This clearly cuts off all privilege of transfer of the territory, whether by assignment or sub-lease. So long as China was neutral, the concessions to Germany doubtless remained in force. The military operations of Great Britain and Japan, outside the leased territory, and probably also within it, were violations of China's neutrality. By China's co-belligerency with Great Britain and Japan, these violations were doubtless condoned. On the declaration of war by China, Germany's privileges of all kinds in Shantung lapsed, and her state-property in the leased territory reverted to China. The action of the Allied and Associated Powers is, therefore, not a transfer of Germany's sphere of influence to Japan, but the attempted institution by the allied and associated states other than China of a new sphere of influence in favor of Japan in Shantung similar to that which Germany had before the war; and an attempted transfer to Japan of the title of China to the former public property of Germany in Tsingtao. China properly insists upon the right to choose among all the states of the world, without regard to their location, those whom it regards as states of good will, and to select those whom it may properly admit to its honor and confidence and to lodgment within its own domains, in order that they may help it in helping itself during the trying period of its transition from an Oriental to an Occidental economic status. The "twenty-one demands" of Japan, backed by military force, are in law nugatory. The secret treaties of Great Britain and France with Japan, and the action of the President of the United States in signing the Shantung provision of the Peace Treaty, are equally nugatory. It only remains for the Senate of the United States to announce the legal situation, and to insist upon an amendment whereby the Shantung provisions will be stricken out of the treaty. The theory and practice of the various states differ as respects spheres of influence. According to French and Japanese philosophy, they are essentially political institutions having an economic and also a political object. By the Germans and Russians they are regarded as essentially economic-social institutions, with such political privileges as are needful to render them efficient. In British practice they are one thing or the other according to the views of the British government concerning the policy to be pursued in any particular exigency. The United States, by the "Hay Proposals," recognized spheres of influence as legitimate institutions without attempting to define their import. Whatever the theory or practice, however, they unquestionably menace the peace of the states where they exist and the proper economic development of the world. THE DISPOSITION OF THE GERMAN COLONIES Reprinted from The Nation, October 18, 1919 I N considering the disposition to be made of Ger IN many's interests in territory and sovereignty outside its domestic frontiers, it is necessary to distinguish its colonies-that is, those regions of whose territory it had full title and over whose people it had full sovereignty-from its concessions—that is, the easements in land and personal privileges which had been granted to it by a state, to be exercised by it upon the territory and under the sovereignty of that state. The German colonies were Togoland, Cameroon, German East Africa, German Southwest Africa, German New Guinea, and certain islands in the Pacific Ocean; the interests which it had in China (including those under the Shantung treaty), Siam, and other states being concessions. For purposes of disposition, the colonies were grouped and divided thus: Togoland, Cameroon, and German East Africa formed a group. All these colonies were tropical and were densely inhabited by blacks, with a few white settlers. They were all within the Conventional Basin of the Congo as fixed by the Berlin African Act of 1885, and also within the much larger Middle African Zone |