Chinese position has inevitably placed them.
I do not blame my noble friend for not finding that which, perhaps, is not to be found, for not pointing out a way which, perhaps, does not exist, but if there was any undertone of criticism of His Majesty's Government in the speech that he delivered—and I thought that here and there I did detect such an undertone—I am not sure that if it were appropriate I could not, from his own 727 speech, point out what are the reasons for any comparative failure or delay in settling the Chinese question and how little any mere generalities about China are likely to get us out of these difficulties. The noble Earl himself made it perfectly clear, in a very able and interesting part of his speech, that the fundamental problem of China arises from the fact that at this moment that vast population and that ancient civilisation has no Central Government capable of carrying out the duties which, in all other countries, are supposed to devolve and do devolve upon the Central Government. His speech, indeed, clearly showed, I think, that in the sense in which we use the phrase Central Government there is no Central Government in China.
He pointed out that this strange, anomalous and, at the present time, most unfortunate condition of affairs really dates from an immemorial antiquity. I think he used some such description as this: that China had never, from ancient historic times, been a closely organised community, but has always consisted of Provinces very loosely strung together upon the prestige of the divinely inspired at Pekin. In the present state of China we can hardly describe these Provinces as being even loosely connected. It would be more accurate, in some cases at least, to say that they are hardly connected at all, and that each of these military chiefs within his own district is carrying out in his own fashion his own ideas of government, with the unhappy result that security has vanished, that illegal taxation is prevalent, that brigandage goes unchecked and that the very elements of good government, the very elements of a stable society, seem, over large areas and in most important respects, almost to have vanished from the horizon of Chinese politics.
That is a most unfortunate state of things, both for China and for those who have commercial or other relations with China, and it is a state of things with which it is almost impossible, if not quite impossible, for those who are not Chinese to deal in any substantial fashion, or to offer any satisfactory remedy, but I would point out that whatever blunders, or worse than blunders, might have been committed in the long historic past with regard to China, this condition of things that I have attempted to describe, and 728 that my noble friend himself described in admirable terms, is not due, so far as I know, to foreign action of any kind. China is not the victim of invasions which have shattered her fabric of government. There has been no attempt on the part of foreign nations to impose an alien civilisation or an alien creed upon the Chinese. Certainly, throughout the whole period with which we need concern ourselves this afternoon, they have been masters in their own house, and if in the course of their national development they have reached the unhappy path which my noble friend has so admirably described, I do not think that any substantial part of the responsibility for that state of affairs really falls upon foreign countries.
I am quite sure it does not fall upon any of the successive Governments who have held power in this country. How, indeed, is it possible for us to deal with what my noble friend described as the "fundamental difficulty of the situation"—namely, the chaotic condition of Chinese politics? I believe the Chinese themselves describe the present Government of China as a Provisional Government. Even as a Provisional Government its powers extend for many purposes very little beyond the walls of Pekin, and there is no diplomatic difficulty so great as that which arises from the impossibility of negotiations between countries which have and countries which have not anything which deserves to be called a Central Government. That my noble friend has himself described as the central difficulty of the present position, but my noble friend, while he described that central difficulty, pointed out no way by which we could seriously mitigate it and was himself quite loud and clear in his pronouncement that it would be sheer insanity for us to attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of China. Your Lordships will see that in my view, at all events, there is no clear policy before this country, or before any country which has relations with China, which can directly go to the root of the evil. China, and China alone, can bring about that change in her present political situation which may give promise of happier relations between herself and the rest of the world in future. All we can do is to do our best to mitigate the situation whose essential character it does not, unfortunately, rest with us permanently to modify.
729 There were certain parts of the speech of my noble friend—very interesting parts—on which I do not propose to say anything. I mean the condition of labour in China and the general industrial state of things where Chinese labour works, if left alone, apparently quite harmoniously with foreign capital. He speaks with personal know ledge of that subject. I have no personal knowledge, but I am quite ready to believe his statement that, at all events in the British managed factories, the condition of native labour is satisfactory and that where it is unsatisfactory great efforts are being made to improve it. I perfectly believe it and it makes me—if I may make a parenthetical observation all the more indignant at the flood of absolutely unfounded calumny poured upon our country, perhaps from ignorance and perhaps from prejudice, but I fear also from deeper pretexts intended not to benefit the Chinese but to injure the British. I will content myself with the aspects of the present Chinese situation which more directly concerns the diplomacy of His Majesty s Government, and there I find myself in the closest harmony with the observations of my noble friend.
There are two points on which he laid stress, and it so happens that those are also points on which His Majesty's Government have a clear policy, which they are endeavouring to the best of their ability to carry out. The first of those relates to the trouble in Shanghai. An unhappy incident has been poisoned by the political methods to which I have just referred, but I do not mean to go back upon the incident of May 30, and I do not mean to say a single word upon the merits of either side in that controversy, for a reason which I am sure will directly appeal to your Lordships. I mean for the reason that in the view of His Majesty's Government there ought, to be a judicial inquiry, there ought to be a public inquiry, and it ought to be an inquiry of a kind which will command the confidence, not merely of other countries, but of China itself. That is the policy and that is the desire of His Majesty's Government. If all the arrangements are not as yet made it is because this is a subject on which all the Treaty Powers have a right to express their opinion.
730 People sometimes talk as if we were the solitary Power concerned with China and as if it were our responsibility that things do not move rapidly and precisely in the direction which we should desire. Your Lordships are not likely to make that mistake. You know perfectly well that we are but one of many Treaty Powers, that, we have to carry with us in any course we want to take the free assent of many different Governments, with whom negotiations have to be undertaken in order to arrive at a common agreement, with all the delays which such diplomatic negotiations unfortunately always involve. But what we desire to do, and what we are endeavouring to do, in the matter of Shanghai is perfectly simple and perfectly plain. We desire that there should be a judicial inquiry, that it should be public, and that it should take place as soon as possible.
The other quest on relates to the Treaty of Washington. There were phrases occasionally dropped by my noble friend in the course of his speech which almost seemed to indicate that His Majesty's Government should have moved earlier in the direction of carrying out the views of the Washington Conference with regard to a further Conference which was to take place upon matters in which the Chinese people and Government are specially interested. I do not know whether my noble friend really expressed his settled opinion when he suggested that His Majesty's Government were open to criticism in that respect, but if he will allow me to say so I do not think that if he did intend to criticise them he criticised them with justice. The Washington Conference, of which I had personal experience, provided that certain questions connected with Customs and connected with extra-territoriality should be dealt with at a Conference within three months after the ratification of the Treaties. I hope it will take place within three months after the ratification of the Treaty, and no doubt my noble friend is perfectly right in saying that the common view was, after the Washington Treaty, that the three months would begin to run from a period very close to the arrangement of that Treaty.
The wording of the Treaty, if I remember rightly, was that it should take place within three months after ratification. Ratification has only just taken place. 731 The delay, therefore, however regrettable, is certainly not due to His Majesty's Government. We ratified immediately after the Conference, and if all the Powers concerned did not ratify that was not through any lâches of ours. But now that the Treaty has been ratified, now that it has for the first time become operative in this connection, I do not think that so far as we are concerned any delay has taken place in our desire to see the Conference brought together and the great problems which are to be entrusted to it freely discussed by the representatives of the Treaty Powers. Of course, it is impossible not to feel that that Conference, when it meets, which I hope will be very soon, will meet, so far as we can see, under circumstances not very promising for a rapid and happy solution.
We come back here to the topic upon which my noble friend dilated and to which I have already referred: I mean the hopelessly chaotic position of China at the present moment. One of the great objects of the Conference is at the same time to increase the amount of money available by the Chinese Government out of the Customs Duties and to put an end to those unfortunate, irregular and, I imagine, frequently illegal methods of internal taxation which do so much to hamper the trade both of China and of China's customers. Well, but how can any reform of that sort be carried out so long as China is effectively divided between these War Lords, each supreme in his own Province, each dealing with taxation in his own way, each carrying out his own views of law and order? The negotiations must take place directly not with any of those War Lords but with the nominal Government—nominal from many points of view—at Pekin. I hope that in spite of those difficulties the Conference will be fruitful in good results. It is impossible to speak with confidence. It is impossible to speak with confidence of the result of negotiations carried on in such exceptional circumstances and in circumstances so ill-contrived to make a difficult negotiation easy to carry through or, when it is carried through, effective in its actual application.
We must hope for the best, but in the meanwhile I entirely agree with my noble friend that, be the circumstances favourable in China or unfavourable, be it true or be it untrue that it is almost hopeless 732 to expect that an arrangement Binding on all China can be made with the Chinese Government in existing circumstances—in spite of all that, after what passed at Washington, after what was embodied in the Washington Treaty, it is impossible for us to delay carrying out the obligations into which we then entered—namely, to give China, if China as a single entity can be said to exist, the full benefit of this international discussion with a view of relieving and modifying the old Treaty engagements in such a manner as, if properly used, will be of infinite benefit to China and, I hope and believe, no small benefit to China's friends and Allies.
That is really all that I have to say. My noble friend has dwelt, wisely dwelt I think, upon the value and importance of the Chinese markets to European trade and most of all, perhaps, to the trade of this country. But he was careful, I notice, not to put the appeal he made to your Lordships on too low a key. It is not merely as exporters and importers, it is not merely as representing a public which desires from China raw materials and other products of China and desires to sell to China the results of their labours—it is not from that point of view alone, as my noble friend was careful to point out, that he spoke, and that I desire to speak. It is impossible not to look at the condition of that enormous territory and that huge population without sympathy and good will. Everything that we can in reason do to help them to help themselves, I quite agree, should be done, but we Have to recognise, as I think my noble friend did fully recognise, that, if ever there was a case in which, if salvation is to be attained, it must be worked out by a people themselves, it is the case in China at this moment. China must, in the familiar phrase, pull herself together, China must be able to obtain for herself and for others a vigorous and centralised Government which will secure the ordinary requisites of civilisation, and it is not till it succeeds in effectually carrying out that end that anything we can do, anything that the Washington Conference can do, anything that the Treaty Powers can do, will really produce a great or permanent effect. I am sure that your Lordships, in the first place, will desire to help the Government so far as you can 733 in carrying out the immediate policy which I have endeavoured to sketch, and are prepared to express and to show your great sympathy with the troubles in which China has allowed herself to fall and to express your hopes that she, by her own efforts, will be able to extricate herself, not merely to our advantage, but, still more, to the advantage of the innumerable millions which make up that ancient nation.
§ VISCOUNT HALDANEMy Lords, it is my duty to put before your Lordships the view of this question which those whom I represent in this House entertain. I listened with great sympathy to the concluding words of the noble Earl who has just spoken. From the policy which he there shadowed I have not the least inclination to dissent. My criticism goes a little deeper. It comes to this. How did we get ourselves into this situation and how did China get herself into this situation? I was among the audience of the noble Earl who opened this debate. I thought, in admirable taste and with a great knowledge of facts which he had acquired on the spot. I listened to what he said, but his speech, like the speech of the noble Earl, Lord Balfour, suffered from this—that neither was able to suggest any immediate remedy in which he seemed to have any hope. In fact, I have rarely listened to a more pessimistic debate than the debate which has taken place this afternoon on the affairs of China.
What is wrong with China? In the first place, it is an enormous nation of some 300,000,000 persons, who are quite different from us in the West. They are not fond of government. I should say of the Chinese, so far as I have been able to study and read about them, that they like as little government as they can possibly do with. That is, perhaps, the reason why they have so readily split up. It is quite true that they had for a time a Central Government, and nominally have it now, which was, as the noble Earl who moved the Motion said, a theocracy—a government embodied in the tradition of the Manchus. That has shrunk to very small dimensions. When I heard the noble Earl say that we should have to negotiate with what remains of it in Pekin, I own it did not give me very great comfort for the influence of those negotiations over the 734 whole of China. It is true, as the noble Earl who moved the Motion said, that China has broken itself up into a multitude of Governments which I should call local were they not, relatively to those to which we are accustomed in the West, enormous in extent. But these are very imperfect Governments. They are military. They are not organised. The result of that state of things is a great deal of disorder.
What must be our attitude in that condition of things? I agree with the noble Earl, Lord Balfour, that we cannot hope to put it right quickly; but this we can do—we can study a little more closely than we have done what has been our relation towards China in the past and we can draw some lessons of wisdom from that study. We have produced some of those very remarkable personalities of whom the noble Earl who moved the Motion spoke. We have had great Englishmen in China who understood the Chinese, got on with them, worked with them, and inspired them with new ideas. Some of our influence in things like the organisation of the Customs there has been very valuable. But we are too apt always and as a nation when things go smoothly for a little to leave them alone in the faith that they will continue to go smoothly. I am not suggesting that we are alone in that. I think the other nations who have been associated with us in this contact with the Chinese problem have been no better. But the point is that we have not taken the trouble to deal with the Chinese in that spirit which, if we had moved in it, would have had at least the chance of inspiring them with a sense of our sympathy and helpfulness. I am not suggesting that it is an easy thing to do. I am not suggesting that you could write out instructions to the Minister at Pekin or Hong Kong saying just exactly what he is to do. It is a matter of personality, as the noble Earl, Lord Gosford, said.
It is no new question. It is a defect of our nation that we have too little consciousness of what troubles the other nations with whom we are dealing. In certain admirable essays published by Matthew Arnold between thirty and forty years ago, he dwells upon this fact and illustrates it from the case of Ireland in a fashion the truth of which is well exemplified to-day. It has taken us a 735 long time to get away from the sins, the unconscious sins, which Matthew Arnold pointed out to us then. What was true of Ireland, and has been true of other countries with which we have been dealing, is true of China, too. Our middle-class outlook, our tendency to confine ourselves to trade, commerce and industry has prevented us from recognising other traits in a people with whom we have been dealing, who themselves have traits which have to be taken into account if one is to get anything like peaceful or stable government.
I am not the only person who has said this. A very strange person—because he was himself the very exemplification of the middle-class spirit of which I have spoken—Mr. Cobden, said it a great many years ago. He denounced our action in China. He said we made it merely an affair of trade and missions. Although well disposed to both of them, he did not think that the intervention of traders or missionaries was very helpful in China. There are, no doubt, admirable people in the ranks of both, but there are also people who are not admirable. The result is that people among them have called for assistance and the help of force for the preservation of law and order, and the Chinese, wrongly or rightly, get extremely to dislike the people who set these things going. When I heard the noble Earl, Lord Gosford, saying that the things that are going on and the disorderly risings which were taking place in China must be dealt with by sufficient force, I did not dissent from him. It is necessary to preserve law and order; but remember when you are a foreigner in another country, however well you may think of yourself and however entitled you may be to think well of yourself, you have to go with extreme caution in applying force to put down even local disturbances such as that at Shanghai the other day.
In that condition of things the moral I draw from the whole matter is that in the past China has not been a sufficient subject of study to our diplomats and to our Governments generally. What to do with China is a very difficult question. It is a question that requires the most full information and facts. It is a question that requires close conference with other nations. When the noble Earl said that we were not guilty of any lâches in respect of the Washing- 736 ton Conference, because as soon as it was ratified we got ready to conduct our negotiations about China, I thought he gave his case very much away. Why should we have delayed? Why should we not have made an immediate arrangement with Washington at the time the Conference took place, by which the first thing that was to happen—which was a Conference and nothing else—should be this conference upon the affairs of China. I am sure that was not diplomatically impossible and I think the noble Earl, Lord Balfour, could have accomplished it had he thought of it, and had realised that it was as urgent a matter as it has turned out to be. But all that simply shows the necessity of our taking counsel with other nations and addressing our minds to what the programme of China is going to be in the future.
For the past we are responsible and we cannot divest ourselves of the responsibility and blame. The blame lies more in the past than in the present, but I would have our Government realise that they have been to blame in the past in their treatment of the Chinese. The Chinese are not a people like our own. They are very sensitive to interference and it is no good to try to project European methods into their midst. I would certainly like to have an assurance that the closest consideration is being given to the future of China in the spirit of which I have spoken. I am sure it is a very great problem. I am sure it is a problem that will not only give us great trouble but must lose us a great deal of our trade if we are not careful about it. Therefore I would have your Lordships proceed to the study of China in a spirit more thorough than that in which in the past you proceeded to the study of Ireland. There is a great analogy between the two cases and the more you avoid in the one case the mistakes you made in the other the less you will suffer from it in the end.
Having said so much by way of criticism, I should like to add this. I am deeply impressed by the enormous difficulties which the Government have to encounter at the present time. I am deeply impressed by the little that it is in their power to do effectively. All I can say is that I hope they will proceed in that spirit of great caution which is inspired by the consciousness that they are dealing with a race different from 737 ourselves, and I hope they will lose no opportunity of taking the closest counsel with those friendly Powers with whom we are in a position to take counsel and whom it is our duty to consult about the situation in that difficult country.
§ EARL BEAUCHAMPMy Lords, I hope the Lord President will not think that in any remarks that I propose to make I shall be in any way criticising His Majesty's Government. The reason is obvious. The present situation which has so unfortunately arisen in China is in no way due to any action or any step which has been taken by His Majesty's Government. Whatever Government had been in office in this country the same situation would have arisen. Therefore it is that I hope the noble Earl will allow me to make one or two suggestions in regard to what might be done in the future. Perhaps he will allow me at the outset, to say that the fact that he has already spoken may relieve him of the embarrassment of offering any criticism, whether in the way of approval or disapproval, of the various suggestions which I shall venture to make. I heard with the greatest pleasure that he had no wish to intervene in the internal affairs of China.
May I turn to the admirable speech of the noble Earl who introduced this matter? It was a fresh proof of a thesis which I always maintain, that there is no subject which is ever debated in this House upon which we do not possess an expert, in one quarter or another, and we are fortunate indeed to have had the matter introduced to us this afternoon by the noble Earl, who is so well acquainted with the affairs of China. We all realise the extraordinary difficulty of the situation, and I am glad to think how fully all the speakers this afternoon have recognised the hereditary, friendly attitude of this country towards China. The noble Earl spoke of the special Conference and of the delay which unfortunately has taken place in the ratification of the Treaty, and expressed the hope, which I heartily share, that the Conference will now be held without any delay.
The possibility that China may have fresh money is, I think, a happy augury. Contrary to what I think is the experience of most other countries, we have the curious fact that in China if you want to 738 disperse an army you must find some money to pay it. As I understand it, armies in China are often kept together in the hope of receiving money. So long as a Central Government or Generals have not enough money to pay their armies, those armies keep together. Therefore, the best hope that there is for the dispersal of those armies in China is that there should be enough money provided to pay them and enable them to go home satisfied with what they have received.
The boycott which has been referred to is, of course, most unfortunate, but it is a symptom of something which is really a great deal worse. It is a symptom of the misunderstanding which has grown up between this country and China. It is a symptom of the most unfortunate distrust, which I am sorry to think they feel for the foreign policy towards China at this moment. The air is full of a number of intangibilities created by subtle minds which it is most difficult for anybody to controvert. It is difficult, I think, to point to any definite thing which has been done by these foreign Powers which really has justified the sudden and violent outbreak which has occurred in Shanghai. That unfortunate outbreak is a matter upon which I would venture to make one or two remarks. It is quite evident that the judicial inquiry which is about to be held is one which, as the noble. Earl, the Lord President, said, must command the general confidence, not only of the foreign nations, but also of China. It is to be held, I am glad to think the noble Earl told us, soon, and it is to be a public inquiry in Shanghai. I would venture to suggest to the noble Earl the possibility of adding to the judicial body which is inquiring into this matter a Chinese Judge, whose presence on that body would certainly cause it to receive an immense amount of Chinese confidence.
§ THE EARL OF BALFOURHis Majesty's Government are in favour of that policy.
§ EARL BEAUCHAMPI am delighted to hear that. It seems to me to be of the happiest augury for the success of that inquiry. Then I would venture, having met with success in that regard, to make yet another suggestion, and it is this—whether it would be possible for His Majesty's Government to offer some small sum of money to assist the compensation which might be awarded by this judicial 739 inquiry to the relatives of the people who were murdered in the course of the Shanghai riot. It is no very large sum of money which would be wanted, nor should not be made directly by His Majesty's Government. But I think a sum of something like £5,000 might well be offered to the Shanghai Municipal Council, not, of course, directly from His Majesty's Government to the sufferers, but offered by His Majesty's Government to the Shanghai Municipal Council to aid them in any compensation which they think fit to make. A small sum of money of that kind would go far to create a new feeling of confidence in this country by the people in China. It is one of those small things which might go far to meet that in tangible, difficult situation of distrust in which we find ourselves at this moment.
I shall venture to suggest one or two other things which seem to me might very well be done. The first suggestion I would make concerns a matter which is not one upon which His Majesty's Government could be expected to give a decision immediately. It is whether it might not be possible in the future to secure that there should be some representatives of China upon the Municipal Council of Shanghai. That would, I think, go far to mitigate the hostility which is felt by a certain number of Chinese against the administration of that Council. Your Lordships, of course, realise that that hostility very often exists, however little justification there may be for its existence. The Council may do admirable work, but it will receive a great deal more confidence from the Chinese if there are two or three Chinese on that body. I should like to hear that it is possible to say something of the same kind with regard to the Mixed Court which, since the War in 1914, has, of course, assumed an entirely different character.
I turn now to the question of the Boxer Indemnity, a subject on which I rather expected to hear the noble and learned Viscount, Lord Haldane, expatiate. His Majesty's Government have changed the composition of the Committee which is sitting in this country to consider the best way of using the Boxer Indemnity for the benefit of Great Britain and China. The suggestion I make is that an inquiry should be made by the Committee itself, or by emissaries from the Committee, in China as to how that money can best be 740 used. I feel sure that if the Committee itself were to send representatives in order to make inquiries in China the result of their recommendations would be more likely to receive the approval of the people in China.
There is another matter to which I desire to refer. At the time of the Washington Conference, February 2, 1922, a statement was issued—I do not know whether it was an inspired statement or not—as to a consideration of the relations of this country and China in regard to Wei-Hei-Wei. Anything which could be said further on that subject would be welcomed, I think, by the people of China. May I venture to make yet another suggestion? It is one which I hope will appeal to the noble Earl and also to the noble Marquess the Leader of the House. Would he consider the precedent which exists with regard to the way in which this country treated Japan in the matter of extra-territoriality? That precedent was set by the father of the noble Marquess and so admirably was the matter treated with Japan at that time that it laid the foundation for the firm friendship between Japan and this country in which we all rejoice to-day. It would be a matter of satisfaction to the Lord President of the Council and also to the noble Marquess if, by a similar act of statesmanship to-day, they were able to repeat the great success made by the noble Marquess's father on that occasion.
Finally, I throw out another suggestion, not indeed to be realised immediately, not perhaps for some two or three years to come, but still as an ultimate possibility. It is that there should be between China and this country a new instrument drawn up after free consultation between the two countries. At the present moment many of the Treaties which have regularised the position are not the result of equal discussion between two parties, but are rather in the nature of terms almost imposed by conquerors on the vanquished and those terms, even if they are good, do not naturally commend themselves to the vanquished party. I think a new instrument, drawn up after free discussion, although it might contain very much the same terms as a great many of the Treaties, would, from the mere fact that it was produced as the result of a discussion between two nations treating on equal footing, go far to relieve the sore- 741 ness which undoubtedly exists with regard to the specially privileged position extended to foreigners at the present moment.
I hope that, with His Majesty's Government proceeding on the lines which they have themselves outlined this afternoon and adopting, perhaps, some of the suggestions I have ventured to make, we may before very long see the disappearance of the fooling of restlessness, the feeling of distrust, in China and that in its place we may see a restoration of that state of traditional friendship between that country and this to which I have already referred.
THE LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURYMy Lords, the noble Earl, the Lord President of the Council, in the opening words of his very interesting speech spoke of the mysterious nature of the country to which the debate referred. I am certain that it is only when we have tried to realise the mystery that belongs to almost every question connected with this country that we are able to deal in a reasonable and open-minded manner with the great problems with which the Government are at this moment faced. Some of us have been trying for years to understand the facts about China, educationally, philosophically, historically and socially and also religiously, and again and again we have found ourselves baffled by the appearance of quite contradictory conditions, varying conditions which follow quickly one upon another, which seem to be absolutely contradictory but both of which ultimately we have found to be true.
Let mo give you an example of what I mean. We have been referring this afternoon to a movement which is said to be connected with the students in China. The word "student" may puzzle some of us, having regard to our Western use of the term, but in China the student class acts with an independence to which the student class in this country is not accustomed. Undoubtedly, at this moment the principal actors and spokesmen for good or ill in China seem to be of the student class. And we ask ourselves. What do these young men and young women think to do with regard to the present conditions? The moment I tried to look at this problem I at once 742 recalled what happened not many months ago when that remarkable orator, M. Koo—I do not know where he exactly stands in the present controversy in China—a remarkable orator and a remarkable man, told us that at that moment the hunger of Chinese students for a better understanding of Western philosophy, both in its social and religious aspects, was so great that they were prepared to go almost any lengths, and would do anything to further any endeavours we in this country could make, to enable spokesmen of Western thought to go out to China—I am not speaking of any attempt to convert people from one religion to another—and expound to the Chinese Universities Western ideas and Western philosophy. They were prepared to make all kinds of efforts to facilitate the advent of such a messenger, even to preparing halls and translating documents and books, which he might wish to use, before he himself arrived in the country. They were prepared to see that everything was ready to his hand.
These are the people who, a few months later, we read of as now calling for the expulsion of the foreigner from China, getting rid of that influence altogether, and contending that the last thing on earth they want is to have Western influence or thought or agencies. One applies to those who are best conversant with China and its life—and I have done so—for an answer. They say that both are perfectly true. The students did think so that moment, and a great many of them want it still. Many of them do not. A great flood of feeling, however, creates this condition, that people who a short time ago desired the assimilation of Western knowledge, which they thought might be of advantage to them, are now making these other efforts and taking a line which is causing such despair to lovers of China when they look on the country as it now stands. The moral of that seems to me to be that if both these facts are true, if there is an underlying friendly side of the Chinese attitude which is prepared to take so very tangible and even expensive a form as has been shown, we have no more right to neglect that side when we are considering what opinions we are to bring to bear upon the Chinese problem as it stands to-day and what kind of process we can follow in commending to China that which we believe 743 will be for the good of China and for the world as a whole, than we have to neglect that other side upon which, perhaps, more emphasis has been laid.
I believe that what we want at this moment in all our relations with China is not merely that firmness that has been spoken of and of which I entirely approve, that determination to protect our fellow-countrymen and others, if need be, from wrong, riot and disorder, but also that in that very act we may show a friendliness and a confidence in the better side of China's public life and especially of student thought. The contrast that I have tried to draw between the Chinese student, as represented a few months ago, revealing that welcoming spirit of to-day, and the other side of Chinese thought is a matter which we must recognise. The two attitudes co-exist and require some attitude on our part which will not forget either of them. The danger will necessarily be that in our desire for firmness we may forget the other side and ignore the wide, well-ploughed receptive soil that awaits any effort that we may make to show that fraternity and fellowship in these matters to which we may expect a response in China. We must not forget that side of the question if we are to try to understand how to meet the requirements which are finding expression to-day.
I rejoice to hear—though the announcement has not surprised me—that the attitude of His Majesty's Government in regard to the various Commissions, Conferences and Courts which have now to find a place in China's life, in connection both with long-standing problems and with those which have immediately arisen, is in the direction of allowing China to be trusted by us to play her own part judicially in some of these questions along with ourselves, in trying to deal with them and to right wrongs which the best part of the Chinese spirit regrets and deplores as much as we do. There are quite a number of these inquiries. There is, first of all, the Court which is to inquire into the Shanghai disturbances. The noble Earl told us to-night that His Majesty's Government is in favour of a Chinese Judge taking part in that investigation, that it is not only not to be left to foreigners to defend themselves against Chinese attack, but that the 744 Chinese people themselves are to be properly represented.
Then there is, I suppose, the larger Conference that is impending, in which I trust that it will again be found practicable to give to China no small voice in dealing with the problems that are at issue. Again—and this was a point concerning which I do not think we heard anything to-night from His Majesty's Government—there is the question, to which Lord Beauchamp referred a few moments ago, of the Boxer Indemnity. There, too, I am hopeful that in pursuance of what was adumbrated in the debate on this subject some little while ago we shall find that Chinese help is going to be enlisted in the proper arrangement, control and allotment of the moneys which are at our disposal and at the disposal of China in this matter.
The point that I wanted simply to make, taking as a keynote that which the noble Earl said as to the mysteriousness of China, is that we must not forget the other side when we are speaking of the disorderly, troublous, antagonistic and violent elements, that we must remember the side that has asserted itself so markedly, and that, I believe, will be found to justify in a very high degree the confidence that we hope to be able to show, and will permit us to go forward with far greater help than we should enjoy if we were acting as critics from outside, or superior guides helping those who could not help themselves. If we enlist that spirit on our side, we shall find that we can go forward for the benefit of China and, therefore, of other countries as well.
§ Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.