America’s Policy Dilemma in China
It is admitted in Washington that “if breach of the peace comes through unexpected Russian aggression, or if the dismemberment of the Chinese Empire becomes imminent, the United States will be placed in a most serious and embarrassing dilemma. On the one side will be our traditional policy of non-interference; on the other, the fact that the United States is now the greatest power bordering on the Pacific Ocean, an Asiatic power, too, through sovereignty over the Philippines, and in the ‘open-door’ pledges” exacted by this nation. Already “there is some disappointment among the diplomats representing European powers here, because the United States has so far declined to join the tacit alliance” of Britain, Japan, and Germany. And “the friends of the American missionaries in the disturbed zone in China are becoming alarmed, and the State Department is beginning to feel the pressure of their efforts to adopt an aggressive policy.” LATER.—The latest word before going to press is that the United States minister in China was instructed by the State Department at Washington, last Friday, “to act concurrently with the diplomatic representatives of the other powers to-morrow and thereafter;” but it is also “intimated to him that the traditional policy of the American government to act independently must be observed wherever it is practicable.” Just how it may be practicable for the United States thus to play fast and loose without getting overwhelmingly entangled, is not yet explained. However, time will explain all that.