At length, the councils of Mr. Young had their effect and he was asked to invite the good offices of the President to secure a mediation of the

dispute.

To this request, Secretary of State Frelinghuysen replied, by cable, July 12, 1883:

This government cannot intervene unless assured that its good offices are acceptable to both. In such case would do all possible in the interests of peace. The United States Minister at Paris has been directed to sound French Government, and ascertain if it will admit our good offices in the sense of arbitration or settlement.

The answer was not long delayed. France declined to accept the good offices of the United States.32

The French, forthwith, proceeded to declare a blockade of Tonquin and Annam, and although negotiations continued at Shanghai, the troops of the two nations came into active conflict in December, 1883. On May 11, 1884, Li Hung Chang signed with Commandant Fournier a convention which was intended by the Chinese to be the protocol to a treaty. In the Fournier Convention, France waived a claim for indemnity in return for the acknowledgment of her territorial and commercial claims in Annam. There was entire disagreement between the Chinese and the French as to the interpretation of this protocol, and even as to its authorized text, and on June 23rd, 1884, Colonel Dugenne and twenty-two French soldiers were killed in an engagement at Baclé.33

Again China appealed to the good offices of the United States, and again (July 20, 1884) Minister Young referred the matter to Washington. China wished to submit to arbitration the question as to whether she had acted in bad faith with reference to the Fournier Convention.

Again France declined to admit the good offices of the United States. China was thus brought face to face with war. The American Minister renewed his efforts to find a peaceful solution, feeling that peace at any price which France might demand would be better than conflict. At length Prince Kung asked Mr. Young to go to Shanghai, see M. Patenôtre, the French representative, and obtain a settlement. China was even willing to agree to any indemnity which Young might recommend. The American Minister referred the request to Washington for approval, but Secretary of State Frelinghuysen was wary, having already been twice repulsed by France, and withheld his approval. On August 5th, Admiral Lespès at32 Cordier, Relations de la Chine avec les puissances occidentales, II, p. 399. 33 H. B. Morse, International Relations of the Chinese Empire, Vol. II, pp. 353-57, who was present at the Li Hung Chang-Fournier negotiations and saw the documents, gives personal testimony as well as evidence to prove that the French Government was guilty of extremely bad faith in the observance of this convention. His verdict is: "It is only on the ground that an Asiatic nation has no rights which the white man is bound to respect that the course of France is to be explained." For the French statement of the case, see Cordier, op. cit., II, pp. 435 ff.

tacked Keelung in Formosa. After this attack, all hopes of peace vanished. The Chinese were aroused. Prince Kung was retired, and the retirement of the Prince meant the eclipse of Li Hung Chang who had clearly realized the folly of resisting the French.

Early in September, the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company which had been purchased a few years before from an American firm, Russell and Company, was resold to the former owners, and the American flag raised over the fleet of steamers. France, thus deprived of the opportunity of making a most profitable reprisal upon China, was now even less than ever willing to accept any good offices from the United States. However, the American Government kept in very close touch with the rapidly developing situation, and on several subsequent occasions was the medium of communication between Paris and Peking. Sir Robert Hart also undertook the task of mediation and after more than a year of work succeeded in bringing about the signing of a protocol, April 4, 1885.34

Mr. Young, although his efforts at mediation between China and France had failed, was determined to demonstrate the good faith of the United States in its advocacy of arbitration as a means of settling disputes, and was able to secure the consent of the Chinese Government to the arbitration of the "Ashmore Fisheries Case" by the British and Netherlands consuls at Swatow. The case involved the action of the Chinese officials in depriving Dr. W. Ashmore, an American missionary at Swatow, of a fishery which he had purchased in connection with a mission. An award of four thousand six hundred dollars ($4,600) was made to Dr. Ashmore, June, 1884.35 Earlier in the same year, Mr. Young had proposed that the claims of the foreigners arising out of the riot at Canton in September, 1883,36 be submitted to arbitration, but he was unable to secure the consent of the Chinese to such a statement of the disputed points as would have satisfied the British authorities.37

THE SINO-JAPANESE WAR, 1894-5

Although the "good offices" clauses in both the Chinese and the Korean treaties with the United States had been placed there by the Chinese, it

34 Morse, op. cit., pp. 364-7.

35 Moore's Arbitrations, Vol. 2, p. 1857-59.

36 Foreign Relations, 1883, p. 209; 1884, p. 46; Morse, op. cit., p. 320.

37 For the more important details of Mr. Young's negotiations in the French controversy, see China Despatches, Vol. 65, No. 230, Aug. 8, 1883, No. 232, Aug. 16, 1882, No. 252, Sept. 7, 1883, No. 268, Oct. 8, 1883; Vol. 67, No. 308, Dec. 24, 1883; Vol. 68, No. 318, Jan. 6, 1884; Vol. 71, No. 496, Aug. 21, 1884, No. 501, Sept. 4, 1884; Vol. 73, No. 569, Dec. 9, 1884, No. 583, Dec. 22, 1884. It is difficult to explain the omission of all of these very able despatches from Foreign Relations. Perhaps the failure of Frelinghuysen's negotiations with France, together with the fact of a change of administration in 1885, explains it. There are few finer chapters in the history of arbitration than the Young-Frelinghuysen efforts in 1883-4.

cannot be denied that their presence in the treaties reflected correctly the disposition of the United States in the Far East to seek peace and to maintain the most impartial neutrality. Nevertheless, because of the chronic political instability of international relations in Eastern Asia, and because of the ulterior motives which had led to the insertion of the clauses in the treaties, these provisions were a constant menace to traditional American policy in foreign affairs, and unless rigidly interpreted by the United States could not have failed to draw the American government into armed intervention in Asia. In none of the cases already considered where the good offices of the United States were invoked does this appear but it becomes very evident when we come to the case of Korea. A few facts as to the situation will make this clear.

After 1872, it was inevitable that some day China and Japan would come into armed conflict over the possession of Korea. Indeed, the treaties of the western powers with Korea had been made upon the advice of Li Hung Chang, for the express purpose of enlisting the western powers on the side of China in its efforts to prevent Korea from being separated from China by Japan.

At least by 1885, it became evident that China and Japan were not to be permitted to settle the question of Korea without the intervention of European powers. Russia, also, wanted Korea, and the ambitions of Russia drew Great Britain into the situation. Furthermore, the general policy of the European powers before 1900, and this applied also to England before 1894, was to repress the growing strength of Japan. It is a safe generalization that all the powers, except the United States, preferred a weak Asia. This consideration led to a disposition to thwart the efforts of Japan to acquire a defensible foothold in Korea. England was disposed to see Korea remain under Chinese suzerainty. Russia sought to transfer the suzerainty over Korea from China to herself, and the attitude of Europe generally is reflected in the demand for the retrocession of the Liao-tung peninsular to China in 1895.

The American policy was quite different. It was based on the desire to see the development of a strong Asia. While the independence of all of the Asiatic states, including Korea, seemed desirable, this desire was quite subordinate, in American policy, to the growth of indigenous strength in Asia as a whole sufficient to withstand the aggressions of the foreign powers. The American treaty with Korea assumed the independence of Korea. American policy, however, went farther than that. Its effect was to separate Korea entirely from its traditional relationship to China. It would appear that the American government perceived that the shadowy and obstructive suzerainty of China over Korea would never be a source of strength to China, and would, on the other hand, be an element of weakness not only to Korea, but also to Asia as a whole. Consequently, when the question of intervention with a view to establishing the absolute independ

ence of Korea arose, the Government of the United States found that a strict construction of its treaty obligations to China, Korea and Japan, coincided exactly with its major policy in Asiatic affairs. In the first place, the United States was friendly with all three states. It was pledged to use its good offices but these could be effective only if they were acceptable to both parties. It was therefore the duty of the United States to maintain the most scrupulous neutrality. In the second place, intervention with a view to diverting the natural course of events, appeared to be merely playing into the hands of European powers, which desired to repress Japan and also to weaken Korea with a view to the sequestration of Korean territory at some future date. To have followed this second course would have meant not only the repudiation of the friendship which had existed so long with Japan as well as with China and Korea, but it would also have meant continued armed intervention in Asia, in co-operation with European powers, and yet for the express purpose of thwarting European ulterior designs. In effect, such a course would have led to the abandonment of the traditional American policy at many points.

With these choices in mind, let us examine the course of the United States in the Sino-Japanese war of 1894-5.

Early in 1894, the Korean Tonghaks raised the standard of insurrection. While generally anti-foreign in purpose, the Tonghaks were particularly anti-Japanese. Yuan Shi Kai, as the representative of Li Hung Chang and of the Chinese Government, immediately assumed responsibility for the protection of foreigners, and it became evident that the insurrection would assume the larger aspects of a contest between China and Japan for the control of Korea. On June 22, 1894, the American Minister in Seoul was instructed:

In view of the friendly interests of the United States in the welfare of Korea and its people, you are, by direction of the President, instructed to use every possible effort for the preservation of peaceful conditions.3

38

The Koreans, caught between the mill-stones, and quite powerless to act effectively for peace, appealed to Russia, France, England and the United States for help, and Mr. Sill, the American Minister, joined with the representatives of the other powers in asking China and Japan to agree to a simultaneous withdrawal of their troops from Korean soil. Both China and Japan refused.39 On July 5th, the Korean representative in Washington asked that the President "adjust the difficulty" arising out of the fact that the Japanese Minister in Seoul had presented to the Korean King a long list of administrative reforms and was pressing that they be immediately adopted. At about the same time the Chinese Government at Peking sought the good offices of England and Russia to secure 38 Foreign Relations, 1894, Vol. 2, p. 22.

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid., p. 29.

40

a peaceful solution. The British Minister in Peking urged, through Charles Denby, Jr., American Chargé, that the United States take the initiative in uniting the great powers in a joint protest at Tokio against the beginning of hostilities in Korea by Japan. On July 8th, Denby wired that Li Hung Chang had officially expressed the desire that the United States take the initiative as the British Minister had suggested.11

A study of these requests in the light of the history of the preceding twenty years shows their intention to have been as follows: the United States was asked, both by Korea and by China, to take the lead in preventing Japan from enforcing administrative reforms on Korea. That reform in Korea was desirable was undeniable; that China would ever effect these reforms was unlikely; that the European powers were being moved by any sincere desire to rescue Korea from the clutches of Japan for the purpose of creating in the peninsula a strong, independent Asiatic state, was equally improbable. The joint note of the foreign representatives in Seoul had failed to secure the simultaneous withdrawal of the Chinese and Japanese troops. It was evident that any intervention in the affair involved forceful intervention. Furthermore, the forceful intervention desired by Korea, by China, by Russia, by Germany, by England, was to eliminate Japanese influence in Korea for the express purpose of obstructing reform, and for the ulterior purpose on the part of some of the powers, of weakening the resistance of Asia, at the key-stone of the arch, to the aggression of Europe. In this situation the position of the United States was clear. The treaties demanded the offer of good offices. Good offices were offered and rejected. The invitation of the foreign powers to the United States was to assist them in support of a policy which would weaken rather than strengthen Asia. This was contrary to American policy.

Japan refused to heed the protest of the United States as well as those of England and Russia. On July 9th, Secretary of State Gresham told the Korean Envoy in Washington that the United States would not intervene forcibly, that the American government would not intervene jointly with the European powers, that it would maintain "impartial neutrality," but that it would seek to influence Japan in a "friendly way."42 Mr. Gresham expressed to the Japanese Minister in Washington the hope that Japan would deal "kindly and fairly with her feeble neighbor."

To China's request for intervention, Gresham replied advising that China offer the whole question for friendly arbitration. The American Secretary of State did not believe that Japan would resort to war. China, on her part, was not prepared to submit the entire question to arbitration. The fundamental point at issue was the validity of Chinese suzerainty over Korea. Space does not permit a discussion of that claim, but it may be asserted that it would have had a most doubtful status before any board 41 Foreign Relations, 1894, Vol. 2, p. 30.

42 Ibid., p. 37.