Japan's delegation was dispatched to Paris with three clear goals: to get a clause on racial equality written into the covenant of the League of Nations, to control the north Pacific islands and to keep the German concessions in Shantung. (查看原文)
The Japanese had, at best, lukewarm support in Paris. The Chinese, whose nationals suffered from similar discrimination, felt they would probably vote for the clause but, as one Chinese delegate told an American, they had much more important things to worry about - in particular Japan's claims in China. (查看原文)
Wilson, desperate to save the League of Nations but unable to accept the racial equality clause, now faced giving Japan what it wanted in China. What made his position difficult was that China also had a strong case. (查看原文)
The group of some sixty Chinese and their five foreign advisos finally assembled in Paris at the Hôtel Lutétia epitomized China itself, balanced uneasily between the old and the new, the north and the south, and with a strong hint of outside influence. (查看原文)
The great Chinese writer Lu Xun compared his countrymen to people sleeping in a house made of iron. The house was on fire and the sleepers would die unless they woke up. But if they did wake, would they be able to get out? Was it better to let them perish in ignorance or die in the full knowledge of their fate? For all their doubts, Lu Xun and the other radical intellectuals of his generation did try to wake China up. They made it their responsibility to speed change by clearing away the debris of the past and forcing the Chinese to look to the future. They published journal with names such as New Youth and New Tide. They wrote satarical plays and stories scorning tradition. Their prescription for China was summed up in the slogan "Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy" - science to represent reas... (查看原文)
The British were particularly concerned about Japans in-roads into their economic sphere in the Yangtze valley. ambassador in okyo warned darkly, "Today we have come to know that Japan - the real Japan - is a frankly opportunistic, not to say selfish, country, of very moderate importance compared with the giants of the Great War, but with a very exaggerated opinion of her role in the universe." (查看原文)
But was that what the United States really wanted? If Japan could not expand westward into Asia, would it turn to the Pacific, toward the Philippines, perhaps even farther east? Wilson and his advisers were torn, as indeed their successors would be in the 1920s, between the pragmatic goal of cooperation with Japan and the idealistic one of helping China. Could China be helped at all? Was it worth risking a conflict with Japan? (查看原文)
He finished with a warning. "It is a question of whether we can guarantee a peace of half a century to the Far East, or if a situation will be created which can lead to war within ten years." Koo achieved nothing except admiration for his effort and a decision to refer the Shantung question to a committee of experts. (查看原文)
In 1924, acabinet minister in the Labour government in Britain referred to thetreaty as "a treaty of blood and iron which betrayed every principle for which our soldiers thought they were fighting." (查看原文)
How can the irrational passions of nationalism or religion be contained before they do more damage? How can we outlaw war? We are still asking those questions. (查看原文)
作者: Margaret MacMillan 副标题: Six Months That Changed the World isbn: 0375760520 书名: Paris 1919 页数: 624 定价: USD 20.00 出版社: Random House Trade Paperbacks 装帧: Paperback 出版年: 2003
