(It was relinquished in 1922
following the Washington Conference.) It was partly on account of this settlement that the Congress of the
United States failed to ratify the Treaty of Versailles or join the League of
Nations, which had been suggested by the President. On her part Japan was aggrieved at the outcome of the Treaty
because she felt she deserved more recognition for the support that she had
given the Allies. Japan was merely
given the mandate for the Pacific Islands that she had taken from the Germans
in the First World War, despite the fact that she wanted permanent
sovereignty. Japan failed to have a
clause inserted into conditions of the League of Nations declaring the
principle of racial equality. Further
indignities were piled on this sensitive nation. In 1922 at the Washington Disarmament Conference she was only
given the smaller quota of a 3-5-5 proportion of capital ships and the United
States persuaded Great Britain to end the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. In the following years America became very
anti-Japanese and denied the immigration to the U.S.A. of Japanese workers
because in their opinion the Japanese émigrés did not assimilate into the American
way of life. In 1930, while Gareth was
working for David Lloyd George, the London Naval Disarmament Conference was
held. He mentioned having seen some of
the delegates in one of his diaries and records his and Lloyd George’s
unfavourable comments. The ratification
of the Treaty by Prime Minister Hamaguchi and his cabinet had far reaching
repercussions, because it was considered by the Japanese that he had conceded
to the Americans to accepting a below the minimum number of warships. They agreed to a lower ratio for auxiliary
warships than the 10-10-7, which had been laid down as the accepted
minimum. This issue caused a bitter
protest and, with the Nationalists demanding action in Manchuria, culminated in
the attempted assassination of Hamaguchi.
Following
the ‘Mukden Incident’ in September of the next year Japan felt that the
Imperialist nations supported China and were excluding Japanese merchandise
through tariff barriers and the restriction of free trade. An article in Gareth’s possession by
Ishihara Koichiro expressed the opinion that the world was dominated by the
white nations and that Japan had long put up with insults by them. “Japan’s present solitary position,
international, economic and racial, in the nature of things stimulates Japan to
greater activity and advance.