The League of Nations and the East Asian Imperial Order, 1920–1946 [1st ed.] 9789811549670, 9789811549687

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NEW DIRECTIONS IN EAST ASIAN HISTORY

The League of Nations and the East Asian Imperial Order, 1920–1946 Harumi Goto-Shibata

New Directions in East Asian History

Series Editors Oliviero Frattolillo Roma Tre University Rome, Italy Yuichi Hosoya Keio University Tokyo, Japan Antony Best London School of Economics London, UK

This series addresses the ways in which history influences the political, economic and social development of East Asia, a region which now plays a pivotal role in our world’s multipolar international system. The series provides new perspectives on East Asia’s distinctive economic and political situation through the lens of 20th century history, with a particular focus on Pre-War and Cold War periods. It argues the need to re-examine the history of East Asia and provide new historical approaches to a vibrant and constantly changing region. Highlighting that history is at the root of many modern day conflicts in Asia, this series provides a global forum for rigorous academic research and timely debate by scholars worldwide, and showcases significant new research on East Asian history and politics in the contemporary era. The series will appeal to specialists in the history and politics of Asia; international history; scholars of modern and contemporary Japan, Chinese and Korea as well as international relations.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15870

Harumi Goto-Shibata

The League of Nations and the East Asian Imperial Order, 1920–1946

Harumi Goto-Shibata University of Tokyo Tokyo, Japan

ISSN 2522-0195 ISSN 2522-0209 (electronic) New Directions in East Asian History ISBN 978-981-15-4967-0 ISBN 978-981-15-4968-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4968-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Alois Derso and Emery Kelen’s cartoon of the League of Nations. Naotake Sato of Japan as a squirrel is playing golf at the bottom left side. From Le Testament de Genève (Geneva, 1931). Reproduced by permission of Princeton University Archives, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Acknowledgments

This book is the product of my research leave from autumn 2018 to spring 2019. I spent most of this time writing the draft. I am enormously grateful to Patricia Clavin and Henrietta Harrison for their precious time and advice. I would also like to extend my profound thanks to my colleagues at University of Tokyo, especially Tetsuya Sakai, Shin Kawashima, Yasutaka Ichinokawa, Masami Nakao, Hiroyuki Ogawa and Nahoko Miyamoto Alvey for their support and understanding; and also to Antony Best, Olivielo Frattolillo and Yuichi Hosoya for including this book in their new series. Parts of the archival research on which this book is based started nearly twenty years ago. I have been extremely fortunate to have very good mentors and friends. I am tremendously indebted to Ian Nish, Yoichi Kibata, Jane Garnett, John Darwin, Ann Waswo and Steve Tsang. Special thanks are due to Naoko Shimazu, Hatsue Shinohara, Tomoko Akami, Ken Ishida, Sochi Naraoka, Ryo Ikeda and Kayo Takuma (nee Yasuda) for inspiring me intellectually; to Masaya Inoue and the steering members of the Japan Association of International Relations for giving me the opportunity to present a paper at the commemorative 60th annual convention; to Asahiko Hanzawa and Mika Inoue for organizing the colloquia on the history of the United Nations; to Roger Goodman, Victoria Forster, Vandana Desai, Sho Konishi and Chika Tonooka for making my stay in the U. K. pleasant and comfortable; and to the members of Global History Collaborative for arranging a workshop at Princeton. v

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Profound thanks are also due to archivists and libraries for their assistance and for permission to cite the materials they hold in their care. The archival research was supported by JSPS Grants-in Aid for Scientific Research, Numbers JP13610443, JP18520556 and JP22530150. I would also like to express my gratitude to Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press for their permission to reprint my journal articles; to the team at Palgrave Macmillan for efficiently bringing this book to publication. My family has supported me in numerous ways. Without the support and understanding of Emily Ayako Sato, Hideaki and Kyoko Goto, I could not have found time to do any research and to write even a word. Betty, Shingo, Hikaru, Akiko and Chiaki have always been the source of my joy and happiness. Last but not least, thank you, Mark Makoto Shibata. I dedicate this book to you.

Contents

1

Introduction

1

Part I The League of Nations as Forums and Actors 2

3

Social and Humanitarian Issues of the League of Nations The Emergence of Social and Humanitarian Issues in the Covenant of the League Japan’s Participation in the League of Nations The League’s Arrival in East Asia Challenging the Imperial Order: Control of Opium Setting the Scene—Until the First World War Establishing the OAC The OAC at Work on East Asian Questions The Participation of the United States The Geneva Opium Conference Change in the Opium Policies in the British Empire and the Commission of Enquiry Lack of Reforms in the Japanese Empire The Bangkok Conference and Further Reforms The Impact of the OAC and Its Limits

17 17 24 33 43 44 47 51 54 56 61 64 66 69 vii

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4

Expanding the Range: Japan’s Reaction to the Technical Co-operation with China The Developmental Phase Co-operation in Flood Relief The Manchurian Crisis How to Finance the Co-operation Technical Co-operation Politicized

5

The TWC as Another Forum and Women The TWC and the Commission of Enquiry Russian Women Refugees in China and the Remaining Imperial Order Difficulties in Solving the Problem The Lack of Financial Resources The TWC as Another Forum

Part II 6

7

79 80 89 93 96 102 111 112 114 116 120 122

Contested Power and Authority

Japan’s Withdrawal and China’s Request for a Seat on the Council Trying to Continue Partial Co-operation China’s Failure to Be Re-elected to the Council Enter the Soviet Union China’s Aspiration to Be a Permanent Member Japan’s Formal Departure A New Non-permanent Seat for an Asian State Who Controls the Co-operation?: Technical Co-operation after the Outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War The TCC in 1936 Technical Co-operation after the Outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War Continuing for the Second Year Who Controls the Co-operation? Aid to China The League or the Local Authorities

129 130 139 141 142 145 147

157 158 162 167 170 175 179

CONTENTS

8

9

10

11

The Question of Empires: Co-operation in the Yunnan–Burma Borderland in 1939 The South-Western Part of China Robertson’s Epidemiological Survey on the Burma Road Co-operation or Intervention The End of the Technical Co-operation The Limits of the League’s Control of Opium To the United States The Declaration of the British and the Dutch Governments in November 1943 Examining the Application of the New Policy Prepared ‘Policy as Regards Opium in Burma’ and Its Limits The League of Nations and the Question of Opium Eating East Asia in the Architecture of the Post-War World: From the League to the UN Economic and Social Council The Bruce Report Rajchman’s Plan for the United Nations Health Organization Establishing the ECOSOC Establishing the CND The Prospect of the CND and Burma’s New Policy The Experience of the League of Nations Conclusion Achievements and Continuities Discontinuities and a New Departure

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187 188 189 194 197 205 206 207 212 215 218

223 224 227 229 233 237 242 249 249 252

Bibliography

257

Index

283

Abbreviations

BDFA BL CND DBFP DBPO DSB ECOSOC FRUS ILO JACAR JFMA LN LNA LNHO LNOJ NGB NGB, 1-2-2 NGB, 2-1-3 NGB, 2-2-2~5 NGB, M-1-3

British Documents on Foreign Affairs British Library Commission on Narcotic Drugs Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919–1939 Documents on British Policy Overseas Drug Supervisory Body Economic and Social Council Foreign Relations of the United States International Labour Organization Japan Center for Asian Historical Records, National Archives of Japan Japanese Foreign Ministry Archives League of Nations League of Nations Archives League of Nations Health Organization League of Nations Official Journal Nihon Gaik¯ o Bunsho [Documents on Japanese Foreign Policy] NGB, Showa ki 1, dai 2 bu, dai 2 kan [Showa Era 1, Part 2, Vol. 2] NGB, Showa ki 2, dai 1 bu, dai 3 kan [Showa Era 2, Part 1, Vol. 3] NGB, Showa ki 2, dai 2 bu, dai 2 kan ~ dai 5 kan [Showa Era 2, Part 2, Vols. 2~5] NGB, Mansh¯ u Jihen, dai 1 kan, dai 3 satsu [Manchurian Incident, Part 1, Vol. 3]

xi

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ABBREVIATIONS

NGB, M-2-2 NGB, M-3 NGB, M-bekkan OAC ODNB PCOB TCC TNA TWC

NGB, Mansh¯ u Jihen, dai 2 kan, dai 2 satsu [Manchurian Incident, Part 2, Vol. 2] NGB, Mansh¯ u Jihen, dai 3 kan [Manchurian Incident, Part 3] NGB, Mansh¯ u Jihen, bekkan [Manchurian Incident, extra volume] Advisory Committee on Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online edition Permanent Central Opium Board Council Committee on Technical Co-operation between the League of Nations and China The National Archives, Kew Advisory Committee on Traffic in Women and Children

Notes on Japanese and Chinese Names

When Japanese language works are cited in the footnotes, surnames precede given names following East Asian practice. Chinese words are basically transliterated using the Pinyin system of romanization. Some names of people are, however, more widely known in their former usage, such as Chiang Kai-Shek and T. V. Soong. In addition, as this book deals with the period before 1949, there were some people who often used their English names, such as Wellington Koo and Victor Hoo. In these cases, Pinyin transliteration is shown in the first instance only. The example is ‘V. K. Wellington Koo (Gu Weijun)’. In Pinyin transliteration, surnames precede given names.

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The League of Nations and East Asia—what do you associate this with? Most probably the Manchurian Crisis; the impact of which was overwhelming. At the same time, it should be noted that there was a lot more to the League of Nations and East Asia than the Crisis. This book uncovers the League’s works in East Asia in social, economic and humanitarian fields, and examines their impact on the international relations in the region. After the calamities of the First World War, the League of Nations was established to prevent further international conflict. As the United States did not become its member, the League’s influence was limited. It failed in its primary objective and could not prevent the Second World War, so that it was reviled and neglected for a very long time. In the twenty-first century, however, interest in the League of Nations has revived and is flourishing. One of the reasons is that it is now recognized that the League was more than a collective security arrangement. The League had a very wide spectrum of economic, social and other technical activities, and it accomplished quite a lot in these fields. It laid ‘the foundation for the institutions of global governance we have today’.1 For example, Patricia Clavin has shown the growing importance of the League’s undertakings in economics in her Securing the World Economy. She has also shown the continuity of people and their works into the period of the United Nations.2 © The Author(s) 2020 H. Goto-Shibata, The League of Nations and the East Asian Imperial Order, 1920–1946, New Directions in East Asian History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4968-7_1

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Remarkably, such works of the League were not limited to Europe. Sunil S. Amrith’s Decolonizing International Health shows that the League collected information on diseases in South and Southeast Asia.3 The League also sent missions to Asia to investigate the trafficking in opium and the situation of women and children. Based on the information it collected, it endeavoured to solve these problems, or at least to mitigate them. Despite its efforts and achievements, the League’s social and technical works in East Asia have fallen into almost complete oblivion. Existing studies on the League of Nations mainly analyse its works in Europe. Although Europe was indeed at the centre of the League’s attention and activities, the founding fathers of the League aimed to make it more global and universal. Europe could not leave other parts of the world completely outside the system. East Asia was also included in it. The region was by no means free from the impact of the League of Nations. Susan Pedersen is another person who has led the study of the League of Nations. In her extensive review of the previous studies on the League of Nations published in 2007, she divided the League’s works into three categories. Her major work on the League, The Guardians, has examined the work of the Permanent Mandate Commission, and has shown that the imperial order was gradually transformed through the apparatus and the publicity that the mandates system brought into being.4 In the introduction of The Guardians, Pedersen introduced the work of William Rappard, Swiss director of the Mandate Section of the League Secretariat. Rappard’s work is based on his lecture given in the United States in 1925. He started by elucidating ‘Three Leagues in One’. Those three were a League to outlaw war, a League to execute the peace treaties, and a League to promote international co-operation. The first, outlawing war, is related to the primary objective of the League. The second is related to the mandates systems and the minorities question. The third covers a wide field. When the League was established, issues in this third group were considered marginal. Only Article 23 out of the twenty-six articles touched upon them. There were, however, those who considered that ‘the main purpose of the League, the prevention of war, could perhaps be more readily and more effectively served by the consolidation of peace’. The international co-operation was for the purpose of consolidating peace, and this third League expanded over time. It came to cover various activities. Rappard wrote in 1925, ‘[i]ts activities – economic, social, political, hygienic, intellectual, moral – are so extraordinarily varied

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that it is not easy even to classify them.’5 David Mitrany, a political scientist, had these operations and people making them work in mind when he crafted his functionalist theory.6 This book concerns this third category: the League to promote international co-operation. It extends the analysis of the League of Nations to East Asia, examining its social and humanitarian works, which have been neglected. As it was impossible to separate those works from existing economic agreements made by the countries, this book also touches upon economic issues. Even when historians included East Asia in their analyses of the League of Nations, they hitherto tended to focus on the moment of crisis, namely the Manchurian Crisis. Nobody denies its significance, but more light should be shed on the League of Nations and East Asia, and on various aspects. Otherwise, our understanding of the period remains too simple and superficial. The League’s social and other technical works are significant as such. In addition, they were closely related to the development in international relations in the region. Rappard was quite optimistic in 1925. He considered those technical works non-political. However, Edward Hallett Carr wrote in his The Twenty Years’ Crisis as follows: When states co-operate with one another to maintain postal or transport services, or to prevent the spread of epidemics or suppress the traffic in drugs, these activities are described as ‘non-political’ or ‘technical’. But as soon as an issue arises which involves, or is thought to involve, the power of one state in relation to another, the matter at once becomes ‘political’.7

As Carr pointed out, technical works often turned out to be highly political. They were also related to the rise and fall of power and authority of countries. Still, just as East Asia has remained in the shadows in the previous studies of the League of Nations, the League has been almost completely overlooked in the study of the international history of East Asia, except its involvement in the Manchurian Crisis. The works by Ian Nish and Thomas Burkman are superb, but neither of them takes social and other technical issues into consideration.8 This book is at the intersection of the study of the League and that of the international history of East Asia, and aims to advance both. More specifically, this book takes up several issues which the League tackled in East Asia: namely the control of trafficking in opium, and technical co-operation with China. The control of the traffic in drugs was

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directly mentioned by Carr in the above quote. It was also one of the most difficult problems for Japan in the League.9 Technical co-operation with China developed from the works in the field of health, which was also mentioned by Carr. It later developed into a wide-ranging project. This book also deals with the issue of assisting Russian women refugees in China, because this, as well as the control of opium trafficking, developed from the work based on Article 23 (c) of the League’s Covenant. In addition, the same individuals such as Dame Rachel Crowdy (1884–1964) were involved in the two issues. Crowdy was the highest-ranking woman in the League Secretariat, and was the chief of the Social Questions and Opium Traffic Section. She also offered a link between the League and voluntary organizations.10 After she left the League, she visited Japan and Manchuria twice, in 1931 and 1934. This book argues that the League achieved quite a lot in the field of social and technical works; and that those works came to challenge the existing imperial order in East and Southeast Asia, although to do so was by no means the intention of the founding fathers of the League. One point to be remembered is that, different from Europe, the First World War did not change East Asia very much. Empires firmly remained in the region. Britain and France, the mainstays of the League of Nations, were empires with considerable interests in East and Southeast Asia. In her study on the Institute of Pacific Relations, Tomoko Akami has pointed out that the Great Powers which promoted internationalism in the interwar period were at the same time empires.11 In addition to Britain and France, the Netherlands ruled the Dutch East Indies, while Macao was the colony of Portugal. Japan was also an empire, and it maintained various interests in China. Furthermore, China itself had an imperial face, although its semi-colonial status in the inter-war period is usually emphasized. The Republic of China inherited the territory of Qing which was a land-based empire. Qing had conquered Xinjiang in the eighteenth century and ruled the indigenes in Yunnan. I regard this international order consisting of these empires to be the imperial order. Neither the empires nor the League of Nations intended to change the existing order of the region. They were rather ‘the guardians’ of the order.12 They intended to maintain the status quo. If the League did not have the intention to change the imperial order, how did its works come to challenge this order? First, there were various problems to be solved in the region and they were entangled in the existing order. Trying to solve them from a universal perspective resulted

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in criticizing imperial practices. Secondly, once established, the League gained its own momentum. It did not remain a mere gathering of representatives of the powers. It set up various committees where not only states’ representatives but also experts participated. Their works were supported by international civil servants of the Secretariat. Those experts and members of the Secretariat were not necessarily from traditional major powers. New figures entered into the semi-diplomatic world. Those from small and newly independent countries acquired opportunities to work in faraway places such as China for the first time. The country was especially attractive to them. Its sheer size and ancient history provoked awe. As it was not a colony, it was open to the activities of the League of Nations. Furthermore, the League meetings were usually open, and journalists and the representatives of various voluntary organizations (today’s non-governmental organizations), came to observe the arguments there. The outcome of the discussions and publicity went beyond the control of the League itself and even that of the mightiest empires. The League’s Advisory Committee on Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs (Opium Advisory Committee, hereafter the OAC) was one of those committees. Efforts to control opium had been made since the beginning of the twentieth century. The first international commission to eradicate opium was held, at an American initiative, in Shanghai in February 1909. The Shanghai Commission could not make any binding decisions, so The Hague Conference was held from November 1911. The League succeeded this regulatory work. It started trying to solve the problem of opium trafficking and smoking. The point is that opium was one of the old questions of the empires in East and Southeast Asia. Opium supported the financial basis of the colonies in the East: not only the colonies of Britain, but also those of France, Japan and the Netherlands. In the nineteenth century, when a solid tax-collecting system had not yet been established, opium was a valuable (in some colonies almost the sole) source of revenue. This fact was long known only within each empire, and only among a limited number of people. The OAC, however, internationalized the issue, just like the Permanent Mandate Commission closely examined by Pedersen. The issue of opium could no longer be dealt with merely within the national or imperial realm. The international pressure was useful in monitoring the behaviour of even great

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powers.13 As a result of reforms, revenues decreased, while expenditure on local residents’ welfare increased. Curbing opium trafficking and smoking unintentionally shook the financial foundations of the empires. Different from the regulatory works specified by Article 23 (c), technical co-operation with China was not envisaged when the League’s Covenant was adopted. The range of the League’s works was expanded after the organization was established. The idea for the co-operation with China grew out of personal initiatives, especially that of Dr Ludwik Rajchman, the extremely capable director of the Health Section of the Secretariat. The co-operation started in the field of health, and developed into a wide-ranging project. If successfully carried out, technical co-operation would have improved the situation of China and strengthened the country. It was a pioneering effort in establishing international aid for developing countries. The value of co-operation was widely recognized. The timing was, however, not ideal. Co-operation between the League and China began when Sino-Japanese relations deteriorated. It politicized. Japan’s anxiety and dissatisfaction with the League were strengthened by this co-operation. The point here was how to finance the co-operation. It became a contentious issue. The Chinese and Rajchman had to overcome the existing financial agreement made by the powers, most of which were at the same time empires. The technical co-operation also challenged the existing imperial order. Meanwhile, there were various opinions on the League in China. Although China was an obvious beneficiary of the technical co-operation, the country was not united in welcoming the arrival of internationalism embodied in the League of Nations. Some, especially those who were educated in the West, were keen on the League, while others wondered whether the League’s works in China might turn out to be another form of foreign intervention and control, infringing upon China’s sovereignty. Co-operation was sometimes considered to be like an imperialist intervention. Let us review the League’s structure. The main elements were the Council, the Assembly and the Secretariat. As it turned out that the United States did not participate in the League, the Council initially consisted of four permanent members, namely Britain, France, Italy and Japan, and four non-permanent members elected by the Assembly. After the signing of the Locarno treaties, Germany was accepted into the League in 1926, becoming a permanent member of the Council. It declared, however, its withdrawal from the League in October 1933.

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By that time, Japan had also declared its intention to withdraw. The rise of Nazi Germany resulted in the USSR joining the League in September 1934, and it was a permanent member until December 1939. Meanwhile, many countries including China considered the position of non-permanent member as a symbol of international status.14 The number of non-permanent members was increased to six in 1922, nine in 1926, ten in 1933 and eleven in 1936. The Council usually met four to five times per year, and more often during emergencies. The first Assembly was held from November to December 1920. From September 1921 onwards, the Assembly met once per year. Both the Council and Assembly were supported by the Secretariat, which prepared for various meetings and implemented their decisions. The role of the Secretariat was especially significant during the long period when neither the Council nor the Assembly was in session. The first secretary-general, Sir Eric Drummond, created the Secretariat. He was a Scottish aristocrat educated at Eton, and entered the British Foreign Office in 1900. He was also a member of the British delegation to the Paris Peace Conference.15 There would be some under secretaries-general, and a number of sections such as the Political Section, each with a director as its head.16 Drummond was determined to recruit international civil servants to work in the League, not those merely representing their own countries. A balance of nationalities among those who occupied high positions had to be considered.17 This book responds to the following questions. What were the League’s social and other technical works in East Asia? What were their achievements and limits? What were their long-term impacts? Were they an isolated endeavour during the inter-war period? Or were they carried on in the post-war world? This book covers the period until the end of 1946, and shows that the League’s works were succeeded by the United Nations Organization. By answering the questions, this book argues that the impact of the League of Nations in East Asia has hitherto been underestimated. The book is divided into two parts. Part I (Chapters 2–5) introduces the League’s social, economic and humanitarian works in East Asia and considers how they functioned. Chapter 2 first supplies context for including social and humanitarian issues in the League’s Covenant, and observes establishing technical organizations such as the OAC. Among the various aspects of the League such as the Council and the Assembly,

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Part I of this book mainly engages with several of those technical committees. As the committees were supported by relevant sections of the Secretariat, this book also considers some officials of those sections. Chapter 2 then looks at how Japan joined the League and came to participate in those committees. It also introduces the characteristics of those Japanese who were involved in the League. Chapter 3 examines the League’s efforts to solve the problem of opium trafficking and smoking. The League’s OAC functioned as a forum. It asked the participating countries to provide information on opium not only in their home countries but also in their colonies. It then discussed the issue openly. The publicity or the threat of publicity forced the member countries to introduce reforms in their opium regimes. Chapter 4 examines Japan’s reactions to the technical co-operation between the League of Nations and China. The members of the League’s Secretariat played significant roles. Initially, there was no committee. Concerning this issue, the League was more an actor, or a company of actors, than a forum. Chapter 5 is a short chapter which deals with the plight of Russian women refugees in China. Article 23 (c) made the supervision over the trafficking in women and children another task of the League. The Advisory Committee on Traffic in Women and Children (hereafter, TWC) was established. It also functioned as a forum. The Commission of Enquiry sent to East Asia uncovered the unfortunate situation of Russian women refugees. Individual actors such as Crowdy also overlapped with those involved in the opium question. The aim of this Chapter is to observe the part played by women relating to the League’s works in East Asia. The Chapter also shows that Japan continued to participate in the League’s social and humanitarian committees even after its withdrawal. Part II (Chapters 6–10) traces the technical co-operation to its end, and follows the control of opium until the end of 1946. At the same time, it covers the rise and fall of the power and authority of the relevant countries in relation to the social and technical issues. Although those issues were considered to be non-political, they turned out to be highly political, and differences in opinions and collisions of interests were observed. Chapter 6 examines how Japan withdrew from the League, and how China, taking the opportunity, requested a seat in the Council. Article 1 of the League’s Covenant stipulated that any member may withdraw after two years’ notification. The actual procedure of the withdrawal, however, was not decided. Japan said that it would continue to co-operate

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in the League’s technical meetings such as the OAC and the TWC. China initially argued that Japan could not withdraw without fulfilling what was required by the League. On the other hand, China aspired to have a higher status on the international stage. Japan’s withdrawal gave it a good opportunity to require a permanent, or at least a semi-permanent seat in the Council. Chapter 7 examines technical co-operation between the League and China after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War. As a part of the cooperation, the League sent experts to prevent epidemic diseases from spreading. Although their contributions were significant, differences of opinions between those who were supposed to be co-operating grew wide. From the beginning of the co-operation, there were some Chinese who worried that the co-operation might turn out to be another form of foreign intervention, infringing upon China’s sovereignty. In the period after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, differences of opinion were observed between the League experts and the Chinese, and also within the League itself. Chapter 8 examines the final stage of the co-operation, which was carried out in the south-western part of China due to the war. The region bordered on British Burma. In the Yunnan-Burma borderland, both Britain and China ruled the indigenes indirectly. China needed international assistance to fight against Japan, but not all welcomed the co-operation wholeheartedly. Some wondered whether co-operation with the League so deeply into the country was worthwhile. Chapter 9 observes the limits of the League’s opium control by way of examining the final stage of the opium question in British Burma. This book begins by looking at the League’s tackling of the opium question. As will be seen in Chapter 3, its achievement was considerable. The complete eradication of opium, however, was not achieved by the time of the demise of the League of Nations. Indeed, the question of opium eating was not touched at all. One region where the problem remained is the borderland, which was dealt with in Chapter 8. To control the use and trafficking of opium in the mountainous border region covered with dense forests was considered almost impossible. Britain was, however, placed under the pressure of the United States during the Second World War. Chapter 10 considers how the League and the United Nations Organization were related. The establishment of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) in the United Nations Economic and Social Council

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(ECOSOC) is closely studied. In the case of the CND, which was established in 1946, the link with the League is clear and strong. This chapter shows that the League did not just disappear, but many of its works were succeeded by the United Nations. The authority and power of the Republic of China were almost at its zenith in the period covered in Chapter 10. The international co-operation was useful to the country. It also understood the value of presenting itself as being interested in social questions. It contributed greatly to the setting up of the CND. Many studies relating to individual topics are cited throughout the book. Here at the end of the introduction, let us just briefly observe the change of the central authorities of China, because it happened several times during the period examined in this book. The Qing dynasty ruled China since the seventeenth century, but it was in decline at the beginning of the twentieth century. The powers competed for economic profits in the country. The United States was a relative newcomer, and advanced an ‘open door’ policy as a way of safeguarding its interests. In order to change the situation from competition into co-operation, the first China consortium agreement for financing Chinese railways was signed in 1910 by the banks of Britain, France, Germany and the United States. Russian and Japanese banks were later allowed to co-operate with the consortium. Co-operation was, however, just among the powers. The Chinese were dissatisfied with foreign railway loans. The revolution in 1911 made the Qing dynasty fall in 1912. The Republic of China was established. The central government continued to exist in Beijing until the mid1920s. The Beijing government did not sign the Treaty of Versailles that allowed Japan to succeed German interests on the Shandong Peninsula. The Republic of China signed the Treaty of Saint-Germain, and joined the League as an original member, more willingly than Japan, although it was disappointed with American non-participation. The Chinese found that international society was more useful in seeking assistance to change the existing situation in China than bilateral negotiations with its mighty counterparts, whether it be Japan or Britain.18 Their aspiration in the 1920s was to revise treaties and to improve its international status. The Beijing government also aspired to have a non-permanent seat in the Council. It had to be elected to the Council to secure one. It was successful in 1920 and 1926, but the outcome of the election was not always guaranteed. It also insisted at the time of creating the League of Nations that its financial contribution to the League should be almost

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as much as those of Japan and Britain. It turned out, however, that the Republic of China could not pay its shares of expenses, because its financial basis was very weak.19 Meanwhile, the second China consortium agreement was reached in May 1920 by the banking groups of Britain, France, Japan and the United States. They had agreed to contract loans to China together, to refrain from setting up new spheres of interests in the country and from intervening in its internal politics.20 The power and authority of the Beijing government were not strong, and chaos and internal fighting continued. The government of the Nationalists, the Guomindang, in Guandong gradually gained strength. The military forces of the Nationalists began the Northern Expedition in July 1926. They defeated the Beijing government, achieving nominal reunification of the country in 1928. The Nationalist government of the Republic of China was recognized by Britain and the United States, and started to send representatives to the League of Nations. There were many talented diplomats and politicians in the Nationalist government who had been educated in the West, especially in the United States. They considered that to send their representatives to the League was useful for them to prove that they were the legitimate central authorities of the country. They had to prove themselves, because the unification was not perfect and internal strife continued, especially between them and the Communists. The latter would be the final victor and establish the People’s Republic of China in 1949. The defeated Nationalists had to leave the continent. The government of China dealt with in this book is mainly the Republic of China—not the People’s Republic of China—unless clearly mentioned otherwise. In describing the situation after 1928, the terms ‘Nationalist China’ or the ‘Nationalists’ are used interchangeably with the ‘Republic of China’.

Notes 1. Susan Pedersen, The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 8–9. 2. Patricia Clavin, Securing the World Economy: The Reinvention of the League of Nations 1920–1946 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). 3. Sunil S. Amrith, Decolonizing International Health: India and Southeast Asia, 1930–65 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). 4. Susan Pedersen, ‘Back to the League of Nations’, The American Historical Review, 112/4, 2007, pp. 1091–1117; id., The Guardians.

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5. William E. Rappard, International Relations as Viewed from Geneva (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1925). Quotes are from pages 16 and 62. 6. David Armstrong, Lorna Lloyd, and John Redmond, From Versailles to Maastricht: International Organisation in the Twentieth Century (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 1996), pp. 22–23; Pedersen, The Guardians, pp. 8–9. 7. Edward Hallett Carr, The Twenty Years’ Crisis 1919–1939: An Introduction to the Study of International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1961, first published in 1939), p. 102. 8. Ian Nish, Japan’s Struggle with Internationalism: Japan, China and the League of Nations 1931–1933 (London: Kegan Paul, 1993); Thomas W. Burkman, Japan and the League of Nations: Empire and World Order (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008). 9. Sat¯ o Naotake, Kaiko 80 nen [Looking Back at My Eighty Years ] (Tokyo: Jiji Ts¯ ushinsha, 1963), pp. 199–202. 10. Pedersen, ‘Back to the League of Nations’, p. 1111. 11. Tomoko Akami, Internationalizing the Pacific: The United States, Japan and the Institute of Pacific Relations in War and Peace, 1919–45 (London: Routledge, 2002). See also, D. Long and B. C. Schmidt (eds), Imperialism and Internationalism in the Discipline of International Relations (New York: State University of New York Press, 2005). 12. Sandrine Kott, ‘Cold War Internationalism’, in Glenda Sluga and Patricia Clavin (eds), Internationalisms: A Twentieth-Century History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 344–345. 13. Zara Steiner, ‘Introductory Essay’, in United Nations Library and the Graduate Institute Geneva, The League of Nations in Retrospect: Proceedings of a Symposium (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1983), p. 11. 14. Armstrong, Lloyd, and Redmond, From Versailles to Maastricht, p. 56. 15. Lorna Lloyd, ‘Drummond, (James) Eric, Seventh Earl of Perth (1876– 1951), Diplomatist,’ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online (hereafter, ODNB). 16. F. P. Walters, A History of the League of Nations (London: Oxford University Press, 1952, reprinted in 1960), p. 77. 17. Armstrong, Lloyd, and Redmond, From Versailles to Maastricht, p. 59; Karen Gram-Skjoldager and Haakon A. Ikonomou, ‘The Construction of the League of Nations Secretariat. Formative Practices of Autonomy and Legitimacy in International Organizations’, The International History Review, published online 21 December 2017, pp. 4–6. 18. Nishimura Shigeo, ‘20 seiki zenhan ki Ch¯ugoku to “3 no gaik¯ o k¯ ukan” [China in the Early Half of the 20th Century and Three Diplomatic Spheres]’, in Nishimura Shigeo (ed.), Ch¯ ugoku gaik¯ o to kokuren no seiritsu [Chinese Diplomacy and the Establishment of the United Nations ] (Kyoto: H¯ oritsu Bunkasha, 2004), pp. 5–11.

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19. Tang Chi-hua, Beijing zhengfu yu guoji lianmeng (1919–1928) [Beijing Government and the League of Nations ] (Taipei: Dongda Tushu Gongsi, 1998), Chapter 4. Although China was also elected in 1922, due to its internal situation and its failure to pay its annual subscription, it was replaced by Czechoslovakia within a year. See Tang, Beijing zhengfu, pp. 134–142; Shinohara Hatsue, Kokusai Renmei [The League of Nations ] (Tokyo: Ch¯ uo¯ K¯ oron Shinsha, 2010), p. 277. 20. Mitani Taichir¯ o, Wall Street to kyokut¯ o : Seiji ni okeru kokusai kiny¯ u shihon [Wall Street and the Far East ] (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 2009), pp. 78–79, 172–173.

PART I

The League of Nations as Forums and Actors

CHAPTER 2

Social and Humanitarian Issues of the League of Nations

How did social and humanitarian issues come to be included in the scope of the League of Nations? David Hunter Miller, the legal advisor of the US State Department, mentioned several times in his The Drafting of the Covenant that the British officials played a significant role in ‘extending the humanitarian activities of the League’.1 Therefore, paying particular attention to Britain, the first section of this chapter briefly observes the emergence of social and other technical issues in the Covenant of the League. The second section explores how Japan joined the League, and the last section examines the League’s arrival in East Asia.

The Emergence of Social and Humanitarian Issues in the Covenant of the League International co-operation and establishing an international organization to promote peace had been considered in Europe as early as the eighteenth century. By the end of the nineteenth century, arbitration came to be considered significant in solving international disputes, and diplomatic conferences were held at The Hague in 1899 and 1907. More practical co-operation for common rules also developed in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Technical organizations such as the Universal Postal Union, which dates back to 1874, were established. International co-operation in regulatory fields also started. © The Author(s) 2020 H. Goto-Shibata, The League of Nations and the East Asian Imperial Order, 1920–1946, New Directions in East Asian History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4968-7_2

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The horrors and destruction of the First World War strengthened the desire to prevent a repetition of conflicts. The war also convinced some people of the acute necessity of international co-operation. In Britain during the war, the Bryce Group was the first to discuss the idea of an international organization to maintain peace. Its leader was James Bryce, historian, Liberal politician and the former British ambassador to Washington. Among the members was John Atkinson Hobson, a well-known journalist.2 Partly inspired by them, the League of Nations Society was established in the summer of 1915. Lord Robert Cecil, the parliamentary under-secretary of state for foreign affairs and the minister of blockade from February 1916, also came to consider the establishment of the international organization as a most important task. As the son of the third Marquess of Salisbury and the cousin of Arthur Balfour, Cecil was the best-connected among the British advocates of international organization. Both Salisbury and Balfour were former prime ministers. Meanwhile, in the United States, the League to Enforce Peace was formed. At its meeting held in May 1916, President Woodrow Wilson publicly advocated the idea of an international organization. The idea came to be included in the war aims as the United States joined the Allies in April 1917. On 5 January 1918, the British prime minister, David Lloyd George, gave a speech to the Trades Union Congress at Caxton Hall. He declared the creation of some international organization as being among Britain’s preconditions for peace. Cecil was among those who drafted the speech.3 Three days later, President Wilson demanded a general association of nations in his Fourteen Points speech. The French including Leon Bourgeois were also working on their plan. By the end of the war, it became obvious that establishing a new international organization would be negotiated at the peace conference. The British prepared well for the actual schemes for the League, and their proposals greatly influenced its formation.4 On 3 January 1918, just before the Caxton Hall speech, the Committee on the League of Nations was appointed. Its chairman was Sir Walter Phillimore, a jurist and a privy councillor. The plan of the Phillimore Committee was submitted on 20 March 1918. It was still ‘limited in function to the consideration of disputes on urgent occasions’. It did not provide for any regularly recurrent meetings; its conference was the diplomatic group in a particular capital which came together when they were convened at a time of stress.5

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After the Armistice on 11 November 1918, two further reports were produced by the members of the Foreign Office’s Political Intelligence Division. One was by Lord Eustace Percy. He had worked at the British Embassy in Washington from 1910 to 1914, and Ambassador Bryce was then his intellectual mentor.6 The other was by Alfred Zimmern, an Oxford scholar, among those who were recruited to prepare the postwar settlement.7 Cecil had been appointed to head the Foreign Office’s League of Nations Section. He selected Zimmern’s memorandum as a base, and the outcome was Cecil’s plan. It represented the mainstream Foreign Office’s thinking on the League question.8 Jan Christiaan Smuts published a pamphlet The League of Nations: A Practical Suggestion in December 1918. He was a politician of South Africa, then a Dominion in the British Empire. When he participated in the Imperial War Conference in 1917, Lloyd George noticed his capability and made him remain in the War Cabinet. Smuts had been given responsibility for preparing the British brief for the peace conference.9 In The League of Nations, he made the proposal of an international organization more concrete and his proposal had ‘profound influence on President Wilson’.10 He considered the actual structure of the League, suggesting the two strata of the General Conference and the Council, including permanent and additional members in the Council. Permanent members were to be composed of representatives of the Great Powers, while additional members were to be drawn from the middle and small states.11 This was different from Cecil’s plan which limited the Council only to the Great Powers.12 The idea of including international administration of wide-ranging issues appeared quite early. It is widely known that Leonard Woolf considered the issue in his International Government.13 Hobson also wrote as early as 1915 that some of those who considered an international organization also thought it necessary ‘to cure the deep, underlying causes of the grievances, ambitions, and antagonisms of national or quasi-national interests which have always been the great disturbers of the peace’. The issues of ‘primarily utilitarian objects’ he raised include ‘the vast and complex machinery of communications and transport’, ‘the monetary and financial system’, ‘the prevention of disease’, and ‘the spread of reliable information regarding … demands for labour’.14 Practical co-operation to control natural resources, shipping and trade materialized among the Allies during the war. Some members of the Allied Maritime Transport Council would come to play significant roles

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in the League of Nations. Jean Monnet, well-known as the founding father of the European Union, was one of them. He would be the deputy secretary-general of the League, albeit only briefly (1919–1922). Another was Arthur Salter, who would be the director of the League’s Economic and Financial Section. In January 1918, Maurice Hankey, the secretary of Britain’s War Cabinet, submitted a memorandum. He suggested that political, economic and military organizations which already existed during the war might be used as the basis of the League of Nations. He also considered that various international activities ‘could gradually be brought under league auspices’. This idea ‘received important public support from several quarters’.15 Both Zimmern and Smuts developed the ideas concerning international co-operation through the League. Zimmern wrote that there were ‘a large number of existing bodies engaged in performing international functions’, and suggested that ‘they should be required to report regularly to the Inter-State Conference through the secretariat’. Furthermore, he proposed setting up various international bodies for study and inquiry, because he was concerned that the chief dangers to the world’s peace in the future might arise in connection with problems which were not suitable for judicial determination. He raised various subjects as examples of the problems: the slave trade, white slave traffic, health, industrial conditions, finance and currency, transit and the conservation of resources.16 Smuts also suggested that various existing international technical bodies should be placed under the League of Nations. He began his pamphlet, The League of Nations, by referring to the wartime ‘practice of the Allies in controlling and rationing food, shipping, coal, munitions, etc., for common purposes’, and suggested that ‘in future a League of Nations might be similarly used for the common economic needs of the nations belonging to the League’. It is also noticeable that, just like Zimmern, he proposed that ‘[i]nternational administrative bodies, now performing international functions in accordance with treaty arrangement, should in future be placed under the management and control of the Council’. The subjects he raised are also wide-ranging: post, telegraph and cables; copyrights, patents and trademarks; sanitary regulations; the slave trade and white slave traffic.17 Both Cecil and Smuts participated in the Paris Peace Conference, and represented Britain at the League of Nations Commission. Soon after arriving in Paris on 6 January 1919, Cecil began meeting the Americans

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such as Colonel Edward House, the adviser to the president, and Robert Lansing, the secretary of state. They agreed that experts from the two countries should meet and draft a League of Nations treaty for consideration as soon as possible. Cecil recorded on 12 January that a drafting committee of the League of Nations was held in the evening and that it made some progress.18 Miller recorded that a revision of Cecil’s earlier paper was received on 18 January.19 Cecil and Smuts met President Wilson on the evening of 19 January. Wilson showed his scheme for the League of Nations, and Cecil’s impression of it was ‘almost entirely Smuts and Phillimore combined’. Fortunately, Wilson was not difficult to deal with.20 Cecil showed the president a copy of his draft convention and this became one basis for the discussions between Cecil and Miller, who ‘received considerable powers to discuss the differences between the American and the British League of Nations scheme’.21 Miller noticed in discussions with Cecil ‘how much the British were thinking of matters of international co-operation’.22 The Cecil-Miller Draft, which was prepared by 27 January, touched upon appointing a ‘Commission to study and report on economic, sanitary and other similar problems of international concern’, although it was considered supplementary.23 After Cecil exchanged opinions with the president and Colonel House on 31 January,24 the legal adviser of the British Foreign Office, Cecil Hurst, and Miller prepared the socalled Hurst-Miller draft on 1 and 2 February. Thus, by the time the League of Nations Commission began its work with President Wilson as its chairman, substantial progress had already been made between the American and British experts. The first meeting of the League of Nations Commission was convened on 3 February. Wilson, the chairman, laid the Hurst-Miller draft before the Commission. Even Bourgeois saw it for the first time.25 He laid the French proposal, while Italy laid an Italian draft scheme before the Commission. But they did not oppose Wilson’s suggestion that the Anglo-American draft should form the basis of the discussion. There were initially fifteen members in the Commission, namely two members representing each of the five principal allies, and five members elected to represent all the other powers. Among the members were Nobuaki Makino (1861–1949) and Sutemi Chinda (1857–1929) of Japan, and young V. K. Wellington Koo (Gu Weijun, 1888–1985) of the Republic of China. Koo’s impressive English name was taken from the Duke of Wellington. He received a doctorate from Columbia University, and was

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extremely fluent in English. Relations between the Chinese like him and their foreign counterparts became smoother by the shared language and experience. Diplomacy would be a strong point of the Republic of China.26 The Commission members were supported by many colleagues. Among the British team were, to name but a few, Percy, Frank P. Walters, Philip Noel-Baker, Viscount Cranborne who was the nephew of Robert Cecil, and E. H. Carr. Walters would work in the League of Nations, rising to become its deputy secretary-general. He would also be the author of A History of the League of Nations. Noel-Baker, a Quaker, had worked on the continent as a member of the Friends’ Ambulance Unit during the First World War. He would be a Labour MP and an expert on disarmament and international law. As far as the League was concerned, he was almost like a son to Cecil. They would form a very close relationship.27 The British and the Americans planned to have an Executive Council of the Great Powers as well as a General Assembly of all member states. Cecil had met Paul Hymans, the Belgian foreign minister, for tea on 29 January, and told the latter roughly what the League of Nations scheme was. Cecil, however, did not tell Hymans that the smaller states were to have no representatives on the Council.28 On the second and third meetings of the League of Nations Commission, the smaller states demanded to be represented on the Executive Council of the League. Hymans strongly denounced the draft proposal. Belgium had been the first bulwark against German invasion, and placed under four years of occupation during the Great War. The decision to give the smaller states some representation was made on 13 February.29 Meanwhile, Japan’s Great Power status and its seat at the Council were not questioned.30 The British treated Japan as one of the Great Powers at this stage. Both the plans of Zimmern and Smuts included Japan in the Great Powers together with the British Empire, France, Italy and the United States.31 The major reason for this was that Japan entered the First World War as early as August 1914, and fought against Germany. It sent warships to the Mediterranean and female nurses to Britain, France and Russia.32 (I will touch upon one of the nurses later.) Japan was considered to have contributed to the victory of the Allies.33 In addition, Japan had been victorious in the Sino-Japanese War in 1894–1895 and the RussoJapanese War of 1904–1905. The Anglo-Japanese Alliance signed in 1902

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still continued. Military strength was a significant element to be considered as a Great Power in those days.34 Furthermore, to dominate the new international organization by European countries and the United States did not seem appropriate if one wanted to make it appear global and universal rather than merely Western.35 The draft Covenant of 14 February was prepared and made public to gauge the reaction of the other delegations, the neutral states, and the world in general. While Wilson was back in the United States for a month, the efforts to improve the text continued.36 Several draft articles were combined, and more detailed provisions were prepared. The League of Nations Commission reconvened on 22 March. The clauses regarding the traffic in women and children and that in opium and other dangerous drugs were then added by the 13th meeting of the Commission held on 26 March.37 As will be seen at the beginning of Chapters 3 and 5, relevant works had already been started before the First World War. The representatives of voluntary organizations met and tried to influence the national delegates.38 The proposals of extending social and humanitarian activities of the League of Nations were finally incorporated in the Covenant as Article 23. Its section (c) reads that the members of the League ‘will entrust the League with the general supervision over the execution of agreements with regard to the traffic in women and children, and the traffic in opium and other dangerous drugs’; and section (f) stipulates that the members ‘will endeavour to take steps in matters of international concern for the prevention and control of disease’. Because of the more pressing problems of peace, the structure of the technical organization was left undefined by the authors of the League’s Covenant. The task of establishing it was entrusted to Drummond, the first secretary-general. Various organizations and committees including the International Labour Organization (ILO) would be established in the early 1920s. The League’s first Assembly decided to establish the OAC. The League of Nations Health Organization (hereafter the LNHO) was established in 1923. It should also be noted that Article 7 of the League’s Covenant stipulated that all positions under or in connection with the League should be open equally to men and women. Social and humanitarian issues had attracted the interest of women. In addition, there had been many philanthropic organizations.39 Women were sometimes appointed to the League’s committees on social questions, and Rachel Crowdy was in charge of social questions in the Secretariat. She had been renowned

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for her work at the Voluntary Aid Detachment run by the British Red Cross during the First World War, and had been made a DBE for her work in 1919. She was recruited to work in the League in the same year, and initially, her works included issues concerning traffic in opium and other dangerous drugs, the traffic in women and children, and even health questions. The independent Health Section was established in 1921, and Crowdy became the chief of the Social Questions and Opium Traffic Section in 1922. Complete equality, however, was not achieved. While the LNHO expanded, her section remained small. Her staff were not necessarily competent. While other male section heads were all directors, she was never given a rank of director or a salary equal to that of male section heads.40 Furthermore, the contracts of male heads of other sections were renewed for seven years in September 1928, but Crowdy’s contract lasted for only one more year. She left the League in 1930.41

Japan’s Participation in the League of Nations Japan entered the First World War early on the side of the Allies, and became a permanent member of the League’s Council. Its experience before and during the war was, however, very different from other Allies. In his Governing the World, Mark Mazower traces the history of internationalism, and includes economic internationalism and Richard Cobden in the genealogy. He has, however, also pointed out that free trade had a different aspect when the idea was brought to the world outside Europe. What had started out as a peace movement of its own was quickly used to underwrite another kind of imperial policy, and the door into other people’s economies was soon being forced open by British diplomats, backed by gunboats, everywhere from West Africa to Istanbul and Peking.42

Robinson and Gallagher’s term ‘imperialism of free trade’ is wellknown, and East Asia in the mid-nineteenth century was the region where free trade was not easily introduced. Both the governments of China and Japan controlled their foreign relations. China had been the centre of the international order in East Asia, although Japan had maintained a distance. There had been no traditional transborder organizations such as

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the Christian church in the West. The idea of international co-operation had not appeared. From the mid-nineteenth century, Western powers challenged the existing order in East Asia, often with violent measures. In China’s case, the change was the result of the first Anglo-Chinese War, widely known as the Opium War. Japan received the news of the war by Dutch and Chinese reports, and was shocked to the core by the defeat of the Chinese. It had several years for preparation before the arrival of Commodore Matthew Perry of the United States. Free trade was by no means considered to be a vehicle of peace in East Asia. The West had various faces, and that of imperialism was dominant in East Asia. Japan observed how the Western countries behaved on the international stage, especially in East Asia, feeling it necessary to emulate them in order to maintain its independence. Japan had mastered the rules of international society quite well by the outbreak of the First World War, and had achieved a certain status there. It had been victorious in the wars against China and Russia, becoming a colonial power. On the other hand, it had never experienced any drastic changes in the rules of international society. Nor had it participated in major international conferences where the multiple countries negotiated new post-war rules. As a result, Japan had not come to understand the Western tradition that the rules could be revised through negotiations. In addition, Japan was geographically very far away from the major battlefields of the First World War, so that it did not suffer much from the conflict. The economy in East Asia prospered during the war, because European countries which had dominated the market could not export commodities to the region. Therefore, the Japanese did not realize how earnestly the Europeans had come to seek peace. Although the inter-war period was when drastic changes occurred in the rules of international relations, Japan did not expect them to happen. Japan’s understanding of war and peace had not changed by much from the pre-war period. It had not realized that war was excessively expensive and destructive. It would be only a quarter of a century later and through the devastation as a result of the Second World War that the Japanese began to seek peace earnestly. For Japan, which entered the international society in the midnineteenth century under the pressure from the Western powers, the idea of international co-operation was difficult to grasp. Although President Wilson’s impact was tremendous worldwide in 1918–1919,43 the Japanese senior politicians considered his idealism as mere lip service.

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Their majority expected that it would be impossible to establish the League of Nations. Although Japan attended the Paris Peace Conference as one of the five Great Powers, its preparation for the League was extremely poor. The Japanese delegates to the Peace Conference were instructed to postpone the establishment of the League of Nations. Japan’s greatest worry was that such organizations might turn out to be a white men’s club and that Japan might be placed in a disadvantageous position because of race.44 It proposed racial equality to be included in the League’s Covenant.45 The anxiety and intention of Japan were not understood by the Western powers. Japan did not succeed, and its doubts about equal and fair treatment were not mitigated. Even Kijuro Shidehara (1872–1951), the vice-foreign minister, was worried that the League’s multilateral diplomacy was disadvantageous to Japan. Shidehara had been a diplomat, and would serve twice as the foreign minister of Japan in 1924–1927 and 1929–1931. He was known to have made great efforts towards good relations between the United States and Japan, and would become the prime minister in 1946 after Japan was defeated in the Second World War. At the time of the Paris Peace Conference, however, Shidehara preferred bilateral negotiations to conference diplomacy. He knew that the Japanese, perhaps including himself, were not used to it.46 Another serious problem Shidehara must surely have been aware of was that the Japanese were not good at communicating in foreign languages. ‘Talk’ was the gist of what the new system would bring about,47 and that was exactly what the Japanese were not good at. Shidehara himself was skilled in English,48 but the problem of communication was sometimes observed even among diplomats. It was partly because of cultural differences, and partly because the older generation did not receive good language training such as through studying abroad. Naotake Sato (1882–1971), who was the ambassador to France from 1933 to 1936, complained in his memoirs that there had been no established system of language training when he had joined the diplomatic service.49 At the Paris Peace Conference, Japan came to be nicknamed as a ‘silent partner’,50 while participating Chinese diplomats could argue in fluent English. Some Chinese diplomats in those days, such as Wellington Koo, were educated in the United States.51 Some others were the sons of diplomats and spent almost their entire lives in Europe or in the United States. The example of the latter was Victor Chi-Tsai Hoo (Hu Shize, 1894– 1972), who would be the representative to the OAC in the 1930s. He

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was born in Washington, DC, because his father was then working at the Chinese Legation there. Those diplomats of the Republic of China were competent, and internationalist by instinct and training. Furthermore, they were extremely fluent in English, and indeed some were more natural in English than in Chinese. Hoo and T. V. Soong (Song Ziwen, 1894–1971) communicated in English.52 The language problem of the Japanese would become serious when the League dealt with technical questions, because most Japanese experts of such specialized issues had been born, bred and educated only in Japan. Even if they could read, understand and acquire necessary information written in English or French, they were not trained to communicate in those languages. Japan had established its modern education system based on its native language in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. This had been useful when Japan developed its industry and the military forces, because neither workers nor soldiers had to learn foreign languages at all. Once the Japanese had to communicate on the international stage, however, the lack of proficiency in foreign languages turned out to be a severe and serious handicap. Either experts with no language ability attended meetings themselves, or they asked non-experts who could communicate in English or French to do so—whichever the case, a good performance could not be expected. Descriptions like ‘a smiling Japanese who appeared to know no language besides Japanese’ could be often found both in the primary and secondary literature.53 The Japanese themselves were aware of the problem of language proficiency and did not consider the situation satisfactory. Kikujiro Ishii (1866–1945), the representative of Japan to the League of Nations as well as the ambassador to France from 1920 to 1927, wrote in his memoirs as follows: … anyone could see that the Japanese members who had to participate in international conferences were in a difficult situation; although they had favourably comparable knowledge on the topics discussed there, they did not have the ability to express nor to explain it, so that they had to sit silently in the corner of the room.54

Ishii lamented the disgrace and disadvantage the Japanese were suffering as a result of their neglect of foreign language acquisition. It is highly likely that the Japanese missed opportunities to socialize and join in the community of the League officials or the representatives from other

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countries. Not very many could become members of the transnational community. It is also likely that they could not avoid misunderstandings at critical moments.55 Although Japan was initially not keen on establishing the League, once it was decided to be established, the Japanese considered it impossible for them to remain isolated from it. It was obviously better to take part in various rule-making processes. In addition, to be a permanent member of the Council was honourable.56 Furthermore, Japan became one of the mandatory powers. The former German islands in the Pacific north of the equator were placed under Japan’s supervision as a Class C mandate. Therefore, Japan not only participated in the League as a founding member, but all through the 1920s it also did its best to co-operate fully with the League. It prepared for the first Assembly thoroughly,57 so that it appeared enthusiastic to Frank Walters. Only Italy and Japan among the great powers looked upon the meeting as an occasion of practical importance. … Japan appreciated the fact that at Geneva she stood on an equal footing with the leading States of Europe and could watch and, if she chose, share in, the management of international affairs. The Japanese delegation was so numerous that a ship had to be specially chartered to bring it to Europe.58

Walters also wrote that the ‘Japanese government was greatly attached to the League’, and Shidehara and his colleagues of the Minseito party were ‘on the friendliest terms with the Secretariat’.59 The Japanese Bureau for the League of Nations Affairs was established in Paris in 1921. Its aim was to support the Japanese ambassador to France who was also the Japanese representative to the League.60 The number of Bureau members was less than that of the Japanese Embassy in London, but almost the same as that of the embassies in Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands. The Japanese diplomats who worked in the Bureau can be called the ‘League men’. Most of them had the experience of service in France, while that in Britain, the United States, and Asian countries was limited.61 Their first foreign language was French, which means that they were not necessarily fluent in English. Not many Japanese were good at both English and French, the two official languages of the League. Elisabetta Tollardo considers that the lack of fluency in English in the case of the Italians limited the possibility of interaction with other

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League officials and especially with the Americans.62 It is likely that the same was observed in the case of Japan’s ‘League men’. Japan’s ‘League men’ were expected to become good at conference diplomacy. The shared experience of France and the League itself made them favourable to internationalism and to international co-operation through the League. They devoted themselves to the organization. The Japanese delegates to the League contributed to solving problems such as the minorities questions between European countries. … there may be some advantage, when a European problem is under discussion, in including a suitable non-European member if one is available. First the Brazilian and then the Japanese delegate have, for example, usefully acted as rapporteurs on minorities questions.63

The decisions of the Japanese diplomats were considered to be fair, especially because they did not have any personal or national interests involved in those European disputes. In addition, Japan regularly paid its annual contributions to the League which were indispensable in the actual running of the organization. Japan in the 1920s was later described even as ‘a model member’.64 As Japan was a permanent member, some Japanese had significant positions in the League and related organizations.65 Inazo Nitobe (1862– 1933) was the under secretary-general. He was originally an agricultural economist, and studied both in the United States and Germany. He was also known as the author of Bushido: The Soul of Japan (1900). The fact that he was a Quaker married to an American might have made his life easier at Geneva. Rachel Crowdy wrote on him as ‘the one who st[ood] out most clearly in [her] mind’.66 Another Japanese who occupied a high position was Mineitciro Adatci (Mineichiro Adachi, 1869–1934). After taking part in the Council and Assembly as Japan’s ambassador to Belgium (1917–27) and then to France (1927–1930), he was elected to be a judge of the Permanent Court of International Justice (hereafter PCIJ). He served as its president from January 1931 to the end of 1933. Although he had been educated only in Japan, it is known that his French language ability was exceptionally high for a Japanese. While in Belgium, he made tremendous efforts ‘at times in an exaggerated manner’ to be accepted and liked by the people in the country.67 Both Nitobe and Adachi can be considered as Japan’s internationalists. They

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were influenced by the international environment in which they worked, and believed in the value of international co-operation. The efforts of them and the ‘League men’, however, did not increase Japan’s interest in the League of Nations. Despite the above-mentioned observation of Walters, it cannot be said that Japan maintained its interest in the League. Japan, just like the European countries, began to consider the League as a European concern.68 Different from China, which considered the League as a source of national and international legitimacy, Japan did not feel the necessity to use the new international platform to pursue any particular aim. The Japanese government came to leave the League matters to the ‘League men’.69 When the ‘League men’ worked in Japan, many were assigned to the Treaty Division in the Foreign Ministry. The status of the Treaty Division in the Ministry was not low, but not extremely high. Only one person reached the position of vice-foreign minister after he served as the head of the Treaty Division.70 The ‘League men’ were actually not very influential in Japan. Naotake Sato can be considered to be one of the ‘League men’. He had first been stationed at St Petersburg, where French was the language of diplomacy and the upper class of society. He was the head of the Japanese Bureau for the League of Nations Affairs in Paris from 1927 to 1930. While he was the ambassador to Belgium (1930–1933), the Japanese Guandong Army began its aggression in Manchuria. As Kenkichi Yoshizawa (1874–1965), the ambassador to France, was summoned back home to be the foreign minister of the Cabinet of his father-in-law, Sato represented Japan for some time. After he served as the ambassador to France, he tendered his resignation in 1936. He was appointed foreign minister in March 1937. This was not a promotion in the ministry, but an appointment by the prime minister. Many British including Sir Alexander Cadogan, then the deputy under-secretary of state who had been the adviser on the League of Nations Affairs, knew Sato personally. When Sato paid the British ambassador to France his farewell visit in 1937 before leaving for Japan, the former said that ‘Japan was isolating herself from every friend’. Cadogan had ‘every confidence in his good intentions and in his ability, and his appointment [wa]s welcomed’ in Britain.71 In Japan, however, the power of the military had already become overwhelming. Sato’s speech in the Diet was detested by them, and he could serve as the foreign minister only for three months. The understanding of internationalism did not become deeper nor did it spread widely in Japan. As was mentioned above, Shidehara tried to

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have good relations with the United States. Different from the ‘League men’, however, he spent most of his career at the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo. He also served in the United States. It cannot be said that he made efforts for international co-operation in general; rather, he was thinking of co-operation with big powers, especially with the United States. Yotaro Sugimura (1884–1939) is a complicated example. If we look at his career first, he entered the Foreign Ministry four years after Sato and was fortunate to be given the opportunity to study international law at the University of Lyon. He received a doctorate there.72 After serving at the Imperial Japanese Bureau for the League of Nations Affairs, he succeeded Nitobe in January 1927, becoming one of the under secretaries-general and the director of the Political Section of the League. There was an unwritten rule that if an under secretary-general was of a certain nationality, his successor would be from the same country. Even after Sugimura became a League official, he continued to be formally employed in the administration of Japan. Tollardo shows that such ‘double-employment’ was frequent also in the cases of Germany and Italy. These countries wanted their nationals to maintain links to their home countries, especially when the information was needed. Having dual loyalty was not a problem as far as the League and the home country shared a common objective.73 It should be added that in Japan’s case, it was not easy to find a person who would be able to work in the Secretariat74 because of the language problem mentioned above. Sugimura was one of the keenest on the League of Nations among the Japanese in the 1920s, writing articles in Japanese explaining the Covenant of the League of Nations. He was considered to be one of Japan’s internationalists. At the Secretariat, Sugimura formed ‘a particularly trusting and affectionate relationship’ with Drummond.75 In addition, in his memoirs published by the Japanese League of Nations Association in 1930, he praised the British representatives at the League as being flexible, practical and the best. He described Sir Austen Chamberlain, British foreign secretary 1924–1929, as an honest, fair and respectable person in whom one could truly trust his strong sense of responsibility.76 Sugimura, just like Shidehara, tended to understand internationalism to be the co-operation with major powers. Furthermore, as will be seen in Chapter 4, Sugimura was also a nationalist. Internationalism and nationalism coexisted in him. Japan’s national interests were always in his mind. It seems that he was also a pragmatic person. Sugimura’s remarks after

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Japan withdrew from the League became more nationalist than internationalist. Such remarks were probably necessary to communicate with the military whose power was on the rise in the country.77 On the other hand, the divergence between the League and Japan after the Manchurian Crisis must have placed him under tremendous stress. Sugimura died of cancer in 1939 at the age of 55. Japan was a unique member of the League, and it is almost impossible to categorize it into any one group. First, Japan was a permanent member of the Council and a colonial power. It had a Class C mandate under its supervision. Therefore, it shared characteristics with powers such as Britain and France. Those countries were surely what Japan and the Japanese diplomats such as Sugimura aimed to be like. On the other hand, it was obvious that Japan was not a real equal with Britain and France. Japan was an Asian member. There were only a few independent Asian countries in the inter-war period. Initially, there were only four League members in South to East Asia: China, India, Japan and Siam. Most other territories were still colonies of Western powers. India was an anomalous case. It could become a League member due to its contribution to the war efforts of the mighty British Empire. It was, however, admitted only after arguments. Wilson was actually against the membership of colonies, arguing that if India could be a member, then the Philippines also could. Under the circumstances, the Japanese always felt that they might be isolated or discriminated because of race. Japan, which had only poorly prepared for the establishment of the League of Nations as a whole, did not expect at all that social and humanitarian issues would be included in the Covenant. Japan’s attention was concentrated on disarmament, mandates, and the racial equality proposal.78 Ishii considered technical conferences as less important than other diplomatic meetings.79 Still, once the technical issues were included in the Covenant, the Japanese government did not neglect them. As Iris Borowy writes, the Japanese government considered LNHO work sufficiently important to order its representative to remain permanently in Europe to take part in its work, instead of returning to Japan as he had previously planned to do.80 Another point which should be added concerning Japan is that the League did not come into contact with ordinary Japanese subjects at all; only the elite of Japan in some way or another knew the League. Japan was still a class-based society in those days, and the gap between the wealthy and the poor was huge. The language ability of those experts

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who attended the League meetings might have been poor, but still, they received higher education. On the other hand, there were many Japanese who only had six years of compulsory elementary education. The rate of literacy itself was high, but the knowledge of foreign languages was nil or extremely limited at best. The League of Nations Association in Japan was an organization which had a strong link with the Foreign Ministry. It was by no means a voluntary organization supported by ordinary people. Its characteristics were different from those of the British League of Nations Union.

The League’s Arrival in East Asia It was only after the outbreak of the Manchurian Incident in 1931 that the League came to be involved in East Asia to maintain peace and solve an international conflict. Until then, the League refrained from intervening in political issues in East Asia. The reason was the chaotic situation in China. After the Qing dynasty was overthrown in 1912, internal strife continued. Therefore, until the Nationalist government came to power in 1928, it was not very clear to the European members of the League which of the Beijing and the Nationalist governments was the central authority to negotiate with.81 One field where the League of Nations’ contact with East Asia started early was that of health. It was actually a Japanese who suggested the necessity of collecting information on epidemics in East Asia. At the second Health Committee held in October 1921, Dr Mikinosuke Miyajima (1872–1944), the representative of Japan and a malariologist at the Kitasato Institute, drew attention to the spread of pneumonic plague in the north-eastern part of China and Siberia due to population movement. His intention was to demonstrate the level of modernity and civilization of Japan to the international community. The Health Committee, on the other hand, needed to show that the League was a global, not a European, organization. It also needed to control infectious diseases. Miyajima’s suggestion led to the investigation into the incidence of plague and cholera by Dr Norman White, formerly of the Indian Medical Service and a British member of the League’s Health Section. He visited various places in East Asia for eight months in 1922–1923.

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Based on his report, it was decided that the Eastern Bureau would be established in Singapore in 1925 as the regional epidemiological intelligence centre of the LNHO. Preventing epidemics, such as cholera and plague, or at least collecting information on them was a significant work of the LNHO. The Bureau came to be commonly referred to as the ‘Far Eastern Bureau’. In those days, the term ‘Far East’ covered not only East Asia but also today’s Southeast Asia. The Eastern Bureau would be the symbol of the League’s global reach.82 Two Japanese would hold the position of deputy director of the Eastern Bureau: Tadashi Sato for one year from April 1926, and Dr Tsune Ouchi from September 1929 to January 1939. Both were selected from Japan’s Home Ministry.83 White also proposed to have an interchange of public health personnel in Japan. The purpose of this system was to stimulate the exchange of information and experience and to promote liaison between the various health administrations. The interchange was held in Japan in October 1925. Seventeen public health officers from eleven administrations studied in detail the public health services of Japan.84 Dr Thorvald Madsen, the president of the Health Committee, and Dr Ludwik Rajchman, the director of the League’s Health Section and the secretary of the Health Committee, also participated in the exchange. Drs Shiko and Hiroshi Kusama, Japanese First Division members of the Health Section at that time, were also there. They were brothers.85 Shiko Kusama was a Christian who had studied sociology at the University of Chicago, and went on to its graduate school. He came to know Miyajima, when the latter visited the city, and started working at the Japanese Bureau for the League of Nations Affairs in 1921. Later, he worked in the Secretariat of the League of Nations for a few years. He would succeed Miyajima as a member of the Permanent Central Opium Board (hereafter, PCOB), and he would be involved in the League of Nations until Japan finally severed its relations in November 1938. Hiroshi Kusama, the younger brother, studied at Johns Hopkins University. He would come back to Japan after four years at the Health Section.86 Now, back to Rajchman. While in Tokyo, he was impressed with the ‘magnificent system of public health administration which had been built up in Japan’.87 There was not much room for the LNHO to work in Japan. Rajchman then visited China, and had meetings with the Chinese health authorities. Here he was ‘impressed with the sense of a new beginning and powerful nationalist consciousness’. Also, he ‘saw an urgent need not only for public health measures, notably effective quarantine

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services, but also for efforts to win Chinese sympathies for the League.’88 He seems to have made a deep impression on the Chinese leaders and won their confidence. Most participants of the interchange of sanitary personnel also attended the first Advisory Council of the Eastern Bureau held in Singapore from 4 January 1926. Rajchman chaired the meeting. Hiroshi Kusama was also there with two other members of the Secretariat of the League of Nations.89 At the sixth Health Committee held in April 1926, Rajchman proposed that the LNHO should take an active part in the regeneration of China by means of the introduction of medical education and public health organization at Chinese seaports.90 Rajchman would be deeply involved in raising the standard of hygiene and medicine in China, and was to be one of the central figures of the technical co-operation between the League of Nations and China. He was born in Warsaw in 1881 and grew up in what was then a divided and nonexistent Poland. He studied medicine. At the same time, he was attracted to socialism, with the result that he had to leave the country. After staying for eight years in London, which was the centre for Poles with socialist inclinations, he returned to Warsaw in 1918. Presented with the typhus epidemic ravaging Poland in 1920, he contacted the League of Nations epidemic commission. His capability was noticed at this commission.91 It was the time when the LNHO was being established to carry out the terms of Article 23 (f) of the Covenant. The LNHO would consist of the General Advisory Health Council, the Health Committee which was the decision-making body, and the Health Section of the League’s Secretariat. The Health Section would implement the decisions of the Health Committee subject to approval by the secretary-general.92 It was necessary to have a director with medical knowledge to head the section. Crowdy was then in charge of health questions, and she was one of those who first noticed Rajchman’s ability.93 Meanwhile, Drummond, the secretary-general, wanted to recruit a true international civil servant, not the one merely representing his own country.94 A balance of nationalities among those who occupy high positions had also to be considered to make the organization multi-national. Therefore, Rajchman was appointed to be the director in 1921. He contributed greatly to expand the scope of the organization. ‘Under Rajchman’s leadership the Health Section … grew to become one of the largest sections of the Secretariat.’95 It can be said that he was one of the founding fathers of global governance.

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Nobody doubted Rajchman’s ability in medicine and administration, and he was the embodiment of internationalism. There were, however, some who considered that he accepted too many projects, and that the LNHO budget was too costly.96 The more serious problem was that Rajchman considered it difficult to distinguish technical works from politics. He was of the opinion that the League sometimes rendered services on social and economic questions from political considerations.97 Dr George Buchanan of the British Ministry of Health, who also played a role when Rajchman was appointed to be the director, came to have doubt about the latter’s way of moving things forward: presenting matters as urgent and timely that they should be at once given approval in principle; and then presenting the Health Committee with practically accomplished facts to be merely sanctioned. Before he participated in the above-mentioned sixth Health Committee in April 1926, Buchanan asked the opinion of the British Foreign Office on the expected proposal of Rajchman, namely the LNHO ‘taking as active a part as possible in the regeneration of China’. Although Buchanan had ‘no objection to this kind of proposal going forward’ as far as public health aspect was concerned, he was worried about its ‘political aspect’. He had been informed by a colleague who attended the first Advisory Conference of the Eastern Bureau held in Singapore that ‘Rajchman was specially feted by the Chinese there and was hand-in-glove with the Chinese representative while he appeared to be contemptuous of most of the Europeans’. He wondered whether the whole scheme was not ‘a good deal more political than hygiene’. Although this was the period when the AngloChinese relations were strained,98 the Far Eastern Department of the Foreign Office did not think at that stage that political issues would emerge from League’s works in medical and public health fields.99 Still, Buchanan continued to have negative opinions of Rajchman.100 We will meet Rajchman again in Chapter 4. Another issue which the League of Nations was involved with in East Asia from its early days was the control of opium trafficking and smoking. The work of the OAC established in 1921 will be examined in the next chapter.

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Notes 1. David Hunter Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant (New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1928, 2002 reprint), Vol. 1, pp. 218–220, 339. 2. George W. Egerton, Great Britain and the Creation of the League of Nations: Strategy, Politics, and International Organization, 1914–1919 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1978), pp. 7–11. 3. Ibid., pp. 58–59. 4. Mark Mazower, No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp. 42, 44. 5. Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant, Vol. 1, pp. 8–10. 6. Philip Williamson, ‘Percy, Eustace Sutherland Campbell, Baron Percy of Newcastle’, ODNB (version of 3 January 2008). 7. Alfred Zimmern, ‘A Memorandum Prepared for the Consideration of the British Government in Connexion with the Forthcoming Peace Settlement’, The League of Nations and the Rule of Law, 1918–1935 (London: Macmillan, 1936), p. 203. 8. Egerton, Great Britain, pp. 95, 99–100. 9. Ibid., p. 83. 10. Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant, p. 34; Mazower, No Enchanted Palace, p. 68. 11. J. C. Smuts, The League of Nations: A Practical Suggestion (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1918), pp. 29–43; Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant, p. 36. 12. Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant, p. 38; Egerton, Great Britain, p. 102; Armstrong, Lloyd, and Redmond, From Versailles to Maastricht, p. 23. 13. L. S. Woolf, International Government (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1916), Part II, Chapters II and III; Egerton, Great Britain, pp. 14–16. 14. J. A. Hobson, Towards International Government (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1915), pp. 116–118. 15. Egerton, Great Britain, pp. 69–71. 16. Zimmern, ‘A Memorandum’, pp. 203–207. 17. Smuts, The League of Nations, pp. 7–9, 42. 18. British Library (hereafter, BL), Cecil papers, Add 51131, Lord Cecil’s Diary of the British Delegation, 6, 8, 9 and 12 January 1919. 19. Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant, p. 51. 20. BL, Cecil papers, Add 51131, 19 January 1919. 21. Ibid., 25 January 1919. 22. Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant, p. 55.

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23. Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 129; Vol. 2, Document 12 (Cecil-Miller Draft, 27 January 1919), Article II-B. 24. Egerton, Great Britain, pp. 125–127. 25. BL, Cecil papers, Add 51131, 3 February 1919. 26. Alison Adcock Kaufman, ‘In Pursuit of Equality and Respect: China’s Diplomacy and the League of Nations’, Modern China, 40/6, 2014, pp. 611–612. 27. D. J. Whittaker, Fighter for Peace: Philip Noel-Baker 1889–1982 (York, England: William Sessions, 1989), p. 43. Noel-Baker was originally Philip Baker. He began to use his wife’s surname, Noel, as well, and in the 1940s, he started to hyphenate the two surnames. 28. BL, Cecil papers, Add 51131, 15 and 29 January 1919. 29. Ibid., 4 and 5 February 1919; Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant, Vol. I, pp. 138, 140, 157; Egerton, Great Britain, p. 131. 30. Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant, Vol. I, p. 154; Vol. II, p. 232. 31. Zimmern, ‘A Memorandum’, p. 203; Smuts, The League of Nations, pp. 29–43. 32. Araki Eiko, Nightingale no matsuei tachi [Those Who Followed the Footsteps of Nightingale] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2014), pp. 193–196; Ian Nish, ‘Japan’s Response to Britain’s Wartime Naval Appeals, 1917– 19’, Taisho Studies, Part II , Discussion Paper of the Suntory Centre, December 2018, pp. 9–10, 15, 17. 33. Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant, Vol. I, p. 159, Ferdinand Larnaude’s remark. 34. William E. Rappard, ‘Small States in the League of Nations’, Political Science Quarterly, 49/4, 1934, pp. 544–545. 35. Iris Borowy, Coming to Terms with World Health: The League of Nations Health Organisation (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2009), p. 141. 36. Walters, A History of the League of Nations, pp. 34–35. 37. Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant, Vol. 2, Document 19, p. 315, Annex to Minutes on Ninth Meeting; pp. 339–341, 355–356, thirteenth Meeting, March 26; British Documents on Foreign Affairs (hereafter BDFA), Part II, Series I, The Paris Peace Conference of 1919, Vol. 1, Preparations of the Conference and Early Meetings, Document 38, Report of the Commission on the League of Nations. 38. See also, Sandrine Kott, ‘From Transnational Reformist Network to International Organization’, in Davide Rodogno, Bernhard Struck, and Jakob Vogel (eds), Shaping the Transnational Sphere: Experts, Networks and Issues from the 1840s to the 1930s (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2015), pp. 239–240. 39. See for example, Eve Colpus, Female Philanthropy in the Interwar World: Between Self and Other (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018).

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39

40. University of Bristol Library, Special Collections, DM1584/12/B, unpublished autobiography of Dame Rachel Crowdy, Part I, Chapter 4, pp. 4–5. This material is used with the permission of the University of Bristol Library Special Collections. Walters, A History of the League of Nations, p. 79; D. M. Northcroft, Women at Work in the League of Nations (London: Page, 1923), preface, pp. 13–14; Carol Miller, ‘The Social Section and Advisory Committee on Social Questions of the League of Nations’, in Paul Weindling (ed.), International Health Organisations and Movements 1918–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 154–156; and Borowy, Coming to Terms, p. 47. 41. Jessica R. Pliley, ‘Claims to Protection: The Rise and Fall of Feminist Abolitionism in the League of Nations’ Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children, 1919–1936’, Journal of Women’s History, 22/4, 2010, p. 100. 42. Mark Mazower, Governing the World: The History of an Idea (London and New York: Penguin Press, 2012), p. 42. 43. Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self -determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). 44. Kobayashi Tatsuo (ed.), Suius¯ o nikki [The Diary of the Villa of Blue-green Rain] (Tokyo: Hara Shob¯ o, 1966), p. 308; Un’no Yoshir¯ o, Kokusai Renmei to Nihon [The League of Nations and Japan] (Tokyo: Hara Shob¯ o, 1972), pp. 9–10; NHK dokyumento Sh¯ owa shuzai han (ed.), Berusaiyu no Nissh¯ o ki [The Flag of the Rising Sun at Versailles ] (Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, 1986), pp. 210–221. 45. On this subject, see Naoko Shimazu, Japan, Race and Equality (London: Routledge, 1998). 46. Shinohara, Kokusai Renmei, p. 61. 47. Pedersen, The Guardians, p. 4. 48. See for example, Sir John Tilley, London to Tokyo (London: Hutchinson, 1942), pp. 143, 162. 49. Sat¯ o, Kaiko, pp. 151–152, 158–160. 50. NHK shuzai han, Berusaiyu, p. 61, Makino Nobuaki, Kaikoroku, j¯ o [Memoires, Vol. 1] (Tokyo: Ch¯ uo¯ K¯ oronsha, bunko, 2018, first published in 1948–49), pp. 38–39. 51. S. G. Craft, V. K. Wellington Koo and the Emergence of Modern China (Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2004). 52. Mona Yung-Ning Hoo, Painting the Shadows: The Extraordinary Life of Victor Hoo (London: Eldridge & Co, 1998), pp. 1, 70; Sat¯ o, Kaiko, p. 268. 53. For example, Borowy, Coming to Terms, pp. 75–76.

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54. Ishii Kikujir¯ o, Gaik¯ o yoroku [Additional Stories of Diplomacy] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 3rd edition, 1931), p. 439. 55. Elisabetta Tollardo, ‘Italy and the League of Nations: Nationalism and Internationalism 1922–1935’, D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 2014, pp. 70–71. 56. Un’no, Kokusai Renmei to Nihon, p. 17. 57. Ibid., p. 27. 58. Walters, A History of the League of Nations, p. 116. 59. Ibid., pp. 333–334. 60. Sat¯ o, Kaiko, pp. 195–196. 61. Yajima Akira, Ashida Hitoshi to Nihon gaik¯ o: Renmei gaik¯ o kara Nichi Bei d¯ omei he [Ashida Hitoshi and Japanese Diplomacy: From the Diplomacy towards the League to the US-Japanese Alliance] (Tokyo: Yoshikawa K¯ obunkan, 2019), pp. 48–57. 62. Tollardo, ‘Italy and the League of Nations’, pp. 70–71. 63. The National Archives, Kew (hereafter TNA), Foreign Office papers, FO411/18, no. 171, W260, Memorandum on the Revision of the Covenant of the League of Nations, 4 January 1934. 64. TNA, FO371/18193, F6385/2203/23, 5 November 1934, Strang Minute. Looking back to the 1920s, Strang used the term. 65. Gram-Skjoldager and Ikonomou, ‘The Construction of the League of Nations Secretariat’, pp. 5–6. 66. Bristol University, Special Collections, DM1584/12/B, unpublished autobiography of Crowdy, Part III, Chapter 1, p. 4. 67. TNA, FO371/13333, W1490/958/4, 10 February 1928, from Sir G. Grahame. 68. See also Daniel Gorman, The Emergence of International Society in the 1920s (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 94. 69. Sat¯ o, Kaiko, p. 222. 70. Yajima, Ashida Hitoshi, pp. 48–57. 71. TNA, FO371/21038, F1310/233/23, 3 March 1937, from Clive, enclosure 1 (letter from Sir George Clerk, British Embassy, Paris, to Cadogan, 6 March 1937) and 2 (Reply letter from Cadogan to Clerk, 23 March 1937). 72. Sat¯ o, Kaiko, p. 158. 73. Tollardo, ‘Italy and the League of Nations’, pp. 33–34. 74. Sat¯ o, Kaiko, p. 238. 75. Nish, Japan’s Struggle with Internationalism, pp. 5, 11. 76. Sugimura Y¯ otar¯o, Renmei 10 nen [Ten Years at the League of Nations ] (Tokyo: Kokusai Renmei Ky¯ okai, 1930), pp. 57, 61, 72. 77. Obiya Shunsuke, ‘Sugimura Y¯otar¯o to Nihon no Kokusai Renmei gaik¯ o [Sugimura Yotaro and Japanese Diplomacy toward the League of Nations]’, Shibusawa kenky¯ u [Shibusawa Studies ], No. 30, 2017, pp. 25–45.

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41

78. Un’no, Kokusai Renmei to Nihon, p. 15. The Japanese Foreign Ministry hired Thomas Baty, a British scholar, as an adviser on international law. He had been criticized by Paul Reinsch for not giving attention to the organization of economic and scientific interests. See Hatsue Shinohara, US International Lawyers in the Interwar Years: A Forgotten Crusade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 40–41. 79. Ishii, Gaik¯ o yoroku, pp. 442–443. 80. Borowy, Coming to Terms, pp. 75–76. 81. Obiya Shunsuke, Kokusai Renmei: kokusai kik¯ o no fuhensei to chiikisei [The League of Nations: Universalism and Regionalism in an International Organization] (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 2019), Chapter 2. 82. Walters, A History of the League of Nations, p. 182; Martin David Dubin, ‘The League of Nations Health Organization’, in Paul Weindling (ed.), International Health Organisation and Movements, 1918–1939, p. 69; Lenore Manderson, ‘Wireless Wars in the Eastern Arena: Epidemiological Surveillance, Disease Prevention and the Work of the Eastern Bureau of the League of Nations Health Organisation, 1925–1942’, in Paul Weindling (ed.), International Health Organisations and Movements, pp. 109–110, 116–117; and Borowy, Coming to Terms, p. 130f. 83. Yasuda Kayo, Kokusai seiji no naka no kokusai hoken jigy¯ o [International Health Work in International Politics: From the League of Nation’s Health Organization to the WHO and UNICEF] (Kyoto: Minerva Shob¯ o, 2014), pp. 37–39, 46–48. 84. The League of Nations, The League of Nations in Relation to the Pacific (Geneva, September 1929), p. 25. 85. Japan Center for Asian Historical Records, National Archives of Japan (hereafter, JACAR), Ref. B04122184500, images 31, 65, Kokusai Renmei eisei gijyutukan koukan mondai ikken [Papers on the League of Nations’ interchange of sanitary personnel] (B-9-10-0), Vol. 2. 86. Sat¯ o, Kaiko, pp. 327–328; Kusama Shik¯ o tsuit¯o sh¯ u hensan iinkai, Kusama Shik¯ o tsuit¯ o sh¯ u [The Festschrift for Shiko Kusama] (private publication, 1960), pp. 45, 233–240. Kusama’s daughter, Kazuko Yasukawa, received piano lessons while they were in Paris and became a well-known pianist. 87. Walters, A History of the League of Nations, p. 331. 88. Borowy, Coming to Terms, p. 196. 89. JACAR, Ref. B04122189500, images 20 and 35, Kokusai Renmei Singapore densenby¯ o j¯ oh¯ okyoku kankei ikken [Papers on the League of Nations’ Eastern Bureau] (B-9-10-0). 90. TNA, FO371/11688, F1487/1487/10, 8 April 1926, from Ministry of Health (letter from Buchanan to J. Murray, Counsellor of the FO);

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91.

92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97.

98. 99.

100.

Chang Li, Guoji hezuo zai Zhongguo: lianmeng jiaose de kaocha 1919– 1946 (Taibei: Zhongyang Yanjiuyuan Jindaishi Yanjiusuo, 1999), pp. 74– 75; Shinohara, Kokusai Renmei, p. 156; Yasuda, Kokusai seiji, pp. 51– 53, 57. Marta A. Balinska, For the Good of Humanity: Ludwik Rajchman, Medical Statesman, Trans. Rebecca Howell (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1998), pp. 1–61; Dubin, ‘The League of Nations Health Organization’, p. 67. Borowy, Coming to Terms, pp. 124–125. Bristol University, Special Collections, DM1584/12/B, unpublished autobiography of Dame Rachel Crowdy, Part III, Chapter 1, pp. 5, 12. Walters, A History of the League of Nations, pp. 75–76. Neville M. Goodman, International Health Organizations and Their Work (London: J. & A. Churchill, 1952), pp. 104–105. Walters, A History of the League of Nations, p. 134; Borowy, Coming to Terms, pp. 127, 135. Balinska, For the Good of Humanity, pp. 96, 98. See his remarks at the Institute of Pacific Relations in 1931. Bruno Lasker (ed.), Problems of the Pacific 1931: Proceedings of the Fourth Conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations (Greenwood Press, 1969; originally published in 1932), pp. 61–62, 251, 514. Harumi Goto-Shibata, Japan and Britain in Shanghai, 1925–31 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, St Antony’s Series, 1995), Chapter 2. TNA, FO371/11688, F1487/1487/10, from Ministry of Health (letter from Buchanan to J. Murray), 8 April 1926; Outfile to Buchanan, dated 19 April 1926; Jürgen Osterhammel, ‘“Technical Co-operation” between the League of Nations and China’, Modern Asian Studies, 13/4, 1979, p. 664; Dubin, ‘The League of Nations Health Organization’, p. 61. TNA, FO371/14708, F1117/169/10, a letter from Buchanan to Pratt, 22 February 1930; F1176/169/10, Copies of notes taken from Rajchman’s report on his health mission to China, 21 February 1930, p. 29; TNA, FO371/14709, F4398/169/10, from Buchanan, communicated, 13 August 1930.

CHAPTER 3

Challenging the Imperial Order: Control of Opium

Opium smoking was a problem particularly rampant in East and Southeast Asia. It was already recognized by the beginning of the twentieth century that both trafficking in opium and the use of it had to be controlled. International meetings had been held even before the First World War. After the war, the League’s Covenant accepted the responsibility of opium control, which led to the establishment of the OAC. This chapter examines the changes brought about by the OAC, which functioned as a forum. The OAC began collecting and analysing information on opium, not only in the home countries but also in the colonies. Thanks to the OAC, various facts, which had previously been discussed only within each empire and only among a limited number of experts, came to be widely known. Empires in the region had to change their policies on opium.

Parts of the following journal articles have been reprinted with permission: ‘The International Opium Conference of 1924–25 and Japan’, Modern Asian Studies, 36/4, 2002, 969–991; ‘Empire on the Cheap: The Control of Opium Smoking in the Straits Settlements, 1925–1939’, Modern Asian Studies, 40/1, 2006, 59–80. © The Author(s) 2020 H. Goto-Shibata, The League of Nations and the East Asian Imperial Order, 1920–1946, New Directions in East Asian History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4968-7_3

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Setting the Scene---Until the First World War The cultivation of poppies, the collection of the sap, the transformation of the sap into raw opium… Opium is now clearly recognized as a harmful and addictive substance, but this knowledge was not widely shared in the nineteenth century. Opium had been used in Asia as a medicine effective against malaria and for relieving physical pain caused by hard labour or illness. There were two methods for its usage: opium eating and opium smoking. While opium eating was common in India, raw opium was processed into paste and smoked in China, first by the leisured class for recreational and relaxation purposes. The custom spread down to the workers.1 Even in Britain, opium was widely used as a medicine. Laudanum, an alcoholic tincture of opium, was sold over the apothecaries’ counters. It is well known that Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas de Quincy were users of opium. Although the side effects of opium were known, its use was not necessarily considered a serious problem until the mid-nineteenth century. To some in Britain, alcohol consumption had more deleterious effects, because it could result in violence and insanity, which would bring damage not only to those partook of alcohol but also to those who happened to be around.2 The Qing government of China had tried to suppress opium smoking and opium trafficking. Qing and Britain fought wars over the latter’s right to import raw opium freely into the former. Two Anglo-Chinese wars in the mid-nineteenth century, however, did not terminate the importation of Indian opium into China. On the contrary, the Treaty of Tianjin, concluded in 1858 after the Second Anglo-Chinese War (Arrow War) of 1856–1857 and ratified in 1860, legalized opium trade. The import duty on opium was fixed, which also meant that opium became a source of revenue to China. Opium consumption increased in the country. By 1900 China became the major site for poppy cultivation as well as opium consumption. Chinese opium became a competitor to that produced in India. Needless to say, opium brought enormous trading profits to India, the major exporter of raw opium. The revenue from opium was also an important financial source for the government of India, which raised about 15% of its revenue from opium in the mid-nineteenth century.3 It should be noted that other colonies also had financial stakes in opium smoking. Opium revenue supported free trade in the Straits Settlements (namely

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Singapore, Malacca and Penang). The Straits government did not charge customs duties, while it relied on opium. The ‘revenue farm system’, a measure invented in the Dutch East Indies, was introduced to siphon wealth out of the economic activities of the Chinese migrants. It worked as follows. World demand for tin grew from about 1850 onwards, so that tens of thousands of Chinese migrated to the Malay Peninsula to work in the newly opened tin mines. Opium came to be used widely by the migrant workers, partly as a medicine effective against malaria, and for relieving pain. On the one hand, the miners suffered very poor living conditions in the tropics. The rate of morbidity and mortality from diseases was high. On the other hand, the profits gained from mining itself were not large, so that the entrepreneurs sold opium to the workers and recaptured part of the wages they paid. At this level, the problem was the exploitation of the poorer immigrants by the rich and powerful. The colonial governments, in turn, farmed out the exclusive right to process imported raw opium into smoking paste to the merchants, who paid enormous sums for the privilege.4 The early anti-opium movement began in the 1870s. Traditional historiography has raised several reasons. Firstly, the progress of medicine and pharmacology made people more aware of the side effects of drugs. Secondly, experience and reports of missionaries in China, whose number increased after the Second Anglo-Chinese War, highlighted the new knowledge. The missionaries thought that the Westerners’ bringing opium into China was against the efforts of converting the Chinese to Christianity. In Britain, Quakers were especially active in the anti-opium movements. In addition, recent work points out the impact of anti-opium publicity spread from China to other parts of the world.5 In response to the growing anti-opium movement, the Royal Commission on Opium was appointed in Britain in 1893 to enquire into the question of the production and consumption of opium in India. However, most commissioners were not anti-opiumists. Nor did the Commission consider the export of Indian raw opium to China much. The seven-volume report submitted in 1895 defended opium eating in India and India’s acquiring revenue from opium. At the end of the nineteenth century, new colonial powers emerged in Asia. Taiwan was colonized by Japan in 1895 after the Sino-Japanese War, and the Philippines by the United States in 1898 after the SpanishAmerican War. The Americans were unsympathetic to British dominance in the region. Furthermore, opium was not an insoluble problem for the

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United States. The first US–Japan Treaty of 1858 contained a provision that limited the importation of opium into Japan to a minimal amount.6 Opium smoking never became a serious problem in Japan, thanks partly to this treaty. Another possible reason for this was that apart from the Ya’eyama islands in the Ryukyu (Okinawan) archipelago, Japan was not malarial.7 In contrast, Taiwan, just south of Ya’eyama, was malarial. Opium had been smoked there. The newly established GovernmentGeneral of Taiwan adopted a policy of gradual suppression, establishing a monopoly over opium. It allowed the Taiwanese to continue smoking while setting the goal of gradually reducing the number of addicts. The United States, trying to implement more enlightened colonial rule than the European colonial powers, dispatched the Philippine Commission on Opium to learn from the experiences of the surrounding territories. The report of the Commission published in 1905 valued Japan’s opium policy in Taiwan more highly than the policies adopted in the colonies of European powers.8 The United States decided to ban opium smoking in the Philippines from 1908.9 Around this time, there were changes in the political and economic climate in Britain as well as in China. Revulsion towards the opium trade further developed among the British public. Many anti-opiumists were supporters of the Liberal Party. When the party won the general election in 1906, some anti-opium activists were themselves elected as members of Parliament. John Morley, the secretary of state for India, had since the 1890s made clear that he was against the opium trade. In May, the antiopium resolution was passed in the Parliament. It should not be forgotten that due to economic development in India, other cash crops had come to be produced there. Opium was now considered an obstacle when Britain competed with other countries in negotiating loans to China, which were much more profitable than the opium trade. Defeats in several wars made the Chinese elite believe that reforms were necessary, and that opium was a serious problem to be solved. Tang Shaoyi, a young US-educated diplomat close to Yuan Shikai, visited India in 1904 to negotiate over Tibet. He found that the government of India did not strongly insist on maintaining revenue from opium. The revenue which the government of India raised from opium had decreased to 7% of total revenue around this time.10 In September 1906, the Qing government issued an edict mandating the cessation of poppy cultivation within a ten-year period. It also took notice of the aforementioned change of

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the government in Britain. In 1907, Britain and China signed an agreement: if China succeeded in suppressing poppy cultivation, the export of Indian opium to China would cease in ten years. In 1911, it was decided to maintain the 1907 agreement for a further seven years.11 It was under these circumstances that international efforts to eradicate opium smoking gathered momentum. The first international commission was held in Shanghai in February 1909, but it could not make any binding decisions. The Hague Conference was held from November 1911. It dealt not only with the control of opium but also with that of morphine and cocaine. Most morphine, a derivative of opium, was produced in Britain in those days, while most cocaine in Germany. The Hague Opium Convention of 1912 urged the countries to do their best to reduce illicit traffic in narcotics as well as both raw and prepared opium. The Convention also failed to solve the problems. It did not bring the situation in the colonies under control. Furthermore, only eight countries ratified it by the First World War. In addition, chaos spread through China after the revolution started in October 1911 and overthrew the Qing government in 1912. Poppy cultivation and domestic opium trafficking revived in China.

Establishing the OAC During the First World War, narcotics became a serious problem. First, there was some concern in the West that the injured might become so accustomed to the use of medicinal opiates as to be in danger of addiction. Secondly, drugs such as morphine were becoming cheaper substitutes for opium smoking in China.12 Britain began to be concerned that its products were smuggled and misused. It suspected that someone was reexporting the British products to China. A huge amount of morphine with trademarks of British firms was carried via Japan and concealed on British ships.13 The amount was so much that it could not possibly be consumed within Japanese territory and for medical purposes only. It was reported in the English-language press that the Japanese, or even the Japanese government, were the culprits. In reality, however, it was difficult to know who actually smuggled dangerous drugs. It is unrealistic to think that only one nation was involved in transborder trafficking. It is more likely that the Japanese acted in networks of the like-minded. Some British would later realize this possibility. For example, in 1930, Thomas M. Snow, counsellor of

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the British Embassy in Tokyo, wrote that he was struck by the fact that ‘the great majority of seizures at Indian ports appear[ed] to occur on two or three particular vessels of the British India line’. He found it ‘difficult to resist the conclusion that there [might] be a measure of connivance on the part of the officers’ of the line.14 In addition, there were loopholes in the rapidly expanded empire of Japan, which one could take advantage of if one wanted to. Chung Shu-ming examined the Chinese from Taiwan who did business in China. They were called Taiwan seki min. Many moved freely between Taiwan and mainland China. For them, nationality was not given but used for their own benefits. They sometimes claimed to be Japanese Taiwan seki min, and sometimes Chinese. It is known that some of them were involved in trafficking opium and other narcotics.15 Furthermore, the recent study of Steffen Rimner considers this morphine scandal from the viewpoint of information warfare. He writes, for example, although George Ernest Morrison knew that a British firm had installed agents in Osaka and Tokyo, he intentionally left the firms unnamed. Nor did Morrison disclose that he was involved in the reporting. Morrison was an Australian, who formerly sent articles to The Times and who had just become a political adviser to Yuan Shikai.16 Consumption of narcotic drugs was becoming a problem in the United States. Therefore, in the summer of 1918, the United States suggested to Britain that The Hague Convention should be made effective, because its Chapter III dealt with the control of morphine and cocaine.17 This led to Article 295 of the Versailles Peace Treaty. The article together with Article 23 (c) of the League’s Covenant finally took the opium issue out of control of the policymakers of empires. Let us observe the process further. In Britain, the Board of Trade had considered that Germany, a country with an advanced pharmaceutical industry, should ratify The Hague Convention. In December 1918, the British government suggested to the Americans that the question of suppressing illegal traffic in habit-forming drugs should be discussed at the peace conference.18 At least one of the aims of Britain seems to have been to control other narcotic drugs than opium, and to weaken the German pharmaceutical industry.19 The India Office was of the opinion that discussion should be limited to ‘the question of bringing into force the existing provisions’, and should ‘exclude therefore proposals for modification of the substance of the Convention’.20 The First World War was a heavy financial burden, so that India was reluctant to give up a reliable source of revenue. Although the

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Sino-British agreements further reduced the dependence of India’s public finance on opium, in the 1920s, the central government still raised from opium about £2 million per year, just under 2% of its total revenue.21 Although the Americans did not regard discussing The Hague Convention as the aim of the Paris Peace Conference, they did not refuse to take up the issue. Therefore, on 15 April 1919, the British delegation proposed that Germany, who would not be a member of the League of Nations for some time, should agree to ratify The Hague Convention. US Secretary of State Lansing argued that general ratification would be the simplest method. While Sir Robert Borden, the prime minister of Canada who represented the British Empire on the day, was not keen on the idea, both Stephen Pichon and Sidney Sonnino, the French and Italian foreign ministers respectively, supported it. On 19 April, it was agreed that ratification of the Versailles Peace Treaty should be deemed equivalent to the ratification of The Hague Convention.22 ‘Are you saying that the British delegation has agreed to ratify and to complete the procedures within a year, without any reservations whatsoever concerning Britain’s overseas territories including India?’ On 24 April, the Japanese foreign minister thus enquired of their delegates in Paris as to the stance of the British delegation on Article 295 of the Versailles Peace Treaty. Neither Britain nor other countries made any reservations.23 The above remark shows clearly that the development was completely unexpected by Japan. It was only after the Japanese Foreign Ministry double-checked Britain’s stance that it enquired how other ministries in Japan considered the matter. None raised objections. The Department of Overseas Affairs was of the opinion that the opium treaty would not directly affect the opium system in the colonies.24 Its understanding would turn out to be completely wrong. Thus, Article 295 of the Versailles Peace Treaty made The Hague Opium Convention of 1912 finally effective. In addition, Article 23 (c) of the League’s Covenant stipulated that the general supervision of the traffic in opium and other dangerous drugs should be one of the League’s tasks. These two developments in March and April 1919 placed the opium issue firmly on the international stage. The League’s first Assembly agreed on 15 December 1920 that the duties concerning the traffic in opium would be transferred from the Netherlands government to the League; and that the Council should appoint the OAC. The purpose of the committee was to advise the Council on all questions concerning the traffic in narcotic drugs and

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to supervise the application of the relevant convention and agreements. The opium question was first to be discussed at the OAC, then at the Council and the Fifth Committee of the Assembly, which was in charge of social and humanitarian questions. The Social and Opium Section, a small section in the Secretariat, supported it. In addition, the opium committee of the League’s Health Committee advised on medical matters.25 Rachel Crowdy had been the chief of the section since 1919. According to her, she was chosen because she had the apothecaries’ diploma and the experience of running dispensaries in London. Not only Crowdy but also many female activists took an interest in the question of opium and other dangerous drugs. The pressure from women’s organizations was significant, especially at the initial stage of the international control of opium and other dangerous drugs.26 According to William Rappard, there were three types of committees. Some were composed solely of government officials. The second type such as the Economic and Finance Committee was composed only of international experts. The OAC was an example of the third type. It was composed of both representatives of member states and independent assessors with special knowledge of the issue.27 Among the assessors was Sir John N. Jordan. On becoming the British Minister to Qing China in 1906, he had cooperated with the Chinese in the latter’s anti-opium efforts, and had led the way to the conclusion of Anglo-Chinese treaties of 1907 and 1911. He had just retired from the ministership. Another assessor was Mrs Hamilton Wright, an American, whose late husband had contributed to the control of opium for many years. The Council initially designated eight member countries in the OAC.28 All of them had been involved with opium problems in some way or other. Britain, France, the Netherlands, Portugal and Japan had territories where opium smoking was widespread. China and Siam had opium problems of their own. Another member was India, still a major exporter of raw opium. The government of India did not consider that the cultivation of opium fell within the scope of the OAC. It did not intend to give up the cultivation which exceeded legitimate requirements, and continued its export. Practically all opium exported from India went to East and Southeast Asia for smoking. The government of India argued that, so long as exports were certified by the importing country as being for legitimate purposes, the government’s responsibility ended. The British Foreign Office was worried that, if India maintained its point of view, Britain would be publicly attacked for the continuance of the opium traffic. In

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addition, there was another problem in India, namely opium eating. ‘In order to cope with the diseases … the population [had] cultivated the opium poppy from time immemorial, and habitually [took] opium in small doses as a prophylactic or an effective remedy’. This custom was considered legitimate in India. The government of India did not want it to be discussed at the OAC.29 Britain also had to think about other British colonies in the Far East. They also ‘derived a substantial part of their revenue from opium (in the case of the Straits Settlement, over half)’, and it was considered that any sudden prohibition of opium in those colonies would have very serious financial consequences. Britain was afraid that it might easily result in disturbances.30 On the other hand, if one observes the situation in the Straits Settlements, the anti-opium movement had developed among those who were born there. The revenue farm system came under strong condemnation by the beginning of the twentieth century. The government decided to take over the administration of opium revenue, and abolished the opium revenue farms at the end of 1909. The government monopoly of wholesale transactions came into force on 1 January 1910. Yet, retail sales were still left to licensed merchants.31 The British colonies were not alone. The situation in the colonies of other powers in East and Southeast Asia were actually similar.

The OAC at Work on East Asian Questions The first OAC was held from 2 to 5 May 1921. It decided to recommend to the Council that it should invite the League member states to sign and ratify The Hague Convention as soon as possible. This was made in consideration of major opium-producing countries such as Persia, and of significant drug-producing countries such as Switzerland. The OAC also prepared a questionnaire to collect information on the situation in various countries, and entrusted the Secretariat to send it out. Another recommendation of the OAC was that each country party to The Hague Convention should submit an annual report to the League. Furthermore, the OAC suggested that those countries which would import opium and other dangerous drugs should issue import certificates to prove that their use was for legal purposes. These recommendations were approved at the League’s Council in June.32 At the initial OAC meetings, the British and Indian members, Sir Malcolm Delevingne and Sir John Campbell, severely criticized both

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China and Japan. Despite the efforts of the Qing government to suppress poppy cultivation in its last days, chaos spread in China after the revolution in 1911. The central government in Beijing of the new Republic of China could not effectively control the entire country. Domestic opium production and trafficking revived, and in the 1920s it was suspected that a substantial amount of opium was being produced in the country. Delevingne was the assistant under-secretary of state in the British Home Office. He had been in charge of questions such as labour and opium since the beginning of the twentieth century.33 He had, however, never been to Asia and does not seem to have known about the situation in British colonies well. Campbell had worked in the Indian civil service for thirty years. After his retirement in 1922, he came to be involved in opium control as well as in the Greek Refugee Settlement Plan at the League of Nations.34 His main interest concerning opium was to protect the interests of the government of India, and he strongly accused the revival of opium production in China and the smuggling of morphine by the Japanese.35 Jordan, the British assessor, was different from them. He criticized the lamentable situation of China, but he was also against other producing and exporting countries, and criticized the similarly lamentable situation in Hong Kong and the Straits Settlements. Campbell was extremely dissatisfied with Jordan’s stance.36 Japan considered Jordan to be fair, but it could not agree with the stance of Delevingne and Campbell. It does not mean, however, that their accusation against Japan was groundless. The Japanese Empire had expanded after the Russo-Japanese War. It colonized Korea, and leased territory in the north-eastern provinces of China. In the Guandong Leased Territory, a form of opium monopoly had been adopted since 1906. Unlike the government-operated monopoly in Taiwan, the monopoly right in the Guandong Leased Territory was awarded to Chinese merchants. The system was like the revenue farm which had already been criticized and abolished in the Straits Settlements. The colonial authorities of the Guandong Leased Territory were indifferent to opium smoking except as a source of revenue.37 Condemnation of Japan’s smuggling of dangerous drugs continued. In response to the developments on the international stage, Britain passed the Dangerous Drugs Act of 1920, and decided to limit its exports to only those with legitimate needs. It also suspected that morphia refining had started in Taiwan, where a large quantity of raw opium was being

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imported from India.38 On 19 March 1921, Sir Charles Eliot, the British ambassador to Japan, visited the Monopoly Bureau of the government of Taiwan with a consul. Britain’s suspicion was to the point. The Taiwan Monopoly Bureau was making smoking paste out of the imported raw opium. That was for officially recognized addicts. Although the residue had been considered waste, the Hoshi Pharmaceutical Company found a way of refining morphine out of it in 1915. British officials were alarmed to discover that after crude morphine had been delivered to Hoshi, the Japanese officials had simply stopped tracing it.39 Tettaro Fujiwara, an official of the government of the Guandong Leased Territory, examined the situation of northern China in 1921– 1922. He reported that cheap substitutes of opium used in the northern part of China were mainly smuggled from Japan and that roughly 70% of the five thousand Japanese living in the city of Tianjin, northern China, dealt in morphine or other narcotics.40 On 12 October 1921, the League Council adopted the resolution that the governments were invited to furnish the Secretariat any information concerning the illicit production, manufacture or trade in opium and other dangerous drugs, which they thought likely to be useful to the League. The British Home Office became keen to inform the League of drug smuggling by some Japanese. The Foreign Office was more cautious, because Japan was still an ally and would inevitably be offended. However, the abrogation of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance was approaching, and the opinion of the Home Office won the day.41 The Japanese representatives to the League of Nations were deeply worried, and suggested to the Foreign Ministry that Japan should investigate the situation and establish a unified opium control system.42 However, the relevant authorities such as the Home Ministry, which were actually in charge of controlling opium and narcotics, did not share the anxiety at all. The narcotics problem was not occurring in Japan. Nor were those authorities at the forefront of the criticism from international society. The problem of language is noticeable here again. Those authorities were completely insulated by the linguistic barrier, so they were completely indifferent to the fact that Japan was severely criticized on the international stage. The Japanese press hardly reported the arguments at the OAC. It only carried what the government announced concerning the issue. Ambassador Eliot commented that the Japanese were lamentably uninterested in the control of opium trafficking. If the Japanese public did

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not come to consider the problem of opium and other dangerous drugs shameful, he continued, the situation would not possibly improve.43

The Participation of the United States Although the United States did not join the League of Nations, it continued to be interested in the opium problem. The third Assembly of the League held in September 1922 invited the country to participate in the OAC. Receiving the invitation, the United States sent observers to the fourth OAC in January 1923, and then sent a delegation continuously from the fifth OAC held from May to June 1923. The participation of the United States changed the situation completely. Its delegation, led by Congressman Stephen G. Porter, the chairman of the Committee of Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives, was strong. The United States was to contribute greatly to the making of fairer and more universally acceptable international rules. While Britain and India concentrated on suppressing illegal trafficking, many actually thought that the cultivation of poppies and the production of raw opium were at the core of the whole issue. The United States would strongly make this point.44 Drummond, the British secretary-general, was ‘nervous’ about what effect the US participation would have on the OAC. He confidentially wrote to the British Foreign Office, ‘our people ought to be careful’.45 At the fifth OAC, which was held publicly, it was decided to convene a pair of international conferences at Geneva in 1924–1925. The agenda of each conference would be limited; the first should deal with the problem of opium smoking, while the second should consider the issue of other dangerous drugs. It was Britain which insisted that these issues be discussed separately. The British were worried that the Americans might attack their government and that of India. Britain also wanted to limit the participants to those conferences to the countries that were either producing the raw material or manufacturing dangerous drugs; it strongly opposed the inclusion of delegates from other countries. At the fourth Assembly of the League of Nations held in September 1923, it was decided that the first conference should consist only of the representatives of those states in whose territories the practice of opium smoking still continued. As the United States had officially prohibited opium smoking in the Philippines, it was not invited to take part in the first conference. However, the scope of the second conference was enlarged by the Council

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to invite all member countries or parties to The Hague Convention of 1912.46 Britain expected that the situation in the colonies would be discussed at the Geneva Opium Conference and started preparing for it soon after the fourth Assembly. The Colonial Office instructed the colonial governments in East and Southeast Asia to appoint committees to investigate the existing situation and consider what steps could be taken to carry out The Hague Convention. The report of the British Malaya Opium Committee was submitted to the colonial government five months later. According to the report, 15% of the Chinese population of Malaya were born in Malaya, while 85% were immigrants. The Straits-born Chinese were the leaders of the anti-opium movement, and the habit of opium smoking was dying out among them; on the other hand, 90% of the smokers were immigrants from China, although the majority of those acquired the opium habit only after their arrival in Malaya.47 There are several reasons why the immigrants acquired the habit in Malaya. Firstly, Chinese migrant workers were predominantly single young men. They lived lonely lives. Plantations and mines were generally in remote regions, and the living conditions were often appalling. Forms of recreation were extremely limited. Secondly, opium relieved physical aches. Thirdly, the workers were not under the guidance of family members, which would have been the case while in China. The report stated that owing to the steady influx of adult Chinese immigrants, educational propaganda alone was insufficient to eradicate the opium habit. The objective, the report argued, could only be achieved through control over individual smokers, and a system of registration and rationing was necessary.48 The central obstacle in solving opium questions was finance. While the revenue derived from opium was no longer indispensable to Hong Kong, a large proportion of the general revenue in the Straits Settlements and British Malaya still came from the opium monopoly. Therefore, the governor of the Straits Settlements, who had worked in the British Treasury and the Board of Inland Revenue for thirty years, declined to accept the principle that no state was to draw any net revenue from opium traffic. Furthermore, both governors of the Straits Settlements and Hong Kong considered that the policy of total prohibition was impracticable in their territories.49 In the case of Hong Kong, the reason was the practical impossibility of controlling the transborder trafficking between itself and the mainland China.50

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Both the home and colonial secretaries prepared memoranda in regard to opium policy. The Home Office made it clear that the existing situation was extremely ‘embarrassing’ and it wanted to ‘announce that prohibition of the use of opium for smoking’ would be brought into force ‘after a certain fixed period’ of time.51 The British Government has been specially active in the execution of the Opium Convention and has brought a good deal of pressure to bear on other countries to enforce the Convention effectively, while at the same time it has to be admitted that Great Britain itself is not carrying out its obligations under Chapter II of the Convention and moreover is actually deriving large revenues from the traffic which it is under the obligation to suppress.52

The Colonial Office could not concur in the proposals made by the Home Office nor force the colonies and protectorates in the East to go further.53 Presented with the completely opposite views between the two offices, the British Cabinet decided to postpone consideration of the subject until after the League’s fifth Assembly in September 1924. Owing to the fall of the first Labour government, however, Britain could not afford the time to consider the instructions to be given to the delegate to the Geneva Conference.54

The Geneva Opium Conference The International Opium Conference started in Geneva on 3 November 1924. All its plenary meetings were in principle to be held in public. As many journalists and members of religious and women’s organizations came to observe them, the impact and influence on public opinion were considered tremendous. Participating countries made many experts attend the Conference with their representatives.55 The Japanese delegates were Sagataro Kaku, the head of the Taiwan Opium Monopoly Bureau, and Yotaro Sugimura, the deputy director of the Imperial Japanese Bureau in Paris for the League of Nations Affairs. Two experts, Miyajima and Sanzo Tsurumi, and a further two from Sankyo Pharmaceutical Company supported them. Tsurumi was a Japanese member of the OAC. He was, however, not necessarily an expert of opium. He was a bacteriologist who had graduated from the Imperial University of Tokyo.

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The attendants of the first Conference were the eight original members of the OAC. There were two subjects for consideration: the effective carrying out of Chapter II of The Hague Convention, and the situation of China and the suggestion to the government of the Republic of China. Chapter II of The Hague Convention dealt with prepared opium, while Chapter I covered raw opium. The general discussion of the first Conference was opened by Kaku’s speech on the policy of Taiwan, namely a policy of progressive suppression leading generally to absolute prohibition. General statements on the positions in the respective territories followed.56 After the general discussion, a closed meeting of Britain, France, the Netherlands and Japan was held. Britain hoped that this meeting would shorten the work of the Conference, but to its surprise, an argument broke out between the representatives of Britain and Japan in connection with two issues: the export of opium and drugs to Japanese territories, and the proposed article which obliged countries to allow export or transhipment if an import certificate from the government of the importing country was shown. Most ships bringing opium to Japan stopped at Hong Kong. The Japanese delegates argued that London had no right to deny permission for transhipment at Hong Kong of opium certified by the proper Japanese authorities in conformity with the League of Nations guidelines. In total contrast, Britain thought that through the process of transhipment, some opium found its way into illegal trafficking. When the British delegates rejected the Japanese proposal, the Japanese representative responded heatedly by accusing their British counterparts of discriminating and of slandering Japan’s good name in front of the international community. Sugimura made it quite evident that it hurt their pride very much that ‘certificates issued by the Imperial Japanese government should be questioned by the government of a “little island like Hong Kong”’. ‘Unfair’ and ‘unjust’ were the terms he used to describe the British attitudes.57 The first Conference also reached a deadlock over the question of China. Even before the meeting, the Chinese overproduction and smuggling of opium had been more severely criticized by the representatives of Britain and India at the OAC than the situation in the Japanese Empire. Dr Alfred Sao-ke Sze (Shi Zhaoji), the Chinese minister to the United States and representative to the Geneva Opium Conference, stated that opium production was confined to a few provinces. During the Conference, however, the International Anti-Opium Association (wanguo jinyan

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hui) of Beijing, which had been established in 1918 with a British leader, reported that the opium production in China amounted at least to 15,000 tons annually. The amount was estimated to be about 88% of global production.58 The Association’s data had ‘seemed to be more accurate and reliable than the governmental data’.59 Six of the eight countries represented at the first conference, ‘that is, Great Britain, France, India, Holland, Portugal, and Siam, declared that any further regulation of opium smoking was fruitless as long as the uncontrolled production of opium continued in China’.60 Presented with the deadlock, the American representative declared on 24 November that if the first Conference failed to reach an agreement or reached only an unsatisfactory agreement, the United States would not participate in the agreement of the second Conference. The participating countries found it necessary to reach a compromise agreement.61 The second Conference was supposed to be exclusively concerned with other dangerous drugs, but on the fourth day, the American delegation presented the proposals of their government, which took the form of a comprehensive redraft of The Hague Convention and dealt with the question of opium smoking. The redraft provided that each contracting party in whose territory the use of prepared opium was permitted should agree to abolish smoking by reducing imports of raw opium by 10% per annum. The British believed that the issue of opium smoking should be settled by the first Conference. Campbell was utterly opposed to the American proposal, and the Colonial Office also found it presenting serious problems. Firstly, there was a possibility that India might be driven to agree to limit the export of opium to what was required for medical and scientific purposes. Secondly, if Hong Kong and Malaya could not get opium from India, they would be obliged to buy it from Persia. Thirdly, the arbitrary restriction of supplies of government opium might lead to a greatly increased demand for illicit opium. The Colonial Office argued that it was impossible to accept any proposal for the final abolition within a fixed period until a radical change in the conditions in China occurred.62 Britain was displeased with the stance of the Americans. It considered that they had deliberately brought forward proposals in defiance of the international agreement previously reached and which were outside the agenda of the second Conference. At the Cabinet meeting on 10 December, a committee was appointed to consider the question of opium policy and the instructions to be given to the British delegation in Geneva. As India and colonies in the East were concerned with the

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problem, consultation among the relevant authorities was necessary. On 15 December in Geneva, Delevingne announced that he had received an order to go back to London, so that the second Conference went into recess.63 An inter-departmental meeting was held in Britain on 19 December 1924. It was decided that the draft agreement reached at the first Conference should be signed; that Britain should propose an authoritative and impartial international commission to be appointed in order to investigate the conditions in the Far Eastern territories of the countries signatory to the Opium Convention; and that preparations for propaganda should be made.64 According to the Foreign Office minutes, there was no subject of interest on which so many misconceptions existed or in regard to which the British attitude was so misunderstood or misrepresented as the opium problem, so that propaganda was considered necessary.65 The good name of the British Empire was still not protected. On 10 January 1925, the Indian National Congress informed the League’s ‘President’ of its resolution. … congress is of opinion that the policy of government of India in using drink and drug habit of people as source of revenue is detrimental to moral welfare of people of india (sic) and would therefore welcome its abolition … congress is further of opinion that regulation by Government of india (sic) of opium traffic is detrimental not only to moral welfare of india (sic) but of whole world and that cultivation of opium in india (sic) which is out of all proportion to medical and scientific requirements should be restricted to such requirements.66

The anti-opium movement had started in India, and Gandhi had been involved in it since 1918.67 The Geneva Opium Conference was reopened on 19 January 1925, and Cecil, now Viscount Cecil of Chelwood, the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, was the chief representative of Britain. The Japanese delegates reported home that a heated argument, almost unprecedented in the League, broke out between the Americans on one side and the representatives of Britain, France and the Netherlands on the other.68 Both the governments of France and the Netherlands had been communicated the intention of the British, and they had decided to take similar steps.69 The American proposal of a comprehensive redraft was rejected, with the

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result that American delegates withdrew from the Conference, followed by the representatives of China. The first Conference completed its work on 11 February 1925. The participating countries apart from China signed the agreement. The following was decided: sale and distribution of opium, as well as the making of prepared opium for sale, should be a government monopoly; the sale of opium to minors should be prohibited; the number of retail shops and smoking divans should be limited; the export of opium whether raw or prepared should be prohibited; the transit or transhipment of opium should be prohibited unless an import certificate issued by the government of the importing country could be accepted; the use of prepared opium should be discouraged by suitable instruction in schools and by dissemination of literature; and the number of opium smokers should be reported.70 A protocol was also prepared. The gist of Article Two is as follows: As soon as the poppy-growing countries have ensured the measures to prevent the exportation of raw opium, the States where the use of prepared opium is temporarily authorised will strengthen the measures already taken, and will take any further measures, in order to reduce consumption of prepared opium so that such use may be completely suppressed within a period of not more than fifteen years.71

It was also decided that a Commission appointed by the Council should decide when the effective execution of the measures mentioned above reached the stage.72 China was considered to be one of the poppygrowing countries. Therefore, as far as no reform was made in China, other countries could be allowed to retain the existing situation. The second Conference completed its work on 19 February. Among various decisions, the creation of the PCOB should be noted. The eight members of the PCOB should be appointed by the Council within three months from the coming into force of the Convention. The duration of the mandates of the members was five years, and they could be reappointed. The PCOB was to collect information on opium and look out for the smuggling, although its mandate was not strong. Publicity was its only tool.73 More than ten major countries including Britain and Japan signed the Convention. The Indian signature was added on 11 August.74 The International Opium Convention came into force in 1928.

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Change in the Opium Policies in the British Empire and the Commission of Enquiry At the Geneva Opium Conference, the British Empire was exposed to strong criticism from the United States. It should be noted that Britain also felt pressure from within. There was a vocal body of anti-opiumists in Britain. Voluntary organizations had been formed to grapple with the problem of opium and to put pressure on the government. They agreed with the opinion of the American delegation, and made it clear that they could not think the existing opium policies of the British Empire justifiable. Even the Japanese delegates reported home that the British Anti-Opium Society was openly expressing their views that Campbell, the representative of the government of India, was not representing the Indian people at all.75 The arguments at the Geneva Opium Conference made opium policies in some places in the British Empire change drastically, although those in other places such as Hong Kong remained unchanged. The first major change was seen in India. The government of India realized its isolation at the Conference, so that in February 1926 it declared publicly that to fulfil its ‘international obligations’ and ‘to obviate complications that may arise from the delicate and invidious task of attempting to sit in judgement on the internal policy of other Governments’, it intended to reduce the exports of opium so as to extinguish them altogether within a definite period except as regards the export for strictly medical purposes. The period which the government had in mind was 15 years.76 It reported this new policy to the eighth OAC in May 1926. The official export of raw opium from India reduced rapidly after this. The revenue gained from opium was about 15% of the total revenue in the mid-nineteenth century. It would decrease to about 0.5% in the mid-1930s, although opium eating and smuggling abroad continued.77 The second example of change is found in the Straits Settlements, a Crown Colony. In March 1925, the Colonial Office ordered the Straits government to start efforts to make its finances independent of revenue collected from the sale of narcotics. This was a challenging task, because as much as 32.3% of the total revenue of the Straits Settlements was gained from opium as late as 1928. This was far higher than that of Taiwan, a colony of Japan which Britain severely criticized. The dependence of Taiwan’s revenue on opium in the same year was 2.72%.78

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In October 1925, the Straits government decided to establish the Opium Revenue Replacement Reserve Fund to prepare for the day when they could no longer rely on opium revenue.79 The Fund was created by way of the following measures: a sum of $30 million was appropriated from general revenue as the nucleus of the Fund; 10% of the total revenue of the colony during the period from 1925 to 1927 was contributed to that Fund; and the Fund and the interest derived therefrom was invested by the Crown Agents for the Colonies. In addition to this reserve fund, the government was also to introduce other new policies. Firstly, it decided to control not only the wholesale but also the retail of opium smoking paste. Secondly, it established a new opium packing plant. Smoking paste for sale was packed into tin tubes in this plant to prevent the repeated use of the paste. Thirdly, the Straits government started to offer free treatment to opium addicts at government hospitals.80 Although the British government was determined, especially after the Cabinet agreement on 15 June 1927, to reduce the consumption of opium in the colonies in East and Southeast Asia, the situation did not improve easily. The colonial authorities in Hong Kong hardly believed it was possible to control opium, especially because of its geographical location.81 Even in the Straits Settlements, people were dissatisfied with the contribution they had to make to the Reserve Fund. In addition, economic prosperity in the late 1920s attracted many Chinese workers to the Malay Peninsula. Their wages increased, so that the amount of opium consumed did not decrease, rather, it actually increased in some years.82 The Straits government could not claim that the Chinese with opium smoking habits migrated to the colonies. The British Malaya Opium Committee of 1923 had already revealed that although 90% of opium smokers were those who came from China, most of them started smoking after they came to the Malay Peninsula. The increased income of migrant workers was spent on opium. Therefore, on 23 November 1927, the British Cabinet discussed the necessity of letting the League of Nations know the difficult situation. It was decided that the Colonial Office would prepare a memorandum to ask the League to send a Commission of Enquiry.83 In June 1928, Britain officially proposed to the League the necessity of the Commission of Enquiry into the control of opium smoking in the Far East. The ninth Assembly of the League decided to send out a Commission composed of three members including Eric Einar Ekstrand, a Swedish diplomat who

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was to succeed Crowdy and become the director of the Social Questions and Opium Traffic Section of the League. The secretary of the Commission was Bertil Arne Renborg, a member of the Section. The conference which was to have taken place based on the agreement of the Geneva Conference was postponed until the report of the Commission of Enquiry was available.84 The OAC had been left uninformed about the situation in China for some time. China had fallen into further chaos after the Geneva Opium Conference. Firing on the demonstrating Chinese by a British police officer in the Shanghai International Settlement occurred on 30 May 1925, only three months after the Geneva Opium Conference. This made Anglo-Chinese relations drastically deteriorate. Britain’s having brought opium into China was mentioned in a handout distributed in Shanghai in June as the top item of the country’s eight crimes against China.85 About a year later in July 1926, the Nationalists’ forces in Guangzhou (Canton) started marching northwards to defeat the warlords and the Beijing government.86 The purpose was to reunite the country, but the reality was a civil war. China could not submit even annual reports on opium to the OAC for some years. The situation would only start to change after the Nationalist government was established in Nanjing in 1928, but the OAC still had no information on poppy cultivation and opium production in China.87 Although Japan, France and the Netherlands wanted the Commission of Enquiry to investigate the Chinese situation, China was not willing to accept its visit unless it included Chinese members. China also demanded the investigation to be extended to all the countries which produced not only opium but also other dangerous drugs.88 Britain did not insist on investigating the situation in China. The Anglo-Chinese relations had just started to improve because of the worsening Sino-Japanese relations after the military clash at Jinan in May 1928.89 Britain was determined to avoid inciting further anti-British sentiment and boycotts in China.90 Neither did it want the status of foreign settlements in China to be questioned. In the end, the League of Nations could not reach an agreement concerning the Commission’s visit to China. The Commission of Enquiry was to visit only foreign settlements in China.91 The Commission left Geneva on 4 September 1929, visiting places including Burma, the Straits Settlements, the Federated Malay States, the Dutch East Indies, Siam, French Indochina, Hong Kong, Makao, Taiwan, the Guandong Leased Territory and the South Manchurian

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Railway Zone. It also visited the Philippines with the acquiescence of the United States. The objective of the Commission was to enquire into the use of prepared opium for smoking, the measures taken by the governments concerned, the nature and the extent of the illicit traffic, and to suggest what action should be taken by the governments concerned and the League of Nations.92 During its voyage to the East, the Commission first drew up a questionnaire consisted of 186 questions, forwarding it in advance to the governments concerned. On reaching the destinations, it had meetings with members of both central and local governments, and interviewed relevant people. It also visited factories for the manufacture of prepared opium as well as opium retail shops and smoking establishments. In Singapore, for example, it visited the new plant under installation for the manufacturing and packing of prepared opium in metal tubes. It was also present during the search of a steamer notorious for smuggling opium.93

Lack of Reforms in the Japanese Empire The Publicity did not work so effectively on Japan. Japan was not accused much at the Geneva Opium Conference. The most heated argument occurred between the United States and the European colonial powers. Japan did not join other countries in criticizing China at the first Conference, and both the United States and China actually praised Japan’s opium policy in Taiwan. Therefore, Japan ended up making very little effort to control illegal trafficking after the Conference. The control remained extremely loose. Some Japanese would notice this problem. Itaro Ishii, the Japanese consul-general in Shanghai for four years from September 1932, would write that the penalty had been too light.94 To make the situation worse, birds of a feather flock together. Criminals in Japan, Taiwan, Korea and mainland China formed networks of trafficking.95 Hampered by the language barrier and distance, the Japanese public as well as the government were insulated from international criticism. Neither of them viewed the problem of opium and narcotic drugs as their own. Press coverage was sketchy and often failed to convey the gist of the problem. The activities of the OAC were hardly known in Japan. Unlike in Britain, no religious or voluntary organizations were formed to grapple with the problem earnestly and put pressure on the government.96 The Japanese government, in total contrast to the British government, felt

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neither external nor internal pressure. Only those who took part in the OAC and the Geneva Opium Conference realized how serious the situation was and that defective humanitarian records might gravely damage national prestige in the future. The Japanese in Geneva were not blind to the existing problems. Sugimura’s argument with the British over the transhipment in Hong Kong was to keep Japan in a decent position in international society. He wrote in turn to the Japanese Foreign Ministry that the Japanese government should establish an organized control system as soon as possible.97 Shiko Kusama of the Health Section visited Java to observe the situation there. He was asked how Japan utilized the products made from the huge amount of imported raw opium. He wrote to a member of the Foreign Ministry in March 1926 that the matter should be discussed with the Home Ministry and Taiwan.98 After attending the eighth OAC held public in Geneva in May 1926, Kusama wrote to another in the ministry. He described the question of opium and other dangerous drugs as a ‘stain’ on Japan’s foreign relations, and asked again to make the Home Ministry take action in order to keep Japan’s honour.99 In October 1926, Naotake Sato, who was to be the head of the Japanese Bureau for the League Affairs in Paris, also wrote to the Foreign Ministry. Although he had received Sugimura’s reports and knew that Japan’s unsatisfactory control of opium and dangerous drugs had been accused at the OAC, it was only when he participated in the Fifth Committee of the Assembly which dealt with the opium issue that he realized how serious the situation was. It was impossible, Sato added, for Japan to allow the situation of loose control to continue.100 The opinions of Sugimura, Kusama, and Sato, however, were lost in the bureaucratic layers and piles of papers. They did not reach the Foreign Minister; nor were they conveyed to the Home Ministry, which was in charge of the actual control of opium and narcotics in Japan. In February 1927, Delevingne wrote to the British Foreign Office that nothing was being done by the Japanese authorities to check the outflow of the Japanese drugs into illicit traffic.101 He came to think by the summer of 1929 that it might be more useful to negotiate directly with the Japanese Home Ministry. The British Embassy in Tokyo, however, considered this idea unrealistic. The first reason was that it could easily be expected that the Japanese Foreign Ministry would feel offended. The second reason was again the obstacle of the language ability. The British Embassy wrote, ‘although a few Japanese officials in departments other than the Foreign

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Office have a certain knowledge of English, their mastery of the language is too limited to enable them to keep up an official correspondence on such a relatively complicated subject as drugs, and they would inevitably solve the problem in true oriental fashion by letting things slide’.102

The Bangkok Conference and Further Reforms After an absence of over eight months, the Commission of Enquiry returned to Geneva on 11 May 1930. Its report was submitted on 16 October. It stated that the habit of opium smoking was spread mainly among the Chinese, and that the overwhelming majority of the opium smokers were recruited from the working class. It included detailed observations of the territories visited. The Commission’s suggestions to the governments concerned and to the League of Nations included the following points: (1) that all measures aiming at gradual suppression should be taken concurrently; (2) that international scientific research should be undertaken with the support of governments; (3) that steps should be taken to secure international cooperation for the gradual limitation and control of poppy cultivation; (4) that the demand for opium for smoking should be combated by public opinion, systematic propaganda, education, sports and physical training; (5) that effective steps must be taken to combat the illicit traffic; (6) the reduction of prices of government opium to make smuggling unprofitable; (7) the abolition of all licensed retail shops; (8) registration with licensing and rationing of all opium consumers; (9) that smoking should be prohibited to anyone under twenty-one; (10) allowing smoking only in establishments owned and managed by the governments; (11) strict control of dross (the residue remaining in the pipes when prepared opium is smoked); (12) the cure of opium addicts; (13) that opium as a source of revenue must be replaced; and (14) that the League of Nations should establish a central bureau in the Far East for the opium smoking problem. As for the issue of revenue, it was suggested that the government of the territories concerned should adjust their finances to the gradual loss of opium revenue. Measures such as devoting the net opium revenue to expenses connected with the campaign against opium smoking, and establishing opium revenue replacement funds were mentioned.103 In January 1931, the 62nd Council of the League of Nations accepted the report of the Commission104 and, based on the suggestion of the delegate of Siam, decided to hold a conference in Bangkok in November.

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Britain, France, India, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, Siam and the United States participated in the conference held from 9 to 27 November 1931. The Republic of China, however, decided not to attend it. Indeed, the Nationalists had protested against the report of the Commission of Enquiry, saying that the Commission was not competent to include information on the internal situation of China. It was also strongly against the charge that the smuggling of opium from China made reducing opium smoking in various territories difficult. To this statement of the Republic of China, it was pointed out that ‘the Commission had been unable to go to China notwithstanding its great desire to do so’.105 Delevingne was the British representative to the Bangkok Conference. On his way there, he visited the Straits Settlements, and discussed with the local authorities how to improve the situation. He asked whether more might be done to provide migrant workers with alternative forms of recreation and improve the conditions under which they lived.106 Improvements were necessary, because it was considered that the first step towards opium addiction was opium taken to relieve tedium or to alleviate pain. After the conference, the Siamese government invited Delevingne to travel to the northern border region. This was the region where effective control of opium and other dangerous drugs was very difficult. The report of the Commission of Enquiry read as follows: … The situation regarding poppy cultivation in neighbouring countries, especially in China, has continued to cause difficulties. … Large supplies of opium grown in Yunnan and in the Shan States enter Siam by the northern frontiers which are mountainous and sparsely populated, making control difficult. The town of Ken Tung in the Southern Shan States is a collecting point. Opium arrives there by caravans from other parts of the Shan States and from Yunnan.107

The Siamese government estimated ‘some sixty percent of smuggled opium was … brought in from the Burmese Shan States and more than twenty percent from French Indochina, much of it originating in the Chinese province of Yunnan’, and it wanted Delevingne to see for himself the nature of the land frontier.108 The problem of this and the neighbouring regions will be considered again later in Chapters 8 and 9. Various technical agreements were made at the Bangkok Conference, such as making retail sale and distribution of opium take place only in government shops, and banning opium smoking by those under the age

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of twenty-one.109 The system to control opium by the League of Nations was finalized at the Bangkok Opium Conference. Bangkok Agreement of the Suppression of Opium smoking in the Far East would come into force on 22 April 1937.110 Efforts to reduce opium consumption continued in the Straits Settlement in the 1930s. In order to control the retail of smoking paste, it was first necessary to register smokers and to limit the amount supplied to them each day. Otherwise, anyone, including shopkeepers, could continue retailing secretly the excess over personal requirements to unregistered smokers.111 The registration scheme was introduced in January 1929. It faced grave difficulties for some years, but progress was made in the years 1933–1934. The maximum amount each smoker was allowed to purchase was fixed. In addition, a card registration system in which each card bore the photograph of the smoker was introduced to provide a guarantee that the government smoking paste was sold only to registered smokers.112 The living conditions of the workers also improved. It was recorded in a memorandum prepared in 1935 that the social habits of the people had changed considerably in the previous ten years and that the change was most noticeable among the Chinese community and in larger towns. First, outdoor games came to occupy a large and increasing portion of the spare time of the younger generation. Sports grounds were to be found in all towns and villages and were eagerly used on most evenings of the week. Football and other matches attracted large crowds. Secondly, ‘amusement parks’ had been opened in many towns. These parks held various activities such as Chinese theatrical performances, cinemas, and shooting galleries, and the most prominent feature was dance halls. Thirdly, town-improvement and slum-clearance schemes had been undertaken. The residents of the slums were being provided with open spaces and more airy dwellings. The rapid expansion of cheap and frequent transport services between the towns and neighbouring villages came to enable rural dwellers to avail themselves of the urban amenities.113 Medical services were also improved. Hospitals all over the country offered special inducements in the way of comfortable wards and appropriate treatment for the cure of opium addicts. They also offered ready treatment for the relief of pain and suffering among the poorest classes of the community. The efforts of the Health Department were being strengthened, with the aid of government funds, and directed towards improving the health and well-being of the community.114

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The Impact of the OAC and Its Limits This chapter has considered the impact of the League of Nations’ OAC, showing that it functioned as a forum. Opium had financially supported the powers’ colonies in East and Southeast Asia since the nineteenth century. These facts had previously been known only within the empires and only by a limited number of people. Even a person like Delevingne did not have accurate knowledge of the reality of the British Empire concerning opium. The OAC, once established, started to collect information not only on the metropoles but also on their colonies. Although its main participants were the representatives of the member states, the independent experts also attended the meetings. In addition, the United States, a non-member, was also asked to participate in the OAC. Its meetings were in principle held public and severe questions were asked. Journalists and members of the anti-opium organizations came to observe the arguments. The revelation was embarrassing to most empires. Publicity or the possibility of publicity made even the mightiest empire change its policy on opium. The OAC functioned like the Permanent Mandate Commission examined by Pedersen. This chapter has also shown that no reform was made to the opium policy of the Japanese Empire. Control remained loose, and the situation would rather deteriorate in the 1930s. Due to the language barrier and distance, most Japanese were not aware of the arguments at the OAC. Publicity did not work sufficiently in this case. Only those who attended the OAC and the Fifth Committee of the Assembly realized how serious the situation was. They were worried that the opium question might damage the image of Japan. Even in the Straits Settlements, where various measures were introduced and more progress was observed than in other colonies, the consumption of opium did not end by the outbreak of the Second World War. The opium monopoly continued. The ratio of opium-related revenue of the Straits Settlements decreased from the height of over 40% in the mid-1920s to around 20% in the late 1930s. This figure, however, could hardly be considered as low and despite the development of the colony and the extension of taxation basis the ratio never reached zero by the outbreak of the war. Furthermore, control of opium in some places such as Hong Kong and the peripheral region of Burma was considered almost impossible.

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The total ban of opium smoking was never introduced in the colonies before the Second World War. According to the work of John M. Jennings, at the time of the outbreak of the war in the Pacific, it was thought that there were still about 130,000 smokers in Malaya, 120,000 in French Indochina, and 60,000 in the Dutch East Indies.115 Furthermore, opium eating was completely left untouched. The limits of the League of Nations’ opium control will be further considered in Chapter 9.

Notes 1. Yangwen Zheng, The Social Life of Opium in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 2. Virginia Berridge, Opium and the People (New York: Free Association Books, 1999, revised edition). 3. John F. Richards, ‘The Opium Industry in British India’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 39/2 & 3, 2002, p. 157, chart 2. 4. Carl A. Trocki, Opium and Empire (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), p. 69; Nicholas Tarling (ed.), The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, 2–1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 135, 144, 149. 5. Steffen Rimner, Opium’s Long Shadow: From Asian Revolt to Global Drug Control (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018). On the pages 59–81, Rimner pays particular attention to the démarche by Prince Gong of Qing to the British Minister Rutherford Alcock. 6. Yuzo Kato, ‘The Opening of Japan and the Meiji Restoration, 1837– 72’, in Ian Nish and Yoichi Kibata (eds), The History of Anglo-Japanese Relations, Vol. 1 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 60–73. 7. Iijima Wataru, Mararia to teikoku [Malaria and Empire] (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 2005), Chapters 1, 2 and 5. 8. U. S. Congress, Senate, 59th Cong. 1st sess., S. Doc. 265, pp. 3–4. 9. Anne L. Foster, ‘Prohibition as Superiority: Policing Opium in SouthEast Asia, 1898–1925’, The International History Review, 22/2, 2000, p. 272. 10. Richards, ‘The Opium Industry in British India’, p. 157, chart 2. 11. British Foreign Office, The Opium Trade (Delaware: Scholarly Resources, 1974), Vol. 1, Part III, no. 183 (Jordan to Grey, 8 May 1911). The record of British Foreign Office, FO415, has been printed and published as The Opium Trade. See also, Margaret Julia B.C. Lim, ‘Britain and the Termination of the India-China Opium Trade, 1905– 1913’ (unpublished Ph.D thesis, University of London, 1969), pp. 235– 254; R. K. Newman, ‘India and the Anglo-Chinese Opium Agreements, 1907–14’, Modern Asian Studies, 23/3, 1989, pp. 544–551.

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12. Frank Dikötter, Narcotic Culture: A History of Drugs in China (London: Hurst, 2004), Chapter 8. 13. Berridge, Opium and the People, pp. 246–249, 259. 14. TNA, FO371/14764, F6700/469/87, 20 October 1930, from Snow (Tokyo), received on 25 November 1930. 15. Chung Shu-ming, ‘Kakusan suru teikoku network – Amoi ni okeru Taiwan seki min no katsud¯o [Diffusing Imperial Network: The Activities of the Chinese from Taiwan in Amoi]’, in Ishida Ken (ed.), B¯ och¯ o suru teikoku Kakusan suru teikoku [Expanding Empire, Diffusing Empire: Japan, Britain, and Asia Moving towards the Second World War] (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 2007), pp. 135–140; Rimner, Opium’s Long Shadow, p. 244. 16. Rimner, Opium’s Long Shadow, pp. 242–252. 17. TNA, FO371/3176, 146169/F226/10, Page (American Embassy) to Balfour, 23 August 1918. 18. TNA, FO371/3176, 155732/F226/10, Board of Trade to FO, 11 September 1918; and 197836/F226/10, Balfour to US Chargé d’Affaires, 10 December 1918. 19. See also, Egerton, Great Britain, pp. 72–73. 20. TNA, FO371/3176, 209131/F226/10, Under Secretary of State for India to Under Secretary of State, FO, 19 December 1918. 21. TNA, FO371/10326, F2577/20/87, from Cabinet, C.P. 414, 28 July 1924, memorandum by Home Secretary, p. 8. 22. BDFA, Part II, Series I, Vol. 3, documents 12, 14, and 15; Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant, Vol. 1, pp. 219, 339–342. 23. Japanese Foreign Ministry Archives (hereafter, JFMA), 2.3.1.43, Uchida Yasuya to Matsui Keishir¯o, no. 288, 24 April 1919; Matsui to Uchida, no. 784, 29 April 1919. Pre-war Japanese diplomatic records including this can now be consulted at the website of Japan Center for Asian Historical Records, National Archives of Japan (JACAR). Its URL is as follows. https://www.jacar.go.jp/ 24. JFMA, 2.3.1.43, Shidehara to Vice-Ministers of Home Ministry, Finance Ministry, Communications Ministry and the Minister of the Department of Overseas Affairs, no. 178, 24 April 1919; the Minister of the Department of Overseas Affairs to Shidehara, no. 640, 31 May 1919. 25. William B. McAllister, Drug Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 44, n4. 26. Bristol University, DM1584/12/B, unpublished autobiography of Crowdy, Part I, Chapter 4, pp. 4–5 and Part III, Chapter 2, p. 16; McAllister, Drug Diplomacy, p. 18; Borowy, Coming to Terms, p. 47. As the League developed, the Section was transformed into the Social Questions and Opium Traffic Section in 1922. 27. Rappard, International Relations as Viewed from Geneva, p. 18.

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28. By 1926, Germany, Yugoslavia, the United States, Bolivia, Switzerland, and Italy were successively invited to send delegates. Further seven were added in 1930. Bertil A. Renborg, International Drug Control: A Study of International Administration by and through the League of Nations (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1947), pp. 34–35. 29. TNA, FO371/6595, F2249/15/10, from the LN, minutes by Lampson and Wellesley, 12 June 1921; FO371/ 6596, F3669/15/10, communicated by LN, A. 143.1921, 1 October 1921. 30. TNA, FO371/7057, W1738/1480/98, from Balfour (Cabinet), 10 February 1921. 31. John G. Butcher, ‘The Demise of the Revenue Farm System in the Federated Malay States’, Modern Asian Studies, 17/3, 1983, pp. 401– 402; Ian Brown, Economic Change in South-East Asia, c.1830–1980 (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 54–55. 32. TNA, FO371/6595, F2179/15/10, from the LN, 8 June 1921. 33. Sandrine Kott and Joelle Droux, ‘Introduction: A Global History Written from the ILO’ in Kott and Droux (eds), Globalizing Social Rights: The International Labour Organization and Beyond (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 21–22. 34. Greece experienced a refugee problem on an unprecedented scale in 1922–1923. Campbell was in charge of agricultural settlement. 35. League of Nations documents (hereafter LNd), C.72.M.27.1923.XI, OAC, minutes of the 3rd session. 36. LNd, C.416.M.254.1922.XI, OAC, minutes of 2nd session; BL, India Office Record, IOR/L/E/7/1322, file 282, I.&O. 2188, Report of the Fifth Session of the OAC by Campbell, p. 4; JFMA, 2.4.2.44, Vol. 2, ‘Kokusai ahen kaigi ni taisuru shuy¯ o koku no taido (Eikoku) [Attitudes of Countries on the International Opium Conference (The United Kingdom)]’. 37. Yamada G¯ oichi, Mansh¯ ukoku no ahen senbai [Opium Monopoly of Manchukuo] (Tokyo: Ky¯ uko Shoin, 2002), introduction and Chapters 1–3. 38. TNA, FO371/5308, F2063/17/10, Eliot to FO, minute, 4 September 1920; F2192/17/10, from Board of Trade, 22 September 1920; John M. Jennings, Opium Empire: Japanese Imperialism and Drug Trafficking in Asia, 1895–1945 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997), p. 38. 39. TNA, FO371/6596, F3034/15/10, from “Observer”, 14 August 1921; FO371/6597, F4021/15/10, from India Office, 11 November 1921; ibid., F 4475/15/10, Delevingne to B. C. Newton, unnumbered, 2 December 1921; Jennings, Opium Empire, pp. 42–43, 55.

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40. JFMA, 2.4.2.30, Vol. 7, ‘Ahen seido ch¯ osa h¯ okoku [The Reports on the Opium Regimes]’; Nonami Shizuo, Kokusai ahen mondai [International Opium Problem] (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1925), p. 221. 41. TNA, FO371/6597, F4207/15/10, from Cabinet Offices, 16 November 1921, enclosure; FO371/6598, F4496/15/10, from Home Office, 28 November 1921. 42. JFMA, 2.4.2.30, Vol. 6, Ariyoshi Akira in Geneva to Uchida, no. 6, 29 April 1922; Vol. 7, Plenipotentiaries to Uchida, no. 39, 15 September 1922. 43. FO, Opium Trade, Vol. 5, part XIX, no. 16. 44. W. W. Willoughby, Opium as an International Problem: The Geneva Conferences (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1925), pp. 123, 450. 45. TNA, FO371/9242, F1502/33/87, Drummond to C. H. Tufton, Counsellor of the FO, 11 May 1923. 46. TNA, Cabinet papers, CAB 27/256, OP.(24)3, memorandum by Home Secretary, 11 December 1924; FO371/9240, F3076/5/87, from Home Office, 18 October 1923; FO395/396, P340/296/145, from British Library of Information, New York, 16 February 1923; FO371/9242, F1502/33/87, memorandum from Sweetser, 9 May 1923. 47. British Malaya Opium Committee, Proceedings of the Committee Appointed by His Excellency the Governor and High Commissioner to Inquire into Matters Relating to the Use of Opium in British Malaya (Singapore, 1924), pp. A6, A12 and section XIII. 48. Ibid., pp. A62–64. 49. TNA, FO371/10325, F2463/20/87, Grindle (Colonial Office) to Waterlow, 21 July 1924. 50. See Koizumi Tatsuya, Ahen to Hong Kong 1845–1943 [Opium and Hong Kong ] (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 2016); Tatsuya Koizumi, ‘International Dimensions to the Development of the Opium Retail System in Hong Kong, 1845–1943’, in Kazuhiko Kondo (ed.), History in British History: Proceedings of the Seventh Anglo-Japanese Conference of Historians (Tokyo, 2015), pp. 271–284. 51. TNA, FO371/10326, F2577/20/87, from Cabinet, C.P. 414, 28 July 1924, memorandum by Home Secretary. 52. Ibid., p. 6. 53. TNA, FO371/10326, F2760/20/87, from Cabinet, C.P. 425 (24), 15 August 1924, memorandum by the Secretary of State for the Colonies. 54. TNA, CAB 27/256, OP. (24)3, memorandum by the Home Secretary, 11 December 1924. 55. Nihon Gaik¯ o Bunsho [Documents on Japanese Foreign Policy] (hereafter NGB), 1925, Vol. 1, no. 118, Representative (the Opium Conference) to Shidehara, 13 January 1925, fuki 7 (Representative to Shidehara, 16 November 1924).

74

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56. House of Commons, parliamentary papers, Cmd. 2461, miscellaneous No. 8, League of Nations, Report on the International Conferences on Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs, pp. 11–13. This report was by Delevingne. 57. TNA, FO371/10329, F3834/20/87, from Consul London (Geneva), 16 November 1924; F3881/20/87, letter from Delevingne to Anderson, 17 November 1924; F3986/20/87, Letter from Delevingne to Paskin (CO), 25 November 1924. 58. Edward R. Slack, Opium, State, and Society: China’s Narco-Economy and the Guomindang, 1924–1937 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001), p. 6. 59. Rimner, Opium’s Long Shadow, pp. 269–271, 277. 60. Rappard, International Relations as Viewed from Geneva, p. 93. 61. TNA, FO 371/10329, F3986/20/87, Letter from Delevingne to Paskin, 25 November 1924. 62. TNA, CAB 27/256, C.P. 520 (24), 2 December 1924; and C.P. 530 (24), 5 December 1924. 63. TNA, FO371/10330, F4149/20/87, FO Minute (Waterlow), 9 December 1924. 64. TNA, CAB 27/256, OP. (24)8, meeting of Inter-Departmental Conference held on 19 December 1924, 8 January 1925; FO371/10330, F4352/20/87, from Home Office, 22 December 1924. 65. TNA, FO395/402, P6/6/150, FO Minute (Randall), 31 December 1924; FO371/10330, F4171/20/87, Waterlow minute, 11 December 1924. 66. BL, IOR/L/E/7/1368, file 5349, LN, O.D.C.87, Telegram to the President, League of Nations, from the Indian National Congress. 67. BL, IOR/L/E/7/1364, file 4902, International Opium Conferences at Geneva, Report of the Indian Delegation, p. 23; Willoughby, Opium as an International Problem, pp. 78–79; John Palmer Gavit, Opium (London: George Routledge & Sons., 1925), pp. 106–108; M. Emdadul Haq, Drugs in South Asia: From the Opium Trade to the Present Day (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000), pp. 86–89, 95. 68. NGB, 1925, Vol. 1, no. 128, Japanese delegation to Shidehara, 27 January 1925; no. 130, Shidehara to the delegation, 29 January 1925. 69. House of Commons, parliamentary papers, Cmd. 2461, p. 26. 70. League of Nations Official Journal (hereafter LNOJ ), May 1925, pp. 673–679, C. 82. M. 41. 1925. XI. [C.O.P. (1).], First Opium Conference: Agreement, Protocol, Final Act. 71. Ibid., p. 681, Protocol, Article II. 72. Ibid., p. 681, Protocol, Article III. 73. LNOJ , May 1925, pp. 699–703, C.88.M.44.1925.XI., Second Opium Conference: Convention, Protocol, Final Act; Renborg, International Drug Control, p. 42; McAllister, Drug diplomacy, p. 76.

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74. BL, IOR/L/E/7/1375, File 295, E & O 2573, 15 April 1926, Ratification by His Britannic Majesty; IOR/L/E/7/1383, File 1196, E&O 3143, from Viceroy, Finance Department, to Secretary of State for India (Earl of Birkenhead), 26 May 1925; E&O 5321, from R. Sperling (Berne) to Chamberlain, 12 August 1925. 75. NGB, 1925, Vol. 1, no. 139, Japanese representative to Shidehara, 19 February 1925, fuki. 76. BL, IOR/L/E/7/1450, File 2013, E&O528, from Viceroy (Reading), Finance Department, Central Revenues to Secretary of State for India, 30 January 1926; E&O 749, extract from speech made by Lord Reading at the opening ceremony of the Indian Council of State, 9 February 1926. 77. LNOJ , October 1926, p. 1253, Annex 896, A.20. 1926. III, Report on the Work of the Eighth Session of the OAC (May 26–June 8, 1926); Haq, Drugs in South Asia, pp. 95–97. 78. League of Nations, Commission of Enquiry into the Control of OpiumSmoking in the Far East, Report to the Council (Geneva, 1930), Vol. I, Part III, section VIII, pp. 60, 100. 79. TNA, Colonial Office papers, CO 273/529, no. 41976, 20 August 1925, Hose to Amery, enclosure no. 1. 80. British Malaya Opium Committee, Proceedings, p. A27; TNA, CO273/565/7, Clementi to Passfield, 24 February 1930, pp. 2–3; CO273/529, Hose to Amery, 26 October 1925, no. 52452. 81. Noman Miners, Hong Kong under Imperial Rule, 1912–1941 (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1987), Chapters 11 and 12. See also, Koizumi Tatsuya, Ahen to Hong Kong 1845–1943. 82. BL, IOR/L/E/7/1395, File 3279, pp. 1–2, E. & O. 765, letter from Campbell to Walton, 10 January 1926. 83. TNA, CAB23/55, Cabinet 57 (27), 23 November 1927. 84. LNd, A.7.1928. XI, 22 June 1928, Proposal by the Government of Great Britain for a Commission of Enquiry; FO, Opium Trade, Vol. 6, part XXV, no. 36. (LN, C.639.1928.XI); ibid., Vol. 6, part XXVI, no. 12 (FO to LN, 16 November 1929); TNA, FO371/15527, F4207/172/87, 16 July 1931, FO Minute (MacKillop). 85. Shanghai Nihon Sh¯ ogy¯ o Kaigisho [Japanese Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai], Go Sanjy¯ u Jiken Ch¯ osasho [The Report of Investigation into the May Thirtieth Incident ] (Shanghai, 1925), p. 429. 86. Goto-Shibata, Japan and Britain in Shanghai, Chapters 2 and 3. 87. LNd, C. 521.M. 179. 1927. XI [OC 686(I)], Report, OAC to the Council, 10th session 28 September–8 October 1927, pp. 4, 7; and LNd, A.7.1928. XI, Report, OAC, 11th Session, 12–26 April 1928, p. 6. 88. LN, Commission of Enquiry, Report, Vol. 1, pp. 9, 11.

76

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89. Goto-Shibata, Japan and Britain in Shanghai, Chapter 4. 90. TNA, FO371/13254, F4237/229/87, Delevingne to Mounsey, 7 August 1928; F4799/229/87, Strang minute (from Consul London), 5 September 1928; FO371/13255, F5280/229/87, Lampson to Chamberlain, 24 September 1928; and F6276/229/87, FO minute (draft letter to Delevingne and Grindle), 14 November 1928. 91. LNd, A.7.1928. XI, 22 June 1928, Extract from the Minutes of the Council, 31 August 1928; TNA, F0371/13254, F4237/229/87, 7 August 1928, Delevingne to Mounsey; F4799/229/87, 5 September 1928, Strang minute (from Consul London); FO371/13255, F5280/229/87, 24 September 1928, from Lampson; F6276/229/87, 14 November 1928, FO Minute (draft letter to Delevingne and Grindle); Zhou Yongming, Anti-Drug Crusades in Twentieth-Century China (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), pp. 55–56; Zoku Gendai Shi Shiry¯ o 12 Ahen Mondai [Second Series, Materials of Contemporary History, Vol. 12, Opium Problems ] (Tokyo: Misuzu Shob¯ o, 1986), part 1, document 11, And¯ o Akimichi, ‘Kokusai ahen mondai kenky¯ u bassui [The extract of The Study of International Opium Problem]’ (March 1931), p. 126. 92. LN, Commission of Enquiry, Report, Vol. 1, p. 10. 93. Ibid., pp. 13–16, 58–59. 94. Ishii Itar¯ o, Gaik¯ okan no issh¯ o [The Life of a Diplomat ] (Tokyo: Yomiuri Shimbunsha, 1959), p. 50. 95. TNA, FO371/14768, F2079/1446/87, Croft (India Office) to Orde, 8 April 1930; FO, Opium Trade, Vol. 6, part XXVII, no. 83, enclosure (Consul-General Eastes to Lampson, 5 December 1930); part XXVIII, no. 1 (Snow to MacKillop, 3 December 1930). See also Motohiro Kobayashi, ‘Drug Operations by Resident Japanese in Tianjin’, in Tim Brook and Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi (eds), Opium Regimes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), p. 158. 96. Kikuchi Y¯ uji et al., Ahen mondai no kenky¯ u [A Study on the Opium Question] (Tokyo: Kokusai Renmei Ky¯ okai, 1928), p. 5. 97. NGB, 1925, Vol. 1, no. 141 (Kaku and Sugimura to Shidehara, 20 February 1925); no. 147 (Japanese representative to the sixth Assembly to Shidehara, 5 October 1925). 98. JACAR, Ref. B04122189500, Kokusai Renmei Singapore densenby¯ o j¯ oh¯ okyoku kankei ikken (B-9-10-0), image 20; JFMA, 2.4.2.45, a letter from Kusama to Kuriyama Shigeru, 21 March 1926. 99. JFMA, 2.4.2.45, a letter from Kusama to Sasaki, 17 June. 1926; Sugimura to Shidehara, no. 93, 9 June 1926 and no. 13, 16 June 1926. 100. JFMA, 2.4.2.30, Vol. 9, Usami Uzuhiko, deputy director of the Japanese Bureau, to Shidehara, no. 197, 18 October 1926.

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101. TNA, FO371/12527, F1705/153/87, HO (Delevingne) to Mounsey, 18 February 1927. 102. TNA, FO371/13976, F4145/1215/87, 17 August 1929, from Chancery (Tokyo); outfile (Letter from Mounsey to Delevingne). 103. LN, Commission of Enquiry, Report, Vol. 1, pp. 137–145; FO, Opium Trade, Vol. 6, part XXVIII, no. 4 (LN, C.84.1931.XI, 19 January 1931). 104. Using the information contained in the report, the International Labour Office published Opium and Labour in 1935. 105. LNOJ , February 1931, pp. 197–200, Work of the Commission of Enquiry into the Control of Opium-Smoking in the Far East; TNA, FO371/15527, F2333/172/87, Delevingne to Orde, 28 April 1931; F2652/172/87, Delevingne to Orde, 13 May 1931; F2668/172/87, Patteson (Geneva) to Henderson, 15 May 1931; F4264/172/87, Delevingne to Orde, 3 August 1931. 106. TNA, CO825/11/3, pp. 27–31, note of a conference held at the Residency, Penang, 29 October 1931. 107. LN, Commission of Enquiry, Report, Vol. 1, p. 82. 108. Stefan Hell, Siam and the League of Nations: Modernisation, Sovereignty and Multilateral Diplomacy, 1920–1940 (Bangkok: River Books, 2010), pp. 107–108. 109. LNd, C.70.M.36. 1932.XI, Conference on the Suppression of OpiumSmoking, Agreement and Final Act (Signed at Bangkok, 27 November 1931); FO371/15527, F7465/172/87, 8 December 1931, Charles minute (Perrins to Orde). 110. Hell, Siam and the League of Nations, p. 108. 111. TNA, CO273/547/1, p. 29, Grindle to Delevingne, 7 September 1928. 112. TNA, CO273/588/3, Clementi to Cunliffe-Lister, 10 August 1933, pp. 53–55; CO825/17/10, Straits Settlements to Cunliffe-Lister, 3 January 1934, p. 21; CO825/19/1, Thomas to MacDonald, 2 November 1935, pp. 19–20. 113. TNA, CO825/19/1, pp. 26–40, Governor to Cunliffe-Lister, no. 132, 1 May 1935. 114. Ibid. 115. Jennings, The Opium Empire, p. 100.

CHAPTER 4

Expanding the Range: Japan’s Reaction to the Technical Co-operation with China

We have seen in the previous chapter that the League functioned as a forum. This chapter examines the initial stage of the technical cooperation between the League of Nations and China. It argues that the League was a significant actor, or a company of actors, in the development of international relations in East Asia. After a period of internal strife, China was reunified by the Nationalists in 1928. The Republic of China was different, however, from today’s People’s Republic of China. First, the reunification was not complete, and internal conflicts continued, most notably between the Nationalists and the Communists. Secondly, the Republic of China in the inter-war period was not a permanent member of the League’s Council. It had to be elected to the Council to secure the seat of a non-permanent member. This led to the visit of Joseph Avenol, then the deputy secretary-general, to China in 1929. While the Republic of China was still under various international restrictions, it was not a colony of any one power; it was therefore open to

Parts of the following journal article have been reprinted with permission: ‘The League of Nations as an Actor in East Asia: Empires and Technical Co-operation with China’, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, 17/3, 2017, 435–461. © The Author(s) 2020 H. Goto-Shibata, The League of Nations and the East Asian Imperial Order, 1920–1946, New Directions in East Asian History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4968-7_4

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the activities of the League of Nations. Some in the Nationalist government, including T. V. Soong who had been educated at Harvard, came to show keen interest in co-operation with the League, partly because it offered the opportunity for them to present themselves as the central authorities of China. The League was a source of national and international legitimacy.1 The co-operation was also useful as a diplomatic tool. The technical co-operation with China was not a work envisaged by the founding fathers of the League. Co-operation started in the field of health and developed through personal networks. Officials in the League’s Secretariat played significant roles. There were originally no well-considered rules nor structures for such works. The League was careful not to impose co-operation on China.2 Still, some members of the League Secretariat and experts were enthusiastic. China’s sheer territorial dimensions and its ancient history continued to provoke awe. More significantly, the cooperation with China offered the experts fertile grounds for testing their expertise. They could start from scratch, and if successful, they could demonstrate the League’s potential. They could also make their names in their fields. The co-operation between the League of Nations and China has been valued highly.3 Margherita Zanasi considers it as a pioneering effort in establishing international aid for developing countries.4 None of the existing studies, however, investigated deeply into why Japan was strongly opposed to the co-operation. Therefore, this chapter focuses on identifying the reasons for the reaction. Concerning technical co-operation as well as opium control, it was not the intention of the League as a whole to challenge the existing imperial order. These activities of the League, however, led to the reconsideration of the status quo in the region. By taking Britain into consideration, this chapter also sheds light on the interimperial aspect of the League. Britain, one of the mainstays of the League, clearly understood the causes of Japan’s dissatisfaction and hostility, even though it was not sympathetic to the latter.

The Developmental Phase The opinions of the Chinese elite towards the League in which the United States did not join were ambivalent. It was hoped that the League would improve China’s international status, although the League was sometimes regarded as an organ controlled by the imperialist powers. A seat

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in the Council was considered to be important. The Republic of China was successfully elected to the seat of a non-permanent member in 1920 and 1926. In order to be rendered eligible for re-election continuously, however, non-permanent members had to secure a two-thirds majority of the votes at the Assembly. China failed to secure re-eligibility on 10 September 1928. China’s failure made Drummond deeply worried that it might consider leaving the League. There was already a precedent: Brazil left the League in 1926. Therefore, he made Avenol, the deputy secretary-general, visit China to promote closer relations between the Chinese government and the organs of the League.5 Receiving this news, Giichi Tanaka, the prime minister cum foreign minister of Japan, instructed Naotake Sato, the head of the Japanese Bureau of the League Affairs in Paris, to invite Avenol to visit Japan as well, because otherwise the Japanese would think that the League was giving a particular favour only to China. Sato asked Tanaka in return to make sure that the arrangements should be made to lead Avenol to understand Japan’s status in the Far East well and to be favourably impressed with Japan.6 Avenol met Sugimura on 4 December. Sugimura was then one of the under secretaries-general and the director of the Political Section of the League. Avenol mentioned that Arthur Salter, the director of the Economic and Financial Section, together with the members of the Section, was contemplating loan questions of China. The Economic and Financial Section had succeeded in rescuing Austria and Hungary from financial ruin and in solving the loan questions of Greece and Bulgaria.7 Therefore, it also started to think about the reconstruction of China. In contrast, Avenol was not well-disposed towards the League’s meddling in China’s financial affairs. He said to Sugimura that he intended to make Salter fully aware of the necessity of co-operation not only with the United States but also with Chinese financiers who worked in the consortium.8 The second China consortium agreement had been reached in May 1920 by the banking groups of the United Kingdom, the United States, France and Japan. They had agreed to contract loans to China together, to refrain from setting up new spheres of interests in the country and from intervening in its internal politics.9 Although the powers thought that the cooperative spirit of the new age was reflected in the agreement, the Chinese did not think likewise. They considered that the consortium would insist upon financial control.

82

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It should be noted that the issue of loans to China was one of the central questions in the international relations of East Asia in the first half of the twentieth century. Britain had come to consider contracting loans to be more profitable than the opium trade before it reached agreements of 1907 and 1911 with the Qing government. The direct cause of the Chinese revolution of 1911 had been the people’s dissatisfaction with foreign railway loans. The issue of loans could not be separated from politics. Avenol arrived in Shanghai on 25 January 1929 and stayed in China for about a month. He met various leaders including Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi), and tried to make them better understand the League of Nations.10 He also met Sir Miles Lampson, British minister to China, at the end of February, and exchanged information and opinions on the League and China. Lampson told Avenol that the League could give advice to China on finance.11 While Avenol was still in China, the health minister of the Nationalist government invited Rajchman to become a member of an international advisory council whose duty would be to advise him. Drummond authorized Rajchman to accept the invitation, and this appointment opened the way for an official co-operation between the Chinese Health Ministry and the LNHO.12 Having travelled through the north-eastern provinces of China, Avenol arrived in Japan on 13 March 1929. When he met Prime Minister Tanaka on 19 March, they discussed the difficulty of giving loans to China for reconstruction. Avenol’s opinion was as follows: when one gave loans, one also needed security, but the Chinese would regard the stance as the revival of unequal relations between the foreigners and themselves; and they would use it to incite anti-foreignism in the country. Therefore, Avenol considered it indispensable for China to seek assistance. He also thought that the League should refrain from offering large loans to China soon. Tanaka agreed with Avenol’s opinion.13 The League would make it a rule to respond to China’s request. Otherwise, as Avenol observed, the assistance might be repulsed as a new form of foreign intervention. Avenol also had a talk with Kikujiro Ishii, then a member of the Japanese House of Lords. Ishii had been the ambassador to France, and the representative to Geneva from 1920 to 1927. On this occasion, Avenol again expressed his concern about the issue of loans to China. He observed that the important members of the Nationalist government

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had studied in the United States and that they believed monies would be easily provided with them as soon as they asked.14 On 14 September 1929, the Chinese foreign minister sent a telegram to Drummond, inviting a commission of experts from the LNHO to come to China to make a survey on health conditions in ports and maritime quarantine.15 Rajchman arrived in China in November, and surveyed various places in the country.16 Rajchman visited China again from 23 December 1930. Following his advice, the Nationalist government sent a telegram to Geneva on 7 January, inviting Salter and Robert Haas, the director of the Transit and Communications Section, to visit China. It was expected that the former should discuss the effect of the Great Depression on Chinese economy, while the latter was expected to consider the problems of inland waterways and the reclaiming of land.17 T. V. Soong had actually sought the advice of Arthur Young, who had been an American adviser of China’s Finance Ministry since 1929. This was because the Nationalist leaders were not sure whether the co-operation with the League would be to their advantage, although Rajchman himself had gained their confidence. They were rather concerned that the co-operation might result in another foreign intervention in China’s domestic affairs. Soong had been educated in the United States and had trusted the Americans. Young was of the opinion that the advice provided by the League experts would be useful. Receiving this advice, the Nationalists finally decided to start co-operation with the League of Nations.18 The League’s Council accepted the request of the Republic of China and the works of the League began to become wide-ranging. On 27 February 1931, Haas arrived in Nanjing. Salter, who had been in India on another mission of the League, sailed with Elliott Felkin, a member of the Economic and Financial Section, from Colombo on 15 February, reaching Nanjing on 5 March. Three directors of the League of Nations were thus together in China, although Salter planned to resign from the League shortly.19 Soong discussed with Rajchman the desirability of establishing some form of economic planning organization. This organization would be the National Economic Council. When Rajchman left China in early March, he took back to Geneva a plan of collaboration proposed by the Chinese Ministry of Health, including arrangements of technical advice by experts from the League in regard to quarantine, a new Central Field Health Station in Nanjing, medical education, cholera control in Shanghai, and

84

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training of Chinese health officers by means of travelling fellowships in Europe and the United States provided by the League.20 The Nationalists would continue to be keen on travelling fellowships to the United States. Meanwhile, Salter stayed in China for nearly two months. He discussed with Soong all the immediate financial and economic problems.21 Some members of the Japanese Foreign Ministry had been uneasy about the growing involvement of Rajchman and other League officials in China. Sugimura shared their concern. He visited Britain in early spring, and found out that the Bank of England was waiting for Salter’s report with regard to the possibility of the League’s loans to China. He discussed the matter with Kenkichi Yoshizawa, the Japanese ambassador to France and the representative to Geneva, and Setsuzo Sawada, who succeeded Sato as the head of the Japanese Bureau for the League of Nations Affairs. On 7 March 1931, Sawada opined to the Foreign Ministry that Japan should know the opinions of Salter. They suggested that Kengo Mori, a member of Japan’s House of Lords, should invite Salter to come to Japan and have talks with him. Mori had been a Japanese financial commissioner in London from June 1913 to May 1927.22 Sugimura also suggested to the Foreign Ministry that those League officials who would visit China should also be invited to Japan on their way back. Haas had expressed his keen interest in coming to Japan after his visit to China, and stayed in Japan for one week from 2 April 1931. Salter also stayed in Japan from 30 April to 5 May 1931.23 Landing at Kobe, Salter had a very busy week in Japan: seven speeches, official meals, numerous official calls, and some attempt to see Kyoto, Nara, Tokyo and Nikko where the cherry blossoms had not yet ended. Salter had a conversation with Mori on the reconstruction of China’s finances. He said that only a small sum of loans should be offered at first, because those of a substantial sum would rather weaken China’s finance. When deciding to give China some loans, three points should be taken into consideration: their supervision, the security and their relations with the consortium agreement. As China would not accept foreign supervision, some way of indirect supervision should be devised. This would be different from the cases of Austria and Hungary. China was actually strongly opposed to the existing consortium, so that it would be necessary to form a new group through the mediation of the League. A railway loan might be possible, but such a loan should be based on a first-class government security. Although customs were the only possible security, they were already used to cover multiple loans. It would be helpful if

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other creditors make some concessions and the new League loan should be treated preferentially, given a high-ranking charge on the customs. Those were Salter’s opinions Mori understood.24 The question of foreign loans to China was of particular interest not only to Japan but also to Britain. Returning home, Salter called on Sir John Pratt, the adviser in the Far Eastern Department of the British Foreign Office, on 13 and 23 July. He showed various ‘notes’ he wrote on questions of China, and allowed Pratt to have one of them titled ‘Supplementary Note on China’.25 Sir Victor Wellesley, the deputy undersecretary of state for foreign affairs, asked Salter to give his opinion on the report of the Committee on Chinese Situation, of the Economic Advisory Council. The Committee had been formed in the previous year, and the members included Balfour, John Maynard Keynes and Sir Charles Addis. Addis was the former London manager of the Hongkong Shanghai Banking Corporation and once a director of the Bank of England. He had helped in creating the consortium. Although he knew that the Chinese hated it, he thought the only alternative was the return of foreign competition and spheres of interests.26 The Committee’s report recommended that the British group in the consortium should get in touch with the Chinese government concerning railway rehabilitation.27 Salter replied to Wellesley’s inquiry on 31 July. His suggestion was completely different from the proposal of the Committee. He wrote that the Chinese regarded the consortium ‘as an intended instrument of financial and political domination’. A constructive loan of the League of Nations was promising, but Salter thought that the League would not be able to assume responsibilities for the expenditure of the loan and the due execution of the scheme, as well as for framing the scheme itself. He was aware of Chinese public opinion. He thought that the only line of practicable progress was for the Chinese government to appoint foreign experts, on their own initiative, in the places of supervision. He had also begun thinking ‘that the question of the formal dissolution of the consortium deserves consideration’, and ventured to suggest it to Wellesley. He considered that the first step would be for one of the associated governments to suggest to the others that they should terminate the political engagement. He wrote to sum up that in the immediate future no issue of any substantial government loan on foreign markets would be practicable. He thought a foreign railway loan might be possible before a big comprehensive issue. Such a loan, however, should be based on a first-class government security, namely the customs. To achieve this, he thought it

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desirable to contemplate waving the present high-ranking charge in favour of new foreign loans for constructive purposes.28 Receiving this letter, the Far Eastern Department felt encouraged, because it actually had the same idea on the consortium.29 Wellesley asked Salter to make available the more detailed memoranda which the latter prepared for the Chinese government and had already shown to Pratt.30 In the meantime, on 25 April 1931, T. V. Soong announced in a telegram to Drummond, which he sent as the vice-chairman of the Executive Yuan, that the Nationalist government had set up the National Economic Council, and had requested the League’s technical organizations to collaborate and assist in their making and carrying out of reconstruction plans.31 In view of the importance and complexity of the problem, Drummond considered it desirable to set up a committee in the Secretariat on the question. He proposed that Avenol should preside over it, and that Rajchman, Haas and three other directors (Albert Dufour-Feronce, German under secretary-general and director of the International Bureau Section; Alexander Loveday, British director of the Financial Section and Economic Intelligence Service; and Pietro Stoppani, Italian director of the Economic Section) should be its members.32 He did not appoint any Japanese as a member. His intention behind this selection of members is not clear. It might have been because Sino-Japanese relations had already begun to deteriorate. But it is also possible that he simply thought of League directors from major European powers and added Rajchman who had already visited China several times. Neither reason was welcomed by the Japanese. It cannot be said that this move of the League Secretariat was tactful, because it did not take the regional situation into consideration. It was fairly obvious that excluding Japan would offend the Japanese and would not make the situation easier. The Japanese diplomats in Europe such as Yoshizawa and Sawada as well as Sugimura were all displeased with the development. They considered that there must be some political meaning behind it. First, they suspected that the exclusion of Japan might be deliberate, because even Sugimura, one of the under secretaries-general and director of the Political Section, was not informed of the plan at all. Secondly, they felt China was being given a special favour by the League despite the fact that it had continuously failed to pay its annual contribution to the League. These considerations made Sugimura and others lobby for including Japan in the technical collaboration.33

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On 1 May, Sugimura had meetings with Drummond, Avenol and Rajchman separately. According to Avenol, Rajchman was of the opinion that the League should not make China feel that the powers were behind the League experts, so that Rajchman asked the British to pretend to be indifferent.34 This was because some in China worried that the League, controlled by the British and the French, planned to start an economic invasion of China.35 Rajchman asked Sugimura not to propose Japanese advisers. Sugimura stated that he could not agree with the suggestion if the Japanese were the only ones who would be excluded.36 Sugimura was an under secretary-general of the League of Nations. He should have considered the League of Nations and the development of international co-operation first. Concerning this issue, however, one aspect of Sugimura as a nationalist who tried to protect Japan’s national interests can be observed. Internationalism and nationalism coexisted within him. Sugimura discussed the matter with Rajchman again on the next day. He observed Rajchman was so besotted with China that he slighted Japan. Sugimura accused directly why Rajchman had not contacted him before the visit to China, and why Sugimura himself was excluded from the committee in the Secretariat. Although Rajchman apologized to Sugimura, he also said that if the attitude of Japan towards China, apart from that of Shidehara, was not changed, the League could not be sure whether it should include Japan in the co-operation.37 Even Shidehara, the foreign minister, could not accept the exclusion of Japan from the scheme. He was right in considering the League’s collaboration with China to be unavoidable, and that leading it to Japan’s advantage would be more profitable than opposing to it. He instructed Sawada to make the League always provide Japan with sufficient information and to select Japanese advisers.38 Yoshizawa therefore visited Drummond with Sawada on 16 May, requesting the utilization of Japan’s knowledge and experience when the League would give ‘assistance’ to China. Sawada and Yoshizawa were representing Japan. Their position was different from that of Sugimura. Sawada strenuously insisted that if the League did not make use of the Japanese, Japanese feelings would be harmed to the extent that Japan’s attitude to the League might drastically deteriorate.39 His words were strong, but it should be noted that they were worried that if co-operation were not made acceptable to Japan, some strong opposition might arise from Japan.40 Japan used the term ‘assistance’ instead of ‘co-operation’. It does seem that Japan wanted to show that the relations between the League and China were not equal.

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Drummond prepared a proposal concerning the procedure for collaboration. His first suggestion was that one of the directors of the technical organizations should pay a further visit to China. Then, he considered that the proposals should be transmitted to the competent technical organizations. He proposed 480,000 Swiss francs a year for the collaboration.41 As Drummond knew how sensitive Japan was about the project, he showed his proposal to Japan in advance.42 No objection was raised by the Financial Supervisory Commission which consisted of independent advisers to the secretary-general’s estimates of the budget, but Pratt would write in his memorandum in 1934 that the financial arrangement involved was ‘curious’. In 1931, China’s arrears to the League amounted to the equivalent of about ten years’ contributions. An arrangement was then made by which it should pay them off by twenty annual instalments, amounting to between 480,000 and 490,000 Swiss francs a year, and an amount roughly equivalent to each instalment included in the budget of the League for collaboration with China. In effect, therefore, China was spending its money, through the League, on foreign experts and advisers.43 Although the financial arrangement was ‘curious’, the League’s Council accepted Drummond’s proposal at its 63rd session on 19 May 1931. The president of the Council at that time was Arthur Henderson, the British foreign secretary. His Labour Party was supportive of the League of Nations and he stated that every member would wholeheartedly approve the proposals and would congratulate those members of the Secretariat who had been to China on behalf of the League. Dino Grandi, Italian foreign minister, also expressed a favourable opinion.44 Yoshizawa also supported the plan, but the nuance of his statement was different. After assuring his colleagues that Japan desired to see public order established in China and the well-being of the Chinese people increased, he reminded the participants that the plan should refer solely to works of a purely technical character and put aside all assistance of a political nature. He added that he was convinced that the League would invite Japan to the work of reorganization in China, particularly by appointing Japanese advisers for the purpose. Finally, he expressed his sincere hope that the plan of co-operation would be carried out very carefully in order that real assistance be given to the Chinese government in its efforts to reorganize the country.45 The secretary-general’s proposals were adopted, and the committee was set up in the Secretariat.46 On 23 May, Loveday wrote to Salter

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that although it had been decided that Haas should go, when and for how long were not certain. Rajchman had written to Soong to inform the Council decision and to inquire whether the latter was coming to Geneva in September.47 The first meeting of the China Committee in the Secretariat was held on 2 June. Sugimura attended it. Other participants were Avenol, Rajchman, Haas, Loveday, Dufour-Feronce, and Stoppani. The main issue was Soong’s request that Rajchman should urgently visit China. Sugimura was of the opinion that persons other than Rajchman, such as Salter and Haas, should be sent to China because the issues to be dealt with mainly concerned China’s economy, finance and transport. On the other hand, Sugimura did not think Salter would accept the mission, so that he actually expected that Rajchman would be the person to visit China. On the following day, when asked, he told Avenol that ‘assistance’ to China should not be carried out solely based on the close relations between a certain leading figure of China and a certain director of the League of Nations. Although the China Committee decided that Rajchman should be dispatched to China, it was planned that other directors of the relevant sections would be sent next. Avenol emphasized that it should be avoided to dominate the co-operation by certain persons or countries.48 As a part of co-operation, experts of education were to be sent to Nanjing Central University for two years. In addition, the educational mission of experts was to observe China’s education system. The selection of candidates started in June. The British appointment was Richard H. Tawney, a professor of history at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He was also a left-wing Labour supporter. He had already visited China, and it was known that the Chinese had a favourable impression of him.49

Co-operation in Flood Relief As a result of unusually prolonged and heavy rainfall in the late spring and early summer of 1931, the dykes of Changjiang (Yangtze River) began to break towards the end of July 1931. An inland lake, 1440 kilometres long with an average width of 64 kilometres, was created; 80,000 square kilometres were seriously flooded, and 20,000 square kilometres less seriously; and the provinces which suffered most severely were Hubei, Henan, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui and Jiangsu.50 According to the record of the Japanese who surveyed the area in mid-September, while

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not much damage was observed in Shanghai, the river swelled in the upstream region, swallowing villages, towns, and farmlands; from Nanjing upstream, the embankments could not be seen at all; 80% of the city of Jiujiang was flooded; and the triplet cities of Hankou, Hanyang, and Wuchang were as if floating in the middle of a huge lake.51 Dr J. Heng Liu (Liu Ruiheng), the Harvard-educated director-general of the Chinese National Health Service, assisted by the staff of the Central Field Health Station, surveyed the area from Nanjing to Hankou. The Central Field Health Station, one of the concrete results of the cooperation between China and the LNHO, formed the nucleus of the Chinese National Health Service. The situation they found was most alarming in Hankou, where more than 200,000 refugees were concentrated. The Nationalist government established the National Flood Relief Commission on 14 August, appointing T. V. Soong, minister of finance, as its chairman. The purposes were to organize relief measures; to repair the dykes and drain the flooded areas; and to assist in the reconstruction of farmlands. Soong requested Rajchman to provide China with the LNHO’s assistance, because epidemics such as cholera and typhus could spread from the flooded regions. Beginning on 28 August and continuing all through September, the work of establishing field health units proceeded in various sections of the country. Each unit consisted of a director and the subordinate staff responsible for the prevention of epidemics, sanitation and medical relief.52 On 31 August, Soong asked Drummond to recommend a League expert to assist China in flood relief. A week later, at the twelfth Assembly of the League, Viscount Cecil proposed to show by action their sympathy for the victims of the catastrophe.53 Rajchman arrived in China with Frank P. Walters, Drummond’s private secretary, on 10 September 1931. He was appointed technical adviser to the National Flood Relief Commission and stayed in the country until 26 December 1931. On 17 September, the Second Committee of the League’s Assembly, which was in charge of technical organizations, touched upon the progress of co-operation from the previous year in its report. It pointed out the danger of the spread of epidemics and the loss of life as a result of the terrible disaster in the valley of Changjiang; it recalled the assistance rendered in similar circumstances by the LNHO through its Epidemic Commission to Poland and Greece in 1921 and 1923; and it requested the Council to take the necessary steps to render the international co-operation effective.54

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September 1931 was a tumultuous month. Three days earlier, namely on 14 September, China was elected as a non-permanent member of the Council after three years’ interval, and on 18 September, the Japanese Guandong Army, without prior approval from Tokyo, initiated aggression in Manchuria. On the following day, the 65th Council of the League of Nations started as scheduled, and on Monday, 21 September, China brought the Manchurian Incident to the Council invoking Article 11 of the League’s Covenant. Although the League’s Council was preoccupied with the Manchurian Crisis from 22 September, Drummond managed to include the selection of experts in flood relief in the agenda of the meeting held on 25 September. Two persons were considered to fulfil the conditions. The one was Sir John Hope-Simpson. He was a British who had worked in the Indian civil service for twenty years, and a friend of Sir John Campbell, whom we met in Chapter 3. Hope-Simpson retired early and succeeded Campbell in the League’s Greek Refugee Settlement Commission in 1926. He became its vice-chairman in 1927. The other candidate was Raymond Schlemmer, a delegate to the International Committee of the Red Cross for many years. He had been involved in the League’s work in relation to Russian refugees in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Greece.55 Relief measures and epidemic disease control in the flooded areas of China were again discussed at the Council on 29 September. The report presented by Sean Lester of the Irish Free State read as follows: the ‘need for anti-epidemic measures [wa]s emphasised, in view of the international danger resulting from the prevalence of malaria, dysentery, cholera and typhus fever’; and ‘fortunately’, representatives of the LNHO were in China and had already taken steps to co-ordinate the assistance proposed by various countries. The Council drew the attention to the need for contributions of money as well as for medical and health staff and supplies. The Netherlands government had informed Drummond that it was able to send one thousand kilogrammes of quinine to relieve the victims of malaria in the flooded areas. Large amounts of vaccines had been despatched by Denmark and Poland. The Spanish government was sending a medical officer who would be invaluable in the campaign against typhus fever. The Council authorized Drummond to take action in accordance with the Chinese request of sending an expert.56 A number of donations arrived in China, although the quantities were limited and consisted mostly of vaccines. Borowy writes that Japan

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made generous contributions of material, personnel and transport facilities.57 Ten thousand doses of dysentery vaccine were offered by Japan for oral administration, which was administered to refugees in the Wuchang camps.58 The Japanese emperor and empress had offered 110,000 yen to the residents in the neighbourhood of Hankou: 100,000 yen to the Chinese victims, and 10,000 yen to the Japanese residents. This was handed by the Japanese minister, Mamoru Shigemitsu, to T. V. Soong.59 Japan’s donation was the fourth largest following those from China itself, the Straits Settlements, and the United States.60 T. V. Soong asked Drummond to make Hope-Simpson come to China as soon as possible.61 Hope-Simpson travelled first to Geneva, and from there via Siberia with two experts sent by the LNHO. These experts were Professor Mihai Ciuca, a Rumanian secretary of the Malaria Commission of the League of Nations, and Dr T. F. Huang (Huang Zifang). Huang had worked in the National Epidemic Prevention Bureau in Beijing and had then been recruited by Rajchman to work in the Health Section.62 Arriving in China on 20 October 1931, Hope-Simpson was made director-general of the National Flood Relief Commission, and his base was the Shanghai International Settlement. Initially, it was planned that Hope-Simpson would stay in China for half a year, but in the end, he stayed until 1933, working in charge of flood relief and making the schemes including the construction of dykes of Changjiang and Huai River to prevent further floods. Ciuca and Huang were sent to prevent epidemics from spreading. Both of them as well as Rajchman and Dr Berislav Borcic took an active part in the organization and operation of field units. Borcic was the director of the Health Institute at Zagreb, and represented the LNHO in China since May 1930. He assisted in the organization and development of the Central Field Health Station. As malaria prevailed among the flood refugees, Ciuca, together with medical officers from the division of malariology of the Central Field Health Station, spent five weeks in Nanjing and neighbouring areas, and reported that malaria was endemic in Nanjing. Huang was in charge of medical treatment in Hankou. As 200,000 people had taken refuge in the camps, the sanitary conditions were bound to be bad. Cholera, dysentery and other intestinal diseases prevailed. Cholera had occurred regularly in Shanghai for a number of years. In this occasion, smallpox and typhus fever broke out in all the provinces affected by the floods.63

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The National Flood Relief Commission continued its works until the beginning of July 1932, when Hope-Simpson left for England on leave. Minor operation resumed in November when he returned from leave.64

The Manchurian Crisis The Manchurian Crisis was closely related to the politicization of the technical co-operation between the League of Nations and China. This section does not investigate the crisis itself, but examines how the Japanese diplomats observed Rajchman’s attempts to assist China. Once the Manchurian Incident broke out, Rajchman started to play an active role. He did not distance himself from power politics, and his activities were no longer limited to the technical co-operation or the works related to his expertise. It is said that it was he who advised the Chinese to refuse bilateral negotiations and to bring the issue to the League of Nations.65 Shigeru Yoshida, the Japanese ambassador to Italy, reported that Rajchman sent many long telegraphs to Geneva in support of China, and that it was whispered that their length did not matter to him since the Chinese government paid the cost.66 Presented with the Manchurian Incident while he was actually in China, Rajchman did not pretend to be a neutral person who would only offer good offices. He stayed at T. V. Soong’s house, and was consulted by Soong at almost every phase of the crisis.67 China sent many dispatches during the Manchurian Crisis and they are printed in the League’s records. The author, however, could not find Rajchman’s own dispatches in Geneva, although Yoshida reported that Rajchman had sent many. Instead, there is some correspondence between him and Drummond in the British diplomatic records. Both Drummond and F. P. Walters were British. As Drummond did not have his own source of information on what was taking place in Manchuria, information from Rajchman must have been useful and valuable to him.68 Let us look at some of the examples of those correspondences kept in the British records. Rajchman wrote on 9 October in reply to Drummond’s message: [i]t is vitally important to realize that this is a life and death struggle for [the Nationalist] Government which although beset on all sides by appalling obstacles is doing everything it can to maintain friendly relations

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with the West, from which it is receiving constant counsels of perfection but small evidence of understanding.69

On 10 November 1931, Walters, who was leaving for Tokyo, asked E. M. B. Ingram of the British sub-legation at Nanjing to be allowed to communicate with Rajchman through the consulate-general at Nanjing. Rajchman made the same verbal request to Ingram. Lampson, the British minister in Beiping (Beijing),70 inquired to London about whether this request should be granted. In view of the agitation against Britain in Japan ‘coupled with ill feeling at prominent part that Rajchman currently believed to be playing’ in China, Lampson thought that he ‘should deprecate what otherwise might have been a perfectly proper and natural arrangement’.71 On 28 November, the League’s Secretariat asked Alexander Cadogan, the adviser on League of Nations affairs of the British Foreign Office, to transmit a message to the Foreign Office. The message itself was from Rajchman in Nanjing and its final destination was Walters in Tokyo. Cadogan wondered why Rajchman did not ask the British Minister directly.72 On 1 December, a message from Drummond was sent via the British delegation in Geneva. Drummond had a long conversation with Alfred Sze, the Chinese representative, who asked him to explain the Jinzhou situation to Rajchman. Jinzhou was located between Manchuria and northern China, and strategically important. Douglas MacKillop of the British Foreign Office minuted, ‘True Chinese diplomacy. … Mr. Sze does not telegraph at once to his own govt. (sic) about this curious development but communicates with Dr. Rajchman through Sir E. Drummond’.73 Japanese diplomats were displeased with Rajchman’s involvement in politics and his support for China. Japan preferred bilateral negotiations to the arbitration by the League of Nations. Even Shidehara was not pleased with Drummond’s idea that Japan should propose a commission of enquiry, because he suspected that it originated with Rajchman. At the end of October, Yoshida described Rajchman as a member of the Secretariat who made ‘mischief’.74 Around mid-November, Yoshizawa complained to France, then the presiding state of the Council, that the League was manipulated by supporters of China including Rajchman and the Chinese delegation.75 The Japanese were from the beginning not strong supporters of internationalism. Furthermore, to understand internationalism as an abstract norm was one thing, but to accept it

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being applied in the neighbourhood was quite another. As a result, the Japanese diplomats came to think of Rajchman as an improper person who overstepped the limits of the authority of the League’s directorship and engaged in anti-Japanese activities.76 Britain was also an empire with extensive interests in China, and therefore understood how the Japanese felt, although the level of sympathy naturally varied from person to person, and it was to decrease over time. Britain did not want chaos or instability in the region, so that the British Foreign Office did not approve of Rajchman’s activities. For example, Sir Francis Lindley, the ambassador to Japan, reported that there was great indignation in Japan over the alleged proceedings of Rajchman. Receiving this, Pratt minuted down on 12 November as follows: ‘I cannot help thinking that Dr Rajchman’s present activities will not dispose Japan to entrust the settlement of disputes to the League and that they are therefore definitely harmful’. On 24 November, MacKillop minuted that in Rajchman the Nationalist government had ‘an ally almost more Chinese than the Chinese’.77 It was thus difficult to separate technical collaboration from politics, although the collaboration itself was valued highly by many people. On 12 May 1932, Pratt described the League’s assistance as ‘the most hopeful line of approach’. He repeated a similar idea in November. He thought that there was no need to discourage proposals for further technical assistance to China ‘on the lines of the assistance given during the last few years’. He added, however, that ‘the League experts sent to China should steer absolutely clear of politics’ and the ‘expenditure on th[e] assistance should also be carefully scrutinised’.78 The report of the Lytton Commission also emphasized the importance of international co-operation. Chapter 9 of the report, Principles and Conditions of Settlement, made international co-operation in Chinese reconstruction as the tenth condition of a satisfactory solution. It reads as follows: ‘since the present political instability in China is an obstacle to friendship with Japan’, ‘the final requisite for a satisfactory solution is temporary international co-operation in the internal reconstruction of China’. It suggests that Japan should ‘recognise and welcome sympathetically the renaissance of Chinese national sentiment’. For China, it appeals that in political and economic matters, the co-operation of all the leading powers is necessary, and emphasizes that ‘especially valuable to her would be the friendly attitude of the Japanese Government’.79 The report of the

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Lytton Commission was drafted cautiously and diplomatically in order to recover stable relations.80

How to Finance the Co-operation On 27 March 1933, Japan notified that it would withdraw from the League of Nations. The period dealt with in this section is between Japan’s notification and its formal withdrawal. As will be examined in Chapter 6, it was actually still possible for Japan to reverse its position and to reintegrate itself in the League. The technical co-operation developed into one of the focal points of East Asian international politics during the period from 1933 to 1934, because financial resources were necessary for carrying out the projects. The Nationalist government of China had not yet managed to establish solid administrative and tax-collecting systems, so that it had to find financial resources from different sources. Although some in China were reluctant to introduce foreign capital, T. V. Soong was convinced that this was indispensable. Against the background of deteriorating Sino-Japanese relations, Soong sought to raise capital without including Japan, who wanted to maintain the old imperial order and agreements. Using British and Japanese documents, let us examine the situation more in detail. In March 1933, Soong asked the League to assign Rajchman to China in order to examine conditions under which international co-operation might be brought about for the reconstruction of the country as recommended by the Lytton Report. Almost all agreed that co-operation itself was a useful and important project, but many wondered whether Rajchman was the appropriate person to do the job. Lampson wrote that both he and Nelson T. Johnson, the American minister, had an instinctive mistrust of selecting Rajchman who had identified himself almost too wholeheartedly with China’s causes when he was last in the country.81 The British Foreign Office shared the doubts with them, but it was difficult to see on what grounds they could justify their objection. Charles Orde, the head of the Far Eastern Department, thought that if Rajchman and the Chinese heard of the objection, they would make the British suffer.82 In the end, Rajchman was appointed as the technical agent and visited China twice in this period, i.e. from April to mid-May 1933 and from October 1933 to April 1934. The former turned out to be a short visit, because Rajchman’s activities in China relied heavily on his good

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relations with T. V. Soong, who left China himself to attend the World Economic Conference held in London. Soong visited the United States on his way to the Conference, and succeeded there in inviting Jean Monnet to China as a financial adviser. Monnet was the former deputy secretary-general of the League of Nations and would become the founding father of the European Union. The Nationalist government was trying to have the benefit of the advice and counsel of persons of necessary standing and experience. Soong also concluded the so-called ‘Wheat and Cotton Loan’ with the Reconstruction Finance Corporation of the United States. Through this agreement, the Chinese Nationalist government was able to purchase American wheat and cotton on credit to the value of 50 million dollars, and sell the goods for cash in China. The proceeds of such sales would be immediately available to the Chinese government, while the debt to the United States was to be repaid in three years. The case was one of credit, and Dorothy Borg wrote that the ‘credit was thought not to violate the letter of the Consortium agreement as it did not involve any public bond issue’.83 It was probably the American view, but the problem was that the difference between credits and loans was not obvious to nonspecialists, and even diplomats continued to call the case a ‘loan’. The British Foreign Office actually considered it ‘a somewhat flagrant breach of the Consortium Agreement’, at least of its spirit. Pratt later summarized the situation as follows: The consortium was an agreement made in 1921 (sic), at the urgent instance of the United States Government, between banking groups in the United States, Great Britain, France and Japan to the effect that all Chinese Government loans involving a public issue should be shared equally between the four groups, each of which was assured of the complete support of their respective Governments. The object of this agreement was to substitute co-operation in place of the dangerous scramble for loans and concessions in China, and it has always been regarded as the financial and industrial counterpart of the Nine-Power Treaty of 1922, … When the Wheat and Cotton Loan was negotiated, no protest was made to America, but the British, French and Japanese banking groups informed their respective Governments that they considered that a breach of the spirit of the consortium had been made.84

On 28 June 1933, Soong announced in a letter to the secretarygeneral that the Nationalist government had decided to carry into practice

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its national reconstruction work. The government therefore requested the nomination of a technical officer to be accredited to itself and the National Economic Council.85 There was one significant change in the League during this period. Joseph Avenol succeeded Eric Drummond who resigned on 30 June from the secretary-generalship. Avenol was known to be an administrative reformer, putting emphasis on efficiency rather than efficacy.86 He was very conservative, and had the opinion that the League’s activities in the technical fields should be absolutely separate from politics. He therefore preferred not to take any responsibilities in the technical co-operation. At the 74th session of the Council at which he was present for the first time as the secretary-general, he proposed to set up a special committee to examine the request and to take useful steps.87 The Council Committee on Technical Co-operation between the League of Nations and China (hereafter TCC) was thus set up. This was more in the direction of increasing control of co-operation rather than expanding the activities further. Japan was still a member of the League, and the Japanese Foreign Ministry thought that they should endeavour to make the situation favourable to their country.88 Foreign Minister Yasuya Uchida instructed Nobufumi Ito, deputy director of the Japanese Bureau for the League of Nations Affairs, to discuss the matter with Avenol and other relevant persons. Avenol told Ito that he would not intend the technical cooperation to result in the further deterioration of Sino-Japanese relations. On the other hand, however, he considered it impossible to negotiate over the matter which had already been decided by the Council.89 On 18 July 1933, the first TCC was held in Paris and it examined the memorandum which had been submitted by Wellington Koo, the Chinese representative. The appointment of a technical agent was discussed. The United States, having accepted Avenol’s invitation to take part in the TCC’s work, nominated an unofficial observer to be present at the committee. Britain was actually against Rajchman’s return to China, but the Foreign Office considered it difficult to raise objections, so that the representative of the United Kingdom maintained a passive stance.90 After a discussion, the TCC decided to appoint a technical agent for one year, who would act as a technical liaison officer. It was made clear that the appointment was of a purely technical and entirely non-political character. Rajchman was appointed to be the agent, and his stay in China

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this time, as already mentioned above, was from October 1933 to the beginning of April 1934. How to finance the reconstruction schemes became a contentious issue. Rajchman reported on 10 January 1934 that it was expected that arrangements would be made by which the work of the National Economic Council would be financed out of the proceeds of the American Wheat and Cotton Loan.91 When he lunched with Cadogan, then the British minister to China, on 22 March 1934, Rajchman observed that his proposals would depend largely on whether Jean Monnet and the associates would be able to succeed in realizing their plan for establishing a finance corporation.92 This corporation would be the instrument through which co-operation between the banks would be arranged and the required study and investigation undertaken in the case of a proposition which, in view of its scale or character, was unsuitable for an individual bank to deal with singly as part of its ordinary business. Japan suspected that this corporation might turn out to be the means of introducing foreign capital into China. The Western financiers, however, were not forthcoming. Nor were the Chinese united in welcoming the introduction of foreign capital. The finance corporation would be established in June 1934 completely out of Chinese capital.93 These developments formed part of the background of the so-called ‘Amau remarks’. Eiji Amau, director of the Information Bureau of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, made an unofficial comment on international assistance to China during a press conference on 17 April 1934. It was reported that Amau said that if the powers intended to take common action for China, it would inevitably become political, even if it was claimed to be only financial and technical. He said to have given as examples the providing of arms or military air planes, the dispatching of military instructors and the raising of political loans. These so-called Amau remarks and their repercussions in various countries have been studied thoroughly,94 and it is known that the remarks reflected the opinion of Shigemitsu who became the vice-minister for foreign affairs in May 1933 and who advocated bilateral negotiations between Japan and China.95 The author does not intend to examine the statements themselves nor to say whether the League’s technical cooperation with China was the sole issue Amau picked up. For example, the German ambassador in Japan suspected that German military advisers in China were among the concerns of the Japanese.96 The technical co-operation, however, should not be forgotten. Ambassador Lindley

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thought that the statement was issued in response to the reports of Rajchman and Salter.97 As mentioned above, Salter first visited China in 1931. He was again in China from the autumn of 1933 to the spring of 1934 at the invitation of the Chinese government.98 In addition to Monnet and Salter, David Drummond, the son of the former secretarygeneral Eric Drummond, was also in China, assisting Monnet. Although all of them were visiting China in their private capacities, finance was closely related to the success of the technical co-operation between the League and China. Rajchman left Shanghai for Geneva on 8 April 1934. His route was via Kobe and Yokohama, but he did not disembark at those ports.99 Joseph Grew, the American ambassador to Japan, expressed the following opinion to Lindley. An explanation which most observers agree seems to be the most reasonable is that the Japanese suspect that Dr. Rajchman, of the League Secretariat, now on his way to Geneva from China, … is carrying with him some plan for international technical and economic assistance supervised by the League of Nations, to China, and that the Japanese Government wishes to forestall any such move by the League.100

Britain was the mainstay of the League of Nations, but at the same time, it still had considerable interests in East Asia. Although it did not sympathize with Japan after the Manchurian Incident, it thought it could understand why Japan was hostile to the technical co-operation between the League and China. Pratt wrote a long memorandum on 8 May 1934. He considered that from the Japanese point of view the League assistance to China in effect amounted to a plan for the economic reconstruction of China from which Japan was excluded, in breach of the spirit of the Nine-Power Treaty, and which was to be financed by the proceeds of a loan which was a breach of the spirit of the consortium agreement. At the same time, however, it was difficult to see how Japan could be included so long as the tension between it and China continued. He also added that there was not the slightest suspicion that Monnet was involved in politics nor that his plans were in any way directed against Japanese interests. Nevertheless, he thought, the Japanese entertained some suspicions against both Salter and Monnet, and connected their activities with the League of Nations’ co-operation with China.101

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In the meantime, the advance copy of Rajchman’s progress report reached the British Foreign Office. It was an extensive report of 76 pages which dealt with various fields including agriculture, water conservancy, roads and health. It also touched upon the works not under the control of the National Economic Council, such as railway construction and aviation. In order to carry out reconstruction projects in such wideranging fields, it was obvious that a huge amount of capital would be needed. Rajchman was present at the fourth TCC which began on 17 May 1934 to examine his report. Wellington Koo conveyed his government’s high appreciation of the services rendered by the technical agent and the experts.102 The British Embassy in Tokyo reported that the Japanese press was intensely hostile to Rajchman and that it claimed his report went ‘beyond the scope of technical assistance’. Rajchman was ‘accused of political activity’. It was also reported that Shigemitsu ‘said that Japanese Government had proofs that R…. (sic) had sent to League of Nations in the name of Chinese Government telegrams full of hostility to Japanese’. The British Embassy suggested that ‘it would be all to the good if some pretext could be found by the League for not sending him back to China’, because the Japanese seemed ‘quite irreconcilable to him and m[ight] find means to wreck any plans identified with his name’.103 Pratt considered this suggestion reasonable. In his opinion, the Japanese government was following ‘their usual procedure of press propaganda’. He considered that one of the causes of their objections was ‘their fear that under League auspices foreign capital w[ould] be introduced to finance reconstruction without Japanese participation’. Pratt thought that ‘Dr. Rajchman ha[d] given colour to these Japanese suspicions.’ In his preliminary report of 10 January, Rajchman had stated that the work of the National Economic Council would be financed out of the American Wheat and Cotton Loan, and that Monnet was organizing the finance corporation. Pratt continued, ‘There is therefore considerable justification for the Japanese suspicion that the League technical assistance, the American Loan and the Chinese finance corporation are all parts of a conspiracy to effect the economic rehabilitation of China without Japanese participation.’ Pratt was of the opinion that Rajchman failed to appreciate the inevitable political repercussions of such action. He also added that the Japanese held Rajchman responsible for China’s refusal to enter into direct negotiations with them in 1931 over Manchuria and that they

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would never forgive him or trust him again. In conclusion, Pratt wrote that Rajchman should not return to China next July.104 The British Foreign Office agreed that the best way was to express British apprehension to Avenol. It was necessary to decide before 10 July when Rajchman’s term as an adviser would expire. Although Avenol agreed with the British, he did not want the matter to be counted as a victory for the Japanese.105 Avenol met Rajchman and made it clear that as the director of the Health Section he must resume his duties at Geneva. He also said to Rajchman that he must abandon any idea of occupying himself further with the work of League collaboration with China. Rajchman agreed.106 On 28 September 1934, the fifth TCC was held. It was reported that on the expiration of the mandate on 1 August, Rajchman had resumed his work as the director of the Health Section. The TCC found it unnecessary to appoint a technical delegate forthwith, and requested the secretarygeneral to dispatch the director of one of the sections of the Secretariat concerned, for a short period. Avenol decided to send Haas to China for a period of about two months.107

Technical Co-operation Politicized This chapter has shown that the League of Nations was a significant actor or a company of actors in East Asia. It has also shown that, although the technical co-operation between the League and China was expected to be non-political, it turned out to be highly political. There are several reasons why the technical co-operation politicized. The first is, of course, the timing. The co-operation was carried out when Sino-Japanese relations had deteriorated drastically, especially after the Japanese aggression in Manchuria. It should be noted, however, that politicization started even before the Manchurian Incident. The second is the lack of rules or structures for such works. The League’s founding fathers did not envisage technical co-operation. The practice of co-operation grew out of personal initiatives, and the role played by the members of the Secretariat was significant. The third reason is the way Rajchman, the central actor on the League side, carried out the co-operation. He was extremely capable of expanding the range of the League’s activities and influence, and did not intend to limit his activities to his expertise. He chose to be involved in international

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power politics and to assist the weaker country. Changes in the existing situation were indeed necessary, but impossible without tension. The fourth is that the issue came to be closely related to that of loans to China. The technical co-operation was impossible without capital. The Chinese and Rajchman had to find ways to overcome the existing consortium agreement made by the powers. On the other hand, Japan could not accept being excluded. It also wanted to maintain the status quo which the empires established. It became hostile not only to Rajchman but also to the technical co-operation as a whole. One point to be noticed is that Britain, one of the mainstays of the League, was the largest empire on Earth, and still had predominant interests in East Asia. Even if it did not sympathize with Japan after the Manchurian Crisis, it also had a big stake in preserving the status quo. It could not appreciate the activities of Rajchman, which went far beyond his expertise and might cause further chaos and instability in the region. It decided to pressure Avenol, the French secretary-general, to remove Rajchman from the co-operation. The technical co-operation between the League and China was generally valued highly and continued after the end of Rajchman’s term as the technical agent, and even after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War. The period will be examined in Chapters 7 and 8.

Notes 1. Yoshizawa Seiichir¯ o, ‘Seihoku kensetsu seisaku no shid¯ o: Nankin kokumin seifu ni okeru kaihatsu no mondai [The Beginning of the Policy to Construct North-western Part of China]’, T¯ oy¯ o bunka kenkyujo kiy¯ o [The Bulletin of the Institute of Advanced Studies on Asia, University of Tokyo], No. 148, 2005, pp. 15–74; Tehyun Ma, ‘“The Common Aim of the Allied Powers”: Social Policy and International Legitimacy in Wartime China, 1940–47’, Journal of Global History, 9/2, 2014, pp. 257–258. 2. NGB, Showa ki 1, dai 2 bu, dai 2 kan [Showa Era 1, Part II, Vol. 2] (hereafter NGB, 1-2-2), no. 228, Daijin kaiken roku [The record of the Foreign Minister’s interview]. 3. The technical co-operation in the period from 1933 to 1934 was briefly touched upon by Dorothy Borg in her The United States and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1933–1938: From the Manchurian Incident through the Initial Stage of the Undeclared Sino-Japanese War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964), Chapter 2. When she prepared her book, however, British archival sources were not yet available, and

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4.

5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

her analysis was only from the viewpoint of the United States. Ann Trotter’s Britain and East Asia 1933–1937 (London and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975) used the British documents, but her main interest was not technical co-operation. Jürgen Osterhammel’s ‘“Technical Co-operation” between the League of Nations and China’ (Modern Asian Studies ) is the groundbreaking work that first concentrated on examining the technical co-operation between the League and China. Its main interest was to clarify the situation in China. In recent years, the research on the topic has deepened dramatically. Chang Li’s Guoji hezuo zai Zhongguo is an extensive study on the co-operation. Donald A. Jordan praised the collaboration as successful in his ‘China’s National Economic Council and the League of Nations Experts, 1929– 1937’, in Susanne Weigelin-Schwiedrzik et al. (eds), As China Meets the World: China’s Changing Position in the International Community (Wien: Der Oesterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2006). He noted the significance of the question of finance, although he had not consulted either Osterhammel or Chang and his article contained many factual errors. Iris Borowy and Kayo Yasuda also examined it especially in the field of health. Iris Borowy, Coming to Terms with World Health; idem, ‘Thinking Big—League of Nations Efforts towards a Reformed National Health System in China’, in Borowy (ed.), Uneasy Encounters: the Politics of Medicine and Health in China 1900–1937 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2009); Yasuda, Kokusai seiji. Margherita Zanasi, ‘Exporting Development: The League of Nations and Republican China’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 49/1, 2007. LNA, R3585, 50/8007/8007, 18 October 1928, reply letter from Drummond to Wang King Ky, Bruxelles. LNA, R3585, 50/8007/8007, 29 October 1928, confidential circular 18, record of interview; NGB, 1-2-2, no. 215, Tanaka Giichi to Sato Naotake, 26 October 1928; no. 218, Sato to Tanaka, 15 November 1928. Clavin, Securing the World Economy, pp. 25–33. NGB, 1-2-2, no. 220, Sato to Tanaka, 6 December 1928. Mitani, Wall Street to Kyokut o¯ , pp. 78–79, 172–173. NGB, 1-2-2, no. 229, Sato to Tanaka, 5 April 1929, besshi. TNA, FO371/13950, F2247/1959/10, Lampson to Mounsey, 2 March 1929. TNA, FO371/13945, F1254/1254/10, 7 March 1929, LN 54th session of the council, extract from final minutes of the 5th meeting held public on 7 March 1929. NGB, 1-2-2, no. 228, fuki 1 (Daijin kaiken roku [The record of the Foreign Minister’s interview], 19 March 1929).

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14. NGB, 1-2-2, no. 228, fuki 2 (Ishii, summary of the meeting with Avenol, 22 March 1929). 15. LNOJ , 1929, p. 1672, 57th session of the Council, 2506. 16. On Rajchman’s works in China during this period, see Fukushi Yuki, Kindai Shanghai to k¯ osh¯ u eisei [Modern Shanghai and Public Health] (Tokyo: Ochanomizu Shob¯ o, 2010), pp. 175–181, 189–191. 17. LNA, R3575, 50/28390/3769, 15 May 1931, C.326.1931, communication from the Chinese government in regard to technical co-operation with the League, note by Drummond. 18. Chang, Guoji hezuo, pp. 136, 177–181. 19. NGB, 1-2-2, no. 242, Kamimura Shin’ichi, consul in Nanjing, to Shidehara, 21 March 1931. 20. ‘Regular Collaboration with League of Nations is Proposed by Nanking’, Shanghai Times, 28 April 1931. 21. TNA, FO371/15479, F2871/160/10, 30 April 1931, from Sir M. Lampson (on tour), enclosure 1 (T. V. Soong to Salter, 16 April 1931). 22. NGB, 1-2-2, no. 241, Sawada Setsuz¯o to Shidehara, 7 March 1931; Mitani, Wall Street to kyokut¯ o, p. 48. 23. NGB, 1-2-2, no. 241, fuki, Sugimura to Aoki Setsu’ichi, head of the Tokyo office of the League of Nations, 14 March 1931. 24. NGB, 1-2-2, no. 257, Shidehara to Sawada, 16 May 1931. 25. TNA, FO371/15479, F3962/160/10, 16 July 1931, Sir A. Salter to Sir J. Pratt. 26. Roberta Allbert Dayer, Finance and Empire: Sir Charles Addis 1861– 1945 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988), p. 272. 27. TNA, FO371/15479, F160/160/10, 29 December 1930, from Economic Advisory Council (communicated); F668/160/10, 18 December 1930, from Economic Advisory Council (communicated). 28. TNA, FO371/15480, F4260/160/10, 31 July 1931, letter from Salter to Sir V. Wellesley. 29. Dayer, Finance and Empire, pp. 274–277. 30. TNA, FO371/15480, F4260/160/10, Pratt minute dated 8 September 1931; outfile from Wellesley to Salter, dated 13 August 1931. 31. LNA, R3575, 50/28390/3769, 25 April 1931, Soong to Drummond. 32. LNA, R3575, 50/27937/3769, 28 April 1931, note by Drummond. 33. NGB, 1-2-2, no. 248, Sawada to Shidehara, 4 May 1931; no. 260, Shidehara to Shigemitsu, acting chargé d’affaires in China, 19 May 1931. 34. NGB, 1-2-2, no. 248, Sawada to Shidehara, 4 May 1931. 35. Chang, Guoji hezuo, p. 137. 36. NGB, 1-2-2, no. 248, Sawada to Shidehara, 4 May 1931. 37. NGB, 1-2-2, no. 260, Shidehara to Shigemitsu, 19 May 1931 (Forwarding the record of Sugimura’s conversation with Rajchman). 38. NGB, 1-2-2, no. 254, Shidehara to Sawada, 11 May 1931.

106

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39. NGB, 1-2-2, no. 259, Sawada to Shidehara, 18 May 1931. 40. Yajima Akira, ‘Gaimush¯ o renmei ha to sono seisaku [The League Group in the Japanese Foreign Ministry and Their Policies]’, Meij¯ o H¯ ogaku [The Bulletin of the Law Faculty of Meijo University], 68/1, 2018, pp. 7–8. 41. LNA, R3575, 50/28390/3769, 15 May 1931, C.326.1931, communication from the Chinese Government, note by Drummond. 42. NGB, 1-2-2, no. 259, Sawada to Shidehara, 18 May 1931. 43. TNA, FO371/18090, F2683/85/10, FO Memorandum (Pratt), para. 14, 8 May 1934; Walters, A History of the League of Nations, p. 130. 44. LNA, R3575, 50/28390/3769, 19 May 1931, extract from minutes of the 2nd meeting of the 63rd session of the Council. 45. Ibid. 46. Chang, Guoji hezuo, p. 141. 47. Nuffield College, Oxford, Loveday papers, 7/89, Letter from Loveday to Salter, 23 May 1931. This material is used with the permission of Dr Helen Loveday. 48. NGB, 1-2-2, no. 267, Sawada to Shidehara, 22 June 1931, besshi k¯o, besshi otsu; Un’no, Kokusai renmei to Nihon, p. 168. 49. LNA, R2255, 5B/28134/28134, 12 June 1931, letter from Montenach to Gilbert Murray; 5B/29547/28134, 18 June 1931, letter from Zilliacus to de Montenach; Chang, Guoji hezuo, p. 48. 50. LNA, R5934, 8A/35838/30816, 17 March 1932, report of the League of Nations Health Organization; Borowy, ‘Thinking Big’, p. 213. 51. JACAR, Ref. B04013311500, images 39, 59, 64 and 101, Ch¯ ugoku ni okeru suigai kankei zakken [Papers relating to the flood in China] (I-6-0-0). 52. LNA, R5934, 8A/35838/30816, 17 March 1932, report of the League of Nations Health Organization, pp. 3–4; TNA, FO371/15512, F4637/4106/10, from Drummond (LN) to Cadogan, 21 August 1931; JACAR, Ref. B04013311500, image 67. 53. LNA, R2520, 9A/30762/25140, 31 August 1931, telegram from T. V. Soong to Secretary General; TNA, FO371/15512, F4960/4106/10, LN, A42.1931, 7 September 1931. 54. LNA, R5933, 8A/31244/30816, A.60.1931.III, 17 September 1931, Work of the Health Organization. 55. LNA, R2520, 9A/30762/25140, C.613.1931.III, 25 September 1931, Flood Relief in China, Note by the Secretary-General. 56. TNA, FO371/15513, F6390/4106/10, LN, C.L. 284.1931.III, 3 November 1931, 2939, Relief Measures and Epidemic Disease Control in the Flooded Areas of China. 57. Borowy, ‘Thinking Big’, pp. 214, 216. 58. LNA, R5934, 8A/35838/30816, 17 March 1932, report of the League of Nations Health Organization, p. 14.

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59. TNA, FO371/15512, F5230/4106/10, 3 September 1931, from Lindley (Tokyo). 60. LNA, R2520, 9A/30762/25140, The Work of the National Flood Relief Commission of the National Government of China (Shanghai, June 1932), p. 8. 61. LNA, R2520, 9A/30762/25140, 30 September 1931, Soong to Drummond. 62. Klaas Dykmann, ‘How International Was the Secretariat of the League of Nations?’ The International History Review, 37/4, 2015, p. 730. 63. LNA, R5934, 8A/35838/30816, 17 March 1932, report of the League of Nations Health Organization, pp. 6–11. On cholera in Shanghai, see Fukushi, Kindai Shanghai to k¯ osh¯ u eisei, pp. 173–202. 64. LNA, R2520, 9A/30762/25140, The Work of the National Flood Relief Commission of the National Government of China; TNA, FO371/16211, F7527/307/10, from Ingram (Peking), 3 September 1932. 65. NGB, Mansh¯ u jihen, dai 1 kan, dai 3 satsu [Manchurian Incident, Part I, Vol. 3] (hereafter, NGB, M-1-3), no. 145, Yoshizawa to Shidehara, arrived on 20 September 1931; NGB, M-1-3, no. 181, Shidehara to Yoshizawa and others, 26 September 1931; Arthur Young, China’s Nation-building Effort, 1927 –1937: The Financial and Economic Record (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1971), p. 342; Un’no, Kokusai Renmei to Nihon, p. 179; Balinska, For the Good of Humanity, p. 91; Chang, Guoji hezuo, p. 184; Shin Kawashima, ‘Sino-Japanese Relations at the League of Nations’, in Asahiko Hanzawa (ed.), Japan and the UN in International Politics: Historical Perspectives (Sapporo: Hokkaido University, 2007), p. 117. 66. NGB, M-1-3, no. 444, Yoshida to Shidehara, arrived on 7 November 1931. 67. Documents on British Foreign Policy (hereafter DBFP ), second series, Vol. 8, no. 582, 8 October 1931; NGB, M-1-3, no. 448, Murai Kuramatsu, consul-general in Shanghai, to Shidehara, arrived on 7 November 1931: no. 493, Shigemitsu Mamoru, minister to China, to Shidehara, arrived on 12 November 1931; Un’no, Kokusai Renmei, p. 194. 68. DBFP, second series, Vol. 8, no. 559, 6 October 1931; no. 567, 7 October 1931; James Barros, Office without Power: Secretary-General Sir Eric Drummond, 1919–1933 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 325– 326. 69. DBFP, second series, Vol. 8, no. 585, 9 October 1931. 70. As Nanjing was made the new capital, Beijing was renamed to Beiping. Jing means capital, while ping peace. 71. TNA, FO371/15498, F6493/1391/10, from Lampson, 11 November 1931; F6494/1391/10, from Lampson, 11 November 1931.

108

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72. TNA, FO371/15502, F7060/1391/10, from British delegation (LN), 28 November 1931. 73. TNA, FO371/15503, F7138/1391/10, from British delegation (LN), 1 December 1931; MacKillop minute, 2 December 1931. 74. NGB, M-1-3, no. 410, Yoshida to Shidehara, arrived on 31 October 1931. 75. NGB, M-1-3, no. 235, Shidehara to Sawada, 10 October 1931; no. 482, Yoshizawa to Shidehara, arrived on 11 Novomber 1931; no. 492, Yoshizawa to Shidehara, arrived on 12 Novomber 1931. 76. Un’no, Kokusai Renmei to Nihon, p. 168. 77. TNA, FO371/15497, F6470/1391/10, from Lindley (Tokyo), 11 November 1931; FO371/15500, F6853/1391/10, MacKillop minute, 24 November 1931. 78. TNA, FO371/16231, F3962/3163/10, Pratt minute, 12 May 1932; FO371/16180, F7733/1/10, Pratt minute, 4 November 1932. 79. League of Nations, Report of the Commission of Enquiry, p. 131, in NGB, M-bekkan. 80. TNA, FO371/16179, F7304/1/10, Orde and Mounsey minutes, dated respectively 12 and 13 October 1932. 81. TNA, FO371/17127, F2034/1842/10, from Lampson, 26 Mar. 1933; Foreign Relations of the United States (hereafter, FRUS), 1933, Vol. III, p. 494, from Johnson, 30 March 1933. 82. TNA, FO371/17127, F1842/1842/10, Minutes by Pratt (21 March), Orde (22 March) and Wellesley (22 March), and outfile (FO to the Consul, 22 March 1933). 83. Borg, The United States and the Far Eastern Crisis, note 65 on page 574. 84. TNA, FO371/18090, F2683/85/10, FO Memorandum (Pratt), para. 12, 8 May 1934; Dayer, Finance and Empire, p. 285. 85. LNOJ , Septenber 1933, pp. 1063–1064, C.405.M.204.1933.VII., Communication from the Chinese Government regarding technical co-operation between the League of Nations and China, 28 June 1933. 86. Clavin, Securing the World Economy, pp. 232–233. 87. James Barros, Betrayal from Within: Joseph Avenol, Secretary-General of the League of Nations (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1969), pp. 14, 16, 18, 24, 30, 40, 146, 171, 185, 194–197; LNOJ , September 1933, p. 1059, 74th session of the council held on 3 July 1933. 88. Un’no, Kokusai Renmei to Nihon, p. 171. 89. NGB, Showa ki 2, dai 2 bu, dai 2 kan [Showa Era 2, Part II, Vol. 2] (hereafter NGB, 2-2-2), no. 216, Uchida to It¯ o Nobufumi, 11 July 1933; no. 217, Matsudaira Tsuneo, Ambassador to the UK, to Uchida, 11 July 1933, message from It¯ o; no. 218, Matsudaira to Uchida, arrived

4

90.

91.

92. 93. 94.

95.

96. 97. 98.

99.

100.

101. 102. 103.

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on 12 July 1933, message from It¯ o; no. 220, Matsudaira to Uchida, 13 July 1933, message from It¯ o. TNA, FO371/17127, F4690/1842/10, outfile from Vansittart to Tyrrell, 17 July 1933; FO371/17128, F4778/1842/10, from Harvey, 18 July 1933; F4808/1842/10, FO Minute (Vansittart), 12 July 1933. LNA, R5721, 50/9126/7263, 10 January 1934, C/China/3, Technical co-operation between the League of Nations and China, report of the technical agent (Rajchman). TNA, FO371/18090, F2901/85/10, from Cadogan (Nanking), 25 March 1934. Young, China’s Nation-Building Effort, p. 345; Chang, Guoji hezuo, p. 181; and Mitani, Wall Street, p. 210. Although there are numerous studies written in Japanese, as for studies written in English, see for example, Borg, The United States and the Far Eastern Crisis, Chapter 2, and Trotter, Britain and East Asia 1933– 1937 , Chapter 5. Tomizuka Kazuhiko, ‘“Renmei dattai no konpon gi” to Nihon gaik¯ o ni okeru “T¯ oa” gainen no keisei [“The Meaning of the Withdrawal from the League” and the Making of the Concept of “East Asia” in Japanese Diplomacy]’, Kokugakuin Daigaku Nihon Bunka Kenky¯ ujo Kiy¯ o [Bulleting of the Institute of Japanese Culture, Kokugakuin University], No. 92, 2003. TNA, CAB23, Cabinet 17 (34), 25 April 1934. TNA, FO371/18096, F2193/107/10, from Lindley, 19 April 1934. Sidney Aster, Power, Policy and Personality: The Life and Times of Lord Salter, 1881–1975 (Seattle: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016), pp. 263–265; Dayer, Finance and Empire, pp. 287–288. Salter presented a report to the Chinese government in his capacity of economic adviser. Its synopsis is as follows: Sir Arthur Salter, ‘China and the Depression’, The Economist, 19 May 1934, Issue 4734, pp. 57–72. JACAR, Ref. B04014063200, images 61, 69, and 70, Kokusai Renmei Shina ch¯ osain haken kankei ikken [Papers relating to the League of Nations’ dispatching commissioners to investigate into China] (B-9-1-0), Vol. 2. FRUS, 1934, Vol. III, p. 119, Grew to Hull, 20 April 1934; p. 123, Grew to Hull, 21 April 1934; Borg, The United States and the Far Eastern Crisis, p. 77. TNA, FO371/18090, F2683/1842/10, FO Memorandum (Pratt), paras. 12 and 13, 8 May 1934, and Vansittart minute, 9 May 1934. LNA, R5721, 50/11248/7263, 17 May 1934, C.206.1934, TCC, Report of the Committee, fourth session. TNA, FO371/18090, F2911/85/10, from Dodd (Tokyo), 18 May 1934; F2912/85/10, from Dodd, 18 May 1934.

110

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104. TNA, FO371/18090, F2912/85/10, Pratt minute, 25 May 1934. 105. TNA, FO371/18090, F2912/85/10, minutes by Randall, Mounsey, and Vansittart, 25 May 1934; FO371/18091, F3622/85/10, Strang, British delegation, Geneva, to Randall, 12 June 1934. 106. TNA, FO371/18091, F3855/85/10, Stevenson (UK delegation) to Randall, 19 June 1934; outfile to Stevenson, Cadogan and Clive (Tokyo), 10 July 1934. 107. LNA, R5681, 50/17786/980, 10 January 1935, C/China/14, summary of the development of the technical co-operation between the League of Nations and China.

CHAPTER 5

The TWC as Another Forum and Women

Umé Yuasa was from a family of former samurai in the Aizu domain (now Fukushima Prefecture). Educated in a school for girls founded by Catholic missionaries in Tokyo, she was baptized into the Catholic Church at the age of fifteen. She became a nurse because she was determined to serve God and to devote her life to the poor and the less fortunate. Yuasa served as a nurse in Paris during the First World War. As Japan was one of the Allies during the war, the Japanese Red Cross sent twenty-two female nurses to work in Britain, twenty-three in France and thirteen in Russia. Yuasa was one of them.1 Rachel Crowdy remembered the arrival of the first Japanese Nursing Unit when the Allies took over Hotel Astoria in Paris from the British. When one thinks of the status of Japanese women in 1914, how can one say enough for the courage of nurses who’d never before left their own country and yet faced submarine seas and a voyage into the unknown in order to help their British allies wounded on the Western front.2

After Yuasa returned from the service in Paris, she worked in the Red Cross Hospital in Shenyang (Mukden) in north-east China.3 In 1934 when Crowdy visited Manchuria for the second time, Yuasa was the Japanese matron there. It was a remarkable reunion after twenty years. She and Crowdy ‘fell literally on to each other’s necks and started talking Paris and the war’.4 © The Author(s) 2020 H. Goto-Shibata, The League of Nations and the East Asian Imperial Order, 1920–1946, New Directions in East Asian History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4968-7_5

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Crowdy had left the Secretariat of the League of Nations by this time. However, she kept her interest in the League’s humanitarian works. We have seen that Article 23 (c) of the League’s Covenant made the supervision over the trafficking in opium a task of the League. General supervision over the trafficking in women and children was another task that Article 23 (c) stipulated. The Advisory Committee on Traffic in Women and Children (TWC) was set up to carry out the mission. This chapter examines the TWC which functioned as another forum. It deals with just one issue which was tackled by the TWC, namely the plight of Russian women refugees in China. This was one of the issues which Crowdy observed in Manchuria in 1934. The aim of this chapter is to observe the part women played in the League’s work related to East Asia by using the issue of Russian women refugees as a case study.5 This chapter also shows that Japan continued to participate in the League’s social and humanitarian works even after its official withdrawal in March 1935.

The TWC and the Commission of Enquiry The League of Nations took over some regulatory works which had already been started before the First World War. Article 23 (c) of the League’s Covenant made the suppression of trafficking in women and children one of the League’s tasks. In 1921, the International Conference on Traffic in Women and Children was held in Geneva, which led to the adoption of the Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children.6 Another important result of the Conference was that the Council appointed the TWC in September 1921. The TWC had no executive power. It could only advise the Council. Just like the OAC, the TWC was composed of two groups of members, namely government representatives and assessors. There were initially nine TWC member countries, namely Britain, Denmark, France, Italy, Japan, Poland, Rumania, Spain and Uruguay. The representative of Denmark was Estrid Hein, and that of Uruguay was Paulina Luisi. Both women were doctors. Five assessors were representatives of non-governmental organizations, including the International Bureau for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children. This International Bureau was one of the non-governmental organizations which actively lobbied for international treaties. Four out of the five assessors of the TWC were women. It should be recalled that

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Article 7 of the League’s Covenant stipulated that all positions under or in connection with the League should be open equally to men and women. Equality was by no means achieved. Still, the representation of women at the TWC was relatively high.7 Based on the TWC’s recommendation, an enquiry into the international trafficking in women in Europe, the Mediterranean Basin and the Americas was carried out from 1924 to 1926. Although the United States did not join the League of Nations, the Americans continued to have tremendous interest in the social and humanitarian issues the League dealt with. Necessary funds for the international enquiry were furnished by the Bureau of Social Hygiene in New York, a Rockefeller-founded institution. The assistance was indispensable, because the League was run by subscriptions from its member countries and its budget was limited. In 1930, the League’s Council decided to extend the enquiry to Asia. The Commission of Enquiry into Traffic in Women and Children in the East was established. Crowdy was then the head of the League’s Social Questions and Opium Traffic Section, and was authorized to be present at the Commission. The Japanese member of the Commission was Nobufumi Ito, the deputy director of the Imperial Japanese Bureau for the League of Nations Affairs. He had studied at the University of Lyon and married to a French. His substitute was Shiko Kusama.8 The responsibility of the Commission of Enquiry was limited to the international aspect of the problem. The colonial powers were reluctant to open their colonies to the international view. In addition, China and Japan made it clear that they would participate only if the enquiry was limited to the international aspect.9 Japan was one of the countries which still had a system of state-regulated prostitution. Impoverished families sometimes had to sell their daughters to licensed brothels, while the daughters were made to believe that to work there was the proof of their filial piety.10 The Commission of Enquiry was expected to investigate the situation not only in East Asia but also in South Asia and the Middle East. The members of the TWC were aware that the enquiry would be difficult due to the wide differences in social customs. Therefore, the League limited the TWC’s work to the international aspect, the area where members could show a cooperative spirit. The government of the United States consented to the extension of the enquiry to the Philippines. The Americans also co-operated in other ways. First, the Bureau of Social Hygiene in New York agreed to furnish the necessary funds again. Secondly, the chairman of the travelling

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commission was Bascom Johnson, the director of the Legal Section of the American Social Hygiene Association. There were two other members in the travelling commission: Alma Sundquist was a Swedish female physician, and Karol Pindor was a Polish diplomat. The travelling commission left Marseilles in October 1930, and spent eighteen months in various parts of Asia including Japan, India, and the British mandate in Palestine. One of the officials who received the travelling commission in Japan was Hiroshi Kusama, who was then the medical officer of the Ministry of Home Affairs. Pindor wrote a report. It was signed in December 1932, and made public in March 1933.11 The travelling commission found that the largest number of victims of trafficking were Chinese, followed by women from the Japanese Empire. The Japanese government had claimed that there was almost no international trafficking of Japanese women. The members of the travelling commission, however, considered this to be incorrect. They considered that the Japanese women who were reported to be ‘entertainers’ in China were the victims of trafficking. Their report concluded that the abolition of licensed brothels was urgently required.12 The impact of the travelling commission and its report was tremendous. The Japanese Home Ministry announced in 1934 that the licensed prostitution would be abolished in the near future. However, it was abolished only in 1946 after the Second World War. The Anti-Prostitution Law was enacted in 1956.

Russian Women Refugees in China and the Remaining Imperial Order It was the plight of Russian women refugees in China that the report of the travelling commission dealt with first, even before the abovementioned (and more numerous) victims. After the revolution in 1917, it is estimated that one to two million Russians fled their homeland. They took refuge in many countries, and some fled to the East. They began to arrive in Manchuria and the treaty ports in China from 1918 onwards.13 While the refugees in Europe did not go unnoticed, it was only in the 1930s that the plight of Russian refugees in China came to the attention of the League of Nations. The overwhelming majority of the Russian refugees in China were single men of military age, because the soldiers of the defeated White Russian army constituted the core. Different from the image created by press commentary and philanthropic activists, most refugees were not

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former aristocrats.14 Some 80% of the Russian population at the time of the revolution were members of the peasant class, from which most of the soldiers and the civilians came.15 Therefore, most of them did not know any language other than Russian, which made it difficult for them to find jobs, especially in China where the local workforce was abundant. These refugees were divided into two categories in the report of the League’s travelling commission: those stranded in remote parts of Manchuria, and those in the Chinese Eastern Railway (hereafter, CER) zone of north Manchuria.16 The issue of Russian refugees was entwined with the remaining imperial order in East Asia. The CER started as a joint venture of the Russian and Chinese Qing Empires at the end of the nineteenth century. After the Russo-Japanese War, its southern branch was ceded to Japan and became the South Manchurian Railway. After the Chinese and Russian revolutions, the governments of the Republic of China and the Soviet Union succeeded the half-ownership each. Harbin was at the centre of the CER and a relatively large Russian community existed there. When the League’s travelling commission investigated the situation in 1931, only a part of the Russian community in the city was destitute. It should be remembered that the powers still enjoyed extraterritorial privileges in the settlements and concessions in the coastal cities of China in the inter-war period. For example, Britain still had predominant status in the Shanghai International Settlement, and some British residents there regarded it almost as a British colony.17 Many single, young Western men worked in the settlements and concessions in the treaty ports. Furthermore, powers’ naval ships sailed up and down the coast. They called at ports such as Yifu and Qingdao. They could also navigate big rivers such as Changjiang. Foreign residents in China in the inter-war period usually enjoyed affluent lives which they could not have dreamed of pursuing in their home countries. There was a huge demand for dancing partners and restaurant waitresses. The racial similarity was preferred.18 Although what constituted the ‘white’ race was unsettled, many considered Russians in the midst of the Chinese to be white.19 On the other hand, there were many Russian girls in Harbin who longed for a fashionable life in coastal cities. Traffickers exploited this situation. Needless to say, not all Russian women in the treaty ports were victims of the traffickers and engaged in prostitution. Some talented women gave lessons of music and art, and were much respected. Some with language

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ability worked as typists. Some others were engaged in dress- or hatmaking, while many worked as chef’s assistants. It should also be noted that the observation and opinions expressed in those days were not free from the social norms of the period. Some women might have lived with men outside of marriage, but many couples married later. This is just cohabitation nowadays, but it was not so considered in the inter-war period. Even so, Marcia Ristaino’s study estimates that at least 22.5% of Russian women in Shanghai were engaged in some form of prostitution.20 The plight of the Russian women refugees in China came to the notice of the League through the report of the TWC’s travelling commission. The reason why such unedited information came to light was that the Russian refugees were not under the protection of any country. The League’s Council had limited the work to the area where members could be cooperative. The relevant countries, including Japan, were shown the draft of the report before it was made public. They could ask for corrections and modifications if they thought it necessary.21 The Soviet Union became a member of the League in September 1934 just around the time the issue came to be noticed, but it was the regime that the refugees fled from. The refugees did not have Soviet citizenship.22 They were not under the protection of the Soviet Union. Besides, the Soviet Union was opposed to the notion that the capitalist West was capable of solving social problems such as trafficking. It was not so much interested in the social and humanitarian works of the League.

Difficulties in Solving the Problem Although it was surely necessary to help Russian women refugees in China, the TWC found it difficult to take initiatives. There were several obstacles such as the question of race, the growth of Chinese nationalism and the lack of the League’s financial resources. The question of race was argued in an article entitled ‘The “Shocking” Report on Russian Women in Shanghai’, which appeared on 1 October 1934 in The People’s Tribune, a Shanghai-based English-language monthly. The article pointed out that racism was mixed in with the sense of sympathy towards the Russian women. Although there were many women in the same plight almost all over the world, the League’s sympathy was shown only towards the Russian women in Shanghai, not to local Chinese women nor towards Russian women in Russia. The article also referred to the failure of the racial equality proposal presented

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by Japan at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. It continued to ask whether the League was simply a ‘League of White Nations’. (Emphasis in original.)23 In October 1934, the British Foreign Office instructed its posts in China to report on the trafficking of Russian women.24 Sir John F. Brenan, consul-general in Shanghai, enclosed the article of The People’s Tribune with his reply to the Foreign Office. It seems he was worried about the effect of emphasizing the plight of the Russian women. It cannot be denied that the issue of the Russian women refugees initially drew the League’s attention because of race, but the fact made it difficult to be taken up. The growth of Chinese nationalism also made the issue difficult for the powers to deal with. Many Russians, over 18,000, had taken refuge in Shanghai. The growth of Chinese nationalism had already made the foreign settlements unwelcome by the local population. The Westerners including the British had to be careful not to incite unnecessary disputes over the status of foreign settlements and residents. On 25 April 1935, the 14th TWC started together with the Advisory Commission for the Protection and Welfare of Children and Young People. It was the first TWC after Japan’s withdrawal from the League became official. At the beginning of the meeting, the Chilean chairman stated that it would be regrettable to lose Japan’s co-operation. Then Dr Hein, the Danish female member, proposed to ask the Council to take steps to ensure the continued co-operation of Japan. The members from France, Britain, Italy, Poland and Belgium supported the proposal. British member, Sidney W. Harris of the Home Office, suggested that until the Council’s move, Masayuki Yokoyama, the deputy director of the Japanese Bureau for International Conferences in Geneva, should participate in the TWC meetings unofficially. Yokoyama attended the meetings on Harris’s suggestion.25 As for the issue of the Russian refugees, the TWC also asked Victor Hoo, the director of the Permanent Office of the Chinese Delegation accredited to the League of Nations, to attend the meetings. As Hoo was away, a Chinese first secretary attended for him.26 The TWC continued until 9 May. The members debated whether a conference on trafficking in women and children in the Far East should be convened. The British colony of the Straits Settlements was one possible venue. The TWC then considered the plight of the Russian women refugees. In November 1934, Avenol had asked member countries to enquire into the situation of Russian women. The results of the

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enquiry were submitted to this meeting. Although Harris expressed his sympathy towards the Russian women, he at the same time emphasized that members of the TWC must not overlook the fact that it was no more miserable than that of women in many other countries who were unable to find respectable employment. This is the same point as the one made by the above-mentioned article of The People’s Tribune. Harris also stated that funds would be necessary to make any proposals for the assistance of the Russian women. Therefore, the TWC agreed that it would expect voluntary organizations to increase their efforts.27 In July 1935, a memorandum by Crowdy entitled ‘The Position of the White Russian in Manchukuo’ was sent by the British Social Hygiene Council, one of the voluntary organizations, to the British Foreign Office. Crowdy had attended the 15th international conference of the Red Cross in Tokyo which was held from 20 to 29 October 1934. This was the first international conference of the Red Cross held in East Asia. One of the Japanese who welcomed Crowdy was Prince Iyesato Tokugawa, the president of the Japanese Red Cross. She made the most of the opportunity and visited various places including Japanese hospitals and a prison. In Osaka, she saw ‘one good sized passenger ship which was over a mile up the main street of the city’. The city had only weeks before been hit by ‘the greatest typhoon Japan, or even the Far East, had ever known’. The typhoon named Muroto caused high tides. Crowdy observed how the Japanese tried to repair the damage caused by the typhoon.28 She then visited several cities in Manchuria including Harbin. She wrote in her unpublished autobiography, ‘Nothing could justify Japan’s action as an international treaty breaker but I wanted to go to Manchuria to form my own opinion as to whether the people were better or worse off under Japanese domination’.29 As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, this was her second visit to East Asia. She had attended the fourth conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) held at Shanghai and Hanzhou from 21 October to 2 November 1931, visiting Manchuria, Korea and Japan on her way back. Many British including Lionel Curtis, founder of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, attended the IPR conference. R. H. Tawney, who was just investigating China’s education system as a part of the technical co-operation between the League of Nations and China, submitted a report titled ‘A Memorandum on Agriculture and Industry in China’ to the conference. In addition, F. P. Walters and Rajchman from the League, as well as four observers from the ILO including Dame

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Adelaide Anderson, attended the conference.30 Anderson was the first female factory inspector in Britain and was a member of the Shanghai International Settlement’s commission on child labour in 1923–1924.31 At the time of the IPR conference, she was a member of the ILO mission to assist China in establishing a system of factory inspectors. It is impressive that new types of people flocked to China in the inter-war period. Their observation of the situation was different from that made by the traditional diplomatic body stationed in China. Now, back to Crowdy. Based on her observations in Manchuria in 1934, her memorandum, ‘The Position of the White Russian in Manchukuo’, reported the worsening economic situation of the White Russians. Due to the sale of the CER to Manchukuo, the Red Russians who worked for the CER had started to return home. Although the White Russians used to do business with the Red Russians, they were losing their employment. The small shops and cafes previously owned by them were gradually being taken over by the Japanese or the Koreans. Crowdy wrote that Russian women had no choice but to become dancing partners. She also referred to a Russian woman who appeared to be supported by a Chinese farmer.32 It is without any doubt that Crowdy was full of good intentions. At the same time, her memorandum makes one notice the question of racial group-making and boundary maintenance in the period. As Crowdy observed, the most crucial development was the sale of the CER to Manchukuo.33 The Soviets wanted to avoid a military clash with the Japanese in the early 1930s. Therefore, in May 1933, Maxim Litvinov, the people’s commissar for foreign affairs, mentioned the possible sale of the CER to Japan. The Soviets also agreed to change the railway’s name to the North Manchurian Railway. The negotiations continued for more than a year and a half. There was a huge disparity between the prices the two parties were contemplating. The Soviet vice-director of the railway had claimed that the whole of the CER was the property of the Soviet government, while Manchukuo only admitted the Soviet Union’s claim to half-ownership.34 The sale was brought to a successful end in March 1935, which led to a drastic change in the situation of North Manchuria. The Soviet employees of the former CER and their families left for the Soviet Union at the expense of Manchukuo by the beginning of August 1935. John HopeSimpson, who worked for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, made a comprehensive study of the refugee problem. He wrote in a book

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published in 1939 that Harbin’s importance as the centre of the refugee community in the Far East had disappeared, and that it had been replaced by Shanghai.35

The Lack of Financial Resources A memorandum on Russian women in East Asia was prepared by the League Secretariat in the summer of 1935. It mentioned the existence of many voluntary non-governmental organizations. Although they were making efforts to improve the situation of Russian women refugees, each one tended to concentrate on one area and there were very limited links between different organizations. It was considered significant to overcome these shortcomings by appointing an agent who would orchestrate the activities of the various organizations.36 In September 1935, the Fifth Committee of the League Assembly agreed to authorize the secretary-general to secure the service of a competent League agent. The British representative, however, pointed out that the appointment of an agent without funds in so large an area as China would not enhance the reputation of the League.37 The 15th TWC was held from 20 to 27 April 1936. At the beginning of the meeting, it was informed that the Council had decided to combine the TWC with the Advisory Commission for the Protection and Welfare of Children and Young People. A new Advisory Committee on Social Questions would be created. Crowdy attended this last session of the TWC as an independent participant, and she was the only one who raised the issue of the Russian women refugees. Referring to her experience in Manchuria and her impression of the Japanese officials in Manchukuo, she stated her belief that Japan would take the issues into consideration. This remark seems to show that she had a certain trust in the Japanese, perhaps because of her acquaintances with Nitobe, Umé Yuasa and Prince Tokugawa. Her memorandum on the plight of Russian women might have been sensationalistic, but if one reads her unpublished autobiography without hindsight, it is noticeable that she did not use such language on the Japanese.38 The Japanese representative to the TWC, however, did not respond to her expectations. He stated that although he did not intend to raise a political question, the issue should be discussed not with Japan but directly with Manchukuo.39 He followed the instructions of the Japanese Foreign Ministry and pretended that Manchukuo was not a puppet

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state. It was, however, impossible for other League member countries to recognize the situation brought about through aggression. It was not Yokoyama that represented Japan at this meeting of the TWC. Yokoyama had been educated at Gyosei (Ecole de l’Etoile de Matin), a Catholic school in Tokyo, and then the Imperial University of Tokyo. He was one of Japan’s ‘League men’ and had been very willing to continue cooperating in the TWC. His stance, however, came to be disapproved by the ministry back home. He was transferred to be the Minister in Egypt at the end of 1936. In February 1937, the Conference of Central Authorities in Eastern Countries was opened in Bandung, the Dutch East Indies. As the government of the Straits Settlement had objected to the suggestion that the Conference should be held at the same time as the meeting of the Advisory Council of the Eastern Bureau of the LNHO, Bandung was chosen instead.40 Britain, China, France, India, the Netherlands, Portugal, Siam and Japan (the same eight countries as the initial OAC members) participated in the Conference. Japanese representatives were officials of the Foreign Ministry, the Home Ministry, the Department of Overseas Affairs, and the Government-General of Taiwan. The observer from the United States also attended the Conference.41 The question of assisting the Russian women refugees was one of the six issues discussed in Bandung. The conclusions were the same as before: the task was for non-governmental organizations; the League should appoint an agent who would orchestrate the activities of the nongovernmental organizations; and the funds to employ such a person were hoped to be found from the outside sources. The innate insufficiency of the League budget should be recalled. Some League member countries failed to pay the allocated amount. It fell to the British and the French to make up any budget deficit. In addition, the number of refugees drastically increased in the mid-1930s. After September 1935 more than 100,000 Jews fled Germany. The League’s budget was completely insufficient to cope with the new situation. Following the conclusions of the Bandung Conference, the Assembly approved the appointment of the agent in September 1937. The Council, however, suspended the procedure in January 1938 due to the situation in East Asia.42

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The TWC as Another Forum This chapter has examined one issue dealt with by the TWC. It has shown that the plight of the Russian women refugees was entwined with the remaining imperial order in East Asia. Empires continued to have informal interests in treaty ports such as Shanghai. Many Westerners continued enjoying affluent lives there. The existence of many single Western men in foreign settlements and ports such as Qingdao cannot be forgotten in considering the issue. The TWC, just like the OAC, functioned as a forum, but it could not succeed in rescuing the Russian women refugees. Mere publicity did not work in this case. In the case of the OAC, some participating countries were embarrassed enough to introduce reforms in their territories. The League itself did not have to initiate the reforms. In the case of the Russian women refugees, they were not under the protection of any country. No country felt obliged to take responsibility. Furthermore, the budget of the League was limited, so that there was an imbalance between what some internationalists aspired to do and what the League could achieve. The race was one reason why the plight of the Russian women refugees attracted much attention. At the same time, it made this issue more difficult to be solved. For example, the travelling commission reported that there were more Chinese women who were the victims of trafficking. It was impossible for the TWC and the League to try to rescue only one group of women. In addition, many Russian women refugees were in foreign settlements and concessions, which Chinese nationalists had already started to regard as the embodiment of imperialism. In the end, the League of Nations preferred to rely on the efforts of non-governmental organizations concerning this issue. Still, the existence of a forum was a significant first step. It surely raised awareness of the problem. It is also remarkable that the venue was open to relatively many women: Crowdy, Hein, Luisi, Sundquist and some assessors of the TWC. Building on this experience and foundation, efforts to find ways to help refugees were continued after the Second World War by the United Nations. One further point to be noticed is that Japan continued to participate in the TWC after March 1933 when it declared its withdrawal from the League. The Japanese were surely there at the conference in Bandung held as late as February 1937. The issue of Japan and the withdrawal from the League is considered in the next chapter.

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Notes 1. Araki, Nightingale, pp. 224–225. 2. University of Bristol Library, Special Collections, DM1584/12/B, unpublished autobiography of Crowdy, Part V, Chapter 3, p. 37. This material is used with the permission of the University of Bristol Library Special Collections. 3. It is recorded that Yuasa who worked in the Red Cross Hospital in Mukden received a Japanese Florence Nightingale medal in 1920. 4. University of Bristol Library, Special Collections, DM1584/12/B, unpublished autobiography of Crowdy, Part V, Chapter 3, p. 36. 5. See Harumi Goto-Shibata, ‘Britain, the League of Nations and Russian Women Refugees in China in the Interwar Period’, in Antony Best (ed.), Britain’s Retreat from Empire in East Asia, 1905–1980 (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017). 6. F. S. L. Lyons, Internationalism in Europe 1815–1914 (Leiden: A. W. Sythoff, 1963), pp. 274–284; Gorman, The Emergence of International Society in the 1920s, pp. 53–57. 7. LNd, C.225.M.129. 1923.IV, Société des Nations, Commission consultative de la traite des femme et des enfants, process verbal, p. 5; Pliley, ‘Claims to Protection’, p. 96. 8. LNd, C.849.M.393.1932. IV, League of Nations, Commission of Enquiry into Traffic in Women and Children in the East, Report to the Council, p. 11 and List of members. See also Barbara Metzger, ‘Towards an International Human Rights Regime During the Inter-War Years’, in Kevin Grant et al. (eds), Beyond Sovereignty (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). 9. Stephanie A. Limoncelli, The Politics of Trafficking: The First International Movement to Combat the Sexual Exploitation of Women (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), p. 72; Gorman, The Emergence of International Society in the 1920s, p. 87. 10. On the investigation in Japan and its impact, see Onozawa Akane, Kindai Nihon shakai to k¯ osh¯ o seido [Modern Japanese Society and the System of Licensed Prostitution] (Tokyo: Yoshikawa K¯ obunkan, 2010), Part II. On the roles played by the parents, see pp. 200–201 and 209–210 of Onozawa. State-regulated prostitution was still common in Southern and Eastern Europe, the colonized world and much of South America. See Limoncelli, The Politics of Trafficking, p. 24, Table 2.1; Pliley, ‘Claims to Protection’, p. 91. 11. LNd, C.849.M.393.1932. IV, Commission of Enquiry, Report, pp. 3, 12, 13; TNA, FO371/17387, W858/263/98, from LN, C.50.1933.IV, 23 January 1933.

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12. LN, Commission of Enquiry into Traffic in Women and Children in the East: Summary of the Report to the Council, Geneva, 1934, pp. 10, 12, 39–40. 13. Sir John Hope Simpson, The Refugee Problem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1939), p. 497; Claudena M. Skran, Refugees in Inter-War Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 35–36. 14. Philippa Lesley Hetherington, ‘Victims of the Social Temperament: Prostitution, Migration and the Traffic in Women from Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, 1885–1935’, Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, April 2014, p. 397. 15. Skran, Refugees in Inter-War Europe, pp. 33, 109. See also Michael R. Marrus, The Unwanted (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002). 16. LNd, C.849.M.393.1932. IV, Commission of Enquiry, Report, pp. 7–8, 29–37, 97–98. 17. See Robert Bickers, Empire Made Me: An Englishman Adrift in Shanghai (London: Penguin Books, paperback edition, 2004). 18. On page 34 of her The Politics of Trafficking, Limoncelli has not paid attention to this situation of the treaty ports and the existence of many single young Western men. 19. Brian Donovan, White Slave Crusades (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006), pp. 6–9, 15; Colpus, Female Philanthropy in the Interwar World, Chapter 2, section titled ‘Visions of a free Russians’; Hetherington, ‘Victims of the Social Temperament’, p. 354. Hetherington describes this situation as ‘superficiality of the League’s supposed commitment to race blindness’. 20. Marcia R. Ristaino, Port of Last Resort (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), p. 94. 21. LNd, C.849.M.393.1932. IV, Commission of Enquiry, Report, pp. 11, 14; Onozawa, Kindai Nihon shakai to k¯ osh¯ o seido, pp. 225–228, 306–307. 22. Hetherington, ‘Victims of the Social Temperament’, p. 386. 23. TNA, FO371/19668, W1467/26/98, Brenan (Shanghai) to Simon, 29 December 1934, enclosure. 24. TNA, FO371/18534, W8702/43/98, Pratt minute, 8 October 1934, and Simon to China posts, 18 October 1934. 25. JACAR, Ref. B04122142400, images 56 to 58, Kokusai Renmei fujin jid¯ o mondai ikken [On the League of Nations, the issue of traffic in women and children] (B-9-10-0), Yokoyama to Hirota, 25 June 1935. 26. Ibid., image 71. 27. TNA, FO371/19668, W4217/26/98, Harris to Makins (FO), 16 May 1935; W4677/26/98, minutes of the 86th session of the LN Council, 23 May 1935; JACAR, Ref. 04122142300, images 230–231, Sei-sh¯ onen hogo shimon iinkai keika h¯ okokusho [The report of the Advisory

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28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33.

34.

35. 36. 37.

38. 39. 40. 41.

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Commission for the Protection and Welfare of Children and Young People]. University of Bristol Library, Special Collections, DM1584/12/B, unpublished autobiography of Crowdy, Part V, Chapter 3, p. 36. Ibid., Part V, Chapter 3, p. 35 and Chapter 4, pp. 43–66. Lasker, Problems of the Pacific 1931, p. 39; LNA, R5721, 50/11248/7263, 30 April 1934, C. 157.M. 66. 1934, Report of the Technical Agent of the Council on his Mission in China, Chapter 1; Margherita Zanasi, Saving the Nation: Economic Modernity in Republican China (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 67–68. Meta Zimmeck, ‘Anderson, Dame Adelaide Mary (1863–1936)’, ODNB. TNA, FO371/19677, W5908/356/98, British Social Hygiene Council to Hoare, 4 July 1935. On the negotiation concerning the sale of the CER, see Sat¯ o Motoei, ‘Hokuman Tetsud¯ o j¯ oto mondai wo meguru Nisso kankei [Japan-USSR Relations on the Issue of North Manchurian Railway]’, Komazawa daigaku bungakubu kiy¯ o [Bulletin of the Faculty of Literature, Komazawa University], No. 54, 1996; Nihon Kokusai Seiji Gakkai (ed.), Taiheiy¯ o Sens¯ o he no Michi, 4, Nicch¯ u Sens¯ o, Ge [The Road to the Pacific War, 4, Sino-Japanese War, Vol. 2] (Tokyo: Asahi shimbunsha, 1987, originally published in 1963). NGB, 2-2-2, no. 326, Consul-General Morishima, Harbin, to Uchida, 25 January 1933; no. 327, Matsudaira, Ambassador to the UK, to Uchida, 11 April 1933; no. 328, Uchida to Matsudaira, 11 April 1933; Sat¯ o, ‘Hokuman Tetsud¯ o’, p. 130; TNA, FO371/17067, F2919/27/10, Garstin to Simon, 31 March 1933; FO371/17069, F5199/27/10, Garstin to Simon, 30 June 1933; and FO371/17134, F3488/2463/10, Garstin to Simon, 9 May 1933. Hope Simpson, The Refugee Problem, p. 497. LNd, A.12.1935. IV, LN, Position of Women of Russian Origin in the Far East, pp. 1, 16. BDFA, Part II, Series J, Vol. 10, doc. 132, 1 October 1935; TNA, FO371/19694, W10383/10383/98, 5 December 1935; FO411/19, Part XXII, no. 2, 9 August 1935; and Skran, Refugees, p. 144. JACAR, Ref. B04122142500, images 97–98, Kokusai Renmei fujin jid¯ o mondai ikken (B-9-10-0), Vol. 2. Ibid. LNA, 11B/15411/13661, 13 May 1935, Ekstrand to Rajchman. JACAR, Ref. B04122149400, images 1, 8, and 54, fujin baibai ni kansuru T¯ oy¯ o kankeikoku kan kaigi kankei [Papers on the Conference of Central Authorities in Eastern Countries] (B-9-10-0). TNA, FO371/22521, W1426/272/98, 20 December 1937, LN, no. C. 516.M357.1937.IV, Report on work of the Bandeong Conference, p. 66.

PART II

Contested Power and Authority

CHAPTER 6

Japan’s Withdrawal and China’s Request for a Seat on the Council

Part II of this book traces the technical co-operation between the League of Nations and China to its end, and also follows the control of opium up to the demise of the League. At the same time, it covers the rise and fall of the power and authority of the relevant countries in relation to the social and technical issues. First, this chapter shows the regional rivalry between Japan and China which continued on the stage of the League of Nations even after the former declared its intention to withdraw from the organization. International relations of East Asia underwent a sea change after the Manchurian Incident. International society strongly criticized Japan’s military aggression in the three north-eastern provinces of China, and on 27 March 1933 Japan notified the League that it would withdraw from the organization. Japan was not the first nor the only member to withdraw from the League. When Germany was accepted into the League and was made a permanent member in 1926, Brazil also hoped to be given a permanent seat. Its hope was not fulfilled, and it indignantly left the League. Germany’s membership of the League was short. It left the ILO in June 1933, and departed the League as a whole in October that year. German members of various commissions and committees also resigned soon after.

© The Author(s) 2020 H. Goto-Shibata, The League of Nations and the East Asian Imperial Order, 1920–1946, New Directions in East Asian History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4968-7_6

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Japan’s withdrawal, however, was not as straightforward as Germany’s. Article 1 of the League’s Covenant described the conditions of membership, admission and withdrawal. It stipulated that any League member may withdraw from the League after two years’ notice of its intention, so Japan remained as a member until 26 March 1935. Further details of the withdrawal had not been decided. Japan also said that while it would cease its participation in political organizations such as the Council and the Assembly, it intended to co-operate in other activities. Japan continued to participate in the League’s technical works until October 1938. This chapter examines why and how Japan initially intended to cooperate partially with the League even after it declared to withdraw from the organization. In the meantime, China started to require its status to be upgraded. It had aspired to improve its international status since the 1920s. Taking advantage of Japan’s withdrawal, it argued that East Asia was not represented sufficiently in the League’s Council. The authority of Japan declined drastically after the Manchurian Crisis, while that of China rose.

Trying to Continue Partial Co-operation The League’s report on the Manchurian Incident was ready on 15 February 1933. The full English text was broadcast from the League Wireless Station on 17 February.1 Part IV, ‘Statement and Recommendations’, proclaimed that ‘[t]he settlement of the dispute should observe the provisions of the Covenant of the League, the Pact of Paris, and the Nine Power Treaty of Washington’, and that the settlement should also observe the resolution of the League’s Assembly on 11 March 1932. The resolution had declared that members of the League should not ‘recognize any situation, treaty or agreement which might be brought about by means contrary to’ the League’s Covenant or to the Pact of Paris.2 The League’s report on the Manchurian Incident recommended that Japanese troops evacuate from outside the zone of the South Manchurian Railway, and expressed the members’ intentions not to recognize Manchukuo and to appeal to non-members not to do so either. Hatsue Shinohara explains the meaning of the Assembly resolution adopted on 11 March 1932. After the Pact of Paris was signed in August 1928, the question was whether to regard the Pact as legally ineffective or to support and maintain it by seeking legal elaboration. On 7 January 1932, US Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson sent a diplomatic note

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both to Japan and China to the effect that the United States would not recognize any situation brought about by means contrary to the treaties. Although this non-recognition doctrine was only the policy of one nation then, it was made a legal principle when the League’s Assembly adopted it on 11 March 1932. Shinohara emphasizes that the three multilateral treaties ‘were gaining recognition and emerging as a unified system in the quest for collective security’.3 Even Britain, however, had stated that it would join the Pact of Paris ‘on the “understanding” that it would not limit Britain’s “freedom of action” relating to “certain regions of which the welfare and integrity constitue[d] a special and vital interest for [their] peace and safety”’. Japan failed to understand that the international society and its legal system were not static but a crucial change was occurring.4 It could not respond to the change, or changes in general. Neither the Japanese diplomats in Geneva nor the home country intended to withdraw from the League until a few weeks before the Cabinet decision of 20 February 1933. Isolation from the entire world was not what they wanted.5 Not only Sato6 and Sugimura but even Yosuke Matsuoka, who gave a speech on 24 February and led the exodus of the Japanese delegation from the Assembly, had also actually been a ‘remainer’. He had hoped to be ‘successful within the League’.7 The emperor did not understand why Japan had to leave. He even asked whether it was not possible to reconsider the decision.8 Worrying developments were, however, the Japanese Imperial Army’s move in China. It was impossible for the Foreign Ministry to control the Army. In January, the Imperial Army had attacked Rehe (Jehol), a province on the border between Manchuria, Mongolia and northern China, which hardened the opinions of the League. If the army renewed its aggression on Rehe after the League made its decision based on Article 15, Japan might be subjected to sanctions under Article 16. Japan was determined to avoid such a humiliation.9 Although the Japanese delegates walked out the League’s Assembly on 24 February, the Japanese Cabinet’s decision on 28 February and 16 March should be noted. It decided that although Japan would refuse to take part in political organizations such as the Council and the Assembly, it intended to continue participating in the Disarmament Conference, the World Economic Conference and the League’s humanitarian and technical works as well as the ILO. So far as financial contributions to the League budget were concerned, Japan would continue to pay until

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the day when the two-year notice period was completed.10 Japan also continued to contribute to the operating costs of the Eastern Bureau of the LNHO.11 Japan did not intend to withdraw completely from the stage of international politics. It had to find concrete measures and procedures to continue participating partially in the League of Nations. Why did Japan try to remain in the League albeit partially? The greatest reason was that Japan at this stage did not want its general relations with the world to deteriorate further.12 Nor did it intend to challenge the international order as a whole. Several practical benefits of remaining in the League can easily be pointed out. First, Japan, a permanent member of the Council, had enjoyed high international status at the League. It did not want to make its status in the international society change drastically. Several Japanese had significant positions at the League and the related organizations. For example, Mineichiro Adachi, after contributing to the League as Japan’s ambassador to Belgium and then to France, was elected to be a judge of the PCIJ. He gained 49 out of 52 votes at the Assembly, and was also supported unanimously at the Council. He was serving as the president of the PCIJ from January 1931. His term as the president would last until the end of 1933, and that as a judge till the end of 1939. Mikinosuke Miyajima had been a member of the PCOB since its inauguration in 1929. He would be successfully re-elected in October 1933.13 Japan also hoped that Inazo Nitobe would be elected to the International Committee of Intellectual Cooperation. Sadly, he passed away on 15 October 1933, so Japan had to find another candidate.14 Masaharu Anezaki, a professor in religious studies at the Imperial University of Tokyo, agreed to serve and was successfully elected in January 1934 to be a member.15 He was an advocate of the League’s contribution to culture.16 It was, however, easily expected that maintaining membership in commissions and committees would be more difficult after Japan finally withdrew from the League. Secondly, Japan held a mandate over former German islands in the Pacific north of the equator, and wanted to keep it.17 There were some discussions in the Japanese press and among jurists in Japan as to how Japan’s withdrawal would affect its position vis-à-vis the islands. The editorial of the Tokyo Asahi Shimbun argued on 7 February that the islands were brought under Japan’s mandate in May 1919, some eight months before the League of Nations actually came into existence; that it was the Supreme Council of the Allied Powers which granted it the mandate.18 Some press wrote that the Nazi regime might dispute the

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Japanese claim that the withdrawal from the League would not affect the position as regards Japan’s mandate over the islands.19 Britain considered the issue thoroughly around the time of Japan’s declaration of withdrawal, and reached the conclusion that it would avoid discussion on the subject, leaving it to other members of the League to raise, if they wished. It was true that mandates were conferred not by the League but by the authority of the Principal Allied and Associated Powers at the Paris Peace Conference. In a letter to the US Secretary of State of 1 March 1921, the President of the League’s Council stated that the League was ‘concerned not with the allocation but with the administration of these territories’. In addition, Article 22 of the League’s Covenant did not make it impossible for a non-member of the League to hold a mandate. The United States was at one stage a strong candidate for a mandatary over Armenia. Furthermore, two dominions of the British Empire, the Union of South Africa and Australia, had maintained the irrevocability of mandates. There was also a practical consideration that Japan’s withdrawal would only take effect two years after the date of declaration, and Sir Herbert William Malkin, the legal adviser of the Foreign Office, considered ‘a good deal m[ight] happen in two years’.20 In the end, no country raised the issue. The League’s Council made no resolutions. Germany renounced all claims to the Japanese mandates in March 1935. Japan continued to hold its mandate and submit annual administrative reports on it. Nobumichi Sakenobe, the retired Japanese minister to Chile, continued to take part in the Permanent Mandate Commission.21 Thirdly, through being a member of the League, Japan could acquire valuable information and precious knowledge even without making any particular efforts.22 This was especially valued by the Japanese diplomats in Europe. Therefore, Setsuzo Sawada, the head of the Japanese Bureau for the League of Nations Affairs, and Sato, then the ambassador to Belgium, were seriously worried that Japan might be placed in a very unfavourable situation after its withdrawal. Sawada suggested that the two Japanese who were working in the Secretariat, namely Ken Harada of the Political Section and Kaneo Tsuchida of the Information Section, should continue their work there even after Japan withdrew from the League. Harada started working in the League in 1920 as a personal assistant of Nitobe. Tsuchida had been the managing editor of the Shimbun Rengosha, a news agency in Japan, and worked as a First Division staff in the League from 1929 to 1935.23

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In April 1933, Sato reported home on his discussion with other Japanese diplomats in Europe including Ambassador to the United Kingdom Tsuneo Matsudaira. Japan had the Bureau for the League of Nations Affairs in Paris, but the diplomats in Europe all considered it necessary to have an office in Geneva. This was to avoid being isolated from valuable information. Sugimura suggested the name ‘Japanese Bureau for International Conferences’ would be acceptable to all concerned.24 Sugimura was actually the one who suffered the most by Japan’s withdrawal. He had to retire from his position in the League. In summer 1933, the necessity of maintaining Japanese members in various committees including the OAC, the PCOB, the Permanent Mandate Commission and the International Committee of Intellectual Cooperation were expressed by the Japanese. Nobufumi Ito, the deputy director of the Japanese Bureau, suggested that Japanese members should attend the meetings and show Japan’s willingness to co-operate in order to secure its status even after the withdrawal became definite.25 The bureau in Paris was closed at the end of November, and the reduced number of staff started working in the new bureau in Geneva from 1 December 1933. The minister to Switzerland in Berne would be the nominal head, while the consul-general in Geneva would be the deputy and in actual charge of the League matters.26 Thus, Japan continued to send its representatives to various League meetings even after its declaration of withdrawal from the League and to continue its collaboration with the League’s works, with the exception of the Council and the Assembly. Masayuki Yokoyama, the deputy director of the new Japanese Bureau for International Conferences in Geneva, reported home that the League appreciated Japan’s intention of partial co-operation, and that Arthur Sweetser, the head of the Information Section of the League, was of the opinion that to have Japanese members in various committees would not be difficult.27 Sweetser was an American who worked long in the Secretariat. In addition, it does seem that Yokoyama wanted for Japan to reconsider its policy and remain in the League. He repeatedly hinted the possibility to his colleagues in Geneva.28 The reality, however, was not as simple as Yokoyama reported home and hinted to his colleagues in Geneva. The opinions in Geneva were actually not favourable to Japan’s intention of partial co-operation, while Japan’s Foreign Ministry gradually lost interest in the co-operation with the League.

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China initially argued that Japan’s declaration did not absolve it from the obligations which it must fulfil before it could claim the right to withdraw. It pointed out that the third paragraph of Article 1 of the Covenant read any member may withdraw ‘provided that all its international obligations and all its obligations under this Covenant shall have been fulfilled at the time of its withdrawal’. China insisted that the paragraph meant ‘Japan [was] not entitled to the right to withdraw from the League unless and until she ha[d] carried out not only all the resolutions and decisions of the League of Nations in respect to the present dispute and the other obligations under the Covenant but also all obligations under those international agreements’.29 Frank Walters, who succeeded Sugimura and was appointed to be the under secretary-general in 1933, also considered that Japan would have ‘no right, once her withdrawal from the League became definitive, to participate in the activities of certain League organisations’. He was of the opinion that it might be possible to persuade the Japanese to postpone their final withdrawal for another two years, during which time Japan’s partial participation in the League activities could be continued. A further two years’ delay might also clear up the political situation and make it possible for Japan to cancel its withdrawal altogether. He also considered, just like the Chinese, that it was impossible for Japan to withdraw from the League under the present circumstances, because Japan had failed to fulfil its obligations under the Covenant.30 The British Foreign Office did not share the opinion of Walters. Malkin, the legal adviser, noted the fact that non-members, especially the United States, were almost regularly invited to participate in technical treaty-making conferences and committees such as the OAC. His opinion was the same as that of Sweetser. He could see no reason why Japan should not be treated like other non-members. Neither could he see technically how Japan could postpone its withdrawal for two years, except by withdrawing the existing notice and giving another one. He added that he had ‘never been able to understand what the concluding words of the last paragraph of Article 1 of the Covenant mean, and [he had] never met anybody who did’.31 Indeed, when the question of withdrawal had been discussed at the League of Nations Commission at the Paris Peace Conference, there had been no united opinion among the participants. While ‘the majority of the delegates, led by Orlando, had said that a State had the right to withdraw from the League’, ‘Cecil said that was not his understanding

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at all’. Miller’s opinion was that ‘a State did not have the right to withdraw from a treaty’ and that ‘in modern times treaties had usually been drawn to continue for a certain period’. Cecil and Miller agreed with each other, but the arguments and amendments on the right of withdrawal continued. Wilson needed the right in order to convince the Senate, while at the meeting held on 25 March 1919, the French were opposed to mentioning a period of expiration. They thought it might give the impression that the League was to last only for that period. The final withdrawal clause of Article 1 was a product of compromise.32 Malkin thought in 1934 that there was nothing to be gained by suggesting that it was impossible for Japan to withdraw. Amau’s remarks, which we observed in Chapter 4, had already been made by this time, and the Foreign Office accepted Malkin’s point. It did not ‘annoy Japan’ by suggesting unnecessarily that Japan could not withdraw or should postpone the withdrawal. It only instructed the embassy in Tokyo to enquire discreetly whether there was any chance of Japan postponing its withdrawal.33 Meanwhile, the arguments at the OAC came to reflect the growing tension in East Asia and became even more difficult for Japan. Even after the withdrawal from the Geneva Opium Conference in 1925, the United States continued to make a consul in Geneva attend the OAC. In the 1920s, the role was an observer, but in the 1930s, the American representative would come to be more actively involved in the OAC. Stuart J. Fuller, who was in charge of international narcotics affairs in the US State Department, began to attend the OAC. He had been a consular official in Tianjin.34 At the 17th OAC held in November 1933, he strongly criticized the puppet state of Manchukuo for establishing a government monopoly of opium. He claimed that the system was to promote opium smoking in order to gain economic profits from it.35 The opium monopoly itself was still in wide use in East and Southeast Asia, but the Americans including Fuller believed that opium should be made illegal. During the period from 1933 to 1940, the American representative acted as ‘one of the leading members, particularly in all questions relating to the vexatious problem of the situation in the Far East’.36 According to John Collins, there were ‘many unreconstructed alcohol prohibitionists’ among American drug control advocates.37 In December 1933, Japan asked Avenol, the secretary-general, whether other contracting parties of the Convention for Limiting the Manufacture and Regulating the Distribution of Narcotic Drugs would object to its

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ratifying it with a reservation that ‘the Japanese government underst[ood] that the present position of Japan, regardless of whether she be a member of the League of Nations or not, was to be maintained in the matter of the composition of the organs and the appointment of the members thereof mentioned in this said Convention’.38 This Convention had been signed at the Conference on Limitation of the Manufacture of Narcotic Drugs which was held in Geneva in July 1931. Based on the agreement, the Drug Supervisory Body (hereafter, DSB) was to be established by the PCOB. The DSB would be concerned with estimates of drug requirements, and it would oversee pharmaceutical firms. Although it would not have the power of enforcement, it could publish information and make the publicity a ‘threat’ to urge those who violated the rules to reconsider their stance.39 Japan’s reservation was an attempt to maintain its position regarding the organs mentioned in the Convention, namely the OAC, the PCOB and the DSB, notwithstanding its ceasing to be a member of the League. The Health Committee was also mentioned as one of its supervisory bodies.40 In those days, the reservation had to be approved by all the contracting parties. Britain answered in their note dated 9 August 1934, addressed to the secretary-general, that although they had no objection to the reservation, as regards appointments which involved an action by the Council, it did not appear to Britain that ‘the reservation would have the effect either of limiting the freedom, or modifying the composition of that body, when dealing with such matters’. Britain suspected that Japan expected to be invited to participate in the appointment of members of the abovementioned committees in a manner similar to that by which Germany and the United States were invited in accordance with the Convention signed at the second Opium Conference in 1925.41 This invitation was necessary, because neither Germany nor the United States was a member of the League in 1925. Avenol could not accept that Japan should ‘still claim as a matter of right to enjoy the advantages of collaboration with the League in the technical sphere’. He thought that Japan should ask for the privilege of such collaboration. According to him, the cases of Japan and the United States were different. The United States had never undertaken those obligations under the Covenant as a whole, but by seeking collaboration had assumed a part of them.42 His opinion, therefore, was closer to those of the Chinese and Walters.

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In December 1934, Miyajima expressed his intention to resign from the PCOB. When Yokoyama discussed the matter with Ugo Theodoli, the Italian president of the PCOB, the latter was not sure whether the successor could be a Japanese. He was of the opinion that it would be most beneficial for both sides to ask Miyajima to stay in the position. In the end, Shiko Kusama succeeded Miyajima and became a member of the PCOB from September 1935 to November 1938.43 Theodoli had worked at the Chinese Maritime Customs Service for 22 years before he joined the PCOB. He himself would resign from the PCOB soon after Italy’s withdrawal from the League in December 1937.44 A problem also occurred with the PCIJ. On 28 December 1934, Adachi, a judge of the PCIJ, passed away in Amsterdam. His contribution as the ambassador to Belgium and France as well as the League’s rapporteur on the minorities questions had been tremendous. He was keenly missed, and the Netherlands gave him a state funeral. Although Japan wanted to maintain a Japanese judge in the PCIJ, the election to fill the vacancy would be held at the Council and the Assembly after Japan’s withdrawal became definite, so that the prospect was not easy. In the end, Harukazu Nagaoka, ambassador to France in 1932–1933, was elected in September 1935, but he could gain only 35 out of 51 votes, namely 14 votes less than Adachi five years earlier. It was expected that similar difficulty would arise repeatedly. In February 1935, Japan inquired of Britain as to the latter’s stance on the above-mentioned reservation. While 26 countries had approved it by this time, 31 countries had not given any answer.45 The French Embassy in London also inquired of Britain as to its view. Roger Cambon, a counsellor of the French Embassy, showed Charles Orde, the head of the Far Eastern Department of the British Foreign Office, a dispatch from Paris. It suggested that the Japanese should be told orally only that Japanese collaboration was regarded as desirable. The implication was that they should not oppose a practical way out if one was found. Orde told Cambon that Britain would also adopt the procedure. The Japanese ambassador was notified of this on 13 March 1935.46 Based on a flexible French suggestion, both Britain and France adopted a very practical solution.

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China’s Failure to Be Re-elected to the Council More than half a year earlier, on 7 July 1934, the Chinese minister to the United Kingdom, Guo Taiqi (Quo Tai-chi), told Orde that he hoped to see Sir John Simon, the secretary of state, to ask for the support of the British government for China’s candidature for membership of the Council of the League. He was of the opinion that, as this was the seat traditionally reserved for an Asian country, China had the strongest claim, and there was more need to represent Asia as Japan was absent.47 China was elected to the Council as a non-permanent member in 1920, 1926 and again in 1931. Especially, the term of office from 1931 created a favourable condition for China to cope with the Manchurian Crisis, because the Council set the agenda for the League as a whole. The term was coming to an end in 1934. Also, it should be noted that China aspired to have a permanent seat in the Council since the 1920s. The insistence that China deserved a seat on the Council was based on the claim that it was ‘superior to and unique among Asian nations’.48 Henry Ashley Clarke of the Far Eastern Department minuted that China was ‘completely vindicated’ over the Manchurian Affair and was ‘following out a programme of close technical co-operation with the League’. In addition, China’s collaboration in the opium problem was highly necessary. Therefore, he thought China was a much stronger candidate than Siam. Non-permanent members of the Council were usually unofficially grouped for the purposes of election: one member for the British Dominions, one for Asia, one for the Little Entente, one for the Scandinavian group, three for Latin America and one for the miscellaneous countries not included in any other group.49 Therefore, China had to compete with other Asian countries. Orde was also in favour of China’s continued membership at the Council. He thought that the ‘substitution of Siam for China would be a double blow to China, for Siam was the single deliberate absentee when the vote condemning Japan was taken’ on 24 February 1933. He considered, however, the opium argument addressed by Ashley Clarke as ‘paradoxical’, for he suspected that China’s interest was not opium reform but ‘pretence of reform’, ‘revenue from a supposedly forbidden traffic’ and ‘the use of the League opium machinery as a means for utterly insincere propaganda against foreign Powers for political objects’. At the same time, that did not make him against China as a Council member. Orde thought that China’s membership at the Council would give ‘an

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additional opportunity of pressure’. He thought it also important for the League members not to run the risk of appearing to accept the Amau remarks.50 On 25 July, Sir George Mounsey, assistant under-secretary of state, minuted that ‘it would be to our greater interest to support China’s re-election rather than oppose her re-election’. Both Sir Victor Wellesly, deputy under-secretary of state, and Sir Robert Vansittart, permanent under-secretary of state, agreed.51 Two days later, however, a piece of information from the Treasury completely changed the opinion of the Foreign Office. It was about the financial situation of the League, which showed that ‘on 30th June, 1934, China, apart from her consolidated arrears, owe[d] the League 2,256,000 gold francs, being apparently the whole of her contributions for 1931, 1932 and 1933’. The Treasury official who conveyed the piece of information added he felt ‘a little unhappy’ that more suitable candidates were not available. The Treasury was inclined to adopt a strong attitude towards defaulters.52 Vansittart was shocked to see the ‘magnitude of the Chinese default’, and decided that Britain should support Turkey rather than China.53 Turkey had been accepted into the League in July 1932. It did not wish to be regarded as a ‘purely Asian’ member, but wanted to be elected to fill the place vacated by China on the Council.54 On 7 September 1934, China requested re-eligibility as a nonpermanent member of the Council. Guo Taiqi, who was representing the Republic of China at the Assembly, requested to see Sir Anthony Eden, lord privy seal and the British representative, and asked Britain’s support for China’s re-election. Guo maintained that ‘even previous to Japan’s withdrawal from the League Asia was poorly represented on the Council in contrast with South America’. He would not accept Eden’s argument that Turkey was an Asian country, ‘contending that Turkey herself had insisted only a few months ago that she was in fact a European Power’. Even in the 1920s, China’s delegates did not appear to have supported any other country’s bid for a Council seat. China sought a Council seat only for itself.55 Guo went on to say that there were two groups in China. The one was interested in co-operation with the League and the West, while the other was ‘prepared to make terms with Japan and work for a pan-Asiatic policy’. He said that China’s failure to secure re-election to the Council would strengthen the position of the latter, and that if Britain

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decided to support China, it would have ‘an excellent effect upon AngloChinese relations’.56 Guo clearly understood that Britain was opposed to pan-Asianism. On 11 September, Turkish Foreign Minister Tewfik Rüstü Bey, visited Eden. ‘He deeply regretted China’s candidature and was somewhat at a loss to know who had encouraged her to put it forward’, and he went on to complain that for some years the Middle East had been completely unrepresented. He also stated that since he arrived in Geneva, he had been ‘somewhat perturbed to notice how far China’s application was being made the occasion for anti-Japanese propaganda’. He considered the ‘League was too big an organisation to be anti-anybody’.57 The election to non-permanent seats was held at the Assembly on 17 September. China failed to secure enough votes to render it eligible for re-election. The number of votes cast was 52, and while China needed 34, it obtained only 21. Spain, Chile and Turkey were elected.58

Enter the Soviet Union On 18 September 1934, the Soviet Union was admitted into the League, and became a permanent member of the Council. During the summer of 1934, three permanent members of the Council, namely Britain, France and Italy, were favourable to the Soviet’s entry into the League. France was especially keen on the idea, and the entry was a direct consequence of the establishment of Nazi power in Germany. By joining the League, the Soviet Union, if attacked by Germany, would be able to call on all members of the League of Nations for support. Japan too was a danger to the Soviet Union.59 Just before the Assembly, the British Admiralty had drawn the attention of the Foreign Office to ‘the consequences which might possibly arise from the withdrawal of Japan from the League of Nations and the adhesion of Soviet Russia with a permanent seat on the Council’.60 The Admiralty had seen Japan as a useful barrier to the Soviet Union.61 Now, however, if a war between the two countries should take place, ‘under Clause 3 of Article 17 of the Covenant, Japan would be regarded as the aggressor, and the provisions of Article 16 of the Covenant would automatically apply as against her’. ‘[T]he whole effect of this procedure would necessarily be to cause [Britain’s] relations with Japan to deteriorate, a consequence which it [wa]s the especial object of HMG to avoid’ (emphasis as original). The Admiralty was worried ‘if the League

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endeavour[ed] to intervene and apply sanctions, the Royal Navy must bear the brunt’. The Admiralty urged consideration to the situation arising from ‘prospective entry of Russia into the League and to the abstention of three major powers, US, Japan and Germany, with a view to seeking some modification of the obligation to enforce sanctions which was accepted under the Covenant’.62 This was considered serious by the Foreign Office, because Britain was ‘defenceless in the Far East’ and should not ‘dream of taking any action endangering [its] relations with Japan’.63 William Eric Beckett, the second legal adviser, however, corrected the letter of the Admiralty. ‘In order to render 17 (3) applicable, it must be clear that Japan has resorted to war against Soviet Russia and whether this was so or not [wa]s a question for the Members of the League to decide’.64 The Foreign Office was still worried that if ‘the application of sanctions were rendered impossible by the abstention of one of the principal Powers concerned, the League’s prestige would suffer a severe, perhaps an irreparable blow’. On the other hand, ‘the participation of HMG in actual sanctions against Japan would entail a risk of war with her which this country is not in a position to run’.65 Although Britain was convinced of the Royal Navy’s qualitative superiority, the Admiralty’s apprehension about Japan continued.66 It would surely be better if Japan was not part of the global menace to the British Empire.

China’s Aspiration to Be a Permanent Member Nine days after China failed to secure enough votes to render it eligible, Guo submitted a memorandum on the subject of China’s representation on the Council to the president of the Council, Edvard Beneš of Czechoslovakia. It read that China hoped and expected that the League would recognize China’s position in Asia as well as its special relations with the League, and thus would enable the Chinese government to maintain the support of the Chinese people in the present policy towards the League. It continued that in China, Japan’s programme of isolation from the West and ‘Asia for the Asiatics’ had gained advocates. It then requested that the president of the Council should be empowered to submit a concrete proposal for action relative to the creation of ‘a special seat on the Council for China’.67

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During the period when the Assembly was held, Baron Pompeo Aloisi, the Italian representative to the League, talked to Eden about the permanent seat of the Council after Japan withdrew from the League. Aloisi understood that China wished to obtain the one held by Japan, and the Italian government would support the Chinese request. Drummond who had resigned from the League and become British Ambassador to Italy wrote to Eden on his conversation with Aloisi. According to the latter, China had ‘threatened’ to withdraw from the League. Drummond wrote that although it was a mistake to ‘pay a price to prevent threats materialising’, the election of China to a semi-permanent seat would be a good idea, because ‘China is so large that if she were in a settled condition she would be almost entitled to a permanent seat’ and because Turkey wished to be considered as European.68 The future partnership was not fixed yet, and at this stage, both Britain and France were more conciliatory to Japan and more critical of China than Italy. On 16 October, Avenol informed William Strang, the adviser on the League of Nations Affairs of the British Foreign Office, of the Chinese request to the president of the Council, namely creating a special seat for China. Avenol, however, ‘saw some advantage in the exclusion of China from the Council for a while’. Although he regretted that China had not been re-elected to a seat on the Council, he thought it ‘quite enough for the present to give China as much “face”’ through the operations of the TCC.69 On 18 October, Cambon of the French Embassy came to consult the British Foreign Office in regard to the Chinese request for the seat on the Council left vacant by Japan. France thought that the Italians had been carrying on the ‘flirtation’ with China for some time and that was because they wanted to get orders for war materials from the Chinese. The French government, however, ‘did not think it reasonable that a State in such a condition of internal disorder as China should be given special privileges in the matter of representation on the Council’. Nor did they think it would be wise in the circumstances to fill the Japanese seat at once and thus ‘in effect appear to shut the door against the possible return of Japan to the League’.70 Strang judged that both the French and the secretary-general wished to avoid causing unnecessary annoyance to Japan. These were ‘good and substantial reasons’ not to support China, but it was not wise ‘to quote to the Italians’ who he thought would ‘of course tell the Chinese’.71

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Eden generally agreed with another opinion of Strang, namely that the Council was already too large and that ‘there would be no justification for increasing it by creating a permanent seat for China within a few months of the Assembly’s declaration of China’s non-reeligibility’. Eden also maintained that Turkey was holding the ‘Asiatic seat on the Council’, and that it was clearly undesirable to take any step ‘which might have the effect of discouraging Japan’s return to the League’. He also thought that Italy’s move was ‘to secure orders for arms’.72 Japan’s withdrawal from the League was not effective yet, and neither France nor Britain tried to expel Japan completely. Rather, they hoped that Japan would somehow reconsider its policy and stay in the organization. Indeed, there were precedents. Although Spain notified its intention to withdraw on 11 September 1926, it retracted its notification in 1928, remaining in the League. Mexico also notified its intention to withdraw by a note dated on 3 December 1932, but it informed the secretary-general on 5 May 1934 of the cancellation of the note.73 On 2 November 1934, the British Foreign Office informed Cadogan, the minister to China, that it did not favour the Chinese request, because it was undesirable to discuss the future of Japan’s seat while Japan was still a member of the League.74 The British League of Nations Union, in total contrast, considered that there was a strong case for giving China a seat on the Council.75 China continued its efforts to secure recognition of its status, and asked for the support of the member countries.76 On the afternoon of 16 November, Ambassador Guo asked to see Eden. Replying to Eden’s question, he emphasized that China was not asking to succeed to Japan’s seat, but that an additional seat should be created on the Council for semi-permanent occupation by China.77 Precedents had already been created. Poland and Spain were considered to have intermediate status between great and small powers, so that they were treated as indefinitely re-eligible to the Council.78 When Eden asked him about the attitudes of other countries, Guo replied that Beneš, the Italians, and the Latin American countries were favourable. René Massigli, France, had not raised any objection, but had stated that he must consult his government. Eden actually knew that other governments were reluctant to increase the size of the Council. He did not think that Asia was inadequately represented, because Japan was still a member of the League and actually still had a permanent seat, and because the Soviet Union had just joined the League

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in September and had also a permanent seat. Eden wrote that ‘a large part of the continent of Asia was included in the Soviet Union’.79 China needed to be considered a responsible member in order to acquire higher status in international society. Therefore, the Nanjing government finally began to control opium. At the 19th OAC in November 1934, Victor Hoo declared that China would adopt a method of gradual restriction of poppy cultivation and opium consumption. In order to achieve the aim of abolishing them within six years, China declared that it would establish a government monopoly. Most OAC participants praised China’s decision. The United States, however, was against opium monopoly. It considered that the opium monopoly would make countries rely on the revenue raised from it.80

Japan’s Formal Departure Two years after the declaration of the withdrawal from the League, Japan formally left it on 27 March 1935. It would continue to participate in the work of the ILO and the PCIJ. As to other organizations connected with the League, matters were still under discussion. In the two years after the declaration, however, the opinion different from Japan’s ‘League men’ and that against the League became more dominant and influential in the Japanese Foreign Ministry. Mamoru Shigemitsu became the vice-minister in May 1933. Koki Hirota took office as the foreign minister in September 1933. Both Hirota and Shigemitsu considered that the League should not intervene in East Asia. Japan under their guidance had no intention of taking an initiative in proposing co-operation with the League.81 Rather, it imperiously insisted that if the League made its hope of cooperation clear, Japan would respond to it.82 Under the circumstances, even Sugimura and some members of the Treaty Division began to think co-operation with the League difficult.83 The 20th OAC started on 20 May 1935. Although the Japanese representative initially refrained from participating in it, just like the TWC, the other member, in this case the British, proposed that the Council should ensure the continued participation of Japan in the OAC. Most participants agreed with the proposal. The Chinese representative also supported it, but he made a reservation on the legal question of representation on League committees of governments that had withdrawn from

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the League.84 The 86th Council decided to ensure the continued cooperation of Japan, and the Secretary-General conveyed the decision to Japan on 28 May 1935.85 Meanwhile, on 16 May 1935, Guo showed John Simon the draft of communication to the President of the Council. It urged the Council to create a special seat for China or a new non-permanent seat with special reference to the Far East. China aspired to gain a Great Power status and regional predominance. Simon made two observations. Firstly, the Assembly had decided on 2 October 1933 that the general question of the principle of composition of the Council would be brought before the Assembly in 1936. Consequently, a proposal limited to China and calling for action in 1935 might be considered to run counter to the more general proposition already approved. Secondly, the British government could not promise in advance what view they would take on the proposal. He told Guo, however, that China could of course make the proposal.86 On 25 May 1935, the 86th Council of the League met in a secret session to consider the Chinese request. Avenol read but did not circulate the letter dated 21 May, which was addressed to the President of the Council, the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, Maxim Litvinov. It emphasized that China had ‘strengthened her ties with the League by an extensive scheme of technical collaboration’, and asked that the Council should take practical steps to secure the representation of China on the Council.87 Eden pointed out that the decision was planned to be taken in 1936, while the representatives of Portugal, Turkey and Denmark as well as Aloisi expressed opinions favourable to China. The representative of Argentina supported Aloisi’s proposal, provided it were understood that there was no question of creating a permanent seat. The representative of Chile and Litvinov were favourable to the creation of new seats and supporting the Chinese request. The representative of Poland, Tytus Komarnicki, said that the general study of the question as a whole might be expedited. Massigli said that the Council could not create a seat for a specific country, except in the case of a permanent seat. Thus, apart from negative opinions from Britain and France, there was almost no opposition.88 Litvinov proposed that the secretary-general should make a preliminary study on the various possibilities of giving effect to the request of the Chinese government. Avenol suggested that he would prepare a memorandum setting forth the possibilities and that, at the opening of the next

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session, the Council might officially decide to include the question in the agenda.89 Meanwhile, Japan was determined to show absolutely no interest in the issue of China’s seat in the Council.90

A New Non-permanent Seat for an Asian State On 29 August 1935, the paper prepared by Avenol titled ‘Composition of the Council: Request of the Chinese Government’ reached Britain. It clarified that unless a permanent seat for China or an additional nonpermanent seat was created, China could present its candidature only in 1937, and even then the result of the election could not be guaranteed. On seeing this memorandum, Strang thought that Britain had better maintain a non-committal attitude as long as it could. Eden had become the minister without portfolio in charge of the League of Nations affairs in the third Baldwin Cabinet which came to power on 7 June 1935. He agreed with Strang, but observed that the Secretariat were on the side of China and a non-committal attitude would not be easy to keep.91 The secretary-general’s memorandum was submitted to the 88th Council, which decided to place on the agenda the question of China’s representation on the Council.92 Then a secret meeting of the 89th Council was held on 23 September. The representative of Turkey said that both the Balkan Entente and the Little Entente were in favour of giving China an extra seat. On the other hand, the representative of Australia said that as it would be a dangerous precedent to create a seat especially, the only possible course was to refer the matter to a committee. French Prime Minister Pierre Laval proposed that the existing committee foreshadowed by the 1933 Assembly should be instructed to consider the Chinese request. Litvinov pointed out that the members of the Council and the Assembly had changed since 1933; Japan and Germany had withdrawn from the League, while the Soviet Union had joined in September 1934. He suggested therefore that the personnel of the old committee should be adjusted to the present conditions. The representative of Spain pointed out that reference to a committee would have the effect of postponing a decision until the following year, and was therefore equivalent to refusing China’s request. However, Laval’s suggestion, as amended by Litvinov, was approved.93 At the third meeting held on 26 September, the Council decided to appoint a committee to reconsider the number of the members of the Council and also to examine the Chinese proposal. The committee was

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to be composed of representatives of Argentina, Austria, Belgium, United Kingdom, Canada, China, France, Italy, Peru, Poland, Rumania, Spain, Sweden and the Soviet Union. Rumania declined the offer, and Avenol proposed Turkey in its place. Turkey, however, proposed Iran, stating that there was no Asiatic country in the proposed list apart from China. Finally, not only Rumania, Turkey, Iran but also Latvia were included in the committee.94 The first session of the Committee on the Composition of the Council was held on 28 September 1935. Guo proposed the appointment of a sub-committee to study only the question of Chinese seat on the Council and to report to the next meeting. Massigli and the Belgian representative, however, retorted that the terms of reference to the Committee clearly indicated that the Chinese request should be considered together with the general question of the number of seats. This was supported by Lord Cranborne of the United Kingdom as well as by the Polish and Soviet representatives. It was decided that the observations of the governments should be sent in by 11 November, and that the next meeting should be held not later than the end of November.95 Meanwhile, a border conflict had broken out between Ethiopia and Somaliland under the rule of Italy. Italy started aggression in Ethiopia on 2 October 1935. The League came to be occupied with this Ethiopian crisis, with the result that the composition of the Council was dealt with only in 1936. The situation in East Asia also deteriorated further. Officers of the Imperial Japanese Army staged a coup d’état on 26 February 1936. Although it was narrowly suppressed, the Japanese government came to be completely controlled by the military. Cabinets had to be formed including the Ministers of the Army and the Navy who should still be in active service. The League deepened its mistrust of Japan and its concern over the situation in East Asia. The Committee on the Composition of the Council was finally held from April to May 1936, and Viscount Cecil of Chelwood participated in it as a rapporteur. He was far more ‘pro-Chinese’ in this matter than Eden, and felt ‘rather strongly’ that ‘China should be got onto the Council’ and ‘personally would have favoured giving her a permanent seat’. The reason was that ‘she represent[ed] such an immense force in Asia’ and there was no adequate Asiatic representation then.96 The Committee decided to maintain the seat temporarily created in 1933. It also decided to create a seat for an Asian member, and China would occupy it first.

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The report of the Committee was examined at the second meeting of the First Committee of the Assembly held on 24 September 1936. The First Committee was in charge of constitutional and legal questions. Wellington Koo stressed the principle of universality of the League, and emphasized that ‘[t]hrough an arrangement for technical collaboration, China had been able to co-operate with the League to their mutual advantage, and had thereby established a valuable precedent’.97 At the 17th Assembly held in October, it was decided that the number of non-permanent seats on the Council should be increased by two for a period of three years. One of these two seats would be reserved for the non-grouped European states and the other for an Asian state. Benito Mussolini had already announced the annexation of Ethiopia to Italy in May 1936. The Civil War in Spain started in July. The trust in the League of Nations was rapidly being lost. Still, China managed to acquire a provisional status of non-permanent member of the Council.98 This chapter has considered the situation from 1933 to September 1936. It first pointed out that even after the declaration of withdrawal from the League, Japan did not intend to retreat completely from international society. It intended to continue participating in the League’s technical organs including the OAC and the TWC. It was after Japan decided to leave the League that some Japanese further strengthened the idea that the answer to Japan’s problems could not be found in accepting and following Western ideas. The situation changed completely in the five years after the outbreak of the Manchurian Incident. Japan was ‘a model member’ of the League in the 1920s and had a permanent seat in the Council.99 It threw away almost all it had. On the other hand, the Republic of China had a very clear goal: to recover the rights it had lost to the great powers since the mid-nineteenth century, and to improve its status in the international society. Making the most of the regional rivalry, it achieved its goal step by step. The Republic of China started to think it necessary to present itself as a responsible member of international society. Its diplomats were aware of the effect of publicity and propaganda.

Notes 1. Nish, Japan’s Struggle with Internationalism, pp. 218–219. 2. ‘League of Nations Assembly Report on the Sino-Japanese Dispute’, American Journal of International Law, 27, 1933, pp. 147–150.

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3. Shinohara, US International Lawyers in the Interwar Years, pp. 79, 111– 122. 4. Ibid., p. 84; Oona A. Hathaway and Scott J. Shapiro, The Internationalists: And Their Plan to Outlaw War (Penguin, 2017), pp. 159–160. 5. NGB, Mansh¯ u Jihen, dai 3 kan [Manchurian Incident, Part 3] (hereafter, NGB, M-3), no. 319, Uchida to representatives to the League of Nations in Geneva, 20 February 1933, betsu-den (‘Kakugi kettei [Cabinet decision]’); Makino Nobuaki (It¯ o Takashi et al. eds), Makino Nobuaki Nikki [Diary of Makino Nobuaki] (Tokyo: Ch¯ uo¯ K¯ oronsha, 1990), pp. 540–541 (30 January 1933). 6. Sat¯ o, Kaiko, p. 338. 7. Usui Katsumi, Mansh¯ ukoku to Kokusai Renmei [Manchukuo and the League of Nations ] (Tokyo: Yoshikawa K¯ obunkan, 1995), p. 165. 8. Makino, Makino Nobuaki Nikki, pp. 547–548 (27 Feburay, 8 and 9 March 1933); Nish, Japan’s Struggle, pp. 216, 228. 9. Inoue Toshikazu, Kiki no naka no ky¯ och¯ o gaik¯ o [The Diplomacy of Cooperation in Crisis ] (Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha, 1994), Chapter 1; Kat¯ o Y¯ oko, Manshu Jihen kara Nicch¯ u Sens¯ o he [From the Manchurian Incident to the Sino-Japanese War] (Iwanami Shoten, shinsho, 2007), pp. 162–169. 10. NGB, M-3, no. 351, Uchida to Sawada, 28 February 1933; no. 371, Sawada to Uchida, arrived on 17 March 1933; no. 373, Uchida to Sawada, 18 March 1933; Un’no, Kokusai renmei, pp. 258, 307. 11. Manderson, ‘Wireless Wars’, p. 125. 12. NGB, M-3, no. 319, Uchida to representatives to the League of Nations in Geneva, 20 February 1933, betsu-den (‘Kakugi kettei [Cabinet decision]’); no. 320, Uchida to representatives, 21 February 1933. 13. NGB, 2-2-2, no. 198, Ito to Hirota, 14 October 1933. Although McAllister mentions only six European and one Indian member of the PCOB in his Drug Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century (p. 84), Miyajima was a member from the inauguration of the PCOB. 14. NGB, 2-2-2, no. 206, Yokoyama to Hirota, 22 November 1933. 15. NGB, 2-2-2, no. 207, Hirota to Yokoyama, 5 December 1933. 16. Saikawa Takashi, ‘Kokusai renmei no chiteki ky¯oryoku jigy¯ o to Nihon, Ch¯ ugoku’ [The Intellectual Co-operation of the League of Nations, Japan and China], Paper Presented at the Japan Association of International Relations, November 2018, p. 3. 17. ‘Kakugi kettei’, 16 March 1933 (https://rnavi.ndl.go.jp/politics/entry/ bib01471.php, accessed on 24 December 2019). 18. TNA, FO371/17159, F1710/821/23, 16 February 1933, from Sir F.O. Lindley. 19. TNA, FO371/17159, F2946/821/23, 30 March 1933, from Lindley.

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20. TNA, FO371/17158, F1319/821/23, Beckett minute dated 24 March 1933 and Malkin minute dated 27 March 1933; FO371/17159, F1999/821/23, outfile from R. A. Leeper, FO, to A. S. Fletcher, British Library of Information, 10 May 1933. 21. Tohmatsu Haruo, Nihon teikoku to inin t¯ ochi: Nany¯ o gunt¯ o wo meguru kokusai seiji 1914–1947 [The Japanese Empire and Mandates: International Politics on the former German Islands North of the Equator 1914–1947 ] (Nagoya: Nagoya Daigaku Shuppankai, 2011), Chapter 3; Pedersen, The Guardians, pp. 289–291. As for Germany, see Antony Best, British Intelligence and the Japanese Challenge in Asia, 1914–1941 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), p. 130. Sakenobe entered the Foreign Ministry in the same year as Sato. 22. Masayuki Yokoyama’s eulogy in Kusama Shik¯ o tsuit¯ o sh¯ u, p. 81. 23. NGB, 2-2-2, no. 166, Sawada to Uchida, 25 February 1933; NGB, M-3, no. 338, Sawada to Uchida, arrived on 25 February 1933. 24. NGB, 2-2-2, no. 172, Sato to Uchida, 1 April 1933; no. 182, Uchida to Ito, 19 August 1933. 25. NGB, 2-2-2, no. 181, Ito to the Plenipotentiaries at the World Economic Conference, 10 July 1933; no. 184, Uchida to Consul-General Horinouchi, New York, 5 September 1933; no. 185, Ito to Uchida, 7 September 1933; no. 187, Hirota to Ito, 14 September 1933. 26. NGB, 2-2-2, no. 203, Yokoyama to Hirota, 20 November 1933; Yajima, Ashida Hitoshi, p. 49. 27. NGB, 2-2-2, no. 210, Yokoyama to Hirota, 26 December 1933; NGB, 2-2-3, no. 16, Yokoyama to Hirota, 24 January 1934; Yokoyama’s eulogy in Kusama Shik¯ o tsuit¯ o sh¯ u, pp. 83–84. 28. TNA, FO371/18298, N2114/2/38, 29 March 1934, from Walters to Strang. Walters reported on Yokoyama’s remarks to Prentiss Gilbert, American consul in Geneva. Yajima, ‘Gaimush¯o renmei ha’, p. 13; id., Ashida Hitoshi, p. 100. 29. TNA, FO371/17079, F2186/33/10, LN, no. A (extra) 42. 1933. VII, annex. This document dated 28 March 1933 was transmitted to the League by Wellington Koo. 30. TNA, FO371/18193, F2203/2203/23, 12 April 1934, Strang (UK Delegation, Geneva). 31. Ibid., Malkin minute, 26 April 1934; outfile to. C.E.S. Dodd, Tokyo, 14 May 1934. 32. Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant, Vol. I, pp. 293, 342–348. 33. FO371/18193, F2203/2203/23, Malkin minute, 26 April 1934; outfile to Dodd, 14 May 1934. 34. William O. Walker, III, Opium and Foreign Policy (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1991), p. 56.

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35. LNd, C.642.M.305.1933.XI [OC.1507 (1)], OAC report to the Council, 17th session, 30 October to 9 November 1933, Appendix III. 36. Renborg, International Drug Control, p. 35. 37. John Collins, ‘Breaking the Monopoly System: American Influence on the British Decision to Prohibit Opium Smoking and End its Asian Monopolies, 1939–1945’, The International History Review, 39/5, 2017, pp. 778–780. 38. NGB, Showa ki 2, dai 2 bu, dai 3 kan [Showa Era 2, Part 2, Vol. 3] (hereafter NGB, 2-2-3), no. 9, Hirota to Yokoyama, 8 January 1934; ibid., fuki 2 (ry¯ uho sengen), 9 December 1933; FO371/18196, F3820/47/87, 19 June 1934, LN, no. C.L.101.1934.XI., Convention for Limiting the Manufacture and Regulating the Distribution of Narcotic Drugs, Reservation to which the Japanese Government desires to make its ratification subject. 39. McAllister, Drug Diplomacy, p. 96. 40. Kamiyama Akiyoshi, ‘“Mayaku Seiz¯ o Seigen J¯ oyaku” hijyun mondai – Kokusai Renmei dattai no ichimen [Progress in the Ratification by Japan of the Convention for Limiting the Manufacture and Regulating the Distribution of Narcotic Drugs: One Aspect of the Japanese Withdrawal from the League of Natoins]’, Gaik¯ o Shiry¯ okan P¯ o, No. 14, 2000, pp. 51–56. 41. TNA, FO371/18196, F3820/47/87, R. H. S. Allen minute, 7 July, and Malkin minute, 11 July 1934; FO371/19367, F1255/134/87, 23 February 1935, from Japanese Embassy (communicated); Borowy, Coming to Terms, p. 162. 42. TNA, FO371/18193, F6215/2203/23, 16 October 1934, from UK Delegation (Geneva). 43. NGB, Showa ki 2, dai 2 bu, dai 4 kan [Showa Era 2, Part 2, Vol. 4] (hereafter, NGB, 2-2-4), no. 9, fuki, Yokoyama to Hirota, 19 December 1934. 44. Tollardo, ‘Italy and the League of Nations’, pp. 72, 256, 258. He would work for the United Nations after the war. 45. Kamiyama, ‘“Mayaku Seiz¯o Seigen J¯ oyaku” hijyun mondai’, pp. 59–60. 46. TNA, FO371/19367, F1255/134/87, Orde minute, 15 March 1935; to the Japanese Ambassador, 13 March 1935. 47. TNA, FO371/18550, W6540/2531/98, from Chinese Minister (conversation), 7 July 1934; BDFA, Part II, Series J, Vol. 2, doc. 212, W7165, Simon to Cadogan, 31 July 1934. 48. Kaufman, ‘In Pursuit of Equality and Respect’, p. 630. 49. TNA, FO371/18550, W6540/2531/98, Ashley Clarke minute, 18 July 1934. 50. TNA, FO371/18550, W6540/2531/98, memo by Orde dated 9 July 1934 (Chinese Minister, conversation, 7 July 1934).

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51. TNA, FO371/18550, W6540/2531/98, minutes by Mounsey (25 July 1934), Wellesley (25 July 1934) and Vansittart (26 July 1934). 52. TNA, FO371/18550, W7071/2531/98, Earnest Rowe-Dutton (Treasury) to Stevenson, 27 July 1934. 53. Ibid., minutes by Ashley Clarke, 2 August 1934, and Vansittart, 4 August 1934. 54. BDFA, Part II, Series J, Vol. 2, doc. 213, W7166, Simon to P. L. Loraine, Ambassador to Turkey, 1 August 1934. 55. Kaufman, ‘In Pursuit of Equality’, p. 624. 56. TNA, FO371/18550, W8101/2531/98, LN, A24.1934, 7 September 1934; W8120/2531/98, from UK Delegation (Geneva), no. 111 (Note by Eden), 9 September 1934. 57. TNA, FO371/18550, W8222/2531/98, from UK Delegation (Geneva), no. 117 (Note by Eden), 12 September 1934. 58. NGB, 2-2-3, no. 35, Yokoyama to Hirota, 17 September 1934; no. 37, Yokoyama to Hirota, 22 September 1934; TNA, FO371/18550, W8366/2531/98, from Consul Harold Patteson, Geneva, 17 September 1934. 59. Walters, A History of the League of Nations, pp. 579–581; Zara Steiner, The Triumph of the Dark: European International History, 1933–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 98–99, 108; Geoffrey Roberts, ‘A League of Their Own: The Soviet Origins of the United Nations’, Journal of Contemporary History, 54/2, 2019, p. 306. 60. TNA, FO371/18549, W7961/1642/98, 4 September 1934, from Admiralty. 61. Best, British Intelligence, p. 101. 62. TNA, FO371/18549, W7961/1642/98, 4 September 1934, from Admiralty. 63. Ibid., Vansittart minute, 7 September 1934. 64. Ibid., letter from Beckett to Gerald G. Fitzmaurice, third legal adviser, 9 September 1934. 65. TNA, FO371/18549, W9701/1642/98, 18 October 1934, FO Memorandum (R. Allen). 66. Steiner, The Triumph of the Dark, pp. 109–110; Best, British Intelligence, p. 121. 67. TNA, FO371/18550, W10089/2531/98, 19 November 1934, from Chinese Minister (communicated). The content of this file is a letter from Guo to Beneš dated on 26 September 1934. 68. TNA, FO371/18550, W9189/2531/98, personal letter from Drummond to Eden, 10 October 1934, and Strang minute, 11 October 1934. 69. TNA, FO371/18193, F6215/2203/23, from UK Delegation (Geneva), record of conversation between Strang and Avenol, 16 October 1934.

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70. TNA, FO371/18550, W9242/2531/98, Strang minute (From Cambon, French Embassy, conversation), 18 October 1934; FO371/18550, W9189/2531/98, Orde minute, 20 October 1934. 71. TNA, FO371/18550, W9189/2531/98, Strang minutes (personal letter from Drummond to Eden, 10 October 1934), 11 and 19 October 1934. 72. Ibid., Eden minute, 22 October 1934 (personal letter from Drummond to Eden, 10 October 1934). 73. Walters, A History of the League of Nations, pp. 325, 388–389; LNOJ , May 1934, p. 428, Cancellation by the Mexican Government of its note of 3 December 1932, notifying its intention to withdraw from the League of Nations. 74. TNA, FO371/18550, W9659/2531/98, Outfile from FO to Cadogan, 12 November 1934. 75. TNA, FO371/18550, W11153/2531/98, from LN Union, 21 December 1934. 76. TNA, FO371/18550, W10510/2531/98, Cadogan (Nanking) to Wellesley, 31 October 1934; W9919/2531/98, from Minister Hugh Gurney (Copenhagen), 8 November 1934; W9878/2531/98, from Polish Ambassador (conversation), 9 November 1934. 77. BDFA, Part II, Series J, Vol. 2, doc. 227, W10088/2531/98, Note by Eden, 16 November 1934. 78. Rappard, ‘Small States in the League of Nations’, pp. 560–561. 79. BDFA, Part II, Series J, Vol. 2, doc. 227, W10088/2531/98, Note by Eden, 16 November 1934. 80. LNd, C.530.M.241.1934.XI [O. C. 1581 (1)], OAC report to the Council, 19th session, 15 to 28 November 1934, pp. 3–4; LNd, C.33.M.14.1935.XI, OAC, Minutes of the 19th session, pp. 55, 57–58, 65, 67–68. See also Slack, Opium, State and Society, pp. 109, 156; and Zhou, Anti-Drug Crusades, pp. 74, 80–81. 81. Tomizuka, ‘Renmei dattai no konpon gi’; Higuchi Mao, ‘Kokusai Renmei gaik¯ o no sh¯ uen to Renmei ha gaik¯ o kan [The End of the Diplomacy towards the League and the Diplomats of the League Group]’, Kokusai hikaku seiji kenky¯ u [Study of International Comparative Politics ], No. 26, 2017, pp. 117–118; id., ‘Senkanki Nihon gaik¯ o to kokusai chitsujo [Japanese Diplomacy in the Inter-war Period and the International Order]’, Rekishi to Chiri [History and Geography], No. 712, 2018, p. 10. 82. NGB, 2-2-4, no. 25, Yokoyama to Hirota, 23 March 1935; no. 30, Hirota to Ariyoshi Akira, Minister to China, 4 April 1935. 83. Obiya, ‘Sugimura Y¯ otar¯o’, pp. 36–37; Yajima, ‘Gaimush¯o renmei ha’, pp. 13–14. 84. NGB, 2-2-4, no. 34, Yokoyama to Hirota, 24 May 1935; TNA, FO371/19370, F3298/299/87, 22 May 1935, LN, No. C.224/1935/XI (86th session of the Council. Extract from final minutes

6

85. 86.

87.

88.

89.

90. 91.

92.

93. 94.

95. 96.

JAPAN’S WITHDRAWAL AND CHINA’S REQUEST

155

of the second meeting held on 22 May, Geneva); F4923/299/87, Coles to Makins, unnumbered, 26 July 1935. JACAR, Ref. B04122142400, image 96, Kokusai Renmei fujin jid¯ o mondai ikken (B-9-10-0), Vol. 2. BDFA, Part II, Series J, Vol. 2, doc. 228, W4408/4359/98, Simon to Cadogan, 16 May 1935; doc. 229, W4790/4359/98, from UK Delegation, Geneva, 29 May 1935; doc. 230, Record of meeting by Strang, 29 May 1935. LONJ , November 1935, pp. 1349–1350, Annex 1570, C.E.C.C.2, Question of the Representation of China on the Council, Letter dated 21 May 1935 from Quo Tai-chi to Litvinoff; TNA, FO371/19689, W4790/4359/98, from UK Delegation, Geneva, 29 May 1935; Kamiyama Akiyoshi, ‘Nihon no Kokusai Renmei dattai to Ch¯ ugoku no riji y¯ oky¯ u [Japan’s Withdrawal from the League of Nations and China’s Representation on the Council], Gaik¯ o Shiry¯ okan P¯ o, No. 22, 2008, pp. 91, 96. TNA, FO371/19689, W7602/4359/98, from LN (communicated), 29 August 1935 (Exchange of Views Between the Members of the Council on 25 May 1935). Ibid.; and NGB, 2-2-4, no. 35, betsuden, Yokoyama to Hirota, 27 May 1935. Yokoyama reported home that Eden said the issue was very difficult to solve, and left the meeting early. NGB, 2-2-4, no. 20, Hirota to Ariyoshi, 27 May 1935. TNA, FO371/19689, W7602/4359/98, LN (communicated), 29 August 1935 (Composition of the Council: Request of the Chinese Government ), and minutes by Strang and Eden, 30 August 1935. LNOJ , November 1935, pp. 1159–1160, 3621, Question of the Representation of China on the Council; NGB, 2-2-4, no. 45, Yokoyama to Hirota, 19 September 1935. TNA, FO371/19689, W8512/4359/98, from UK Delegation (Geneva), 27 September 1935. LNOJ , November 1935, p. 1200, 89th session of the Council, 3rd meeting, 26 September 1935, 3638, Representation of China on the Council; NGB, 2-2-4, no. 47, Yokoyama to Hirota, 26 September 1935; Kamiyama, ‘Nihon no Kokusai Renmei dattai’, p. 96. TNA, FO371/19689, W8664/4359/98, from UK Delegation (Geneva), 2 October 1935. BL, Cecil papers, Add MS 51083, f. 97, Cecil to Eden, 29 January 1935; Add MS 51087, f. 49, Cecil to Cranborne, 17 October 1935; Add MS 51087, ff. 69–70, Cranborne to Cecil, 24 April 1936; f. 72, Cecil to Cranborne, 24 April 1936; TNA, FO371/20484, W523/228/98, Lord Cecil (conversation), 14 January 1936; and W3510, Lord Cecil (conversation), 22 April 1936.

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97. LNOJ , Special Supplement, no. 156, Records of the Seventeenth Ordinary Session of the Assembly, Minutes of the First Committee (Constitutional and Legal Questions), pp. 10–12. 98. LNOJ , November 1936, pp. 1186–1187, 3802, Composition of the Council, Resolution adopted by the Assembly on 1 October 1936; TNA, FO371/20485, W12898/228/98, from LN, 2 October 1936; FO411/19, Part XXIII, no. 30 (W13391, Malcolm MacDonald to Eden, 6 October 1936); Kamiyama, ‘Nihon no Kokusai Renmei dattai’, p. 97. 99. TNA, FO371/18193, F6385/2203/23, 5 November 1934, Strang minute.

CHAPTER 7

Who Controls the Co-operation?: Technical Co-operation after the Outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War

We have seen in Chapter 4 that at the fifth TCC held in September 1934, it was decided not to appoint a technical delegate forthwith. The TCC was not held for some time after the meeting. Technical co-operation between the League of Nations and China since 1 April 1934, together with the works of the Chinese National Economic Conference, was recorded in the July 1935 issue of the League of Nations Official Journal. Fields of co-operation mentioned were public health, roads (building, upkeep and transport), hydraulics and agricultural economy.1 This chapter and Chapter 8 trace the technical co-operation to its end. After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war in July 1937, the League decided to send several experts to prevent epidemic diseases from spreading. Although the co-operation was carried out under difficult circumstances and the contribution of the experts was great, differences of opinions between those who were supposed to be co-operating grew wide. How should decisions be made and how should the League funds be used became a contentious issue. This chapter considers who controlled the co-operation: the League or the local authorities.

© The Author(s) 2020 H. Goto-Shibata, The League of Nations and the East Asian Imperial Order, 1920–1946, New Directions in East Asian History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4968-7_7

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The TCC in 1936 Let us first look at the co-operation before the outbreak of the SinoJapanese War. In preparation for the sixth TCC scheduled in March 1936, Avenol prepared a note on the programme of co-operation in the year. The credit voted by the Assembly for the co-operation was 450,000 Swiss francs, and works of experts explained in Avenol’s note are as follows. First, the co-operation in economic fields. William Kenneth Hunter Campbell started his mission in September 1935. He had worked for the Indian civil service in Ceylon and acquired a reputation for developing agricultural cooperative societies. In addition, Benito Mari, an Italian expert of sericulture, had been in China since autumn 1932. The Chinese silk industry had declined due to the deterioration of the silkworms. Mari instructed how to improve the quality of silkworms, how to train the technical staff who would directly contact and assist farmers, and how to use better silk-reeling machines. Second, the co-operation in connection with communication. A mission of four experts including Leon Coursin was in China from December 1934 to the spring of 1935 to examine questions relating to roads and hydraulics. Coursin was a French expert on roads, who had worked in French Madagascar.2 F. J. M. Bourdrez had also been in China since the beginning of 1932. He was a Dutch expert on water power, particularly in connection with river regulation schemes. It was proposed that his mission should continue all through 1937. Third, the LNHO had been represented from May 1930 to the end of 1934 by Borcic. In September 1933, Dr Andrija Stampar, honorary director of public health in Yugoslavia and a former member of the League of Nations Health Committee, also participated in the cooperation, especially in rural reconstruction. In those days, the National Economic Council of China concentrated its efforts on two regions: the north-west (Shanxi and Gansu) and Jiangxi. These two regions were selected partly because of agricultural distress caused by infectious diseases among human beings and animals. Stamper had to travel around the country and was long absent from Nanjing, so that the Chinese government asked in July 1935 whether Borcic could resume his work in China. Borcic obtained twelve months’ leave from the Yugoslav authorities, and expected to work till 1937, while Stampar would leave China before the expiry of his contract in December 1936 and submit a report on his mission to the chairman of the Health Committee.3

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The first meeting of the sixth TCC was held on 2 March 1936. The chairman was the representative of Australia, Sir John McLaren, and seven members including Pratt and Guo Taiqi, the Chinese delegate to the League, attended. Prentice Gilbert, the American consul in Geneva, was an observer. Three from the League also participated: Avenol, Pablo de Azcarate, Spanish deputy secretary-general and the new secretary to the TCC, and C. E. A. M. Smets of the Economic Section who acted as the secretary to the meeting. Avenol first touched upon Robert Haas, who had been the secretary of the TCC and had been to China. After he returned from the country, he passed away on 3 November 1935 at the age of just 44. On his return from China, he had made several points clear. He pointed out the fact that the co-operation was ‘actually in the hands of a very small number of agents of the League in China’, and concluded that ‘the most satisfactory method would seem to be to help the Central government to co-ordinate the work done in the different provinces’.4 Guo pointed out that foreign technical experts sent without any previous knowledge of the country must spend a considerable time simply to get to know it. He proposed to divide experts into two groups, namely those who represented a permanent technical activity and those who were appointed for some specific piece of advice or investigation. An example of the latter was Arthur Salter who surveyed economic conditions and certain financial problems. Guo continued that the former group of experts should further be divided into two, namely those who remain at the headquarters in the capital such as Borcic and Bourdrez, and those who were engaged in field works, such as Stamper who was making surveys in the provinces.5 Guo then supported the note circulated by Avenol to the TCC concerning the programme for the year 1936. It proposed maintaining the Nanjing office and continuing the work of Campbell and Mari on behalf of the Economic Organization, Bourdrez and Coursin on behalf of the Transit Organization, and the health work by Stampar and Borcic. In addition, Guo proposed that the reserve of over 100,000 Swiss francs out of the total should be spent on the missions abroad by Chinese experts, especially in the fields of health, rural reconstruction, cooperative movement and the works of the treasury and the central bank. He also hoped that as for the next year the priority would be given to the missions of Chinese specialists abroad. He reminded them of the fact that the fourth TCC had accepted the report of Rajchman, and had been supported

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by Wellington Koo, the then representative of China. Rajchman’s report suggested sending Chinese experts abroad. Guo further recalled that the report was adopted at the fifth TCC held on 28 September 1934.6 According to Margherita Zanasi, the members of the Chinese National Economic Council had ‘their own ideas about where the country should be heading’; and that ‘[t]hey were happy to receive technological and financial help but were very much committed to their own political agenda’.7 Sending Chinese experts abroad was not easily approved. Avenol mentioned that he had been obliged to adopt a policy of stringent economy during the last few years, and that the credit for the co-operation with China had been subject to the same treatment as others. He had become anxious about ‘the question of expense’ and had raised in his note as regards sending experts abroad ‘a question of principle whether such missions could be regarded as coming within the scope of technical collaboration with China’. He thought that ‘the League should take no action which it might subsequently have to refuse to take if other countries invoked the precedent thus created’. He was concerned that the sending of specialists abroad amounted to ‘the granting of travelling scholarships without control of the manner in which these scholarships were utilised’. The representative of Spain understood Avenol’s anxiety that ‘a dangerous precedent would be created’. The representative of France wondered whether the League could not make its contribution to the organization of the missions ‘in some manner other than purely by financial assistance’. Furthermore, he was concerned with the fact that ‘the engineers whom the Chinese Government proposed to send abroad kn[e]w in fact no foreign language other than English’. He ‘earnestly hoped that the choice of technicians would be as wide as possible’.8 At the second meeting after a short break, Avenol repeated that it would be very difficult ‘to ask the other Members of the League of Nations to defray expenditure which would in fact amount to granting a subsidy to one single Member of the League’. As the credit provided for technical collaboration was one of those administered under his direct responsibility, he pointed out that he could not take such a course without the consent of the Supervisory Commission.9 Victor Hoo, the director of the Permanent Office of the Chinese Delegation accredited to the League of Nations, attended this meeting on behalf of Ambassador Guo. He undeterredly said that ‘[c]ertain countries not Members of the League of Nations were of great importance from the

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point of view of technical study. They should not be excluded a priori’.10 He was most probably thinking of the United States, although China was receiving assistance from Germany in military training around this time.11 Pratt represented Britain at the sixth TCC. In his report, he described the collaboration as ‘a euphemism for League assistance to China’. After considerable discussion, the TCC decided that training Chinese specialists abroad could be included under the heading of collaboration. They agreed, however, with Avenol’s view that ‘it was necessary that the activities of the Chinese specialists sent abroad as well as the disbursement of the funds expended on their behalf should both be under the control of the Secretary General’. The details of sending experts were to be determined jointly by the Chinese delegation and the secretary-general. It was proposed to make the experts attached to the Secretariat.12 Pratt discussed the whole question privately with Seymour Jacklin, the South African treasurer of the League. Jacklin was also ‘worried about collaboration in China because in the past there ha[d] been extravagance and looseness in accounting’. In this connection, he was very critical of both Rajchman and the late Haas. He had just succeeded in establishing proper control. He also considered that the TCC should control the selection of experts more closely. He thought there had been too much ‘intrigue’ and ‘nepotism’ and ‘some unsatisfactory appointment had been made’. He suggested that when an expert was to be sent to China it might be arranged that lists of names should be submitted to the TCC for final approval. Pratt considered that there was much force in Jacklin’s criticism.13 Even within Britain and the League, opinions were divided. While some were absolutely favourable to the co-operation, others were wondering whether it would be fair to grant a subsidy to one single member of the League. Frank Walters was favourable, and thought it a good idea to finance the studies abroad of the Chinese specialists selected by the Chinese government. In total contrast, Charles Orde, head of the Far Eastern Department of the British Foreign Office, wrote that ‘the provision of assistance to China at other people’s expense [wa]s an interesting instance of the Chinese capacity to put a spell on the world’.14 The seventh TCC was held in December 1936, and the programme of co-operation for 1937 was discussed. The following note prepared by Avenol was approved.15 With a view to fostering the development of agricultural cooperative societies, Campbell observed the conditions of the work of the numerous rural cooperative societies in the field.

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Although he appreciated the goodwill and efforts of the staff of the societies concerned, he was ‘struck by the absence of practical knowledge on the part of the majority of the Chinese staff’. The Chinese government accordingly requested the secretary-general to consider appointing another expert, Claude Francis Strickland, who had long experience in Punjab. The Chinese government also renewed the contract of Mari, the expert on sericulture, for another year. The only financial obligation the League still had in connection with Mari was the cost of his return journey. As for communication and transit, it was proposed to establish a technical planning office in Nanjing. The office should consist of three foreign engineers appointed and paid by the League. Bourdrez, who had been in China for nearly five years, and Coursin were the candidates of the foreign engineers.16 In the field of health, Stamper researched health conditions in provinces. He was in Yunnan during the last months of 1935, and then in Fujian, ‘a province where the anti-plague campaign raise[d] special problems’. The plague which spread from Yunnan reached the northern Fujian–Jiangxi border in the 1930s. Borcic resumed his mission at Nanjing, where he was representing the LNHO, co-operating the central authorities and acting as an adviser to the Chinese health administration. This mission would last until 31 December 1937.17

Technical Co-operation after the Outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War On 7 July 1937, the Sino-Japanese War broke out. Although the initial collision was accidental and neither side declared war, the two countries would be at war for more than eight years from then on. The Republic of China brought the war to the League of Nations just before the Assembly in September 1937. Furthermore, Guo Taiqi sent a letter and a memorandum to Avenol. His letter emphasized that in view of the emergency in China, a great need would be served if technical assistance was given for the prevention and control of epidemics and the general relief of the civilian population and refugees.18 Co-operation to prevent the spread of epidemic diseases was urgently necessary. Some 80–100 million Chinese would be forced to migrate during the eight years of China’s war against Japan. Although this figure includes those who returned home soon after they fled,19 it was obviously difficult to maintain good hygiene, and people were moving through the foci of diseases.

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The memorandum sent by Guo on technical collaboration between China and the League of Nations explained the situation. Firstly, the destruction of lives and property in the wake of the hostilities had resulted in an acute shortage of medical and sanitary supplies of all kinds. Tens of thousands of refugees had to seek safety and shelter, so that a great number of people were moving towards the centre and south-west of the country from the lower valley of the Changjiang (Yangtze River). Secondly, the outbreak of various epidemics was observed. Cholera broke out in the south-west, and spread over the entire valley of the Changjiang. The Chinese health authorities gravely feared that in view of the large movements of population and of troops, the disease might recrudesce in winter unless active steps were taken on a considerable scale. The memorandum continued that smallpox, which was endemic in Hong Kong and Guangzhou, might aggravate the already alarming conditions, and that typhus might also break out. It also emphasized that although the Chinese government must assume responsibility for dealing with this situation, in so doing, they were also protecting their neighbours against risks inherent in the spread of epidemics by movements of millions towards shelter and the south-west frontiers of China. In the 1930s, the south-western part of China bordered both the British and French empires. The Nationalist government of China hinted a possible health danger to those imperial territories and proposed that, ‘beginning from the third quarter of the… year and for the period of 1938, all the available resources … should be concentrated on strengthening a plan of sanitary defence and relief measures carried out under the authority of the central and provincial administrations in China’.20 On 29 September 1937, at the eighth TCC, the programme of collaboration for 1938 was discussed. Guo reported that since the memorandum had been prepared, the Central Field Health Station had been destroyed by a Japanese air raid. Sean Lester, the deputy secretary-general, explained that the essential factor in the new plan was setting up an anti-epidemic organization, more particularly the supply of medicine and medical personnel. He continued that the health experts advised Avenol that a plan, which might involve expenditure far exceeding five million Swiss francs, was to be considered as a minimum.21 Then, Rajchman, not as a member of the committee but as the director of the Health Section, presented a map of China prepared by his section to illustrate the situation. He explained that various diseases existed in the country and that the situation was worrying: ‘a cholera epidemic had

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broken out at Hong Kong. Further cholera foci had been discovered on the island of Hainan and, on the mainland, on the Indo-Chinese frontier’.22 Rajchman also reported that plague was also found in the country. It was not new to China. The pneumonic plague had broken out in Manchuria in 1910–1911. According to Rajchman, in addition to the preexisting Manchurian focus, other foci of plague were found on the border between Fujian and Jiangxi, also on the border between Guangdong and Guangxi, and in Shanxi. This situation is confirmed by Carol Benedict’s study. She shows that in the latter half of the nineteenth century bubonic plague spread from Yunnan to Guangxi, Guangdong and Fujian. This plague reached the northern Fujian–Jiangxi border in the 1930s.23 Rajchman expressed his worry at the TCC, because all the foci, ‘except that in Manchuria, la[id] in the path of large group movements of the population’. In addition to cholera and plague, the Health Section’s map also showed that ‘smallpox was very prevalent throughout the territory’ and that the ‘whole territory situated to the north of the Yang-Tze-Kiang and the Yellow River could be considered as being favourable to typhus epidemics’.24 Pratt, the representative of the United Kingdom to the TCC, stated that his government felt the greatest sympathy for China and suggested that the TCC should ask the Council to request the Assembly to increase the credits already sanctioned.25 The Swedish member and Guo suggested the direct contributions from the powers with special interests in the Far East. Pratt was of the opinion that the League’s action should be confined to anti-epidemic measures and that medical care and assistance to the wounded concerned other international organizations such as the Red Cross. After hearing Rajchman’s detailed proposal, Pratt reiterated his concern that it would necessitate considerable expenditure. He expressed ‘his preference for a plan capable both of immediate realisation and of subsequent expansion’.26 The 99th session of the League’s Council was held on 1 October 1937. It examined the resolution of the TCC, which was based on the British proposal. Lord Cranborne said that the UK government was ‘fully alive to the threatening epidemic situation in China’, and was in full agreement with the TCC’s recommendation. However, he reserved in regard to setting up a separate fund and to inviting the most concerned governments to contribute to it. Tytus Komarnicki of Poland also had reservations. He suggested that it might be better to give a grant to organizations such as the Red Cross, because ‘no action taken by the

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League was entirely devoid of a political aspect’. It should be noted that Rajchman was a League official and not a representative of the Polish government. Poland at that time was by no means united. Its government was actually opposed to the left including Rajchman. On the other hand, Litvinov of the Soviet Union was favourable towards assistance to China. His country had already started assisting China from the north-westerly direction. William Jordan, the high commissioner of New Zealand and a member of the Labour Party, did not agree with the view that anything the Council might do would have a political meaning. He emphasized that the money spent to prevent the epidemics from spreading beyond China would be regarded as expenditure in defence of the people of New Zealand. The Council adopted the resolution of the TCC and passed it on to the Assembly.27 All financial questions fell under the authority of the Assembly, and had to be submitted to its Fourth Committee which was in charge of the budget and financial questions, and the financial Supervisory Commission which consisted of independent advisers to the secretary-general’s estimates of the budget. The Fourth Committee examined the issue on 2 October, and participating countries expressed their sympathy for China. The Fourth Committee decided to refer the question to the Supervisory Commission.28 After a thorough examination, the Supervisory Commission came to the conclusion that two million Swiss francs would be a suitable amount.29 From 14 to 16 October, the special sub-committee of the Health Committee for technical collaboration with China was held to consider the detailed measures of the medical assistance. Victor Hoo stated that all responsibility in the contemplated work would rest with the Chinese government. He explained that the League’s assistance would simply be to strengthen the existing Chinese public health and medical relief organization. He emphasized that although medical staff were available in China, all kinds of medical supplies were seriously lacking. The subcommittee also considered that two million Swiss francs would be a suitable amount of assistance.30 The Supervisory Commission met in Paris on 19 and 20 October to examine the proposals submitted by the special sub-committee. Its report read that the League’s part would be to place at the Chinese government’s disposal, for a period of one year, groups of experts provided with the necessary medical and technical equipment. It also read that on the termination of the scheme, the material and equipment placed

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at the experts’ disposal would become the property of the Chinese government.31 Thus the technical co-operation in epidemic prevention began.32 It should be noted that at this stage the League did not clearly define the relations between the experts and Chinese authorities. It does seem that the Republic of China assumed that the Chinese would have the power to control the scheme and that the role of the experts was to provide assistance under them.33 On the other hand, the experts did not think they would be placed under the Chinese authorities. Rajchman was at the centre of making the concrete plan. About ten European experts were to be sent to China. Rajchman initially suggested forming his native Polish as well as British and French teams of experts to work in the fields. It was, however, actually German-, English- and French-speaking units of experts which were composed. The members of the German-speaking unit were Swiss and Austrian. On the arrival of the League experts in China, the Epidemic Commission was constituted, and its meeting was held in Hong Kong on 10 January 1938. Those who attended were Borcic, the leaders of the three League units, and J. Heng Liu, the director of the Health Section of the Chinese Home Ministry.34 The Chinese representative was later replaced by Dr Robert K. S. Lim (Lin Kesheng), who was the son of a famous Singaporean doctor and social reformer, Lim Boon Keng (Lin Wenqing). Both the father and the son were educated at the University of Edinburgh. The German-speaking unit would work in Sian, and its head was Professor H. Mooser (Swiss); the English-speaking unit in Changsha, Hunan province, and its head Dr Robert Cecil Robertson (British); and the French-speaking unit in south China, which bordered on French Indochina. Its head was Inspector-General Antoine Lasnet, who was responsible for public health in the French colonial territories.35 France and the Netherlands were among the countries which had territories in Asia, and both of them considered that they were particularly exposed to the danger of contagion from epidemics. The French government decided to provide four million francs for the year 1937 to assist the anti-epidemic campaign of the League in China. The Netherlands government also announced its intention to contribute a gift of 50,000 florins to the same work, and Avenol decided to use this to purchase quinine at Amsterdam.36 In June 1938, Robertson, the head of the English-speaking unit, wrote to Sir Alexander Cadogan, then the British under-secretary of state for

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foreign affairs, on the works of his unit whose headquarters was established at Changsha. The unit was assigned Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi provinces. Robertson wrote that although they had ‘just completed a fairly successful campaign against smallpox’ in Hunan, cholera had broken out in certain towns such as Changde. He continued that the treatment for the cases of epidemic diseases in adequate isolation hospitals was one of the necessities, and the International Red Cross Committee in Hankou had been most helpful in assisting with the maintenance of some of those hospitals. He also recorded that the British Relief Committee under the chairmanship of the consul-general in Hankou had been generous and sympathetic to the type of work.37

Continuing for the Second Year The anti-epidemic work was originally planned only for one year. The war, however, did not come to an end. In the course of the conversation with Cadogan on 20 May 1938, Guo expressed the hope of the Chinese government to continue the anti-epidemic work for another year. Guo stated that his government hoped the forthcoming Assembly would agree to prolong the existing arrangements, and that it would be better if Britain would take the initiative in the matter. Lord Halifax, the foreign secretary, had expressed his disgust with Japan since the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War, so that he was well-disposed to the continuation of the anti-epidemic work. The Foreign Office enquired of the opinion of the Ministry of Health.38 Based on the note by the Health Section of the League, the Health Ministry considered that those League units were doing valuable works. It suggested the necessity of obtaining the approval of the Treasury.39 The note of the Health Section had been prepared under the directorship of Rajchman. It is typically Rajchman that it put emphasis on the efforts by China itself. In addition to a hundred medical units which worked in rural districts for educational purposes and the units of the Chinese Red Cross, the Chinese government organized three big antiepidemic units. Each unit consisted of 150–250 doctors, nurses, sanitary engineers and sanitary inspectors in northern, central and southern areas of the country. The three League units were co-operating with those Chinese government units as well as with the local authorities. The note clearly wrote that ‘the Chinese authorities themselves would assume responsibility for the work being carried out, and that the object of the

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League medical units should be to reinforce existing organizations and activities, that is, to advise and support the competent Chinese technical services’.40 According to the note, the three League units started working in February 1938. They surveyed not only local epidemic conditions but also the existing mechanisms for controlling epidemics. They also carried out anti-smallpox and anti-cholera vaccination, and prepared for producing typhus vaccine and calf lymph locally. The purchase of stores was completed in Europe and supplies were dispatched to Hong Kong, the centre for bringing goods into China. The stores included quinine, tetanus and diphtheria antitoxin, smallpox lymph and large quantities of drugs required for combating the epidemics feared during summer.41 The English-speaking unit joined with the National Health Administration to form the Central China Epidemic Prevention Unit. The Unit endeavoured to undertake an epidemic survey in provinces and to establish a system for reporting cases of epidemics. It also undertook a large campaign of inoculation against cholera and of anti-smallpox vaccination, in conjunction with the local health authorities and the Chinese Red Cross. The note of the Health Section reported that Robertson was of the opinion that if inoculation and vaccination were combined with the general work of a clinic, the population would accept those preventive works much more readily.42 Although this was claimed to be Robertson’s opinion, it seems to reflect the opinions of the Health Section and the Chinese government which wanted the League to be involved in the general relief of the civilian population and refugees. The British Health Ministry was of the opinion that if the work of the epidemiological units in China were continued, the grant of two million Swiss francs, less possibly the sum of 300,000 Swiss francs, would be sufficient. Halifax suggested that the valuable work should be continued and that Britain should support the proposal of the Chinese government. Although the Treasury agreed with his opinion, it pointed out the heavy charge which the work laid on the budget of the League; ‘a charge which it would be difficult to justify if it were in the interests of one nation alone’. Therefore, the Treasury suggested that Britain should support the continuance of the work within the limits of such credits as the Assembly might be able to grant.43 In July, the Chinese government made a proposal for technical cooperation for the year 1939. Firstly, it asked that two engineering experts including Bourdrez be allowed to continue, and an additional engineer

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be sent to China. Secondly, it requested the League to send a health expert to China, and hoped that Borcic would be appointed to the post. Thirdly, expressing the gratitude for the League’s sending anti-epidemic units to China, it hoped that the assistance of the League in this field would be continued for another year. It also expressed the hope that the future anti-epidemic work would be extended to other places when necessary. Furthermore, in August, it added the request of reappointing Campbell.44 If all these materialized, the considerable expenditure would obviously be necessary. In September, Avenol prepared two memoranda in preparation for the ninth TCC. The one dealt with China’s request concerning the rupture of the dykes on the Yellow River. China had requested the League to undertake urgent measures to control the Yellow River floods, check their extension and prevent their recurrence. Although Wellington Koo did not refer to the causes of the rupture in the letter addressed to Avenol, the dyke had actually been destroyed by the Nationalists themselves as a strategy in the war against Japan. Avenol annexed the report by the League’s Committee for Communications and Transit to his memorandum. The report stated that unless several conditions were guaranteed, it would be difficult for the League to assume responsibility. The conditions included adequate technical documentation regarding the Yellow River, and the supply of the necessary number of Chinese engineers and the subordinate technical staff.45 In the other memorandum, Avenol examined the possibility of the cooperation for the year 1939. First, he reviewed the current situation of the co-operation. Owing to the extension of the military operations, Germanand English-speaking units made plans to withdraw in a south-westerly direction. It would be possible, without drawing on the reserve, to keep the League units in operation until the end of 1939. However, Mooser, Lasnet, and another member were unable to agree to their contracts being extended.46 Summer 1938 had been hot, and both Chinese and Japanese soldiers had suffered from dysentery and malaria.47 Avenol’s memorandum also reported ‘a recrudescence and increase in the cholera epidemic’. It was chiefly in central and southern China, but it even spread to northern China, where cholera had been virtually unknown. The Chinese government had made an urgent appeal to the League of Nations for gifts of the anti-cholera vaccine. Between 7 July, when the appeal reached the Secretariat, and the end of the month, promises of gifts of more than eight

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million doses were made by thirteen countries and institutes. Avenol also purchased one million doses from the Pasteur Institute, Hanoi.48 The list of the countries and institutes who offered the gifts was later published, and Neville Goodman of the British Ministry of Health considered it regrettable that neither Britain nor India offered any gifts.49 The ninth TCC was held on 14 September 1938. It decided to recommend the Council to continue for another year the work already undertaken, on the understanding that it would involve less outlay than the first year. As for the Yellow River floods, it decided not to make any recommendations for the moment. The TCC’s opinion was communicated via the Council to the Assembly, and discussed at the latter’s Fourth Committee on 22 September. The chairman proposed that the request for a supplementary credit should be referred to the Supervisory Commission. Rappard of Switzerland asked the Supervisory Commission to provide fuller details regarding the increased credit proposed, ‘as the terms in which the Council’s request was couched were not very precise’.50

Who Controls the Co-operation? Rajchman played a crucial role again in deciding the scheme for the second year. He was extremely capable in medicine and administration, but some questioned the way he expanded the range of the League’s works. He was removed from the technical co-operation in 1934. Avenol was among those who had taken the decision. The discord between Avenol and Rajchman became even more serious in the last quarter of 1938. It was over a crucial point: who controlled the co-operation, the international organization or the local authorities? Details of the anti-epidemic work in the second year were to be discussed first at the special sub-committee of the Health Committee. The executive control of the work had been retained in the hands of the TCC, namely in effect in the hands of the secretary-general. Rajchman and the Chinese representative, however, prepared the special sub-committee a new scheme which would transfer the control almost entirely to the people on the spot.51 The most crucial point is that the scheme, if accepted, would deprive the League of almost all financial control. Rajchman was always against imposing Western or Great Powers’ terms, and he was supportive of local voices.52 On this occasion, too, he supported the idea of the Chinese being in charge of the anti-epidemic

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work. The Nationalists had since the 1920s tried to free China from the subjugation to the Powers. While the technical co-operation was mostly welcomed, its existing methods were sometimes disliked. Supported by Rajchman, the new scheme of co-operation asked for the breakup of the three units and for the technical personnel of the units to be put at the direct disposal of the Nationalist government. The Chinese asked further that ‘the material now in the hands of the units should be handed over to the Chinese Government and that a much larger allocation from the budget should be paid in direct subsidies to the Chinese Health Authorities’. The Nationalists emphasized that they had come to allocate large sums for anti-epidemic work in the past year and had put into operation more than 100 of their own units.53 On 14 October 1938, the special sub-committee of the Health Committee met. There were five members. Among them, only Madsen was supportive of Rajchman’s plan. Other members were from the UK, the United States and India. The British member was Goodman of the Ministry of Health. Lester, Smets, Victor Hoo and Borcic also participated in the meeting. It soon became clear that the proposed Chinese plan would not be accepted as it stood. Those who opposed argued that the Assembly had not envisaged any radical change of the antiepidemic plan and that the head of the French-speaking unit, Lasnet, was against the proposal. Rajchman who supported the plan had to make many concessions.54 On the next day, however, Goodman was surprised by ‘an extremely ingenious document’ prepared by Rajchman. According to Goodman, the document, ‘by careful selection of phrases from reports previously adopted, threw into high relief the paramount role of the Chinese Government in the League plan’, and ‘transferred all responsibility for the other matters on the Epidemic Commission in China’.55 Dr F. C. Yen (Yan Fuqing), Yale-educated director of the National Health Administration, had considered the existing Epidemic Commission unfavourable to China. Chang Li’s study points out the possibility of enhanced efficiency by strengthening Chinese control.56 Rajchman’s compromise document gave a large role and responsibility to the Epidemic Commission. It would be ‘for this Commission to make proposals to the Secretary General regarding the purchase of material and report to him on the use’ to which the material was put. The document stated that the decisions of the Epidemic Commission should be valid if three members were present.57 The Commission consisted of the

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head of the Chinese Health Administration, the technical adviser of the League of Nations to the Chinese government and three commissioners. If the document was accepted and if China managed to secure a technical adviser who had the favourable attitude it sought, like Borcic, China could control the Commission to a large extent, while the control by the secretary-general and the League of Nations would be drastically reduced. Goodman did not resist this compromise document much, because he thought that ‘the chief point at issue was the control of the League funds’. It was the matter to be decided by the Supervisory Commission. The chairman tried to end the meeting early, because his father was on his deathbed. The sub-committee adopted the compromise scheme, predominantly on the lines of Rajchman’s.58 The Supervisory Commission which met in Paris on 14 and 15 November 1938 accepted the conclusions of the sub-committee, except as regards the grants-in-aid. It opposed the grant of cash subsidies, ‘which would be contrary to the financial regulations of the League’. The Supervisory Commission at the same time considered that help given by the League in the form of loans of equipment, or grants of medical supplies and vaccines, was the surest means of achieving the object aimed at by the special sub-committee. The Supervisory Commission was of the opinion that ‘the Secretary-General should appoint the Head of Mission with precise instructions, in virtue of which he would be responsible to the Secretary-General’. The representative in question would, in principle, be one of the three commissioners. The Supervisory Commission made it clear that the secretary-general would retain the power to effect transfers within the framework of the budget, and it was understood that the entry into force of the scheme was subject to the payment in full of China’s contribution to the League for 1938.59 The Supervisory Commission made it clear that the secretary-general and through him the League of Nations would retain the power of control in the collaboration in the anti-epidemic works, and that they should control the League’s funds. The League remained in a position to hold back funds in the event they disapprove of the way the co-operation was carried out. This final scheme adopted by the Supervisory Commission was, however, not welcomed by the Chinese. The Nationalists, especially Dr H. H. Kung (Kong Xiangxi), the chairman of the Executive Yuan, were displeased with it. As mentioned above, F. C. Yen was dissatisfied with the way the anti-epidemic works were carried out.60

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Discord over who would become the head of the mission in China followed, and in the process Rajchman appeared manipulative. Avenol had intended to appoint Robertson as the chief, because the latter was to be the only one of the three League commissioners to remain in China. Avenol also intended to make Robertson entirely responsible for the use of the League funds. In December 1938, however, it came to be known that Goodman apparently wrote to Rajchman to the effect that the Foreign Office and the British government did not share that favourable opinion regarding Robertson.61 Who else could disclose this piece of information but Rajchman? Goodman had to explain the situation to the Foreign Office. While he was in Geneva about three weeks earlier, Rajchman told him that the Chinese government would not agree to Robertson’s appointment. The reason was Robertson’s attitude to the Chinese. Goodman also heard from the head of the German-speaking unit, Dr H. Mooser, about Robertson’s behaviour at a dinner party attended by the Chinese medical staff. Therefore, after returning to London he wrote to Rajchman, but Goodman insisted that there was nothing whatever to suggest that the Foreign Office or the British government had any objections to Robertson.62 In the meantime, the League’s financial situation was becoming increasingly serious. The League was run by annual financial contributions by its member countries, but some had left by this time. Honduras, Nicaragua and Paraguay left without settling their arrears. Italy notified its withdrawal in December 1937. The ratio of contributions of Italy was large,63 and its withdrawal was financially devastating. In addition, some member states had failed to pay the allotted sums. Only 86% of the contributions due for 1938 were received. Retrenchment was necessary. The Assembly in September 1938 nominated the Committee on Budgetary Economies, which proposed in December the inclusion of the credits for anti-epidemic work in China among the suggested economies, and also the reorganization of the Health, Opium and Social Questions Sections. The salaries of the directors would be economized.64 Avenol decided to reduce the members of the Secretariat, and Rajchman was one of those to be dismissed. Cecil, the strongest supporter of the League of Nations in Britain, was opposed to the dismissal of Rajchman and wrote a letter to Halifax on 4 January 1939. He asked Halifax to take action to stop ‘this latest totalitarian assault’.65

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The minutes of the Western Department of the British Foreign Office records the opinion of the Ministry of Health: although Rajchman’s services had been great, his political activities and methods had made him ‘persona non grata’ in so many quarters that he was really more of a hindrance than an asset to the technical health services of the League. It was understood, therefore, that the Ministry of Health would not oppose his elimination, provided he went with honour and fair treatment. Cadogan acknowledged Rajchman’s undeniable ability and intelligence, but he added that his elimination would ‘in the long run benefit the League’, and that they had been ‘trying to get rid of him for years’. Halifax wrote back to Cecil on 9 January 1939. Quoting Arthur J. Balfour’s remark ‘if the League ever failed, it would be due to the breakdown in its own financial system’, he pointed out the financial difficulty of the League.66 Cecil brought the letter of Halifax to a meeting of the British League of Nations Union held on the morning of 12 January. Neither he nor the Union was convinced by the letter. Cecil wrote to Halifax again, pointing out that Rajchman was ‘a Jew’ and that he had been ‘a very convinced and active supporter of China’. On both grounds Cecil deplored that he should be dismissed at that moment. He hoped that Halifax could propose to consider a matter temperately, because he thought dismissal ‘with abruptness and an appearance of brutality’ would make the situation far worse.67 After Halifax visited Rome with Neville Chamberlain and Cadogan, he discussed the matter with Avenol in Geneva. Avenol’s opinion was reflected strongly in Halifax’s further reply to Cecil. The problem was ‘the real and pressing necessity for economies’. Not only did the League’s income decrease through the withdrawal of certain countries, but also only 86% of the contributions due for 1938 were received, so that the reorganization of the sections was proposed. As for Rajchman, although his technical work was excellent, Halifax wrote that it was true that his political activities had problems. When his contract had been renewed five years earlier, he had given an undertaking that he would drop his political activities. According to Avenol, the undertaking was not kept. Besides his part in international politics, his interest in Polish internal affairs was also considered to have estranged the Polish government. Halifax did not wish his remarks about Rajchman to be passed on to the League of Nations Union.68

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Cecil read Halifax’s letter, leaving out all references to Rajchman, to the Executive Committee of the League of Nations Union on the morning of 19 January. The Committee expressed their warm gratitude to Halifax. Cecil wrote that the matter of the Secretariat should be settled by the authorities at Geneva. But he also wrote that if the League ceased to be of any real value as a peace-keeping machine, the interest of the members would so much diminish.69 At the 104th Council of the League held on 20 January 1939, Jordan of New Zealand and Wellington Koo protested against the dismissal of Rajchman. On the other hand, the UK representative supported the reorganization of the sections. Rajchman was told that the position of the head of the Health Section would be abolished, so that he resigned from the League himself.70

Aid to China As we have seen, even after its withdrawal from the League, Japan continued partial co-operation with the League. Japan’s relations with China and also with the League, however, continued to deteriorate. For example, at the 22nd OAC which was held before the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, both Victor Hoo and Fuller strongly criticized the illicit trafficking of drugs by the Japanese. Harry J. Anslinger, the US commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, also attended the meeting. The explanation by the Japanese representative was feeble in every respect.71 At the 23rd OAC held in June 1938, Japan found itself under fire not only from China and the United States but also from Britain, Egypt, Canada, India and Belgium.72 Support and sympathy for China had increased. Eiji Amau had been the Japanese minister to Switzerland since April 1937. It had been decided that the minister to Switzerland should concurrently hold the post of the head of the Bureau for the International Conferences. Therefore, it was Amau who attended the 23rd OAC. After the committee meeting, he reported home that he found it almost impossible for Japan to continue ‘co-operation’ with the OAC long, but there was then no good excuse to terminate the relations.73 On 11 September 1938, China, a non-permanent member of the Council, invoked Article 17 of the League’s Covenant. On 30 September, the president of the Council declared that individual member states could apply sanctions against Japan under Article 16 of the League Covenant.

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On 14 October, the Japanese Cabinet decided to terminate its entire relations with various organizations under the League of Nations.74 Following this decision, on 28 October 1938, the Japanese Foreign Ministry instructed Uzuhiko Usami, the deputy director of the Japanese Bureau for International Conferences in Geneva, as follows. Japan would notify the League its intention to terminate its entire relations with various organizations within the League. Amau would no longer have to represent Japan at the OAC. Sakenobe and Kusama should tender their resignations respectively to the chairmen of the Permanent Mandate Commission and the PCOB. Anezaki’s term as a member of the International Committee of Intellectual Cooperation was approaching its end, but it was decided not to nominate his successor.75 The relations with the PCIJ would also be de facto severed. Those with the ILO as well. Those who worked in the Secretariat should decide their courses of action by themselves.76 On 2 November 1938, Japan’s intention to discontinue its cooperation with the League had been notified to Avenol by Amau.77 On the next day, Japan declared that it would establish a new order in the Far East, which aimed to form a bloc of Japan, Manchuria and China, and to defeat both Chinese nationalism and Western imperialism. Thus, Japan stood completely outside the League of Nations. Receiving the above-mentioned instruction, Harada, a member of the Political Section of the League Secretariat, resigned on 15 December 1938.78 Ouchi, the Japanese deputy director of the Eastern Bureau, Singapore, resigned from his post on 15 January 1939.79 Furthermore, in May 1939, the Japanese Diet passed a law which prohibited supplying economic data on Japan to the League of Nations. The Tokyo office of the League’s Information Section was liquidated shortly after.80 The Japanese Bureau for International Conferences would be abolished in April 1941. The 104th League Council held in January 1939 had to discuss whether the League would continue medical assistance to China or not. As mentioned above, the Committee on Budgetary Economies had included the credit for medical assistance among the suggested economies. The question needed to come up before the next Assembly in September 1939. In the process of the discussion, Japan’s claim to establish a new order in the Far East was mentioned. On the other hand, Avenol’s note dated 17 January 1939 informed that the Chinese government had not accepted the League’s proposal nor paid its contribution for 1938. The anti-epidemic work in China was to be carried on for

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January 1939 on the savings made on the 1938 budget, but it was not clear what would happen after the end of the month, or when the savings were exhausted. On 20 January 1939, the Council adopted a resolution that the assistance to China should be continued.81 Presented with the possibility of suspension of medical assistance to China, opinions favourable to continuing it came to be expressed in Britain. E. W. Playfair, a young official of the Treasury, discussed the issue with Jacklin, treasurer of the League Secretariat. He told Jacklin that the phrasing in the report of the Committee on Budgetary Economies that ‘the credits for Chinese Medical Aid could be “eliminated” from the [League’s] 1940 Budget’ was far from ‘tactful’. Jacklin was not favourable to the work. Although it started well, he considered that in the second year the ‘Chinese were trying to make money out of it … by insisting that all monies should be spent in buying materials from Chinese official sources’. He said that he and Avenol agreed that ‘the whole scheme would have to come to an end at the end of [1939] whether or not the Chinese paid their 1938 contribution’. In Jacklin’s view, ‘Rajchman was largely responsible’ for the fact that ‘the scheme was no longer run in an honest or useful fashion’. Although Playfair kept Britain’s position completely open, he himself had been very sympathetic to the assistance. He also asked the opinion of Goodman of the Health Ministry.82 A. L. Scott of the Far Eastern Department felt ‘some uneasiness’ on the inclusion of the medical aid among the suggested economies. He wrote on 1 February, ‘we have done little enough in the way of assistance to China – the League and the majority of small powers composing it even less’. As for Rajchman, Scott agreed that ‘he ha[d] been troublesome for his partisanship for China’, but he considered that very partisanship was ‘not without its advantages’ at that stage ‘when China [wa]s really fighting [Britain’s] battle for [Britain] by weakening Japan’.83 Faced with the cessation of the medical aid, China negotiated with Jacklin for a partial payment of its contribution to the League. Therefore, the Supervisory Commission agreed to the continuance of the scheme. On 6 February, Playfair wrote to his seniors, S. D. Waley, principal assistant secretary, and N. E. Young, assistant secretary of the Treasury. Although he could not yet form an opinion whether the medical aid should continue in 1940 or not, he thought that the Treasury should do everything it could ‘to procure its continuance, short of an obvious breach of honest and sound financial method on the part of the League’. Playfair added a message to Robert G. Howe, the head of the Far Eastern

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Department. Personally he should like to ‘let China off its contribution and go on with medical aid’.84 The Treasury was at the same time contemplating offering a loan to China in order to stabilize its currency, the yuan. After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, people in China tried to acquire foreign currency. The Nationalist government had asked Britain to offer a loan to buy and support the yuan. As the consortium agreement of 1920 had not been terminated yet, the Treasury tried to co-operate with the United States.85 On 7 February 1939, a meeting was held at the Treasury to discuss the matter. Sir Frederick Leith-Ross, the chief economic adviser to the government and authority on international finance, was in the chair. He had been in China in 1935–1936 to give advice on the country’s currency reform. Other participants of the meeting included Waley and Young from the Treasury, and Howe and Brenan from the Foreign Office. Waley thought it difficult to offer a loan to a government ‘which was de facto at war’. Howe agreed with Waley and considered that the loan should be made to British banks which would establish a ‘stabilization fund’ together with Chinese banks. The loan to the banks would make Sir Robert Craigie, the British ambassador to Japan, represent that it was made in support of British interests. The Americans had not given a favourable answer, so that Britain was going to make a decision independently.86 On 8 February, Scott wrote that if necessary Britain should be ready to let China off its contribution to the League and go on with medical aid. He further proposed that if the League ceased this activity, Britain, France and the United States should ‘jointly share the cost’. He was of the opinion that from the point of view of the British and the French, the anti-epidemic activity was a form of insurance against the spread of epidemics into their Far Eastern territories. On 13 February, the Treasury showed the minutes of the meeting of 7 February to Howe. On the following day, Howe wrote to Waley based on Scott’s opinion.87 On 22 February, the British Cabinet decided to maintain the stability of the Chinese currency by means of an ‘Exchange Stabilization Fund’. The transaction would not be a loan to the Chinese government. It would take a form of banking operation, and it was hoped that the procedure would be less provocative to Japan.88 Two days later, Goodman came to the Foreign Office on the instruction of the minister of health, who was keenly interested in the anti-epidemic work in China, and perturbed by the report that the work might be suspended owing to the difference

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between the League and the Chinese over finance. On the same day, the Republic of China finally informed the League of its willingness to accept the secretary-general’s plan and to pay its contribution for 1938. The Foreign Office did not have to do anything for the moment.89

The League or the Local Authorities The question examined in this chapter is who actually controlled the cooperation: the international organization or the local authorities? After the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, the co-operation to prevent epidemics started. Rajchman, who played a significant role again, was sympathetic to the local voices and tried to increase the Chinese control over the co-operation. The Chinese had been sensitive to the issue of foreign tutelage and control, so they were naturally pleased with Rajchman’s idea. In total contrast, Avenol and the League authorities could not accept it. The League made sure that it could control the co-operation, especially its finance. In addition, as the League was presented with financial difficulties around the time, Avenol decided to dismiss Rajchman. By the time the medical aid was in danger of suspension, Japan had completely severed its relations with the League of Nations. China was de facto at war against Japan, and found it difficult to pay its contribution to the League even more than before. It also asked Britain to offer a loan to stabilize its currency. It should be noted that those who considered the currency stabilization loan also dealt with the medical assistance. Some of the British officials started to express their opinion that they wanted to let China off its contribution to the League and continue the medical aid. They began to contemplate supporting China independently in this respect even without the co-operation of the United States.

Notes 1. LNOJ , July 1935, pp. 932–933, C/China/16, Summary of the Work of the National Economic Council of China and Information concerning Technical Co-operation between the League of Nations and China since 1 April 1934, 16 April 1935. 2. Chang, Guoji hezuo, p. 320. 3. LNA, R5683, 50/22495/980, 27 February 1936, C/China/17, sixth session, 2 March 1936, TCC, Note by Avenol on the Programme of Co-operation for 1936.

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4. TNA, FO371/20267, F1455/990/10, 14 March 1936, enclosure, LN, C/China/6th Session/P.V.1(1), TCC, sixth session, minutes. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid.; and LNOJ , January 1935, pp. 54–55, Report of the Committee on the Work of its Fifth Session (28 September 1934). 7. Zanasi, ‘Exporting Development’, pp. 145, 155. 8. TNA, FO371/20267, F1455/990/10, 14 March 1936, enclosure, LN, C/China/6th Session/P.V.1(1), TCC, sixth session, minutes. 9. TNA, FO371/20267, F1455/990/10, 14 March 1936, enclosure, LN, C/China/6th Session/P.V.2(1), TCC, sixth session, minutes of the second meeting held at Geneva on 2 March 1936. 10. Ibid. 11. William C. Kirby, ‘The Internationalization of China: Foreign Relations Act at Home and Abroad in the Republican Era’, China Quarterly, Vol. 150, 1997, pp. 443–444, 451, 454; Tajima Nobuo, Nazis Doitsu to Chugoku kokumin seifu 1933–1937 [Nazi Germany and the Chinese Nationalist Government 1933–1937 ] (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 2013). 12. TNA, FO371/20267, F1455/990/10, FO Minute (Pratt) dated 13 March 1936; FO371/20267, F3973/990/10, 29 June 1936, LN, no. C/China/18, TCC, Rules applicable to Chinese Experts sent on Mission or on Study Tours abroad. 13. TNA, FO371/20267, F1455/990/10, FO Minute (Pratt) dated 13 March 1936. 14. Ibid., Enclosed letter from Walters to Strang, dated 29 February 1936. 15. TNA, FO371/20267, F8081/990/10, 23 December 1936, from LN, C/China/7th session/P.V.1, TCC, seventh session, minutes of the first meeting held on 15 December 1936. 16. TNA, FO371/20267, F7527/990/10, 4 December 1936, LN, 50/26167/5479, Enclosed, C/Chine/21, TCC, Note by Avenol on the Programme of Co-operation for 1937. 17. Ibid. On plague, see Carol Benedict, Bubonic Plague in NineteenthCentury China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996). 18. LNOJ , December 1937, annex 1685, C/China/23, letter from the Chinese government to the Secretary General. 19. Stephen R. MacKinnon, Wuhan, 1938: War, Refugees, and the Making of Modern China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), pp. 1, 44–50; Rana Mitter, China’s War with Japan 1937 –1945: The Struggle for Survival (London: Allen Lane, 2013), pp. 6, 115, 118. 20. LNOJ , December 1937, annex 1685, C/China/23, Memorandum of technical collaboration between China and the League. 21. LNA, R5707, 50/30893/5479, C/China/8th Session/P.V.1, 29 September 1937, TCC, eighth session, provisional minutes, first meeting.

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22. Ibid. On cholera in Shanghai after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war, see Fukushi, Kindai Shanghai, pp. 209–233. 23. Benedict, Bubonic Plague in Nineteenth-Century China. On the FujianJiangxi border, see map 23 on p. 85 of her Bubonic Plague. 24. LNA, R5707, 50/30893/5479, C/China/8th Session/P.V.1, 29 September 1937, TCC, eighth session, provisional minutes, first meeting. 25. Ibid. 26. LNA, R5707, 50/30893/5479, C/China/8th Session/P.V.2, 29 September 1937, TCC, second meeting. 27. LNA, R5707, 50/30941/5479, A.73.1937, 1 October 1937, LN, Technical collaboration between the LN and China; LNOJ , December 1937, pp. 938–939, 99th Session of the Council, second meeting, 1 October 1937, pp. 938–940. 28. LNOJ, Special Supplement, no. 173, Records of the 18th session of the Assembly, Minutes of the Fourth Committee, 1937, pp. 74–78. 29. LNOJ, Special Supplement, no. 173, Annex 4, Third report of the Supervisory Commission, 5 October 1937, p. 120. 30. TNA, CO129/565/8, LNd, C.H. 1266, 14 October 1937, Geneva, Special committee of the Health Committee for technical collaboration with China. 31. TNA, FO371/20982, F9896/167/10, 22 October 1937, LN, C.524.M. 363, Technical collaboration with China, scheme of anti-epidemic action, report by the Supervisory Commission. The report of the special committee of the Health Committee is annexed to this document. 32. TNA, CO129/565/8, 5 November 1937, copy of a letter from Morgan to Carnwath; 8 November 1937, letter from Frank Walters to Makins, FO; FO371/20982, F9676/167/10, 12 November 1937, from Sean Lester to Stevenson, FO. 33. Chang, Guoji hezuo, pp. 104, 105, 107. 34. Ibid., p. 110. 35. TNA, FO371/22113, F6753/120/10, enclosure, LNd, C. H. 1333 (I), 16 May 1938, Geneva, Health Organisation, War and Epidemics in China. 36. TNA, FO371/22113, F1204/120/10, 28 January 1938, from E. Phipps (Paris); F1747/120/10, 9 February 1938, from A.V. Coverley-Price, The Hague, to Eden; F5267/120/10, 17 May 1938, LN, C/101st Sess/P.V. 4, Extract from final minutes of the 4th meeting, 11 May 1938. 37. TNA, FO371/22113, F6694/120/10, 21 June 1938, from Robertson to Cadogan. 38. TNA, FO371/22113, F5470/120/10, 20 May 1938, Chinese Ambassador (conversation); Outfile to Health Secretary, 2 June 1938. 39. TNA, FO371/22113, F6753/120/10, 22 June 1938, from Ministry of Health.

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40. Ibid., enclosure, LNd, C. H. 1333 (I), 16 May 1938, Geneva, Health Organisation, War and Epidemics in China. 41. Ibid.; and LNOJ , May–June 1938, pp. 324–325, 101st Session of the Council, fourth meeting, 5 November 1938, no. 4038. 42. TNA, FO371/22113, F6753/120/10, enclosure, LNd, C. H. 1333 (I), 16 May 1938; Chang, Guoji hezuo, pp. 112–113. 43. TNA, FO371/22113, F7588/120/10, 13 July 1938, from Ministry of Health to the Under Secretary of State, FO; F8577/120/10, 9 August 1938, from Treasury. 44. LNOJ , November 1938, pp. 1113–1114, Letters from Director of the Permanent Office of the Chinese Delegation to the LN (Hoo Chi-tsai) to the Secretary-General. 45. LNA, R5707, 50/35391/5479, C/China/28, 8 September 1938, TCC, Note by Avenol. 46. LNA, R5707, 50/35391/5479, C/China/27, 9 September 1938, TCC, Note by Avenol on the programme of collaboration for 1939. 47. See for example, Shintani Takanori, ‘Nisseki kangofu to jinch¯ u nisshi [A Japan Red Cross Nurse and Her Field Diary]’, Kokuritsu rekishi minzoku hakubutukan kenky¯ u h¯ okoku [Bulletin of the National Museum of Japanese History], No. 101, 2003. 48. LNA, R5707, 50/35391/5479, C/China/27, 9 September 1938, TCC, Note by Avenol on the programme of collaboration for 1939; MacKinnon, Wuhan, 1938, p. 38. 49. TNA, FO371/22114, F12061/120/10, 10 November 1938, Report from Goodman. 50. LNA, R5707, 50/35391/5479, C/China/Ninth Session/P.V.1, TCC, 14 September 1938; LNOJ , November 1938, pp. 1112–1113, 102nd and 103rd Council Sessions, Annex 1732, C.320.1938; LNOJ, Special Supplement, no. 187, pp. 35–36; Chang, Guoji hezuo, p. 115. 51. TNA, FO371/22114, F12061/120/10, Report from Goodman, 10 November 1938. 52. Jessica Reinisch, ‘Internationalism in Relief: The Birth (and Death) of UNRRA’, Past and Present, Supplement 6, 2011, pp. 279–282; Tomoko Akami, ‘Imperial Polities, Intercolonialism, and the Shaping of Global Governing Norms: Public Health Expert Networks in Asia and the League of Nations Health Organization, 1908–37’, Journal of Global History, 12/1, 2017, p. 19; and Borowy, Coming to Terms, p. 454. 53. TNA, FO371/22114, F12061/120/10, Report from Goodman, 10 November 1938. 54. Ibid. 55. The document can be seen in the following: LNOJ , January 1939, pp. 40–42, Appendix, Report of the Sub-Committee which met on 14 and 15 October 1938.

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56. Chang, Guoji hezuo, p. 117. Yen was born in Shanghai in 1882 as the son of an Anglican clergyman. 57. LNOJ , January 1939, pp. 40–42, Appendix, Report of the SubCommittee which met on 14 and 15 October 1938. 58. TNA, FO371/22114, F12061/120/10, 10 November 1938, Report from Goodman. 59. LNOJ , January 1939, pp. 39–40, C.468.M.311.1938.X, 21 November 1938, Technical Collaboration between the LN and China, Scheme of Anti-epidemic Action, Report of the Supervisory Commission. 60. Chang, Guoji hezuo, pp. 118–119. 61. TNA, FO371/23443, F52/52/10, 30 December 1938, from FO Minute (Reilly). 62. Ibid., Reilly minutes, 30 December 1938. 63. Rappard, ‘Small States in the League of Nations’, pp. 559–560. 64. TNA, FO371/23443, F966/52/10, LNd, A. 7. 1939.X, 12 December 1938, LN, Committee on Budgetary Economies. 65. TNA, FO371/24016, W333/164/98, 4 January 1939, from Lord Cecil to Lord Halifax. 66. TNA, FO371/24016, W553/164/98, 9 January 1939, E. W. Playfair, Treasury, to Randall; Reilly minute, 9 January 1939; Cadogan minute, 9 January 1939; Outfile to Cecil, 9 January 1939. 67. TNA, FO371/24016, W726/164/98, 12 January 1939, Cecil to Halifax. 68. TNA, FO371/24016, W1074/164/98, 18 January 1939, from UK delegation to the LN, enclosure (Halifax to Cecil, 16 January 1939); Dubin, ‘The League of Nations Health Organization’, p. 71. Top positions were usually limited to six years. 69. BL, Add MS 51084, f. 187, Cecil to Halifax, 19 January 1939. 70. LNOJ , February 1939, pp. 92–96, 104th session of the Council, fifth meeting, 20 January, 4126, Budgetary Economies; Barros, Betrayal from Within, pp. 174–188; and Balinska, For the Good of Humanity, pp. 121– 122. 71. LNd, C. L. 203. 1937. XI. Annex. 72. LNd, C. 249.M.147. 1938. XI, minutes of the 23rd session of OAC held from 7 to 24 June 1938, pp. 52, 66. 73. NGB, Sh¯ owa ki [Showa Era] III, Vol. 2, no. 750, Usami Uzuhiko (Deputy of the Japanese Bureau in Geneva) to Ugaki Kazushige (Foreign Minister), 16 June 1938; no. 752, Usami to Ugaki, 24 June 1938. 74. Kamiyama, ‘Nihon no Kokusai Renmei dattai’, pp. 100–111. 75. NGB, Sh¯ owa ki, III, Vol. 2, no. 763, Konoe Fumimaro (Foreign Minister) to Usami, 28 October 1938. 76. NGB, Nicch¯ u Sens¯ o [Sino-Japanese War], Vol. 3, no. 993, Konoe to Usami, 14 October 1938.

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77. LNd, C.415.M.260.1938, 3 November 1938, Letter from the Japanese government. 78. Harada would become a Minister to the Vatican, and then would serve as the acting ambassador to France after the Second World War broke out. See Sat¯o, Kaiko, p. 427. 79. TNA, FO371/23572, F3624/3624/23, from the Colonial Office, 13 April 1939, enclosure (from A.S. Small, Governor’s Deputy, Singapore, to Malcolm MacDonald, 2 March 1939). 80. Tomoko Akami, ‘The Limits of Peace Propaganda: The Information Section of the League of Nations and its Tokyo Office’, in Jonas Brendebach, Martin Herzer, and Heidi Tworek (eds), International Organizations and the Media in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Exorbitant Expectations (London: Routledge, 2018), p. 268.1/732 (online resource version). The Liaison Office had been established in Tokyo in 1926, and had been engaged in public relations in close relations with the League of Nations Association of Japan. 81. TNA, FO371/23443, F689/52/10, 17 January 1939, LN, C/China/29, TCC, Note by Avenol; Scott minute, 24 January 1939; LNOJ , February 1939, pp. 99–102, 104th session of the Council, fifth meeting, 20 January, 4129, Appeal by the Chinese Government. 82. TNA, FO371/23443, F966/52/10, Note by Playfair, Treasury, 25 January 1939; enclosure (Letter from Playfair to Goodman, 25 January 1939). 83. TNA, FO371/23443, F966/52/10, Scott minute, 1 February 1939. Scott was born in China, because his father had been a consul there. P. D. Coates, The China Consuls (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 537, note no. 274; Antony Best, Britain, Japan and Pearl Harbor: Avoiding War in East Asia (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), pp. 42–43, 49. 84. TNA, FO371/23443, F966/52/10, Copy of a letter from Playfair to N.E. Young and S.D. Waley, 6 February 1939. 85. Best, Britain, Japan and Pearl Harbor, pp. 52–55, 62; Aron Shai, Origins of the War in the East: Britain, China and Japan 1937 –39 (London: Croom Helm, 1976), p. 186; B. A. Lee, Britain and the Sino-Japanese War, 1937 –1939: A Study in the Dilemmas of British Decline (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1973), pp. 131, 134, 163–165. 86. TNA, FO371/23410, F1469/11/10, 13 February 1939, Young (Treasury) to Howe. 87. TNA, FO371/23443, F966/52/10, Letter from Scott to Howe, 8 February 1939; Outfile from Howe to Waley, Treasury, 14 February 1939; TNA, FO371/23410, F1469/11/10, 13 February 1939, Young (Treasury) to Howe.

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88. TNA, FO371/23410, F1723/11/10, 20 February 1939, Parliamentary Question (Noel Baker); F1876/11/10, 22 February 1939, Extract from Cabinet conclusions 8 (39), conclusion 4; David Dilks (ed.), The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan O.M. 1938–1945 (London: Cassell, 1971), pp. 150–151. 89. TNA, FO371/23443, F966/52/10, Randall minute, 25 February 1939; Scott minute, 27 February 1939.

CHAPTER 8

The Question of Empires: Co-operation in the Yunnan–Burma Borderland in 1939

Towards the end of 1938, the areas of actual anti-epidemic work retreated south-westwards due to the military situation. The Japanese military occupied Guangzhou and Hankou in October 1938, and the base of the anti-epidemic work was moved from Hong Kong to Hanoi.1 Under the circumstances, although there was a railway connection between Hanoi and Kunming, the capital of the Yunnan province, the road from Burma to China also became significant. It was possible to unload goods at Rangoon, Burma, then to bring them to Lashio in northern Burma by railway, and finally to Kunming by lorry. The first base of Dr R. C. Robertson, one of the League experts appointed after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, was in Hunan province in central China, but his unit also had to retreat southwestwards. He was born in 1889 and studied medicine at the University of Glasgow. After serving in the First World War, he moved to Shanghai in 1926, and was the head of the division of pathological research at the Henry Lester Institute of Medical Research, Shanghai.2 Robertson thought of carrying out epidemiological surveys on the Burma Road in 1939. The surveys were necessary, and Robertson’s contribution was tremendous. However, we have already observed in the previous chapter that discords were sometimes observed even among those who were co-operating with each other. Robertson was not free from these. The borderland was the region where imperial interests collided. It bordered © The Author(s) 2020 H. Goto-Shibata, The League of Nations and the East Asian Imperial Order, 1920–1946, New Directions in East Asian History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4968-7_8

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on the British and French territories, namely British Burma and French Indochina. The geography magnified China’s concern over the imperialist intervention and domination.

The South-Western Part of China The situation of the Yunnan–Burma borderland is unique in China. Let us first look at the geography of the borderland. It is one of the high mountains and gorges. The region is covered with dense forests. It is inhabited by various ethnic minority groups who were the original residents. Various interests, from ethnic to imperial, had collided there. The Han Chinese started to migrate into Yunnan in the eighteenth century. The Republic of China inherited Qing’s imperial territory, although the control of the central Chinese governments over various ethnic groups in the south-west was limited and only indirect.3 The semi-colonial status of inter-war China is usually emphasized, but it also had an imperial face, which could be observed in this borderland.4 The existence of various diseases was one significant factor which prevented or protected the borderland from integration. The difficulty for the Han Chinese to conquer the indigenous people in the southwest was depicted as early as the third century CE.5 The studies by David A. Bello and Yingcong Dai show that the failure of Qing’s Burma campaign in the mid-eighteenth century was due to tropical diseases, especially malaria, traditionally known as zhangqi.6 High temperature and wet conditions provided breeding grounds for anopheles mosquitos. The British consul-general in Kunming wrote about local history in December 1939. The malaria problem is a matter of some historical interest. Between the western edge of the Yunnan plateau and the Irrawaddy valley is a belt of territory … where malaria has been rampant for centuries past. It seems probable that it was this malarial belt which stemmed the westward advance of the Chinese Empire … Chinese have never been able to settle further west, in the valleys sloping down towards the Irrawaddy. … In each of the little Shan states there is a Chinese Deputy, who is supposed to supervise it, but officials of the better type are seldom willing to serve in these insalubrious posts.7

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Some people in the borderland lived high up on mountains where they were relatively free from diseases as well as from high taxes and military services imposed by the central governments. Some used opium, thinking that it was a panacea, especially effective against malaria. According to Bello, the Han Chinese could not stay long in the borderland, and that was probably the reason why they found it necessary to rely on indigenous chieftains to rule the region.8 The situation was similar in Burma, which came under the rule of the British Empire in the nineteenth century. As Britain’s main interest was economic profits, the indigenous people in the Burma–Yunnan borderland could continue their traditional lives as long as they paid taxes and did not obstruct trade. The British rule there was also only indirect. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, however, the British dispatched expeditionary missions to Yunnan as many as three times to open a trade route to China. They hoped to bring raw cotton, cotton goods and precious stones such as rubies and jade into China, and to take commodities such as opium, silk and tea on their way back. Britain’s attempts were not welcomed by the Qing rulers. There were even occasions when peace was disturbed by the arms trafficking by the British and the French.9 Qing and the British negotiated to demarcate the clear political boundary, but the negotiations were not completely settled even when Robertson reached Yunnan. It was as late as in January 1940 that ownership of the Wa states was finally given to Burma.10 China agreed to this in order to acquire British assistance in the war against Japan.11

Robertson’s Epidemiological Survey on the Burma Road Robertson wrote in his report on the month of October 1938 that the British Foreign Office must be highly interested in the potential of the Burma to China route. He was of the opinion that the greatest attention should be paid to the route from the medical and epidemiological standpoint as well, because there was a possibility that the diseases of China might be carried over into Burma by this new route and vice versa. He also touched upon the enormous potential for the future of the British trade with China, stating that it would be an excellent idea for the ‘British’ unit to operate somewhere on the road between Kunming and Burma.12 Robertson was a League of Nations expert and the unit was actually an

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English-speaking unit, but he called it the British unit and was thinking about the possibility of the trade between the British Empire and China. Robertson’s interest in an epidemiological survey was in line with the works of the LNHO. He attended the tenth and final Congress of the Far Eastern Association of Tropical Medicine (FEATM) which was held at Hanoi from 24 to 30 November 1938, reporting on cholera statistics. The FEATM was a forum-based regional organization, started in 1910, and it became a transnational epistemic community where medical experts representing various colonial governments in East and Southeast Asia gathered.13 There, he met Dr Charles Leslie Park, an Australian director (1932–1942) of the League of Nations’ Eastern Bureau at Singapore, and others who knew the northern Shan states in Burma. Robertson felt that he was, albeit unofficially, encouraged to make an early survey of the new route from an epidemiological angle.14 In early 1939, Robertson travelled around the south-western provinces of China by car, from Kunming, via Guiyang in Guizhou province, Nanning and Longzhou in Guangxi. Then he went to Hanoi. He wrote that such a journey had utterly been impossible only a year or two earlier and described the passes as ‘the most thrilling mountain passes [he] ha[d] ever motored over’ and ‘some of the world’s worst roads’. Of course, he observed the health of the people in the region and showed a keen interest in goitre, namely a thyroid enlargement caused by the deficiency of iodine in the salt of Yunnan, but as goitre was not a contagious disease, neither the League nor the British Foreign Office showed any interest in it. The other two health problems Robertson noticed in the region were malaria and opium addiction.15 Malaria was one of the diseases in which the LNHO took a special interest. The Malaria Commission was formed in 1924, and Commission members were engaged in extensive study tours to malarious areas in Europe. The efforts were extended to India in 1929 and to Siam in 1931.16 The Nationalist government of China also came to consider epidemiological surveys as necessary, and from November 1935 to the end of January 1936, some Chinese members of the Central Field Health Station and Army Medical College, Nanjing, surveyed from Kunming to the south-westerly direction to the border. The Central Field Health Station, established in 1931, was one of the concrete results of the LNHO’s collaboration with China. It was the coordinating body for medical education and research. The achievement of the 1935–1936

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survey was that it determined a disease traditionally known as zhangqi to be malaria.17 By the time Robertson returned from the motor journey of southwestern China, the details of the plan for the technical co-operation in 1939 had been agreed upon by the parties concerned. Dr M. D. Mackenzie of the League’s Health Section was going to China as a permanent League representative. The three units were dissolved, and Robertson became the chief technical expert. In addition, both the League of Nations and the Chinese Nationalist government agreed to Robertson’s proposal of a special epidemiological survey of the Yunnan–Burma Road.18 His epidemiological survey was to the west from Kunming. The westernmost region of the Yunnan province was called Yerenshan (Wild People’s Mountain) by the Chinese and they themselves considered it backward.19 Robertson’s first survey was carried out from 29 June to 14 August 1939 with three Chinese members of the epidemiological survey unit of the League of Nations.20 It was not limited to China, and the most urgent problem he reported was bubonic plague at Namhkam on the Burmese side of the border. According to him, ‘Bhamo had been the worst centre of plague’ in the past, ‘but the situation improved after a serious fire swept away many insanitary dwellings in the city’. Dr Gordon Seagrave, a medical missionary who set up the American Baptist Mission Hospital of some 136 beds in Namhkam, wrote in his Burma Surgeon that plague suddenly broke out in Namhkam after the fire in Bhamo. He suspected that infected rats or their fleas might have been carried to Namhkam with transported goods on lorries. Under these circumstances, 23 people died of bubonic plague even during Robertson’s visit to Namhkam. He was seriously worried about the safety of the Chinese government aircraft factory in Leiyun, Yunnan, where American engineers were working. They shopped for daily commodities at the market in Namhkam, which was the biggest in the Shan states and used by people within a radius of about 80 kilometres. The political borders in the region were porous and, moreover, did not constitute social and economic boundaries at all. The Shans lived not only in Burma, northern Siam (Thailand) and north-western Laos (then a part of French IndoChina) but also in Yunnan, where they were called the Tai. They as well as people of other smaller minority groups crossed the border freely. Indeed, we have seen that the Siamese government invited Delevingne to travel to the northern border region of Siam at the time of the Bangkok Conference of 1931. This mountainous

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borderland covered with the dense forest was where effective control of movements of people and commodities was almost impossible.21 A rough map drawn by Robertson shows that plague existed in the south of Namhkam, and near Bhamo along the road between the two towns. Robertson appealed to the Burmese authorities that they should inoculate the entire population in Namhkam and also eradicate rats. He also wrote that the authorities in Burma should see that lorry drivers were inoculated before crossing the frontier. Robertson had great confidence in the Burmese authorities and expected them to improve the situation, but medical services in the borderland of British Burma were completely undeveloped, so that the governor of Burma suggested the necessity of co-operation with Seagrave in Namhkam.22 At least two reasons can be pointed out for the lack of public health in the region. Firstly, Western medicine was not prevalent in British India as a whole. In the nineteenth century, public health in India was limited solely to cities due to budget restrictions. The outbreak of plague at the end of the century began to change this situation. Local people, however, did not want intervention by the colonial authorities, so that the division between the cities and the countryside as well as that between people continued even into the first half of the twentieth century. Burma had been a province of British India and only became a separately administered colony in April 1937.23 Secondly, the administration in the borderland was different from that in ministerial Burma. After the British Empire absorbed Upper Burma in 1885, it took a long time until it could organize administration in the remote region bordering China, Siam and French Indochina. As mentioned above, this borderland was mountainous and covered with dense forests, so that even the previous Konbaung dynasty of Burma (1752–1885) itself had only limited ties with various ethnic groups there. The British inherited the traditional relations between the Burmese king and the indigenous groups in this border region and their rule was only indirect through the leaders of various ethnic groups. The indigenes could maintain their customs and continue their independence. They were far more independent than those in ministerial Burma, where rules and regulations similar to those in India were strictly imposed.24 Christian missionaries were active in the borderland, successfully converting many into Christianity. Medicine in the region had relied completely on their activities since the nineteenth century. Namhkam, where plague was rampant, was in the Shan states, and the Shans had their

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own social customs, language and administration which were different from the Burmese ones. Therefore, the governor of Burma suggested the necessity of co-operation with Seagrave in Namhkam.25 Malaria was another disease to which Robertson devoted many pages in his report. He tried to understand the local topography and divided the area from Kunming in Yunnan to the Burma border into three regions. Firstly, malaria was slightly prevalent from Kunming to the canyon of the Mekong (Lancang Jiang). Although Yongping was a large town of 7000 inhabitants, he wrote that there were no medical services nor doctors, nor even native-style physicians. ‘The city is terribly insanitary and badly built in a kind of swampy valley. Rice fields mingle with the outskirts of the town.’ And there were ‘masses of voracious mosquitoes’. The second area was from the Mekong, over the Salween River (Nu Jiang), and to Longling. Here, the prevalence of malaria was ‘patchy’: intense in the Baoshan valley, while absent in the mountains and canyons of the Mekong and Salween rivers. This area was ‘very sparsely inhabited’. Thirdly, malaria was severely endemic in the region from Longling to the frontier. Again, Robertson did not end his survey and analysis there. He reported that the region in the British Shan states from the frontier to Lashio was an area of moderate prevalence.26 Robertson intended to obtain as much information as possible on the malaria situation on the Burma Road. He wrote that local people preferred ‘their own herbalists’ and only a few sought modern medical attention. Robertson and his Chinese colleagues checked children for parasites and collected and entomologically studied mosquitos. For the future control of malaria, he suggested, first of all, health education among the indigenous population, because the real cause of the disease was not known or understood by them. Many (just like the British until the nineteenth century) considered that the cause was miasma. Robertson also suggested the following: attempts to deparasitize the local Shan population, medical aid for the roadway workers, building of mosquito-proof shelters, placing the depots of the transportation system on suitable sites away from the swamps and screening the buildings, providing mosquito nets of suitable mesh and improving medical and hospital facilities.27 In order to widen the existing narrow caravan trade routes and also to construct the Yunnan–Burma railway, many unacclimated workers were brought into this malarial area from other regions of China such as Guangxi and Hunan. According to Robertson, there was no mosquito

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control, nor did the workers have any medical aid or quinine distribution. His expectations of the British Empire were again high. He suggested that it was essential that a 100-bed hospital for the Chinese be set up at Lashio in northern Burma as soon as possible, as the existing hospital there of 56 beds was completely overtaxed. He appealed to the authorities in Burma to show a generous spirit of co-operation and assistance in the medical field.28 In September 1939, Robertson prepared a proposal to control malaria in the Yunnan province, to be submitted to the Chinese authorities. He considered that even basic medical facilities were lacking and that there was no co-operation among the existing Chinese organizations such as the south-western transportation bureau, the Yunnan–Burma highway bureau and the central health authorities. He proposed that co-ordinating the activities of the existing organizations was necessary, that the central government should distribute quinine and that unified treatment based on the report of the League of Nations Malaria Commission published in 1937 should be provided.29 In this proposal again, he suggested co-operation between the authorities of Burma and China. Robertson was raising the issue of increasing the Burmese efforts of malaria prevention between the frontier and Lashio.30

Co-operation or Intervention By the time Robertson made the above-mentioned proposal, Europe was engulfed in the Second World War. He was informed by Geneva that the Chinese government did not require his services in 1940. The task, however, was not finished yet, and the Chinese government was to request the Public Health Service of the United States to send experts to south-western China for the purpose of researching into a malignant disease near the Burma border. Three American experts would arrive in Rangoon on 1 December 1939 and work in co-operation with the Chinese health service.31 The British Foreign Office considered the development as a part of the League’s retrenchment policy.32 Geneva, however, considered that the Chinese regarded Robertson as a ‘persona non grata’, and informed Robertson himself of its suspicion. Therefore, Robertson wrote to F. C. Yen in September 1939 to ask directly whether the information was correct or not. He added that he was asked to draw up a comprehensive report on the anti-malaria scheme for the Burma Road when Rajchman,

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who had resigned from the directorship of the League, came to Kunming. As Rajchman was greatly trusted by the Nationalists, Robertson probably intended to impress his own significance by mentioning Rajchman. Yen replied that the Chinese health authorities were particularly appreciative of the valuable services which Robertson was undertaking on the Yunnan–Burma Road. It was true that the Chinese government had not recommended Robertson as the head of the mission at the beginning of 1939, but it was only because he himself had made it clear that he was unwilling to do the administrative work. Yen blamed Geneva for this development, writing that Geneva had mistakenly connected the two and inferred that Robertson was a persona non grata to the Chinese government.33 Several possible reasons for this development can be considered. On the level of international politics, the war in Europe had made the Chinese Nationalists consider the role of the United States as the most significant in the war against Japan.34 Furthermore, many prominent members of the Chinese health authorities such as J. Heng Liu and F. C. Yen had been educated in the United States and had stronger ties to the country than to Europe.35 There were many like them in the government, and understandably they tended to look to the United States first and foremost. Robertson himself suspected that the persona non grata misunderstanding might have been part of the Chinese plan to keep the British out of Yunnan.36 This is a significant point, so, although there might have been more personal reasons, let us consider it further.37 We have to note that the co-operation in 1939 was carried out where the question of empires was real and even more complicated than in the coastal region of China. The Yunnan province bordered on the British and French Empires, while the government of the Republic of China itself inherited the Qing’s imperial character there. Robertson’s survey vividly conveyed the characteristics of the region. Furthermore, it was not limited to the Chinese territory, and Robertson proposed co-operation between the Burmese authorities and China. It should also be noted that Robertson continued to send his reports on co-operation not only to the League but also to the British Foreign Office. The British Empire seems to have been more dominant in his mind than the League of Nations. One example is his letter in March 1939 to A. L. Scott of the Foreign Office. Robertson wrote that the

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opening of Burma Road would offer great possibilities for the sale of ‘lorries of British manufacture’ to China; and that he wanted to feel he was still in touch with the British interests.38 While Robertson’s British identity was even strengthened in this borderland, the most important aim of the Nationalists was to free China from subjugation to the Powers. The relationship between the British Empire and the Chinese Nationalists was by no means easy. In addition, national border defence was one reason why the Nationalists carried out the epidemiological survey in 1935– 1936. It was obviously not a good idea to rely on the people on the other side of the border for a survey for the border defence. Robertson’s suggestion of the co-operation between the Chinese and the Burmese authorities did not match the goals of the Chinese. More generally, the difference between the co-operation by the League and the imperial intervention sometimes became blurred and ambiguous. Some other experts had even stronger links to empires than Robertson who had worked only as a pathologist in Shanghai. What qualified the experts for the co-operation was their expertise. Experiences in places with similar conditions to China were useful. Among the British, those who had previously been members of the Indian civil service are noticeable: Hope-Simpson and W. K. H. Campbell to name but a few. Their background sometimes made technical co-operation like an imperial intervention. China, at least before the outbreak of the war, was attractive to the League experts. It was the place where they could utilize their Western and modern expertise on an unprecedented scale. They could usually start from scratch and provide a comprehensive blueprint, while in other countries they could only try their ideas in a piecemeal fashion.39 Meanwhile, the League experts were usually not China experts. As they did not know the language, they preferred to negotiate with those who had received a Western-style education and could communicate in Western languages such as English.40 The close partnership between Rajchman and T. V. Soong was a typical example. This means, however, that the experts’ understanding of the country was not deep, and they were not necessarily interested in making it deeper. Westernized and English-speaking Chinese were at the centre of the technical co-operation with the League of Nations and the Republic of China. However, they were in an absolute minority in China as a whole. It cannot be said that all Chinese welcomed the co-operation wholeheartedly. There were always some others who worried that the co-operation

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might turn out to be another form of foreign intervention, domination and control. It might infringe upon China’s sovereignty. The notion of ‘civilizing mission’ which most experts shared was also problematic. The idea of tutelage by the civilized and powerful could be considered as patronizing and condescending by those who were placed in the position of the less civilized and weak.41 Indeed, the Chinese were sensitive and opposed to imputations of being uncivilized or underdeveloped. They did not necessarily want to be assisted by ‘generous Western powers’, and to be civilized based on Western models.42 The Chinese needed the assistance of the League because of their war against Japan, but they were by no means satisfied with being placed in a position of inferiority.

The End of the Technical Co-operation Despite the discord, Robertson’s term did not expire until the end of the year 1939, and he received a memorandum from Yen. It was about the unified medical service for the Yunnan–Burma Road, and had been endorsed by H. H. Kung, the chairman of the Executive Yuan. It incorporated many of the points which Robertson emphasized in the previous reports. With this memorandum in mind, Robertson went on another expedition to the China–Burma frontier from 30 October 1939. This time he could go from Kunming to Lashio by airplane. At Lashio he had a conference with some members of the Burmese health authorities. He wrote that plague on the frontier had been largely cleared up, mostly due to the energy with which the Burmese medical people had played their part. Robertson reported that Seagrave did magnificent work with indigenous volunteer nurses whom he trained and who inoculated the people in the Shan villages. Seagrave actually contracted the bubonic plague himself, but fortunately recovered, because he had been inoculated with plague vaccine. Robertson rated the plague vaccine highly.43 Robertson researched not only malaria but also schistosomiasis, goitre and cholera in Kunming. His final report pointed out the ‘backwardness’ of Yunnan in the field of public health, and proposed the necessity of taking some measures in places such as Longling and Dali.44 The problem which was generally observed in rural areas existed in this remote region as well. Many well-trained doctors had been hesitant to work in remote areas. When the British consul-general in Kunming forwarded Robertson’s final report to Ambassador Archibald Clark Kerr, he added that

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a promising feature of the situation was that not a few distinguished Chinese doctors had come to Yunnan from various other provinces to help with public health work. He added that the difficult point was how to organize and co-ordinate their activities.45 Goodman also pointed out the same when he forwarded Robertson’s report to the secretary of state for Burma in March 1940. He noted how the evacuation of competent Chinese medical personnel into hitherto remote and backward province would, together with the help given by outsiders such as Robertson and the American medical mission, result in the ultimate transformation of conditions in a country contiguous with Burma.46 The technical co-operation between the League of Nations and China was approaching its end. On 12 December 1939, the 20th Assembly of the League of Nations began. The Supervisory Commission had advised that, in consequence of the outbreak of the war, even greater retrenchment than that recommended by the Special Committee of 1938 had become necessary. The Fourth Committee recommended that the special powers conferred on the secretary-general and the Supervisory Commission to take any exceptional measures or decisions should be continued until the next ordinary session of the Assembly. The report of the Fourth Committee was passed by the Assembly on 14 December.47 Just before the Assembly, Robertson decided to accept the post of Professor of Pathology and Bacteriology at the University of Hong Kong.48 The League of Nations issued a testifying document by the deputy secretary-general, Sean Lester. It read that the League of Nations was deeply indebted to Robertson for his excellent technical work, and for the courage and enthusiasm with which he had carried out his duties.49 The Epidemic Commission was abolished as from the end of 1939, and only the contracts of two medical experts were extended into 1940. Technical collaboration with China was continued until the end of the year. It was then discontinued as from 1 January 1941, with the agreement of the Chinese government.50 We have looked at the final stage of the technical co-operation between the League of Nations and China. Robertson contributed to the prevention of epidemics under difficult conditions during the war. He applied the knowledge accumulated in the previous works of the League of Nations to the epidemiological surveys in the Yunnan–Burma borderland. Despite such a contribution, however, he came to be in discord with the Chinese. The aim of the Republic of China was to free itself from subjugation to the Powers. The Nationalists detested any kind of foreign control.

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The technical co-operation was welcomed only so far as it matched their goals. The problem was that it could become close to foreign intervention and control. The border region examined in this chapter would further be involved in international turbulence. In April to May 1942, the Japanese Imperial Army reached the region after they invaded Burma. Japan was defeated in 1945, and only a limited number of servicemen survived in this region. Some of them reminisced that they always suffered from diseases, especially malaria there.51 They had not been acclimatized at all. As the main islands of Japan are not malarial, the Japanese doctors had only limited knowledge and information on malaria. They were, needless to say, unable to utilize the result of Robertson’s surveys. The existence of various diseases is considered to have been one reason for the use of opium in this borderland. The League’s control of opium, however, had not reached there. The situation was the same in the peripheral regions of Burma. The reasons and further developments will be examined in the next chapter.

Notes 1. TNA, FO371/22114, F13519/120/10, 14 December 1938, Janet Smith (LN London Office) to Scott, enclosure (LN epidemic commission unit II, reports for October 1938). 2. See also Fukushi, Kindai Shanghai, p. 180. 3. C. Patterson Giersch, Asian Borderlands: The Transformation of Qing China’s Yunnan Frontier (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009). 4. Kibata Y¯ oichi, Minamizuka Shingo, and Kan¯o Tadashi, Teikoku to teikokushugi [Empire and Imperialism] (Tokyo: Y¯ ushisha, 2012), pp. 24, 30–31. 5. L. C. Ling, K. B. Liu, and Y. T. Yao, ‘Studies on the So-called Changch’i Part II. Changch’i in Yunnan’, Chinese Medical Journal, 50/12, 1936, p. 1816. The depiction of Chinese expeditions to the south-west in a Chinese classic Sanguozhi [Records of Three Kingdoms ] has been widely read in East Asia. 6. David A. Bello, Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain: Environment, Identity, and Empire in Qing China’s Borderlands (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 190–206; Yingcong Dai, ‘A Disguised Defeat:

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7.

8.

9.

10.

11. 12. 13.

14.

15. 16. 17.

18.

The Myanmar Campaign of the Qing Dynasty’, Modern Asian Studies, 38/1, 2004, pp. 145–189. TNA, FO371/24700, F1601/1601/10, 12 January 1940, from Clark Kerr, enclosure (a dispatch from British consulate-general, Yunnanfu, to Clark Kerr, 15 December 1939). On malaria in general, James L. A. Webb Jr, Humanity’s Burden: A Global History of Malaria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) is informative, although Webb does not pay much attention to this region except on pp. 59–62. Giersch, Asian Borderlands, p. 171; R. Cecil Robertson, ‘A Malaria Survey on the China-Burma Highway,’ Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 34/4, 1941, p. 212; Nicholas Tarling (ed.), The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, Vol. 2, Part I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 34; and Eric Tagliacozzo, ‘Ambiguous Commodities, Unstable Frontiers: The Case of Burma, Siam, and Imperial Britain, 1800–1900,’ Comparative Studies in Society and History, 46/2, 2004, pp. 366–367, 372. Magnus Fiskesjo, ‘Mining, History, and the Anti-State Wa: Politics of Autonomy Between Burma and China’, Journal of Global History, 5/2, 2010, pp. 253–255; Robert B. Maule, ‘British Policy Discussions on the Opium Question in the Federated Shan States, 1937–1948’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 33/2, 2002, p. 215. TNA, FO371/27610, F828/29/10, 8 February 1941, from Monteath (Burma Office) to Brenan, no. B 412/41. TNA, FO371/22114, F13519/120/10, 14 December 1938, Smith to Scott, enclosure (Letter from Robertson to Scott, 29 November 1938). See Tomoko Akami, ‘A Quest to be Global: The League of Nations Health Organization and Inter-Colonial Regional Governing Agendas of the Far Eastern Association of Tropical Medicine 1910–1925’, The International History Review, 38/1, 2016. TNA, FO371/22114, F12056/120/10, 12 November 1938, Smets to Stevenson; F13519/120/10, 14 December 1938, Smith to Scott, enclosure; ‘Importance of Research Work,’ North China Herald, 17 May 1939. TNA, FO371/23443, F2633/52/10, 2 March 1939, Robertson to Scott. On opium in Yunnan, see Benedict, Bubonic Plague, pp. 51–53. Borowy, Coming to Terms, pp. 239–255. Ling, Liu and Yao, ‘Studies, Part II’, p. 1826; R. Cecil Robertson, ‘Malaria in Western Yunnan with Reference to the China-Burma Highway’, Chinese Medical Journal, 57, 1940, p. 68. TNA, FO371/23443, F2633/52/10, 2 March 1939, Robertson to Scott.

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19. Yeh-jen-shan on the map on p. 1817 of Ling, Liu and Yao, ‘Studies, Part II’; Bello, Across Forest, p. 186. 20. TNA, FO371/23443, F11538/52/10, 16 September 1939, from Clark Kerr, enclosure (British consulate-general, Yunnanfu, to Chungking, 22 August 1939); ‘Shanghai Doctor Braves Wilds,’ North China Herald, 26 July 1939. 21. Gordon Seagrave, Burma Surgeon (New York: W. W Norton, 1943), pp. 106–109; TNA, FO371/23443, F11538/52/10, 16 September 1939, from Clark Kerr, enclosure; Benedict, Bubonic Plague, pp. 1–48; Tagliacozzo, ‘Ambiguous Commodities’, pp. 354–377. 22. TNA, FO371/23443, F11538/52/10, 16 September 1939, from Clark Kerr, enclosure. 23. Judith L. Richell, Disease and Demography in Colonial Burma (Singapore: NUS Press, 2006), pp. 186–189; Wakimura K¯ ohei, Kikin, ekiby¯ o, shokuminchi t¯ ochi: kaihatsu no naka no Eiry¯ o Indo [Famine, Epidemic Diseases, Imperial Rule] (Nagoya: Nagoya Daigaku Shuppankai, 2002), pp. 18, 206–207, 210–211, 224. 24. Tarling (ed.), The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia, pp. 36–37, 75, 80, 82, 96–97, 116–117. 25. Atsuko Naono, ‘Vaccination Propaganda: The Politics of Communicating Colonial Medicine in Nineteenth Century Burma’, SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research, 4/1, 2006, pp. 33–35; Seagrave, Burma Surgeon, pp. 33–36, 70, 75, 88–89, 106–111, 119–120; and Robertson, ‘A Malaria Survey’, p. 315. 26. Robertson, ‘Malaria in Western Yunnan’, pp. 63–64; TNA, FO371/23443, F11538/52/10, 16 September 1939, from Clark Kerr, enclosure, p. 16; BL, IOR/M/3/560, B10152/39, 16 November 1939, H. E. Davies minute on F11538. 27. TNA, FO371/23443, F11538/52/10, 16 September 1939, from Clark Kerr, enclosure, pp. 17, 21; Robertson, ‘Malaria in Western Yunnan’, p. 72. 28. TNA, FO371/23443, F11538/52/10, 16 September 1939, from Clark Kerr, enclosure, pp. 11–12. 29. TNA, FO371/23443, F12778/52/10, 18 October 1939, from Shanghai chancery to Far Eastern Department, enclosure (A scheme for malaria control on the China-Burma Route, by Robertson, 20 September 1939). On the League of Nations Conference on Rural Hygiene in the Far East in 1937 and the malaria committee there, see Borowy, Coming to Terms, p. 254; Amrith, Decolonizing International Health, pp. 38–40. 30. TNA, FO371/23443, F12778/52/10, 18 October 1939, from Shanghai chancery to Far Eastern Department, enclosure. 31. BL, IOR/M/3/560, Burma 10448/1939, 4 November 1939, enclosed letter in L7314/7314/494 forwarded by Foreign Office to Burma Office;

202

32. 33.

34.

35.

36. 37.

38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43.

44.

45.

46.

H. GOTO-SHIBATA

‘The League of Nations Anti-epidemic Work in China in 1939’, League of Nations Bulletin of the Health Organization, IX/3, 1940–1941, pp. 266– 267. TNA, FO371/23443, F10824/52/10, 14 September 1939, from Clark Kerr. TNA, FO371/23443, F12348/52/10, 30 October 1939, from Clark Kerr, enclosure (Letter from Robertson to Drolle, 17 September 1939; letter from Robertson to Yen, 17 September 1939; letter from Yen to Robertson, 22 September 1939). Lu Xijun, ‘Sekai ka suru sens¯o to Ch¯ ugoku no “kokusai teki kaiketu” senryaku [The War Becoming Worldwide and China’s Strategy of “International Solution”]’, in Ishida (ed.), B¯ och¯ o suru teikoku, p. 239. Mary Brown Bullock, An American Transplant: The Rockefeller Foundation and Peking Union Medical College (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980), pp. 58–59. TNA, FO371/23443, F12778/52/10, 18 October 1939, from Shanghai chancery to Far Eastern Department. Chang, Guoji hezuo, p. 118; Mitter, China’s War, p. 185; TNA, FO371/23443, F52/52/10, Reilly minute, 30 December 1938; ‘Importance of Research Work,’ North China Herald, 17 May 1939. TNA, FO371/23443, F2633/52/10, 2 March 1939, Robertson to Scott. Borowy, ‘Thinking Big’, p. 213. For example, see Lord Salter, Memoirs of a Public Servant (London: Faber and Faber, 1961), pp. 216–217. Pedersen, ‘The Maternalist Moment in British Colonial Policy’, p. 202. Pedersen points out the tension contained in paternalism and trusteeship. S. Amrith and G. Sluga, ‘New Histories of the United Nations’, Journal of World History, 19/3, 2008, p. 264. BL, IOR/M/3/560, B11349/39, 13 November 1939, extract from a letter from Robertson to Goodman; Seagrave, Burma Surgeon, pp. 110– 111. TNA, FO371/24700,F1601/1601/10, 12 January 1940, from Clark Kerr, enclosure (Reports, LN, Anti-epidemic commission to China, book V, Kunming-Burma route, epidemiological survey unit, 1 October–14 November 1939). Ibid., enclosure (a dispatch from British Consulate General, Yunnanfu, to Clark Kerr, 15 December 1939). See also, John R. Watt, Saving Lives in Wartime China: How Medical Reformers Built Modern Healthcare Systems amid War and Epidemics, 1928–1945 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), p. 61. BL, IOR/M/3/560, Burma 1671/1940, 28 March 1940, letter from Goodman to Morley; MacKinnon, Wuhan, 1938, p. 42; Bullock, An American Transplant, pp. 107, 130, 163.

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47. U.K. Parliamentary Papers, Miscellaneous No. 1 (1940), League of Nations, Twentieth Assembly, Report of the Delegate of the United Kingdom, Cmd. 6160 (London: HMSO, 1940), pp. 14, 17. 48. TNA, FO371/23443, F12383/52/10, 13 Novomber 1939, Robertson to Cadogan. 49. TNA, FO371/24700, F1836/1601/10, 4 March 1940, LN, 50/31669/30817, testifying document by Lester. 50. LNd, A. 6. 1946, Report on the Work of the League during the war submitted to the Assembly by the Acting Secretary-General, October 1945, pp. 117–119. 51. See for example, Osato Takashi, Waga seishun ha tairiku no hate ni [My Youth on the Farthest Corner of the Continent ] (A private press edition kept in the National Diet Library, 1992), pp. 130, 154.

CHAPTER 9

The Limits of the League’s Control of Opium

We started by examining the League of Nations’ tackling of opium smoking and trafficking. Thanks to the works of the League’s opium control mechanisms and their ‘threat’ of publicity, reforms were introduced in places such as the Straits Settlements. However, neither opium trafficking nor opium smoking was completely eradicated by the outbreak of the Second World War. Furthermore, although opium had been used both in India and Burma, the League never demanded strict control there. This was because opium was mainly eaten in India and Burma. International society was only concerned about opium smoking in the inter-war period. It was argued that opium prepared for smoking was purified, so that it was more harmful than the raw opium eaten. Besides, opium smoking was considered to be ‘more international in its nature’. Poppies were grown in one country, prepared as a smoking paste in another and then smoked there or in a third country.1 As a result, almost nothing was done in Burma, even though there were opium ‘eaters as well as smokers, particularly in the hill-tracts’ as R. E. McGuire of the government of Burma wrote in 1945.2 ‘Hills’ was the term used in comparison with the Himalayas. They were in reality very high mountains. Strict control in those areas was almost impossible. Burma was occupied by Japan in 1942. Britain then announced on 10 November 1943 that it had decided to prohibit opium smoking in their © The Author(s) 2020 H. Goto-Shibata, The League of Nations and the East Asian Imperial Order, 1920–1946, New Directions in East Asian History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4968-7_9

205

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Far Eastern territories freed from the enemy, so that opium in Burma, especially in its border regions, suddenly became an issue. This chapter examines the final stage of opium in British Burma until around the official dissolution of the League of Nations in April 1946, and considers the limits of the League’s opium control.

To the United States Once the war broke out in Europe, efforts were made to transfer technical organizations of the League to the United States. Their expertise and intelligence were considered to be useful to the Allied cause. Arthur Sweetser, an American who worked long in the League’s Information Section, sailed to the United States and negotiated with various people. In May 1940, the director of the Institute for Advanced Study of Princeton University extended an invitation that the technical sections of the League be relocated to Princeton. In July, it was declared that Alexander Loveday of the Financial Section together with some of his staff and the archives would go to the United States.3 Avenol resigned, and Sean Lester from neutral Ireland and a skeleton staff would remain in Geneva during the war. In November 1940, it was also decided to open branch offices of the PCOB and the DSB in the United States. Elliott Felkin, the secretary of the PCOB, and Bertil A. Renborg of the DSB went there. As we have seen, three organizations had been established to control opium and other dangerous drugs in the inter-war period: the OAC, the PCOB created by the International Convention of 1925 with eight expert members and the DSB created in 1931 with four members. The DSB was in charge of overseeing the manufacture of narcotic drugs. Neither the PCOB nor the DSB was under the control of the Council of the League. This was so decided at the time of their inauguration to secure American co-operation.4 As the United States was not a member of the League, the State Department was wary of doing anything which could be considered as recognizing the PCOB or the DSB as League bodies. Therefore, it first thought of treating them as research organizations based at Princeton. In the end, however, it decided to regard the PCOB and the DSB as independent bodies operating under the international treaties to which the United States was also a party, and to let them function through branch offices in the country. The offices were opened in Washington, D.C. in February 1941, and continued to operate there until 1946.5 The

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United States started to treat only the PCOB and the DSB as the existing organizations to control opium and other dangerous drugs, ignoring the OAC which attached to the League Secretariat. Indeed, the OAC became inactive after its 25th session in May 1940.

The Declaration of the British and the Dutch Governments in November 1943 Asia was engulfed by the Second World War in December 1941. British territories in Southeast Asia including the Straits Settlements and Burma came under Japanese occupation in 1942. From the early stage of the war, post-war planning started. The first meeting to consider the post-war plan for controlling opium and other dangerous drugs was held as early as September 1942. Felkin and Renborg came to London from Washington. Renborg had a meeting in Washington with Anslinger and Victor Hoo, then the vice-minister for foreign affairs of the Republic of China.6 The first meeting in London was held on 11 September, and other participants were J. H. Delgorge, the Dutch chairman of the OAC, Delevingne representing the DSB and Herbert L. May, vice-president of the PCOB. May was an American and had served on the PCOB since its foundation in 1928. Another meeting was held on 19 September, and Dr George Woo, a new Chinese member of the PCOB, also participated in it.7 The question of opium smoking was particularly discussed. The British record of the meeting reads that ‘[t]here was general agreement that preparations should be undertaken to make it possible to restore as quickly as possible the pre-war position and to achieve further progress in connection with the peace settlement’.8 According to the record of the League, however, participants emphasized not the restoration but the latter point, namely preventing the revival of opium monopolies and thereby ending opium smoking. Delevingne expressed his opinion that it was important to study the recent experience of China as regards the time element in the abolition of smoking and the transitional arrangements. This was because the government of the Republic of China enacted laws prohibiting all traffic in opium and narcotics except for medical purposes in 1941. Some including Delevingne genuinely believed that practicable laws were enacted. The meeting decided that Renborg would prepare a plan for post-war work and submit it to Sean Lester, the acting secretary-general.9

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The Allies started counterattacking in Europe from the latter half of 1942, and the American forces defeated the Japanese on Guadalcanal Island in February 1943. Various post-war plans were produced in 1943. The influence of the United States on drug control was also strengthened. Anslinger and control advocates based in Washington did not intend to support the move of Renborg. Instead, they planned unofficial meetings in Washington to discuss possibilities for future drug control. The meetings would be held under the banner of the Foreign Policy Association, an American non-governmental organization to promote international understanding, but the intention of Anslinger and the control advocates was ‘to develop a Pacific consensus to isolate the British and the Dutch’. This pressure was by no means the policy of the US government, which had not yet been formed.10 The initial meeting was held in December 1942. Victor Hoo and another Chinese attended it. As one of the Allies with the especially strong support of the United States, the Republic of China was in a much stronger position than before. It was actually at the zenith of its power and authority around this time, because soon after the end of the Second World War, civil war would break out in China, and the Nationalists would be defeated by the Communists. In December 1942, the Allied drive on Burma was expected, so that ‘it was agreed that this should represent the focus of discussions’.11 Another unofficial meeting was planned in March 1943. The venue was the office of Anslinger, and it was hoped that Canada, Australia, New Zealand, China, the Netherlands and Britain would be represented in the meeting in addition to the United States.12 Viscount Halifax, the British ambassador to Washington, inquired of the Foreign Office whether Britain should take part in the meeting. The Foreign Office forwarded the inquiry to Harris of the Home Office, and he then asked Delevingne’s opinion. Neither Delevingne nor Harris thought that Britain could attend this meeting due to several reasons. Firstly, the character, purpose and scope of the proposed meeting were far from clear. Secondly, the selection of governments to be invited was curious. Delevingne thought that India, Burma, Egypt, Turkey, Iran and Switzerland should be invited instead of Australia and New Zealand, which were hardly involved in the question of opium and other dangerous drugs. Thirdly, as the discussion of possibilities for further progress in drug control was very technical, it was impossible for the members of the British Embassy in Washington to

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deal with it even with the assistance of Felkin, the competent secretary to the PCOB. Fourthly, it was not clear what relation, if any, the proposed discussion had with the work done by the League of Nations. Furthermore, Delevingne expected that the question of the complete prohibition of opium smoking might be raised, so that, he thought it should be considered before the British government took part in a meeting.13 The unofficial meeting was held on 17 March 1943. There were eight participants including an observer from the British Embassy. In the beginning, Herbert May expressed his hope that the discussions would be given a more formal character in the future in connection with the plans of the United Nations.14 Next, Anslinger expressed his opinion, which had two characteristics. First, his criticism of the British Empire was very harsh, while he praised China. He highly valued the Chinese six-year plan for the suppression of poppy cultivation and opium smoking. He continued that in all areas which the Chinese were retaking from the Japanese they were ‘immediately stopping the sale of opium, seizing all opium, destroying all opium and prohibiting the smoking of opium’; that ‘a clash of policy would probably occur between the Chinese and the British because so far as he knew, the British would not adopt a policy of complete suppression of opium smoking in territories in which they formerly had jurisdiction’.15 Secondly, Anslinger was enthusiastic about making opium smoking illegal, and about cracking down on smokers as criminals, so that he criticized the opinion of N. A. J. de Voogd, secretary for Japanese affairs, Commission for the Netherlands Indies in the United States. Voogd stated that although all governments concerned agreed to the final object of total prohibition of opium smoking, the methods to reach the goal were different; that the Dutch government had considered government control as the best possible method, and that under the system, the use of smoking opium in the Dutch East Indies had been reduced in 1939 to a half of that in 1930. Anslinger retorted on this, ‘[i]f the monopoly had not existed and the money it took to pay for the monopoly had been given to the police, the police could probably have suppressed the smugglers’. The reason why Anslinger valued Nationalist China highly was that it made opium illegal in 1941. A. L. Scott of the British Foreign Office, however, considered that there was ‘a wide gap between theory and practice’ in China’s control of opium.16 Although the policy of the United States had not been decided yet, the bluff of Anslinger and his fellow control advocates led to the change

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in the opium policies of the colonial powers.17 The British Foreign Office informed the Colonial Office that ‘in view of the desirability of forestalling unfriendly criticism abroad and especially in the United States and in China’, it might be desirable for Britain to announce that the total prohibition of opium smoking was the goal of Britain and other governments such as Burma. At the same time, it did not share Anslinger’s high esteem of the Chinese achievement. It considered that the progress hitherto made by the Chinese government in the suppression of opium smoking and the cultivation of opium poppy as leaving ‘much to be desired’. It was concerned, however, that ‘the Chinese Government, for all their failure hitherto to suppress opium smoking effectively in their own territories, [were] likely to make political capital out of any failure’ of Britain.18 On 7 September 1943, the 33rd meeting of the Inter-departmental Opium Committee was held at the Home Office in London. This was four days after the Allies landed in Italy, and the meeting was the first since the outbreak of the Second World War. The Netherlands government had already informed Britain of its decision to declare the total prohibition of the use of prepared opium in the Dutch East Indies when the colony was freed from Japanese occupation. Harris had requested the Netherlands to postpone publication of its decision in order to give the British government time to consider the policy.19 Harris, chairman of the meeting, stated that a great deal depended on the policy adopted in the neighbouring countries such as China. Delevingne, who participated as a representative of the PCOB, referred to the Chinese six-year plan for the suppression of opium, informing that the latest Chinese government reports claimed that a complete clearance had been made in the large areas of China. He had no doubt that opium smoking would be abolished there. Sir Henry Craw of the Burma Office, however, retorted that ‘there was no complete clearance in the Yunnan Province, where opium was still grown on a considerable scale, so much so that it had a serious effect on the position in Burma’. He added that there was a great deal of opium smoking in Burma before the war, namely about ‘5,000 licenced registered smokers in 1940 amongst the Burmese and 13,000 amongst the Chinese’.20 The majority of the participants agreed that it would be desirable to prohibit opium smoking totally and to make a formal announcement at the same time as the Dutch government. The draft statement which Harris prepared was examined. The Colonial Office was of the opinion that the publication must be deferred until the formal approval of the

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secretary of state. It was also thought necessary to take steps to bring the matter to the notice of the French authorities. As a method of publication, a question in the House of Commons, preferably to the Prime Minister, was considered to be convenient.21 In October 1943, the Foreign Office received an aide-mémoire from the US Department of State, which proposed the adoption of a common policy to suppress the non-medical use of narcotic drugs in areas in the Far East then occupied by the Japanese forces, once such areas were reoccupied by the Allies. The aide-mémoire first reviewed the history of opium control. It is noticeable that it only referred to The Hague International Opium Convention of 1912, the Narcotics Limitation Convention of 1931, the prohibition at the end of 1935 of the exportation of opium from India to the Far East and ‘the enactment by the Chinese Government in 1941 of laws prohibiting all traffic in opium and narcotics except for medical purposes’.22 It did not touch upon the works of the League of Nations or the OAC at all. This was probably because the United States was not a member of the League and because it had withdrawn from the Geneva Opium Conference of 1924–1925. It is also noticeable that the United States valued China’s illegalization of opium smoking highly without asking whether it successfully reduced opium consumption or not. The embassy in Washington opined that Britain should see that the question was considered on political as well as technical lines. It reported that feeling in interested circles in the United States was strong and hostile to Britain; and that if there was an undue delay, the Americans might start some kind of negative publicity which might be damaging to Britain.23 In the middle of October, Britain received the Dutch declaration of the complete prohibition of the use of prepared opium after the liberation of the Netherlands Indies. The Netherlands ambassador informed Britain that although the Netherlands had already notified the United States, it could postpone the publication in order to wait for a British decision.24 Around this time, Stanley Hornbeck, then a political adviser to the US secretary of state, visited Britain. He had a meeting with Henry Ashley Clark, the head of the Far Eastern Department, and agreed that the two countries should make their announcements at the same time. The danger that the Americans might suddenly make an independent declaration before the British was eliminated.25 On 27 October, the 34th meeting of the Inter-departmental Opium Committee was held, and four days later an instruction to convey a

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message to the United States was sent to the embassy in Washington. The message said that even before the receipt of the American aide-mémoire of 6 October, the British government had already decided to prohibit opium smoking in the British Far Eastern territories freed from ‘the enemy’ and not to re-establish the prepared opium monopolies in those territories; and that this would be announced on 10 November.26 On 10 November, both the British and the Dutch governments announced that they had decided to prohibit opium smoking in their Far Eastern territories freed from Japan, and not to re-establish the prepared opium monopolies in those territories. The governments of both the United States and the Republic of China expressed their satisfaction. The British considered the development as quite satisfactory.27

Examining the Application of the New Policy When Britain announced that it had decided to prohibit opium smoking in their Far Eastern territories freed from Japan, the Burmese situation was particularly mentioned. As regards Burma the effect will not immediately be so sweeping owing to the habit … of eating unprepared opium and which is practised for semimedical purposes in many unhealthy parts of the country. This constitutes a different and much more difficult aspect of the problem of the suppression of the use of opium … The Government of Burma have however already adopted the policy of ultimate suppression of all opium consumption and as part of their plans for reconstruction policy in Burma are examining the best means of effecting this suppression in the shortest possible time. …28

In other British territories which were then under the Japanese occupation, measures to reduce opium consumption had already been taken in the 1930s. On the other hand, reforms had not been introduced in Burma,29 because it was a part of India until 1937 and because the problem there was mainly opium eating, not opium smoking in which the international society took an interest. On 13 November 1943, Leopold Amery, the secretary of state for India and Burma, instructed Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith, the governor of Burma, to examine the application of the new policy with a view of eliminating flaws and attempting to attain suppression of all opium consumption. Dorman-Smith had taken refuge in Simla, a hill station

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in northern India. A committee to examine the situation was held on 29 and 30 November. It agreed that policy must be directed towards complete suppression of opium consumption, and insisted that, following the recommendations made by the League of Nations Commission of Enquiry into the control of opium smoking in the Far East, the government of Burma had indeed adopted the policy since 1932. The procedure which the November 1943 committee considered was, however, widely different from the American ideas. The committee stressed, as a prerequisite to any final prohibition, the necessity for the strictest control of the sources of supply and the co-operation with the neighbouring countries, particularly China and Siam. Unless such co-operation was assured and became effective, it was considered that efforts of control would only increase smuggling.30 The report of the committee proposed to establish an opium factory, to start propaganda for educational purposes and ‘to defeat the smuggler by fixing the prices low enough to make smuggling with its hazards unprofitable’.31 These could only cope with the international requirements prior to the declaration of 10 November 1943. The opinions of the Burma Office were not very different from those of the committee. They considered ‘the adoption of the policy of total prohibition … would be quite out of the question in Burma’. They pointed out that in Burma fishermen as well as those who worked in the forests or other ‘unhealthy’ districts regarded opium as a prophylactic.32 In malarial regions, opium was considered to be useful both as a prophylactic and a medicine. Halifax, the ambassador to the United States, was worried that the policy, with its insistence on the necessity of compromising with local customs and conditions, was likely to be opposed strongly by the Americans. He observed that the Americans were particularly interested in the case of Burma because they were also participating in the fighting there.33 Meanwhile, in the United States, both the House of Representatives and the Senate unanimously passed House Joint Resolution 241 in June 1944. The Resolution requested the president to urge upon the governments of those countries where the poppy cultivation existed the necessity of immediately limiting the production of opium to the amount required for strictly medicinal and scientific purposes. It was approved by President Franklin Roosevelt on 3 July 1944. On 4 July, Cordell Hull, the US secretary of state, issued a statement that the new policy of Britain and the Netherlands, as well as the prohibition of the use of smoking opium by

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the Chinese government in 1941, prepared the way for the suppression of the traffic in smoking opium.34 Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, supreme commander Southeast Asia, noticed Hull’s statement, and wrote to Amery on 21 August 1944 to make his attitude clear. His concern was the period of military administration, namely soon after the liberation from the Japanese occupation, for which he was to be responsible. He wrote that it had been pointed out to him that it was not practical to attempt to enforce an immediate and rigid restriction. He deplored ‘solicitude for the native growers of opium’, and hoped the profits to be made from opium were the last consideration of the British government. He continued that if Britain did not intend to come into line with the rigid American point of view, it should inform the Americans as soon as possible, stating its long-term policy and explaining the considerations which made it necessary to take what seems a line contrary to it.35 As Amery was away, the Earl of Munster, the parliamentary undersecretary of state, replied. He first emphasized that the government of Burma had since 1932 adopted the policy of ultimate suppression of all opium consumption. This was to adopt the recommendations made by the League of Nations’ Commission of Enquiry. Munster agreed with Mountbatten as to the importance of being frank with the Americans over the short-term measures which were contrary to the ultimate goal. He added that an explanation of the measures and of the opium policy in Burma itself was being prepared in consultation with the War Office, although poppy cultivation in some of the tribal areas would be necessary during the period of military occupation. This was because when the Burmese government left for Simla, it had withdrawn the prohibition against cultivation and allowed the local people to grow what they needed.36 On 12 October, Mountbatten replied to Munster. In explaining the policy to the Americans, he thought it ought to be emphasized why total prohibition of cultivation in certain areas was not immediately practicable; and that the measures proposed for the military period were governed solely by what was practicable. The Americans emphasized the problem of opium smoking, whereas the problem in Burma almost entirely concerned opium eating. Therefore, he thought this difference should be made clear as well as the fact that the total prohibition of the smoking habit was already accepted as the policy by the government of Burma.37

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Prepared ‘Policy as Regards Opium in Burma’ and Its Limits On 21 September 1944, the Colonial Office sent a draft directive on opium policy to the chief planner of the Malayan Planning Unit, SouthEast Asia Command. Burma Office, however, in consultation with the War Office, re-examined the note which should be communicated to the United States in the light of Mountbatten’s comment.38 R. E. McGuire of the government of Burma, who had been a member of the November 1943 committee, was aware that the government should make some pronouncement fairly soon on its future opium policy. He was, however, dissatisfied with the stance of the United States. He wrote that Americans and other outside opinion did not appear to appreciate Burma’s difficulties. Furthermore, he wrote that although the US government was impressed with the Chinese prohibition laws of 1941, they were not effective in the regions bordering on Burma, particularly the hill areas on the frontier.39 McGuire thought that the Americans were too lenient about the production and use of opium in China. The cases were treated arbitrarily. Like cases were not treated in like fashion. That was McGuire’s complaint. ‘Policy as Regards Opium in Burma’ was thus prepared, and communicated to the United States on 24 April 1945, just before the British retook Rangoon from the Japanese.40 However, the United States refused to accept it by the memorandum dated on 8 August, a week before the Japanese surrender. What was the problem of the ‘Policy’? The ‘Policy’ honestly conveyed the situation in Burma. Its explanation on poppy cultivation, opium consumption and the supply of opium in Burma clearly conveys the situation. Cultivation Upper Burma came under British rule just over 50 years before the Japanese invasion. When we took over the country the poppy was cultivated for opium manufacture throughout the hills to the east and the north. Our policy was to prohibit cultivation, … in 1941 there were only three small areas in which opium manufacture was carried on (a) the Shan States east of the Salween including the Wa States, (b) the small areas known as the triangle and the Hukwang Valley in the Kachin hills (c) Naga Hills. Prohibition had not been introduced there because in (a) administration was very light, the Wa States not being administered at all as yet; in (b) administration was only introduced in 1932 and orders had been

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issued that poppy growing should cease from 1942, and in (c) administration was only introduced in 1939. … it will be necessary in these areas to find some substitute crop as the local inhabitants depend almost entirely on opium for their livelihood. Consumption In Burma proper the smoking of opium was prohibited except by registered smokers, and licences to smoke were only given to proved addicts. The Chinese are the chief smokers, but some Burmans had also acquired the habit. The majority of consumers, however, are eaters and Indians, Burmans and Hill tribesmen are all included in the number. All these people are firmly convinced that opium is a protection against fever and dysentery … Supply Opium is a government monopoly and is sold in government shops. Prepared opium to be used for smoking is not now sold at all. Opium for use in Burma is obtained from India, except in the Shan States where Shan opium grown in the States east of the Salween is sold. Opium is, however, produced on a large scale in China and in Siam and if consumers are refused licences or if their supplies are cut too low they resort at once to an illicit supply brought in by smugglers. … smuggling is easy …41

The ‘Policy’ thus explained the situation clearly. It was difficult to reach mountainous regions where poppies were grown, and those areas were only indirectly ruled before the war. Opium was used for medical purposes, and the efforts to introduce Western-style medicine into the region had not been made. Opium was also used for religious purposes, and almost the sole cash crop in the region. Furthermore, opium was produced on a large scale in Siam as well as in China. The British thought it almost impossible to control opium trafficking and the use of opium in the peripheral regions of Burma. They were afraid that the sudden cut of the supply of opium would result in discontent among the people. Smuggling might simply increase and become uncontrollable. In other words, the British were aware of the limits of their administrative ability. Only possible and practicable policies were proposed in the ‘Policy as Regards Opium in Burma’. During the period of military occupation, namely immediately after the ceasefire, the ‘Policy’ did not propose to re-open opium shops unless it was found to be absolutely necessary to do so. However, if the refusal to provide opium to addicts caused serious unrest and made the reoccupation and pacification of Burma difficult, it was considered that it might be necessary to re-open government shops

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in some areas and to provide a licit supply of opium. Even concerning the longer-term post-war policy, the ‘Policy’ did not mention the end of the opium monopoly in Burma. It proposed ‘to re-open shops for the sale of opium to licensed consumers and to attempt to under-sell the smuggler’.42 It has to be said that the ‘Policy as Regards Opium in Burma’ indeed did not reflect Britain’s declaration of 10 November 1943. In total contrast to Britain, what the United States aspired to achieve was to make opium smoking illegal and treat smokers as criminals. It suspected that Britain was considering to re-establish the opium monopoly in Burma. It thought that the short-term policy for Burma was not consistent with the established US policy. As a result, it refused to accept the ‘Policy’. It urged the British government to reconsider its plans.43 Receiving the American request of reconsideration, the 38th meeting of the Inter-departmental Opium Committee was held on 20 September 1945, and the draft reply to the United States prepared by the Burma Office was examined. However, this draft was not very different from the previous proposal. Henry Craw stated that the Burma Office did not propose to alter its policy which had been formulated after the most careful examination of the problem. J. D. Mabbott of the Foreign Office said that the reply was not so urgently needed now that the hostilities had ceased.44 The Burma Office did not prepare a new opium policy for more than a year after this meeting, so that Britain could not reply to the American request at all. On 18 October 1945, Governor Dorman-Smith returned from Simla to Burma, and Burma returned to civil administration. Britain was also engaged in the reoccupation of the colonies in Southeast Asia, including French and Dutch territories. Although Britain had planned to place Burma under seven years of direct rule by the governor to allow for economic reconstruction, this was unacceptable to the Burmese nationalists. British firms were trying to recommence their Burmese operations, and evacuees in India were demanding the return of their lands and installations. Tension surfaced between the British and the Indian capitalists on the one side and the nationalists in Burma on the other. Dorman-Smith had close connections with the Indian and the British communities in Simla, whom the Burmese nationalists regarded as foreign exploiters who would suck wealth out of Burma.45 Dorman-Smith’s ability to administer Burma gradually came to be questioned. His understanding of the opium question was also completely out of date.

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In February 1946, Dorman-Smith informed Lord Pethick-Lawrence, the secretary of state for Burma of the Labour government, that although active measures to discourage opium consumption would be vigorously pursued, he had decided that the time had come when government opium shops should be re-opened in carefully selected areas. He gave as a reason the existence of fresh addicts among Chinese and Indian returnees, who were considered to be bringing Shan and Indian opium into Burma.46 A fortnightly letter from the government of Burma to the Burma Office also reported that the government opium shops would be re-opened for the time being in order to discourage smuggling.47 In March, copies of an American bill, H.R. 4795, which had been submitted in the previous November, were forwarded by the British Embassy in Washington. The bill would require means to hamper trade with countries which still permitted the sale of opium and other narcotics for non-medical purposes. The Burma Office was worried that the bill would very seriously handicap exports from Burma to the United States.48 In May, Dorman-Smith asked Pethick-Lawrence again to approve the re-opening of the government opium shops as soon as possible. His reasoning was as follows. It was the practice for states to buy up opium from growers for retail sale, and the profit on the sale of opium had always been regarded as a legitimate form of revenue. If the British government required the opium to be destroyed, then the cost would fall on it. In all circumstances, Dorman-Smith insisted that it would seem desirable for the Burma government to purchase opium and retail it in government shops.49 In June 1946, Dorman-Smith informed the Burma Office of the great demand for opium at high prices in illicit markets on both sides of the border. He continued that any delay in sanctioning purchase of Kengtung and Kokang opium would result in heavy leakage of it into smugglers’ hands. He was again asking for the approval of re-starting the government’s sales of opium.50

The League of Nations and the Question of Opium Eating This chapter has considered the limits of the League’s opium control by way of examining the question of opium in Burma until about the League’s last Assembly held in April 1946. There were two methods

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for using opium: opium smoking and opium eating. While opium was mainly eaten in India and Burma, the League of Nations was concerned only about opium smoking in the inter-war period. Opium eating was completely neglected and left untouched. Opium in Burma, however, suddenly became an issue after Britain, together with the Netherlands, announced that it would prohibit opium in its Far Eastern territories freed from the enemy. Britain did not move backwards. It did not sanction the reopening of government opium shops. Consideration of the problem, however, progressed only slowly. The actual procedure to control opium in Burma acceptable to the United States was not produced by the official end of the League of Nations. By then, a new international organization had been created. An international mechanism to control opium and other narcotics was also being established. Britain had to consider these developments and act quickly. The change in Burma’s opium policy will be examined in the last section of Chapter 10.

Notes 1. Rappard, International Relations as Viewed from Geneva, p. 87. 2. BL, IOR/M/4/2512, 6 January 1945, McGuire to W. T. Annan, Burma Office (hereafter BO), ‘Opium—The US Memo of 8 September, 1943’. 3. Clavin, Securing the World Economy, pp. 260–263. 4. TNA, FO371/50653, U2021/2021/87, 23 March 1945, from Sir A.C. Chatterjee (President, PCOB) to A.D.K. Owen (FO), unnumbered; McAllister, Drug Diplomacy, pp. 85, 98. 5. LNA, R5025, 12/40642/40642, 17 December 1940, Renborg to Lester; 27 December 1940, Lester to Armstrong, enclosure; United Nations, Yearbook of the United Nations 1946–47 (hereafter, Yearbook), p. 536. 6. LNA, R5037, 12/43096/43096, 9 December 1942, Jacklin to Lester, enclosure; Hoo, Painting the Shadows, p. 35. 7. LNA, R5037, 12/43096/43096, 9 December 1942, Jacklin to Lester, enclosure. 8. TNA, FO371/34545, C2639/1634/87, 28 February 1943, Harris to M. S. Williams, FO, enclosure (LN, Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs. Note on consultations in London in September 1942 in regard to preparations for the post-war period). 9. LNA, R5037, 12/43096/43096, 9 December 1942, Jacklin to Lester, enclosure; 10 February 1943, Renborg to Jacklin. 10. John Collins, ‘Breaking the Monopoly System’, pp. 778–780; idem, ‘Regulations and Prohibitions: Anglo-American Relations and International

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11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30.

31. 32.

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Drug Control, 1939–1964’, Ph.D. thesis, London School of Economics, 2015, pp. 53–54. Collins, ‘Regulations and Prohibitions’, p. 55. TNA, FO371/34545, C1634/1634/87, 9 February 1943, from Halifax, Washington. TNA, FO371/34545, C2639/1634/87, 28 February 1943, Harris to Williams, enclosure (Letter from Delevingne to Harris, 28 February 1943). TNA, FO371/34545, C5172/1634/87, 26 April 1943, Halifax to Eden, enclosure, p. 1. Ibid., p. 2. Ibid., p. 8; Scott minute on C5172/1634/87, 26 May 1943. Collins, ‘Regulations and Prohibitions’, p. 58. TNA, FO371/34545, C5172/1634/87, outfile, FO to CO, 15 June 1943. TNA, FO371/34545, C10806/1634/87, 17 September 1943, enclosure (‘Minutes of the 33rd meeting held on 7 September 1943’), p. 1. Ibid., pp. 1–2. Ibid., pp. 3–4. TNA, FO371/34545, C11938/1634/87, 6 October 1943, from Chargé D’Affaires, Washington, enclosure (Aide-Mémoire). TNA, FO371/34545, C11953/1634/87, 6 October 1943, Wright (1st Secretary) to Ashley Clarke; McAllister, Drug Diplomacy in the Twentieth Century, p. 151. TNA, FO371/34546, C11998/1634/87, 13 October 1943, from Netherlands Ambassador. TNA, FO371/34546, C12350/1634/87, Minutes by R. A. Butler dated 24 October and by Ashley Clarke dated 25 October 1943. TNA, FO371/34546, C12086/1634/87, 31 October 1943, outfile, no. 7399. TNA, FO371/34546, C13516/1634/87, 16 November 1943, from US Embassy; C14941/1634/87, 16 November 1943, from Seymour (Chungking). TNA, FO371/34546, C12086/1634/87, 31 October 1943, outfile, no. 7399, p. 2. Haq, Drugs in South Asia, p. 104. BL, IOR/L/E/9/732, 13 November 1943, Secretary of State to Governor of Burma, B.2074/43; TNA, FO643/51, 7 February 1944, File No. 4J1, Report of the committee appointed to consider the opium problem in Burma. TNA, FO643/51, 7 February 1944, Report of the committee. TNA, FO371/39366, C1501/527/87, 1 February 1944, Annan, BO, to Williams, FO.

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33. TNA, FO371/39366, C5330/527/87, 17 April 1944, from Halifax to Cadogan. 34. TNA, FO371/40503, U6262/6262/87, 26 June 1944, from Halifax; FO371/40503, U6423/6262/87, 10 July 1944; CO825/39/1, 4 July 1944, ‘U.S. Call to End Opium Traffic’. 35. BL, IOR/M/4/2512, 21 August 1944, Mountbatten to Amery. 36. BL, IOR/M/4/2512, 13 September 1944, Munster to Mountbatten. 37. BL, IOR/M/4/2512, 12 October 1944, Mountbatten to Munster. 38. TNA, FO371/40510, U7533/6911/87, 21 September 1944, Paskin to General Hone; BL, IOR/M/4/2512, 13 Oct. 1944, Annan to Lt. Col. Taylor, Civil Affairs Directorate, B2059/44; 6 January 1945, Annan to Major Logan, WO. 39. BL, IOR/M/4/2512, 6 January 1945, McGuire to Annan, ‘Opium— The US memo of 8 September, 1943’; William O. Walker, Opium and Foreign Policy: The Anglo-American Search for Order in Asia, 1912–1954 (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1991), pp. 68–70, 79, 103, 126, 131. 40. TNA, FO371/50654, U2399/231/87, 5 April 1945, Jebb for Eden to Halifax; FO371/50647, U8714/32/87, 25 October 1945, Stebbins, American Embassy, to J. D. Mabbott. 41. TNA, FO371/40510, U7849/6911/87, 13 October 1944, from Burma Office (communicated), enclosure (no. B. 2059/44, Policy as Regards Opium in Burma). 42. Ibid. 43. TNA, FO371/50654, U6481/2317/87, 17 August 1945, from Halifax. 44. TNA, FO371/50654, U7130/2317/87, 12 September 1945, F. H. Logan (HO) to Mabbott, Enclosure 1 (Minutes of the 38th meeting of the Inter-departmental opium committee). 45. Christopher Bayly and Tim Harper, Forgotten Wars; the End of Britain’s Asian Empire (London: Allen Lane, 2007), pp. 61, 66–67, 236. 46. BL, IOR/M/4/2512, Burma F&R (Foreign and Reforms) 315/1946, 16 February 1946, from Governor of Burma to Pethick-Lawrence. 47. BL, IOR/M/4/2512, Extract from fortnightly letter no. 3 dated 6 February 1946, from Government of Burma to BO. 48. TNA, FO371/57022, U2052/2052/87, J. Balfour, British Embassy, Washington to Bevin, 13 February 1946; letter from Morley, BO, to Berkeley, FO, 23 March 1946; outfile, P. H. Gore-Booth to D. Maclean, Washington, 8 May 1946. 49. BL, IOR/M/4/2512, Burma F & R 1337/1946, 7 May 1946, Governor of Burma to Pethick-Lawrence, Purchase of opium in Shan States. 50. BL, IOR/M/4/2512, Burma F&R 1817/1946, 6 June 1946, from Governor of Burma to Pethick-Lawrence; Ashley Wright, Opium and Empire in Southeast Asia: Regulating Consumption in British Burma (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), p. 155.

CHAPTER 10

East Asia in the Architecture of the Post-War World: From the League to the UN Economic and Social Council

We have seen that the League’s works in social and technical fields were fairly wide-ranging. The Council, however, did not pay much attention to non-political works. The participants in the Council were mainly foreign ministers, diplomats and politicians. In addition, although the United States was ‘represented, officially or by experts, on almost every committee or sub-committee engaged upon the economic and social business of the League’, the US government had no role in nominating the members of any committee or in establishing their budget and their programme.1 Some members of the League were aware of the structural problems concerning the works in technical fields and tried to solve them in the declining days of the League. This chapter examines how the League’s works were succeeded by the United Nations Organization. The two organizations were different, but there were important continuities between them. The United Nations could benefit from the experience of the League of Nations. Particular attention is paid to the establishment of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (hereafter CND), one of the commissions under the Economic and Social Council (hereafter ECOSOC), because it is directly related to the drug control organizations established during the League period, and because its establishment influenced the region examined in the previous two chapters.

© The Author(s) 2020 H. Goto-Shibata, The League of Nations and the East Asian Imperial Order, 1920–1946, New Directions in East Asian History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4968-7_10

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The Bruce Report As early as May 1938, the Committee on the Structure and Functions of the Economic and Financial Section observed that major structural changes might be suggested.2 At the Council’s meeting on 23 May 1939, a committee was appointed. Its purpose was to study and report on the best way to organize the League’s work in connection with technical problems in order to secure its development and expansion.3 Stanley M. Bruce, the former prime minister of Australia and the Australian representative to the League since 1932, was appointed to be the chairman of the committee. Its members included Harold Butler, the former director of the ILO, and Carl J. Hambro, the president of the Norwegian Foreign Affairs Committee. Its report, The Development of International Cooperation in Economic and Social Affairs: Report of the Special Committee, the so-called Bruce Report, was published on 22 August 1939. The Bruce Report first criticized the phrase ‘technical problems’ and the distinction made in connection with the work of the League between ‘political’ and ‘technical’ problems, because it considered that ‘technical problems’ were actually political questions. Therefore, the phrase ‘economic and social questions’ was used in the Report.4 The Report then emphasized that the League was not an institution concerned solely with the prevention of war. More than 60% of its budget was devoted to its economic and humanitarian work.5 In the third section titled ‘The economic and social activities of the League’, the Report touched upon the Article 23 of the Covenant and the history of the League’s contribution in social and economic fields. It included the issues dealt with in the previous chapters of this book: the Geneva Opium Convention of 1925, traffic in women and children in the Far East, and prevention of epidemics in China.6 The Bruce Report proposed that the Assembly should set up a new Central Committee for Economic and Social Questions in the League to deal with social and economic questions independently and prevent them from being overshadowed by the debates on politics. This was considered necessary to cope more effectively with the developments that had taken place since 1920. As we have seen, the League had been engaged in many regulatory works such as the control of opium from its beginning. Later, the economic depression in the 1930s made people seek new measures to promote domestic social welfare. Such measures to ameliorate unemployment, hunger, poor housing and a host of associated social ills came

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to find expression on the social and economic agendas of the League of Nations.7 The proposal also aimed to give non-member states the opportunity of the fullest possible co-operation. Furthermore, the Report also suggested that the Central Committee should comprise not only the representatives of states but also unofficial experts. The latter should co-operate on the ground of their special competence and authority. The budget was to be determined in negotiation with the Secretary-General. The Central Committee could draw up its own rules of procedure, approve its agenda, elect its own president and bureau, appoint members of the main standing committees and establish other committees when necessary.8 It was difficult, however, to examine the Bruce Report closely for some time, because the Second World War broke out in Europe on 1 September. The League’s Assembly was postponed. On the other hand, the United States showed interest in the Report. Loveday wrote to Bruce on 31 October, ‘[t]he receptions in the United States seems to have been particularly good’.9 In Britain, Philip Noel-Baker, a Labour MP, suggested in the House of Commons on 21 November that the proposals of the Bruce Report should be enacted so that the League might be in a position to help solve problems at the war’s end. R. A. Butler, under-secretary of state for foreign affairs, acknowledged Noel-Baker’s idea as constructive. On 28 November, Neville Chamberlain, the prime minister, also praised the Bruce Report.10 Following these exchanges, opinions of the relevant offices were asked in December, just before the discussion at the 20th Assembly of the League. Neville Goodman of the Ministry of Health was most positive, and wrote as his personal view that he was ‘entirely in favour of the objective underlying the Bruce Report’. The Treasury considered the intention of the Bruce Report to attract non-members of the League into its ambit as ‘clearly desirable’, but the proposals seemed to involve a serious risk of facilitating the withdrawal of present League members from its political activities.11 Sydney Harris of the Home Office also considered the proposal to set up a body which would secure the representation and financial support of non-member states as admirable. One of the disadvantages of the opium work, he continued, was that some of the principal countries, such as the United States, were not placed in exactly the same position as member countries. However, no attempt had been made in the Home Office to examine the Report. All Harris could do was to have

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a few words with Delevingne and see Goodman’s comments, so that he was of the opinion that longer consideration was necessary before any definite approval was given to the Report at Geneva.12 The Ministry of Labour pointed out that there was no reference to the ILO throughout the whole Report.13 The 20th Assembly of the League of Nations was held in December 1939. It examined the urgent appeal of the Finnish government. The Soviet forces had attacked Finland on 30 November. The League decided to expel the Soviet Union.14 The Assembly also decided to suspend the rules dealing with the election of non-permanent members. The Council decided on 14 December 1939 to maintain the two additional non-permanent seats, and the Assembly re-elected China. The Republic of China would thus continue to be a non-permanent member of the League’s Council until the demise of the organization.15 As for the Bruce Report, a special committee met on 12 December 1939. In opening the proceedings, the Belgian chairman started by distinguishing the political and economic activities of the League of Nations. He continued to say that ‘while in the political sphere the League had suffered a number of disappointments, in the economic and social sphere it had made substantial progress’. In the ensuing debate, another Belgian delegate, Count de Wiart, pointed out that ‘while recognising the paramount importance of economic questions’, it was important ‘not to lose sight of the invaluable work done by the League in social and humanitarian questions’. The Bruce Report was approved on 14 December 1939. The president of the Assembly was Hambro. The resolutions read, ‘the proposals must be regarded only as a first step in the adaptation of the existing machinery of international economic and social collaboration to the changing conditions of the world’. It was proposed that an organizing committee should be formed to serve as a nucleus for the proposed Central Committee. Countries such as Australia, France and the United Kingdom would be included in the organizing committee.16 James Barros has written, ‘The Bruce Report and its recommendations greatly influenced the establishment within the United Nations of the Economic and Social Council’.17

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Rajchman’s Plan for the United Nations Health Organization As Rajchman was the central actor of the technical co-operation, it is worth looking at his plan for the United Nations Health Organization. This plan was proposed at the final stage of his involvement with East Asia. In July 1940, Rajchman arrived in the United States as a representative of the Polish government in exile. It was planned that he would deal with wartime relief and the question of Polish refugees. The pre-war Polish ambassador was, however, still in Washington, so that Rajchman’s position was not secure. The United States found it difficult to welcome two different representatives of a country. Rajchman was finally allowed to stay in the United States as a private person working as the adviser of the Bank of China whose governor was T. V. Soong.18 Soong then became the foreign minister of the Republic of China, although he remained in Washington. He visited London in July 1943 as an official guest of the British government. Rajchman accompanied him. While he was in London, Britain observed that Rajchman was, ‘in fact if not in name, acting as Soong’s “Chef de Cabinet”’. Rajchman kept in close touch with Noel-Baker, who was then a member of Winston Churchill’s wartime coalition cabinet and was in charge of the Ministry of War Transport.19 While Soong and Rajchman were still in Britain, Noel-Baker sent the Foreign Office Rajchman’s plan to establish a health organization.20 After returning to the United States, Rajchman presented this plan at a meeting of the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace. He then published a revised version, ‘Why Not? A United Nations Health Service’, in September 1943 issue of Free World, a journal on diplomacy and international relations. He also sent the article to many people, asking comments.21 In the article, Rajchman first described health as the greatest commodity in the world, and wrote that there were somewhat more than two billion ‘consumers’ on earth. He tried to make the understanding easier by using the analogy of the market. Then, he reviewed history: ‘[t]he “century of common man” was born with the breakup of mighty Empires in 1918’. It is typically Rajchman that emphasized the benefits to the common people. He continued that ‘[p]rogress in medicine and public health since 1919’ had been ‘truly fantastic’, and ‘unlivable regions

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… were made fit for settlement’.22 The phrase ‘unlivable regions made fit for settlement’ reminds us of Robertson’s epidemiological survey in Burma–Yunnan borderland. Rajchman considered that the League ‘lacked a solid foundation of organized support from “consumers of health”’. As for the future, he wrote that a ‘United Nations Health Organization started in time of war must derive its strength from those whom it [wa]s to serve, “the consumers of health”’ (Emphasis as original). As we have seen in the previous chapters, Rajchman had often been presented with discord over financial resources. Therefore, he proposed that the new Health Organization should be financed by a health tax levied in all participating countries, thus ‘linking the “customers” to the “commodity”’. The price should be ‘one per cent on every dollar now expended’. He emphasized that health was ‘purchasable’.23 Some parts of the Free World version was changed from the earlier version sent to the British Foreign Office. For example, expressions such as ‘this effort, although directed by experts, was controlled by diplomats’ and ‘as an appendage to a political body’ were revised. His criticism of diplomats and politics were erased.24 Concerning the technical cooperation between the League and China, ‘the granting of facilities for the training abroad of China’s own health officers’ was dropped. It had been a point of argument at the League. In addition, Rajchman suggested to ‘select a number of key men within National Agencies and with the latter’s consent incorporate them as Officers in the United Nations Service’. This suggestion was also dropped.25 As for empires, he wrote in the original version that those, particularly in the Pacific and in Africa, would be administered multi-nationally.26 Although this did not contain any criticism on the British and French empires, it did not envisage their reoccupation of their colonies, for example in Southeast Asia. This paragraph was rewritten to refer only to public health administration of empires. Neville Goodman unofficially commented on the version sent by NoelBaker. Although it contained a number of ingenious and far-reaching ideas, Goodman thought that they were largely impracticable in the near future. The conclusion by the British Ministry of Health was also negative. The Ministry expected that the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) which would be established in November would play a significant role in the future international health organization.27 The UNRRA’s aim was to supply war-torn countries and displaced people with basic resources such as food and medical relief.28

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In October 1943, when Goodman wrote the above criticism, T. V. Soong returned to China. His official co-operation with Rajchman was over. Rajchman’s involvement with East Asia also came to an end. The British Ministry of Health was not the only one that criticized Rajchman’s bold proposal on the future of international health. The point was that the proposal was too political. Dr Raymond Gautier, a Swiss who was appointed the acting director of the LNHO after Rajchman’s resignation, was of the opinion that the post-war international organization should take care of various health works regardless of the United Nations.29 Manley Hudson, an international lawyer of the Harvard Law School, considered that Rajchman’s organization would become very political because it used the term the United Nations without any explanations.30 Indeed, the ‘United Nations’ in 1943 did not mean ‘the world’. On 1 January 1942, the representatives of nations that were fighting against the Axis signed the Declaration of the United Nations. The United Nations started off as an alliance. It was at San Francisco in 1945 that the United Nations was adopted as the name of the new international organization.31 When the International Health Conference to establish the post-war health organization was held in New York from June to July 1946, Rajchman could not attend it. It was not his fault but the participants had to be representatives of their countries’ health organizations. On the other hand, ten non-member countries of the United Nations Organization, as well as the occupying authorities of Germany and Japan, were invited to send their representatives to the Conference. Those who gathered at the Conference considered they should take care of the entire world. Otherwise, the post-war health work could not be effective. As Rajchman himself was well aware, contagious diseases would spread beyond borders and beyond the dividing lines between the countries. The dissatisfaction of some countries would easily threaten world security. The new health organization was based on the plan drafted by Gautier during the war. Its name was decided to be more universal ‘World’ Health Organization, and it was made one of the specialized agencies which has a relationship with, but is not subordinate to the ECOSOC.32

Establishing the ECOSOC Let us put the clock back a little to observe the development of the planning for the post-war world organization. The Atlantic Charter, signed by the US President Roosevelt and the British Prime Minister Churchill

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in August 1941, called for ‘the establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security’. This declaration was strengthened, as mentioned above, when 24 other nations, including the Soviet Union and China, subscribed to it on the New Year’s Day, 1942.33 Roosevelt began to express the notion of the ‘Big Four’ as early as September 1941. He considered that the League of Nations fell into inaction because of its size.34 Something more compact was considered necessary. In addition, he treated the Republic of China as one of the Great Powers. Since the Qing government was overthrown and the Republic was established in 1912, the image of China to be guided and protected was widespread in the United States. Roosevelt also thought that unless an Asian power was developed to replace the defeated Japan, revolutionary chaos, a return to colonialism or the hegemony of the Soviet Union would prevail in the post-war world. Neither Churchill nor Eden, the British foreign secretary, favoured the idea of counting China as a Great Power. Both of them were, however, fully aware of the need to humour ‘the naïve American fondness for China because they recognized that the real significance of the China question was its potential impact on relations with the United States’.35 Intergovernmental negotiation between the Big Four began formally in 1943. Since the meeting of foreign ministers in Moscow and then the Teheran Conference, the expectations to establish a new general world organization grew.36 From 21 August to 28 September 1944, the representatives of the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union assembled at Dumbarton Oaks, a private estate near Washington, D.C., drafting the charter of the world organization. The chairman was Edward Stettinius, US under-secretary of state. Andrei Gromyko, ambassador to the United States, represented the Soviet Union. The leader of the UK delegation was Cadogan until the end of September, and then Halifax, ambassador to the United States. The Dumbarton Oaks conference was divided into two, because the Russians were against regarding the Chinese as one of the Great Powers. They had ‘no reason to desire the establishment of a strong post-war China, particularly one that was likely to be a client of the United States’. Nor did they want to enhance the stature of Chiang Kai-shek, who was against communism.37 The necessity to consider the relations of the technical organizations to the ‘World Council’ and the fact that ‘the Bruce Report applied’ was noticed in Britain as early as August 1943.38 The Americans, the British

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and the Russians had prepared proposals to be considered at the Dumbarton Oaks conference. The content of the American proposals was good. Cadogan ‘had never expected anything so good’.39 ‘[T]he economic and social dimension of international security had been included in the American delegation’s proposal’ and it was ‘a carbon copy of the agency proposed by the Bruce Committee in 1939’.40 The Soviets, however, did not include the social and economic co-operation among the purposes of the new body. They considered that too much of the League of Nations’ time had been spent considering ‘secondary matters’.41 It did not consider that the capitalist West was capable of solving such problems.42 Therefore, security issues were placed first. Still, both the British and the Americans considered that ‘some way should be left open for the international organization to act in this secondary but important field’. The Soviets anyway took part in drafting a section on social and economic co-operation.43 The Russian phase of the conference dragged on longer than expected. Cadogan was unable to remain in Washington until the end of the entire conference. The meeting of the representatives of the United States, the UK and China started as late as 29 September, lasting till 7 October. At this second part of the Dumbarton Oaks conference, Wellington Koo, ambassador to the United Kingdom, represented the Republic of China. The Americans thought that Chinese proposals, in total contrast to the stance of the Soviet Union, placed ‘too much emphasis on social and economic concerns and too little on security’. Koo raised seven points ‘that would strengthen the new organization and insure its wide support among the smaller nations’. It was, however, difficult to make major changes at this second stage. While some points, such as international respect for political independence and territorial integrity, were considered unnecessary, others such as cultural co-operation were allowed to be published later.44 The Dumbarton Oaks Proposals were released to the world on 9 October. Its Chapter IX, ‘Arrangements for International Economic and Social Co-operation’, provided for an ECOSOC to ‘facilitate solutions of international economic, social and other humanitarian problems and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms’. It avoided the subordination of those issues to political ones. The ECOSOC was expected to set up commissions as may be required, although the humanitarian dimension was left underdeveloped. The commission on drugs was not mentioned at all at this stage.45

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To examine the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals, the United Nations Conference on International Organization was held at San Francisco from 25 April 1945, just before the demise of Nazi Germany. The venue was suitable to draw the world’s attention to the Pacific. Fifty countries of the United Nations attended the conference. The British delegation was led by Eden. There were four commissions (I–IV) at San Francisco. Each was responsible for drafting a particular section of the charter. The third committee of the second commission (committee II/3) was in charge of economic and social co-operation. It made significant contributions to the drafting of Chapters IX (International Economic and Social Cooperation) and X (The Economic and Social Council) of the charter. Firstly, it recommended that the ECOSOC should be made one of the principal organs of the United Nations. The ECOSOC would be the equal to the Security Council and the General Assembly. Secondly, it greatly enlarged and broadened the objectives which the United Nations should promote in the economic and social fields.46 China took the initiative on the issue of health. On 17 May, the Chinese and Brazilian delegations jointly declared regarding international health co-operation. One reason for this move of China was that Dr Szeming Sze (Shi Siming) was among the delegation. He was the son of Alfred Sze, and graduated from Cambridge University and St Thomas’s Hospital Medical School. There were only three medical experts among the participants of the San Francisco Conference, and Sze was one of them.47 As for opium and other dangerous drugs, the drafting committee which met from 24 to 26 May commented that the language of Chapter IX of the Dumbarton Oaks Proposals, ‘international economic, social, health and related problems’, included ‘international co-operation in the suppression of traffic in, and abuse of, opium and other narcotics and dangerous drugs’. On 29 May, committee II/3 voted unanimously to approve the recommendation. On 4 June, also at committee II/3, the United States delegation pointed out that ‘experience had shown that the problem of drug control was best met … by the type of specialized agencies already functioning in the field’, and it hoped that there would be established an advisory body to the ECOSOC on these matters, and that the existing agencies would be regarded as autonomous agencies to be brought into relationships with the ECOSOC. The delegates of China, Canada and India fully supported the statement. On 11 June, the report

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was examined and approved by commission II, and the UK delegation also strongly supported it.48 All the issues of the conference were decided by 20 June, and on 26 June 1945, the United Nations Charter was signed at San Francisco by 50 states. The Preamble lists ‘to employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples’.49 Furthermore, its Article 55(b) stipulates that the United Nations shall promote ‘solutions of international economic, social, health, and related problems; and international cultural and educational co-operation’. On the other hand, learning from the decline of the League of Nations, the Charter deliberately made no provision for the withdrawal of member governments.50 The Big Five, namely the Big Four plus France, agreed that they, as sponsors, would affix their signatures on the documents before all the other nations. Among them, China was accorded the honour of being the first to sign. It was ‘in recognition of its long-standing fight’. It was planned that the United States, being the host country, would sign last. It was, however, switched to sign midway through the ceremony, to allow President Harry Truman to be present. The delegates signed at the same time an interim agreement which established a Preparatory Commission.51 The Preparatory Commission held its first meeting on the following day, appointing an Executive Committee to do much of the preparatory work.52

Establishing the CND Meanwhile, Britain was going through a drastic change. As soon as the war in Europe ended, the British people started to think about a new life and the new world. The result of the general election, which came to be known in the middle of the Potsdam Conference, was a landslide for the Labour Party. Ernest Bevin took office as the new foreign secretary. He had interest in the ILO and the functional aspect of the United Nations. Philip Noel-Baker also returned to the Foreign Office as the minister of state. During his fourteen months there, he was involved in establishing the United Nations. Professor Charles Kingsley Webster, a historian, was made a special adviser to the minister of state on United Nations affairs. He was Noel-Baker’s old friend and had worked enthusiastically for the League of Nations Union. Since 1943 he had played a central role in Britain’s preparation for the world organization. He was

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an expert adviser both at the Dumbarton Oakes Conference and the San Francisco Conference.53 On 16 August, namely the next day of Japan’s unconditional surrender, the Executive Committee of the UN Preparatory Commission was convened at Church House in London. It consisted of representatives of fourteen countries. The representative of the UK was Noel-Baker, while Stettinius represented the United States, Gromyko the USSR, Wellington Koo the Republic of China and René Massigli France. The executive secretary was Gladwyn Jebb of the host country. One of the staff of the Executive Committee was Victor Hoo. Jebb described him as ‘the nominee of Chiang Kai-shek, an able and popular official’.54 Among the issues the committee had to decide were the site of the United Nations Organization and the timing of the first Assembly. The work of the Executive Committee was divided among ten committees, and Committee 3 was in charge of the ECOSOC.55 During the discussion, Koo urged that the ECOSOC should set up at its first session a commission to replace the OAC. Emphasizing the case against ‘the Japanese for having promoted the use of narcotics in China’, Koo said that the Chinese government had found it necessary to cope with ‘the recrudescence of the opium evil deliberately brought about by the enemy occupation force’.56 As the UN Charter had been ratified by the majority of the signatories, the United Nations was formally established on 24 October 1945. Three days later, the Executive Committee completed its work. Its report called for the first session of the General Assembly to be divided into two parts, and the first was to be organizational and to discuss only urgent issues.57 Its report repeated the necessity of maintaining continuity in the work done by the League of Nations including the control of the drug traffic. The method, however, had not been decided yet. It was necessary to be considered by the Preparatory Commission.58 Noel-Baker considered that the procedure of an Assembly resolution might be used for setting up the international machinery to deal with dangerous drugs. Just like Delevingne, he also thought it worthwhile to consult the Chinese concerning this matter. He contacted Home Secretary J. Chuter Ede, and was suggested to deal with the matter at the inter-departmental committee. Both the British Home Office and the Americans considered that the PCOB and the DSB should be subordinate to the ECOSOC, and that a simple structure such as the amalgamation of the two would be necessary.59

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British policy towards the Preparatory Commission was discussed at an inter-departmental committee held on 9 November at the Foreign Office. Webster attended the committee, and pointed out that several delegations to the Executive Committee, ‘particularly the Chinese’ were anxious to get something done in the field of international drug control. He knew Koo from San Francisco conference, considering him ‘a really sincere and likable man’.60 Noel-Baker was of the opinion that a large-scale international effort through the United Nations should continue and extend the work of the League’s OAC and the controls existing under international conventions. He visualized the immediate policy as being to see to it that the Assembly in January should request the ECOSOC to take up the task. He also considered that the object of the proposed inter-departmental opium meeting should be ‘the preparation of a draft resolution which might then be agreed with the Chinese delegation and submitted to the Preparatory Commission’.61 On 21 November 1945, the 39th meeting of the Inter-departmental Opium Committee was held, and its second agenda was the transfer of the functions of the League of Nations to the United Nations Organization. Paul Henry Gore-Booth of the Reconstruction Department of the Foreign Office attended the meeting. The department was in charge of the United Nations Organization and connected matters. Gore-Booth said that Noel-Baker felt it appropriate for the British delegation to give a strong lead, firstly in view of the importance of the drugs problem, and secondly, having regard to the prominent part which the United Kingdom had played in the past in the field. The advantage in arranging concerted action with the Chinese delegation in support of the resolution was also mentioned.62 The UN Preparatory Commission reconvened in Church House on 24 November to discuss and approve the report of the Executive Committee. At its Committee 3 meeting held on 7 December, Victor Hoo of the Chinese delegation made a proposal to establish a separate CND to assist the ECOSOC. The delegates for the United States, Britain and the Netherlands warmly supported the Chinese proposal, and it was carried unanimously. The report of the Preparatory Commission was submitted on 23 December.63 The first part of the first session of the United Nations General Assembly began in London on 10 January 1946. A banquet for the delegates was held on the previous evening, and King George VI gave a speech there.

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The Third Committee which dealt with social, humanitarian and cultural questions started on the next day, and in the meeting held on 21 January, Sir Ramaswami A. Mudaliar, the leader of the Indian delegation and the chairman of the meeting, gave a brief explanation of the reasons which led the Preparatory Commission to recommend the establishment of a CND. The representatives of Australia and China warmly supported the proposal for the creation of a CND, and the report was approved.64 In the meantime, the British Home Office held the 40th meeting of the Inter-departmental Opium Committee on 18 January 1946. It had been discussed at the previous meeting that the structure of the PCOB and the DSB should be simplified, but as the two bodies had been set up by conventions, it was realized that it would probably be necessary to call a conference of all the signatory states. Harris, the chairman of the committee, suggested that the best method might be to get the proposed CND going as soon as possible by means of an Assembly resolution. It was decided that the Home Office would prepare a note.65 On 29 January, at the 19th plenary meeting of the first General Assembly of the United Nations, Arthur Henderson, parliamentary under-secretary of state for India, made a statement with special reference to the proposal of establishing a CND. The UK delegation considered that the work of OAC should be assumed by the corresponding body of the United Nations, and they, therefore, strongly supported the Chinese proposal that the ECOSOC should establish a separate CND. He continued that in order to make effective arguments, it was necessary to limit the number of member countries, to form a small organization by combining the PCOB and the DSB, and to authorize a commission to draft any convention or any amendment to an existing convention. He then touched upon the British declaration of November 1943, and emphasized that the success of the enforcement of prohibition would depend upon the steps taken in other countries. He concluded by welcoming the American proposal for immediate action to get an opium limitation convention and by suggesting that the ECOSOC should consider what would be the most effective way of obtaining a rapid result. After Henderson’s speech, the report of the Preparatory Committee was adopted.66 On 12 February 1946, at the 29th plenary meeting of the General Assembly, it was decided to refer the matter to the ECOSOC. The first session of the ECOSOC was being held from 23 January to 18 February

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1946, and Noel-Baker was the British representative. On 16 February, it was decided to establish a CND to assist and advise the ECOSOC and to carry out such functions entrusted to the OAC. Two days later, 15 members of the CND were elected. The CND was also authorized by the Council to appoint representatives of the PCOB and the DSB. Trygve Lie, the United Nations secretary-general and Norwegian socialist, informed Lester, the acting secretary-general of the League of Nations, that it had been decided for the United Nations to assume, as from 1 August 1946, responsibility for the work of the Opium Section of the League.67 On 8 April 1946, the 21st and final Assembly of the League of Nations was held in Geneva. Cecil, who was already 81, and Noel-Baker attended it. Cecil gave a speech, ending it with a famous remark, ‘The League is dead. Long live the United Nations!’ The League dissolved on 18 April. The League’s assets including monies it had on account were transferred to the United Nations Organization.

The Prospect of the CND and Burma’s New Policy We have seen in the previous chapter that the opium problem in the British Empire was not completely solved by the time of the official end of the League of Nations. The prospect of the CND, as well as the pressure from the United States,68 made a new policy in Burma more urgently necessary. The first meeting of the CND was initially planned to be held in late July 1946. The US State Department was anxious to receive Britain’s reply to the request of reconsideration which it had sent on 8 August of the previous year. On 23 May 1946, it inquired about the progress of reconsideration. Then on 4 June, it asked Britain whether it was allowed to publish six related documents which the two countries already exchanged.69 Britain had to act quickly. Dorman-Smith was recalled because of ill health. He sailed for London on 14 June. By the time he reached London on 13 July, he had already been removed from the governorship, and nobody came to see him arrive. Dorman-Smith, a Conservative politician appointed by Neville Chamberlain, was deeply at odds with the post-war Labour government. Meanwhile in Burma, there was only the acting governor, Sir Henry J. Knight, until Sir Hubert Rance took up his position at the end of August.70

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Although the first session of the CND was deferred until October, the opium question in Burma was still one of urgency, and negotiations in Britain continued to prepare instructions to be sent to the government of Burma.71 On 12 July, the following letter was sent from Pethick-Lawrence, the secretary of state, to Knight. I have authorised the despatch to you by this bag of a long official air mail message about opium. … This is a most difficult and controversial matter, and I would greatly appreciate your judgement and your personal views on its handling. I would also be grateful for your help in securing an early reply. The Narcotics Commission of the Economic and Social Council of UNO is due to begin its work in the near future, and it is perhaps too much to hope that we shall not find ourselves under fire there. … until we have reached agreement with you we cannot send a firm answer to the American note of last August, which has now been outstanding for nearly a year.72

On the following day, when Dorman-Smith arrived in London, an express letter concerning opium was sent from Pethick-Lawrence to the governor. It started to say that the whole position in regard to opium in Burma had been reviewed in connection with the reply to be given to the US note of August 1945 and the question of surplus opium in Shan and Wa States. … it is essential to give an adequate reply to the U.S. note. This is the more important as reply is likely to be given widest publicity by America. We are committed to complete, though progressive, suppression, and we shall not be able to hold our ground in the Narcotics Commission until we can show convincingly that we are taking active steps to honour our undertakings.73

The secretary of state for Burma regarded it as essential to include in the reply to the United States a positive statement that opium smoking had been made illegal and the possession of smoking apparatus made an offence. It was afraid that unless Britain and Burma legislated in those terms of their own free will, they would be forced to do so by pressure from outside and so would lose the credit of spontaneous action.74 As regards opium eating, the secretary of state thought it necessary to continue exceptions in respect of quasi medicinal, religious and ceremonial uses. He proposed to amend the Burmese opium policy to

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avoid any commitment as regards the establishment of government shops. With American observers such as the consul-general on the spot, it was considered to be important to avoid anything that, if reported, could be misconstrued in the United States.75 In addition, it was made clear that under no circumstances Britain and Burma could contemplate establishing a factory to make smoking paste in Burma. If such an action were to attract attention internationally, they could not hope to hold their position. As for the disposal of surplus opium produced in Shan and Wa States, the surplus should be bought by the government for use against legitimate demands in those areas or in other parts of Burma where the opium would be acceptable. Such a purchase could only be justified internationally if accompanied by a really active policy. The secretary of state instructed to send him back as early as possible a detailed report of steps which the government of Burma were actually taking.76 The Burma Office thus ordered the government of Burma to change its opium policy. This was the decision made in order to preserve Britain’s authority in international society. Although weakened through the war, Britain was still able to lead the world with the United States. Such a country could no longer allow opium smoking nor opium eating even in the peripheral regions of its empire. My point here is that the experience of the League of Nations was crucial. It should be noted that the CND had not started its operation yet. Britain was making decisions based on its experience at the pre-war OAC, the PCOB and the DSB. On 31 July 1946, the United Nations Secretariat sent out a draft protocol amending the agreements, conventions and protocols on narcotic drugs concluded in 1912, 1925, 1931 and 1936.77 The protocol was to transfer functions and powers exercised by the League of Nations under the international agreements dealing with narcotic drugs to the United Nations. On 6 August, Trygve Lie notified Lester that necessary measures required to the above-mentioned transfer would be proposed to the ECOSOC and the Assembly at their next sessions; that as from 1 September, provisional arrangements to ensure the continuance of the works of the PCOB and the DSB would be made and the two organizations would be combined; and that he would invite the members of the CND to meet in New York in November.78 The reply from Burma was prepared by 26 August and sent to the Burma Office two days later.79 It read as follows. First, the legislation would be enacted to make the following illegal: smoking of opium and

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possession of implements for the purpose, and possession and eating of opium except religious, ceremonial, quasi-medical and scientific purposes. Steps would be taken to establish anti-opium clinics attached to hospitals and the issues of opium would be controlled through them, although in the hills it might be necessary to change the arrangement owing to the paucity of hospitals. Preventive staffs would be strengthened, and medical facilities extended. Poppy cultivation in trans-Salween areas would be controlled on the basis of present production pending introduction of alternative crops, and the raw product would be purchased by the government.80 Then, the reply touched upon China: although the Chinese were endeavouring to follow the same course, ‘desire very considerably out[ran] performance on their part’. It stated that it would certainly lay Britain and Burma open to a charge of bad faith if they assured the United States that anything considerable could be done in so short a period as twelve months.81 Finally, the reply emphasized that the cost of all the measures which should be taken plus loss of opium revenue would add up to a formidable sum. The expenditure would be a heavy burden on their depleted resources and the Americans should be warned that the allotment of funds for the scheme would have to compete for priority with other schemes. Complete suppression of opium consumption in Burma was bound to take several years.82 Receiving the above reply from the government of Burma, the Burma Office considered that it finally had sufficient material for its reply to the United States. The draft reply was sent to the India Office, the Treasury, the Colonial Office and the Home Office. No opposition was raised, and as it was much more advanced than the previous plan, there was no need to hold an inter-departmental committee. The Foreign Office instructed Lord Inverchapel, the ambassador in Washington, to communicate the reply to the US State Department. Britain expected the material would doubtless be discussed at the first meeting of the CND.83 The third session of the ECOSOC was held from 11 September 1946 at Lake Success, New York. As Mudaliar was unable to be present at this session, Andrija Stampar of Yugoslavia, now the first vice-president of the ECOSOC, acted as president. Concerning the drug question, the ECOSOC appointed a drafting committee consisting of the representatives of five permanent members of the Security Council together with those of Czechoslovakia, and Peru. The drafting committee examined the changes required in the relevant international conventions in

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order to give effect to the decision of the General Assembly that the United Nations should assume the functions exercised by the League of Nations in regard to the international control of narcotic drugs. Harris, the chairman, presented to the Council a draft protocol on 26 September. The ECOSOC approved the draft protocol with annex on 3 October 1946, and forwarded it to the General Assembly.84 The British were proud that the protocol and annex were almost wholly the work of the UK delegation.85 On 14 November, Britain finally informed the United States that it had no objection to publish documents exchanged between the two countries, and on the following day, it could communicate the new policy on opium in Burma.86 All issues were planned to be discussed at the second part of the first session of the UN General Assembly. At the 49th plenary meeting held on 19 November 1946, the draft resolution together with a draft protocol and annex were duly approved. Article 7 of the protocol provided that the amendments should come into force when a majority of the parties to each treaty became parties to the protocol. Noel-Baker, touching upon the contribution of the solicitor-general of Australia, who examined the legal aspect of the protocol, and the achievement of the first part of the General Assembly held in London, declared that he had full power from the British government to sign the protocol, and intended to do so before the end of the Assembly. He also urged other participating countries to do so.87 The first CND was held from 27 November to 13 December 1946 at Lake Success. Colonel Clem H. L. Sharman of Canada, who had represented Canada at the League’s OAC since 1934, was the chairman, Dr S. Tubiasz of Poland was the vice-chairman, and Szeming Sze was the rapporteur.88 The members of the Commission were present on 11 December 1946 at the ceremony when representatives of 36 countries signed the protocol. At the end of December, the US secretary of state expressed satisfaction with the decision of the government of Burma. The Department of State was going to publish the texts of the exchanged communications in the Department’s bulletin and later transmit them to the secretary-general for distribution to the member of the CND.89

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The Experience of the League of Nations This chapter has shown how the United Nations was established on the experience of the League of Nations. First, in the declining days of the League, the Bruce Report proposed that a new committee should be set up to deal with social and economic questions independently. This led to the establishment of the ECOSOC. Secondly, the CND, one of the commissions under the ECOSOC, was established from the drug control organizations of the League. The Republic of China played a remarkable role in the process. This chapter has also shown that the experience of the League made Britain change the opium policies of Burma. Britain was still able to lead the world with the United States. Therefore, it could no longer allow opium eating even in the peripheral regions of its empire. My point is to say that the experience of the League was significant again. The CND had not started its operations. The experience of the League made Britain expect publicity and respond to it in advance. Britain managed to make the government of Burma introduce new opium policies in time. Not much time, however, was left for the British in Burma. Burma was moving rapidly towards independence. Some minority peoples including the Karens who had been Christian since the nineteenth century asserted separation and their autonomy. They were more pro-British than the Burmese Buddhists, and the British had armed them during the war against the Japanese. At the negotiation in London from December 1946 to January 1947, frontier hill areas were decided to be included in the new Burma.90 The age of empire was approaching its end. Following India and Pakistan, which achieved independence on 15 August 1947, Burma became independent on 4 January 1948.

Notes 1. Walters, A History of the League of Nations, pp. 758–759. 2. Nuffield College, Oxford, Loveday papers, 13/14, a copy of the final version of the Secretary General’s note for the new Bruce Committee. 3. The development which led to this committee and the materials prepared for it by Loveday are detailed in Clavin, Securing the World Economy, pp. 233–247. 4. League of Nations, The Development of International Co-operation in Economic and Social Affairs, Report of the Special Committee (Geneva, August 1939, Official No. A.23.1939), pp. 5–6.

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5. Ibid., p. 7. 6. Ibid., pp. 12, 13, 15. 7. Martin D. Dubin, ‘Toward the Bruce Report: The Economic and Social Programs of the League of Nations in the Avenol Era’, in The League of Nations in Retrospect: Proceedings of a Symposium (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1983), p. 48. 8. League of Nations, The Development of International Co-operation in Economic and Social Affairs, pp. 19–22. 9. Nuffield College, Oxford, Loveday papers, 13/17, letter from Loveday to Bruce, 31 October 1939. 10. Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, Vol. 353, column 1179–1180; Vol. 355, column 29 cited in Dubin, ‘Toward the Bruce Report’, p. 60. 11. TNA, FO371/24041, W18507/895/98, 11 December 1939, Letter from Goodman to Randall; 11 December 1939, Letter from H. E. Brooks, Treasury, to H. Channon, FO. 12. TNA, FO371/24041, W18507/895/98, 11 December 1939, from Harris to Channon. 13. Ibid., 12 December 1939, from F. W. Leggett, Ministry of Labour, to R. E. Barclay, FO. 14. The Republic of China abstained when the decision was made at the Council. 15. U.K. Parliamentary Papers, Miscellaneous No. 1 (1940), League of Nations, Twentieth Assembly, pp. 4–11, 17–18. 16. TNA, FO371/24041, W18989/895/98, 13 December 1939, LN, A. 47. 1939; U.K. Parliamentary Papers, Miscellaneous No. 1 (1940), League of Nations, Twentieth Assembly, pp. 12–13. 17. Barros, Betrayal from Within, pp. 146, 194–197. 18. Balinska, For the Good of Humanity, pp. 150–154; Hoo, Painting the Shadows, p. 68. 19. TNA, FO371/35795, F4067/182/10, 7 August 1943, from Board of Trade, copy of a letter of E. L. Hall-Patch, Board of Trade, to Sir David Waley, British Embassy, Washington (dated 31 July 1943). 20. TNA, FO370/804, L4085/4085/494, 6 August 1943, from Noel-Baker to Law, FO. 21. Yasuda, Kokusai seiji, pp. 94, 102; Amrith, Decolonizing International Health, pp. 65–69. 22. Ludwik Rajchman, ‘Why Not? A United Nations Health Service’, Free World, September 1943, p. 216. 23. Ibid., pp. 217, 218. 24. Rajchman, ‘Why Not?’, p. 217, and TNA, FO370/804, L4085/4085/494, p. 1. 25. TNA, FO370/804, L4085/4085/494, pp. 4, 10. 26. Ibid., p. 9.

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27. TNA, FO370/804, L5483/4085/494, 26 October 1943, from Goodman to Harrower; Amrith, Decolonizing International Health, p. 68. 28. The literature on UNRRA is expanding. See for example, Reinisch, ‘Internationalism in Relief: The Birth (and Death) of UNRRA’; Laure Humbert, ‘The French in Exile and Post-War International Relief, c. 1941–1945’, The Historical Journal, 61/4, 2018, pp. 1041–1064. 29. Gautier also had the experience of acting as temporary director of the Eastern Bureau of the LNHO. See Manderson, ‘Wireless wars’, p. 118. 30. Yasuda, Kokusai seiji, pp. 87–88, 90, 97, 104. 31. Yearbook, Part 1: The United Nations, Section 1: Origin and Evolution, Chapter E: The Dumbarton Oaks Conversations, p. 1. 32. Goodman, International Health Organisation, pp. 152–156, 189; Balinska, For the Good of Humanity, p. 202; and Yasuda, Kokusai seiji, p. 143. 33. Robert C. Hilderbrand, Dumbarton Oaks: The Origins of the United Nations and the Search for Postwar Security (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1990), pp. 5–6, 13. 34. Ibid., pp. 15–16. 35. Ibid., pp. 41, 58–60; E. J. Hughes, ‘Winston Churchill and the Formation of the United Nations Organization’, Journal of Contemporary History, 9/4, 1974, p. 186. 36. Dilks, The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, p. 618, 12 April 1944; p. 628, 12 May 1944. The term Cadogan used is ‘World Organization’. 37. Hilderbrand, Dumbarton Oaks, pp. 60–62. 38. P. A. Reynolds and E. J. Hughes, The Historian as Diplomat: Charles Kingsley Webster and the United Nations 1939–1946 (London: Martin Robertson, 1976), p. 22. 39. Ibid., p. 38. 40. Clavin, Securing the World Economy, pp. 327–328; Hilderbrand, Dumbarton Oaks, p. 89. 41. Hilderbrand, Dumbarton Oaks, pp. 86–88; Steiner, ‘Introductory essay’, The League of Nations in Retrospect, p. 9. 42. Hetherington, ‘Victims of the Social Temperament’, p. 8. 43. Hilderbrand, Dumbarton Oaks, pp. 88–91; Reynolds and Hughes, The Historian as Diplomat, pp. 45, 47; and Roberts, ‘A League of Their Own’, pp. 314, 318. 44. Hilderbrand, Dumbarton Oaks, pp. 229, 231, 237–240. On Nationalist China’s apparent fascination with the internationalist social agenda as a performance, see Ma, ‘“The Common Aim of the Allied Powers”’. 45. Yearbook, Part 1: The United Nations, Section 1: Origin and Evolution, Chapter E: The Dumbarton Oaks Conversations, pp. 8–9. 46. Ibid., pp. 13, 28. 47. Ibid., p. 29; Yasuda, Kokusai seiji, pp. 120–121.

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48. Documents of the United Nations Conference on International Organization, San Francisco, 1945 (United Nations Information Organizations, 1945), Vol. X, Doc. 684; Doc. 780; WD 40; and Yasuda, Kokusai seiji, pp. 120–121. 49. Yearbook, pp. 17–18. 50. Stephen C. Schlesinger, Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2003), pp. 239–240, 250–251, 254. See also, World Citizens Association, The World’s Destiny and the United States: A Conference of the World Citizens Association (Chicago, IL: World Citizens Association, 1941), pp. 53–54. 51. Yearbook, Part 1, pp. 33–34; Schlesinger, Act of Creation, p. 255. 52. Documents on British Policy Overseas, Series I, Vol. VII, Appendix I (hereafter, DBPO), p. 340. 53. Reynolds and Hughes, The Historian as Diplomat, Chapter 3, pp. 74, 99. 54. Lord Gladwyn, The Memoirs of Lord Gladwyn (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1972), pp. 163, 173–174; Reynolds and Hughes, The Historian as Diplomat, pp. 75–76. 55. Yearbook, part I, p. 36. 56. LNA, R5031, 12/42326/41702, 20 October 1945, Extract from an article concerning the work of the Executive Committee of the UNO, NY Times. 57. DBPO, pp. 340–341. 58. TNA, FO371/50892, U9086/5202/70, 14 November 1945, FO Minute. 59. TNA, CO323/1885/6, 15 October 1945, letter from Noel-Baker to J. Chuter Ede, Home Secretary; letter from Chuter Ede to Noel-Baker, 31 October 1945. Several correspondences between Chuter Ede and NoelBaker are kept in this file. McAllister, Drug Diplomacy, p. 154. 60. Reynolds and Hughes, The Historian as Diplomat, p. 72. 61. TNA, FO371/50892, U9011/5202/70, 9 November 1945, FO minute, Minutes of meeting held in the FO. 62. TNA, CO323/1885/6, 21 November 1945, Minutes of the 39th meeting. 63. TNA, FO371/50895, U9498/5202/70, Preparatory Commission, Supplement 3 PC/ES/1; Yearbook, part I, pp. 38, 42. 64. United Nations, Official Record of the First Part of the First Session of the General Assembly, Third Committee, record of the second meeting. 65. TNA, HO45/20414, 18 January 1946, Minutes of the 40th meeting. 66. UN, Official Record, Plenary Meetings of the General Assembly, Verbatim Record, 10 January–14 February 1946, Document A/17, pp. 300–303. 67. Yearbook, pp. 471, 532, 536, 537. 68. BL, IOR/M/4/2512, 5 July 1946, from Sir Gilbert Laithwaite, BO, to Chatterjee, unnumbered.

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69. TNA, FO371/59608, UN168/52/87, 4 June 1946, from Inverchapel, Washington. The six documents are kept in the following file: CO323/1906/4, 27 August 1946, FO to Major William H. Coles, Chief Inspector of Drug Branch, HO; FO371/59608, UN231/52/87, 13 June 1946, Goodwin minute. 70. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Wars, pp. 73, 236; R. H. Taylor, ‘Sir Reginald Hugh Dorman-Smith,’ ODNB. 71. TNA, FO371/59608, UN655/52/87, 27 June 1946, from Trygve Lie to Bevin; BL, IOR/M/4/2512, 5 July 1946, from Gilbert Laithwaite to Chatterjee. 72. BL, IOR/M/4/2512, 12 July 1946, letter from Pethick-Lawrence to Governor of Burma. 73. BL, IOR/M/4/2512, B/F&R1998/46, 13 July 1946, express letter from Secretary of State to Governor of Burma signed by A. F. Morley (It is recorded that ‘The issue of the above has been duly authorized’). The express letter continues to read, ‘And if, as you now report (I would welcome fuller information on this) supplies even for addicts were cut off during Japanese occupation, it will on the one hand be impossible to justify again making them available save for semi medicinal or ceremonial purpose, and it should on the other be the less difficult to enforce a really austere policy’. In the pre-war days, raw opium had been imported from India into Burma, but that route of supply was severed. Japan, which was engaged in the full-scale war against almost the entire world, lost the majority of its transport ships towards the end of the Second World War. In addition, opium was necessary for producing morphine which was indispensable to treat wounded soldiers. Even the US Federal Commissioner Anslinger had expected the shortage of opium during the war. (See John C. McWilliams, The Protectors: Harry J. Anslinger and the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 1930–1962 [Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1990], pp. 95–96. See also, BL, IOR/L/E/9/734, 10 January 1940, letter from F. Thornton, HO, to W. D. Tomkins, IO; 20 April 1944, letter from W. W. Nind, IO, to Juliet Henley, office of the war cabinet.) J. M. Jennings writes, ‘if it had not been for the end of the war, Japan, which was occupying one of the world’s major opium-producing regions, would soon have suffered a critical opium shortage’. (Jennings, The Opium Empire, p. 103.) It is highly likely that Japan could not bring raw opium, for example, from China. Nor could it supply smoking paste to consumers in the short period of its occupation of Burma. 74. BL, IOR/M/4/2512, B/F&R1998/46, 13 July 1946, express letter. 75. Ibid. 76. Ibid.; and Wright, Opium and Empire in Southeast Asia, pp. 148–149. 77. The object of the Convention of 1936 for the Suppression of the Illicit Traffic in Dangerous Drugs is to strengthen the measures intended to

10

78.

79.

80.

81. 82. 83. 84.

85. 86.

87.

88. 89.

90.

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penalize offences, and to combat the illicit traffic in the drugs and substances covered by the conventions of 1912, 1925 and 1931. TNA, FO371/59610, UN2762/52/87, 31 July 1946, from UN, no. E/NAR/1; FO371/59609, UN2075/52/87, 19 August 1946, Harris to Gore-Booth, enclosure (6 August 1946, Trygve Lie to Lester); Yearbook, p. 538. BL, IOR/M/4/2512, Burma F&R 2581/1946, 28 August 1946, from Governor of Burma to Pethick-Lawrence. It also reads that ‘[i]n view of urgency it takes form of express letter over signature of Defence Secretary’. BL, IOR/M/4/2512, Burma F&R 2654/46, 26 August 1946, Express letter from Governor of Burma to Pethick-Lawrence signed by W. R. Bickford, Secretary to the government of Burma, Defence & External Affairs Department. Ibid. Ibid.; and Wright, Opium and Empire in Southeast Asia, p. 149. Wright mainly puts emphasis on the accountability to the United States. TNA, FO371/59609, UN2446/52/87, 27 September 1946, from Morley to Berkeley; 18 October 1946, Minute by Goodwin. Yearbook, p. 469; UN, Resolutions Adopted by the Economic and Social Council during Its Third Session, pp. 13–15; TNA, FO371/59610, UN2828/52/87, UN document E/168 of 24 September 1946. TNA, FO371/59610, UN2828/52/87, 5 October 1946, FO Minute; UN, Resolutions during its Third Session, pp. 16–24. TNA, FO371/59612, UN3808/52/87, 15 November 1946, from the representative in Washington; UN3810/52/87, 14 November 1946, from the representative in Washington. UN, Official Record of the Second Part of the First Session of the General Assembly, Plenary Meetings, Verbatim Record, 23 October–16 December 1946, pp. 986–991. Yearbook, p. 532; BL, IOR/M/4/2528, UN document E/251 of 27 January 1947. TNA, FO371/67641, UN239/239/87, 27 December 1946, Copy of State Department note No. 845C. 114 Narcotics/11-1246 to Washington Embassy. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Wars, pp. 23–24, 73–74, 228, 304–310.

CHAPTER 11

Conclusion

Achievements and Continuities This book has examined the League of Nations’ social and other technical works in East Asia, and their impact on international relations in the region. When the League was established, technical issues were considered to be only supplementary and non-political. The participants in the League’s Council did not pay sufficient attention to those issues compared with the political issues. The League, however, gradually developed economic, social and other technical works, and came to be involved in East Asia. This book has shown that the League achieved quite a lot in the region. Furthermore, the problems existing in the region were often related to empires. Therefore, the League’s works came to challenge the remaining imperial order, although to do so was by no means the intention of the founding fathers of the League. The OAC was one of the most significant examples of such works of the League of Nations. It assumed the regulatory work started before the First World War. It asked countries to submit information on opium, not only in their home countries but also in their colonies. Based on the information, the League held open meetings and conferences. It also asked the United States, a non-member of the League, to attend them, and the latter continued to participate in the OAC. Forthright questions were asked. The information on colonies and its publicity were often embarrassing to those who represented the empires. Even the threat of publicity © The Author(s) 2020 H. Goto-Shibata, The League of Nations and the East Asian Imperial Order, 1920–1946, New Directions in East Asian History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4968-7_11

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and the possibility of public criticism were sometimes sufficient to make the empires introduce reforms in their territories. The OAC functioned as a forum just like the Permanent Mandate Commission examined by Pedersen. As a result of the reforms, revenues decreased, while expenditure on the welfare of the subjects increased. The empires in the East were no longer as profitable as before. The League’s achievements concerning the control of opium were considerable, even if imperfect. After the Second World War, the problem would be centred not on opium any longer, but on other narcotics. The term ‘opium’ was dropped from the name of the new organization, the Commission on Narcotic Drugs. Neither Britain nor the Republic of China, the two countries which had been involved in the opium question and which played central roles in establishing the new organization, had any intention of keeping the term. The plight of the Russian women refugees was also dealt with in this book. Many of them were in coastal cities of China where the powers still had large interests. The TWC functioned as another forum. In this case, however, publicity was insufficient. No country was embarrassed nor felt obliged to take initiatives in helping the Russian women refugees. The only role the League intended to play in the end was to orchestrate the works of various non-governmental organizations. Still, providing such a forum itself was a significant first step towards the future. The TWC contributed to raising people’s awareness of the problem. In addition, it is remarkable that relatively many female experts participated in the work. It should also be noted that the Americans were not irrelevant to the work of the TWC. The necessary fund to make surveys were provided by the American NGOs. We have also examined the technical co-operation between the League of Nations and China from beginning to end. In this case, the role of a company of actors was significant. They had to find ways to overcome the financial agreements made by the powers. Since the previous studies on the subject have already valued the co-operation highly as a pioneering effort in establishing international aid for developing countries, this book has considered different aspects. First, it has noted that technical and supposedly non-political cooperation turned out to be highly political. Japan in the inter-war period could not fully integrate itself into international society. It did not understand the value of international co-operation, so that it came to be strongly opposed to it. On the other hand, the way some of the League

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actors carried out the technical co-operation with China cannot be considered as tactful. Politicization started even before the Manchurian Incident which made the situation in East Asia deteriorate drastically. In the declining days of the League of Nations, the Bruce Report recommended a new committee be set up in the League to deal with social and economic issues independently. The recommendation was necessary and appropriate also from the viewpoint of this book’s analysis, because it is hoped that technical, or if we use a more present-day term ‘functional’ co-operation by international organizations would lead to peace and better international relations. Based on the ideas developed in the Bruce Report, the ECOSOC was established as an independent organ within the United Nations. The ECOSOC was clearly founded on the experience of the League of Nations. Secondly, this book has pointed out that the co-operation was sometimes regarded as being like foreign intervention, despite the fact that the League experts tried to assist China. Some Westernized Chinese were extremely keen on the co-operation. They were included in international networks, had good relations with their Western colleagues and understood the value of international co-operation albeit for their own nationalistic purposes. On the other hand, there were other Chinese who worried that the co-operation might infringe upon China’s sovereignty. The latter did not necessarily want to be civilized by foreign tutelage, and they were actually the majority. The path to distinguish international cooperation from imperial intervention does not seem to have been found by the demise of the League of Nations.1 A number of important continuities do exist between the inter-war and the post-1945 periods. If we look at people here, Andrija Stampar was once a member of the League of Nations Health Committee and was involved in the technical co-operation with China. He became the first vice-president of the ECOSOC. Rajchman could not participate in the founding of the WHO, but he was the main planner of the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF). It was a programme established in autumn 1946 to provide humanitarian assistance to children in Europe and China. It would be financed through voluntary contributions from member countries.2 Furthermore, NoelBaker, Delevingne and Harris for Britain, and Wellington Koo, Victor Hoo for China were all active both at the time of the League and when establishing the United Nations. In Britain, more high-ranking persons such as Eden and Cadogan knew the League affairs thoroughly. Eden

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was, first, the under-secretary of state for foreign affairs, and then, the minister without portfolio in charge of the League of Nations Affairs. Cadogan had spent ten years as the Foreign Office’s adviser on the League affairs.3 It is clear that the United Nations Organization was founded on the experience of the League of Nations.

Discontinuities and a New Departure Why were the League’s works in East Asia so completely forgotten? The greatest reason was that the League, which could not maintain peace, was considered a failed organization. In addition, there were discontinuities between the inter-war and the post-war period. The United States was not a member state of the League of Nations, although it surely played important roles concerning social and humanitarian questions at the League. The publicity of the opium question was enhanced by the Americans. The necessary financial resources for the commissions of enquiry of the TWC were provided by the American NGOs. Nevertheless, the United States did not consider that the new world organization would be the successor of the League. Neither did the Soviet Union, which was expelled from the League in December 1939 because of its aggression on Finland. It was the only country to be expelled from the League. Neither of the two new superpowers had any incentive to remember the continuity from the League of Nations to the United Nations.4 The Republic of China considered the League of Nations more highly than the United States and the Soviet Union did.5 It was a member of the League all through the organization’s life, and its international status rose through participating in the League. When the United Nations was founded, the diplomats of the Republic of China played a leading and significant part in the question of health, and especially, in establishing the CND. This was partly because they, even more than the other Great Powers, considered social questions to be important. Their proposals to the Dumbarton Oaks conference were considered to have been too much on social and economic issues. On the other hand, it was the intention and performance of the Chinese to show how they were keeping with the internationalist spirit of the age.6 In addition, these were the fields in which the other powers allowed the Chinese to play some role. Although social and other technical questions were not merely supplementary nor secondary, politicians continued to think other issues such as security more significant. At Dumbarton Oaks, the Chinese had to drop their

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proposals which both the British and Americans considered unnecessary or dangerous. The Cold War in East Asia drastically changed the situation. Once Japan surrendered on 15 August 1945, the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists restarted in China. Both sides utilized the weapons requisitioned from the Japanese. Despite strong support from the United States to the Nationalists, it was the Communists who were the final victor. The establishment of the People’s Republic of China was declared on 1 October 1949, while the Republic of China retreated to Taiwan. The Republic of China remained in the United Nations until the People’s Republic was allowed to join in 1972, but its power and authority inevitably declined. The People’s Republic of China did not have any incentive to remember and praise the achievements of the Republic of China in the League of Nations and in the process of establishing the ECOSOC and the CND. The Second World War weakened Britain and the British Empire further. Britain lost the predominant interests and influence it had in East Asia since the mid-nineteenth century. It could no longer do without Anglo-American relations in order to continue leading the world. Defeated Japan lost all the territories it acquired after the Meiji restoration. It returned to being a country of small islands in the middle of the ocean. Japan’s involvement in opium suddenly ended with its empire. The record of the 22nd OAC was submitted to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, and many Japanese were shocked to know Japan’s involvement in the problem of opium and other narcotic drugs on the continent. In addition, some returned Japanese ex-soldiers themselves suffered from drug addiction. Japan, however, did not have to continue grappling with the question of opium much after the Second World War. This sudden end of its empire made it easy for Japan to forget its imperial past. Although it was probably not intentional for Japan to forget the works of the League of Nations, it was convenient for it that other countries including the United States ignored the continuities between the League and the United Nations. Japan did not have to reflect on the continuity of the international society from which it once walked out. In the Japanese language, the United Nations during the Second World War is translated as ‘reng¯ o koku’, while the United Nations Organization is ‘kokusai reng¯ o ’. The link between the two is fairly successfully hidden.

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On 18 December 1956, Japan was accepted as the 80th member of the United Nations. More than 20 years had passed since Japan left the League’s Assembly and the Council. Continuity in Japan’s case was not strong. After the San Francisco Peace Treaty was signed in 1951, Renzo Sawada was stationed in New York to prepare for Japan’s joining the United Nations. Renzo was the younger brother of Setsuzo Sawada, who succeeded Naotake Sato as the head of the Japanese Bureau for the League of Nations Affairs in 1930. Renzo also worked at the embassy in Paris when Sato was the ambassador to France. It was, however, only after Renzo left the position that Japan could join the United Nations.7 Sato himself participated in the UN General Assembly in December 1956.8 It was, however, not him but the Foreign Minister Shigemitsu who gave the acceptance speech. Shigemitsu was by no means an internationalist in the 1930s. He was even convicted at the International Military Tribunal and was sentenced to seven years of imprisonment. He was paroled only in 1950. In 1956, Japan did not have to consider the role which the Republic of China played when the United Nations Organization was established. As mentioned above, the Republic of China was not influential any longer, while the Cold War made the People’s Republic of China to be looked upon as the enemy by the United States. Anslinger, who in the 1940s accused Japan of spreading opium addiction, had begun to insist ‘other aggressor nations of trying to subdue the United States by drug addiction’.9 One of his new targets was the People’s Republic of China. On the occasion of Japan’s joining the UN, Sato met Emery Kelen, who described them as ‘survivors of a vanished world’. Kelen and his colleague, Alois Derso, were known for their drawings of the League of Nations. Sato had asked them to draw the entire Japanese delegation at Lausanne in 1923. They had also drawn the Japanese delegation to the Disarmament Conference. Kelen asked whether Sato still had their drawing on the Council at the time of the Shanghai Incident of 1932. It was not a flattering drawing. Sato had represented Japan then, and had been depicted ‘in a belligerent posture’. His hand was ‘the focus of the drawing: was it just the pointing hand of argument, or was it a gun?’ At that time, Kelen and Derso ‘liked him personally, and thought that Fate had dealt him a sorry role, as it had to [them], his critics’. Still, Sato had bought a copy. During the war, his house in Tokyo was burnt down in an air raid. ‘[E]verything [he] owned perished’. With the help of somebody, however, Sato managed to use the drawing as an illustration in his memoir published seven years later.10

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The more definitely bright side of the picture is that ordinary Japanese began experiencing international co-operation first-hand after the Second World War. They took its value to heart. This interaction of ordinary Japanese with the international society was for the first time in history; those who had come into contact with the League of Nations were only the elite. After surrendering unconditionally on 15 August 1945, Japan was occupied by the United Nations for seven years. The Commonwealth troops were among them, and they were given an area that included Hiroshima. Bayly and Harper write, ‘[s]ome men spat at the wharfside on disembarking, but most were saddened by the poverty and wrack of war’.11 Whom they encountered were ordinary people, including women and children, who could not hide their impoverished existence. Postwar Japan experienced economic and social assistance.12 The start of the Cold War was the main reason, but there was also a hint of humanitarian relief. The former US President Herbert Hoover and Maurice Pate, the first executive director of the UNICEF, suggested in 1949 that the organization should expand its horizon to rescue Japanese children as well. Pate had accepted the directorship on condition that the UNICEF would help all necessary children. He was a Quaker married to a Pole.13 Hoover had himself observed the food situation in Japan three years earlier. The ordinary common Japanese experienced social welfare, the care of the children and the protection of the family, which international co-operation provided them with. These were obviously much better for them than being forced to fight to the death in remote malarial places which had been unknown to them. On a more intellectual level, the movement to support the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) started in Japan even before the country was accepted into the United Nations Organization. Culture seemed the only possible platform for Japan to be accepted into international society again. Although not perfectly voluntary, the UNESCO Cooperation Movement had much wider support and popularity than the pre-war League of Nations Association in Japan.14 The UNESCO maintained its popularity in Japan well into the 1970s. There were plenty of opportunities for children to come across the slogan of the organization, ‘building peace in the minds of men and women’. This is obviously a completely new development in the post-Second World War period.

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Notes 1. On UN’s first mission to Haiti and Alva Myrdal’s awareness of the problems, see Amrith and Sluga, ‘New Histories of the United Nations’, pp. 261–265. The Haitian government approached the UN’s secretarygeneral with a request based on a 1947 resolution of the Economic and Social Council (ibid., note 29). 2. Yasuda, Kokusai seiji, pp. 167–170. 3. Reynolds and Hughes, The Historian as Diplomat, pp. 86, 92. 4. Pedersen, The Guardians, p. 396; Roberts, ‘A League of Their Own’, p. 310. 5. Hilderbrand, Dumbarton Oaks, p. 233. 6. See Ma, ‘“The Common Aim of the Allied Powers”’. 7. Renzo’s wife, Miki Sawada, was a grand-daughter of Yataro Iwasaki, the founder of the Mitsubishi conglomerate. Both Renzo and Miki were Catholic. So was Renzo’s brother, Setsuzo. Miki founded the Elizabeth Saunders Home in 1947 to help mixed-race children. Saunders was a British whose bequest was the first to be given to the home. 8. Sat¯ o, Kaiko, p. 535. 9. McWilliams, The Protectors, p. 98; Walker, Opium and Foreign Policy, pp. 168, 172, 197, 220. 10. Emery Kelen, Peace in Their Time: Men Who Led Us in and out of War, 1914–1945 (London: Victor Gollancz, 1964), pp. 120, 214–216; Sat¯o, Kaiko, p. 283. 11. Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Wars, pp. 139–140. 12. See for example, John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York, London: W. W. Norton, 1999); Ian Nish, The Japanese in War & Peace, 1942–48: Selected Documents from a Translator’s In-tray (Kent: Global Oriental, 2011), pp. 1–8. 13. Balinska, For the Good of Humanity, pp. 204–207. See also Davide Rodogno, Francesca Piana, and Shaloma Gautier, ‘Shaping Poland: Relief and Rehabilitation Programs Undertaken by Foreign Organizations, 1918–1922’, in Rodogno, et al. (eds), Shaping the Transnational Sphere, p. 266. 14. Pan Liang, ‘Senry¯ o ka no Nihon no taigai bunka seisaku to kokusai bunka soshiki [Japanese International Cultural Policy Under the U. S. Occupation and International Organization: The Case of UNESCO Cooperation Movement]’, Kokusai seiji, No. 127, 2001, pp. 185–205; Takashi Saikawa, ‘Returning to the International Community: UNESCO and Postwar Japan’, in Poul Duedahl (ed.), A History of UNESCO: Global Actions and Impacts (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 116–130.

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Index

A Adatci, Mineitciro (Adachi, Mineichiro), 29, 132, 138 Addis, Charles, 85 Admiralty. See Britain, Admiralty Advisory Committee on Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs. See OAC Advisory Committee on Traffic in Women and Children. See TWC Akami, Tomoko, 4, 12, 182, 184, 200 Aloisi, Pompeo, 143, 146 Amau, Eiji, 99, 175, 176 Amau remarks, 99, 136, 140 Amery, Leopold, 212, 214 Amrith, Sunil S., 2, 11, 201, 202, 256 Anderson, Adelaide, 119 Anezaki, Masaharu, 132, 176 Anglo-Chinese War, 25, 44, 45 Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 22, 53 Anslinger, Harry J., 175, 207–210, 246, 254 anti-epidemic work, 167, 169–173, 176, 178, 187

English-speaking unit, 166, 168 French-speaking unit, 166, 171 German-speaking unit, 166 Assembly (of the League of Nations) First Committee of the Assembly, 149 Second Committee of the Assembly, 90 Fourth Committee of the Assembly, 165, 170, 198 Fifth Committee of the Assembly, 50, 65, 69, 120 Atlantic Charter, 229 Australia, 133, 147, 159, 208, 224, 226, 236, 241 Austria and Hungary, 81, 84 Avenol, Joseph, 79, 81, 82, 86, 87, 89, 98, 102, 103, 105, 117, 136, 137, 143, 146–148, 153, 158–163, 166, 169, 170, 173, 174, 176, 177, 179, 180, 182, 184, 206

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020 H. Goto-Shibata, The League of Nations and the East Asian Imperial Order, 1920–1946, New Directions in East Asian History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4968-7

283

284

INDEX

B Baldwin, Stanley, 147 Balfour, Arthur J., 18, 71, 72, 85, 174, 221 Bandung, 121, 122 Bangkok Conference, 66, 67, 191 Bank of England, 84, 85 Beckett, William Eric, 142, 151, 153 Beijing government, 10, 11, 63 Belgium, 22, 28–30, 117, 132, 133, 138, 148, 175 Beneš, Edvard, 142, 144, 153 Bevin, Ernest, 221, 233, 246 Big Four, 230, 233 Borcic, Berislav, 92, 158, 159, 162, 166, 169, 171, 172 Borden, Robert, 49 Borowy, Iris, 32, 38, 39, 41, 42, 71, 91, 104, 106, 152, 182, 200–202 Bourdrez, F.J.M., 158, 159, 162, 168 Bourgeois, Leon, 18, 21 Brazil, 81, 129 Brenan, John F., 117, 124, 178, 200 Britain Admiralty, 141, 142 Burma Office, 217, 239, 240 Colonial Office, 55, 56, 58, 61, 62, 210, 240 Foreign Office, 7, 19, 21, 36, 50, 53, 54, 59, 65, 66, 70, 85, 94–98, 101, 102, 117, 118, 133, 135, 138, 141–144, 161, 167, 173, 174, 178, 189, 190, 194, 195, 208–210, 217, 227, 228, 233, 235, 240, 252 Home Office, 52, 53, 56, 117, 208, 210, 234, 236, 240 India Office, 48, 240 Ministry of Health (Health Ministry), 36, 167, 170, 171, 174, 228, 229 Treasury, 55, 168, 177, 178, 240

British Malaya Opium Committee, 55, 62, 73, 75 Bruce, Stanley Melbourne, 224, 225 Bruce Committee/Bruce Report, 224–226, 230, 231, 242, 251 Bryce, James, 18, 19 Buchanan, George, 36, 41, 42 Bureau of Social Hygiene in New York, 113 Burkman, Thomas, 3, 12 Burma, 9, 63, 69, 187–194, 198, 199, 201, 202, 205, 207, 208, 210, 212–221, 237–242, 246, 247 Burma Office. See Britain, Burma Office Burma Road, 187, 191, 193–197 Butler, Harold, 224 Butler, R.A., 220, 225

C Cadogan, Alexander, 30, 40, 94, 99, 106, 109, 110, 144, 152, 154, 155, 166, 167, 174, 181, 183, 203, 221, 230, 231, 244, 251, 252 Cambon, Roger, 138, 143 Campbell, John, 51, 52, 58, 61, 72, 75, 91, 159, 161, 169 Campbell, William Kenneth Hunter, 158, 196 Carr, Edward Hallett, 3, 4, 12, 22 Cecil, Lord Robert (later, Viscount Cecil of Chelwood), 18–22, 59, 90, 135, 148, 166, 173–175, 237 Central Field Health Station, 83, 90, 92, 163, 190 CER, 115, 119, 125 Chamberlain, Austen, 31 Chamberlain, Neville, 174, 225, 237 Changjiang, 89, 90, 92, 115, 163

INDEX

Chang, Li, 42, 104–106, 171, 179, 181–183, 202 Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi), 82, 230, 234 China consortium, 10, 11, 81 Chinda, Sutemi, 21 Chinese Eastern Railway. See CER Churchill, Winston, 42, 227, 229, 230 Ciuca, Mihai, 92 civilizing mission, 197 Clarke, Henry Ashley, 139, 152, 153, 211, 220 Clavin, Patricia, 1, 11, 104, 108, 219, 242, 244 CND, 9, 10, 223, 233, 235–242, 250, 252, 253 Cold War, 253–255 Collins, John, 136, 152, 219, 220 Commission of Enquiry (into the control of opium smoking in the Far East), 62 Commission of Enquiry into Traffic in Women and Children in the East, 113, 123 Commission on Narcotic Drugs. See CND Committee on Budgetary Economies, 173, 176, 177, 183 Committee on the Composition of the Council, 148 Commonwealth troops, 255 Communists, 11, 79, 208, 253 Conference of Central Authorities in Eastern Countries, 121, 125 consortium. See China consortium Convention for Limiting the Manufacture and Regulating the Distribution of Narcotic Drugs, 136, 152 Council (of the League of Nations), 66, 91

285

Council Committee on Technical Co-operation between the League of Nations and China. See TCC Coursin, Leon, 158, 159, 162 Covenant (of the League of Nations) Article 1, 8, 130, 135, 136 Article 7, 23, 113 Article 11, 91 Article 16, 141, 175 Article 17, 141, 175 Article 23, 4, 6, 23, 35, 48, 49, 112, 224 Craigie, Robert, 178 Cranborne, Lord, 148, 155, 164 Craw, Henry, 210, 217 Crowdy, Rachel, 4, 8, 23, 24, 29, 35, 39, 40, 42, 50, 63, 71, 111–113, 118–120, 122, 123, 125 Curtis, Lionel, 118 D de Azcarate, Pablo, 159 Delevingne, Malcolm, 51, 52, 59, 65, 67, 69, 72, 74, 76, 77, 191, 207–210, 220, 226, 234 Delgorge, J.H., 207 Derso, Alois, 254 de Voogd, N.A.J., 209 Disarmament Conference, 131, 254 Dorman-Smith, Reginald, 212, 217, 218, 237, 238 Drug Supervisory Body. See DSB Drummond, David, 100 Drummond, Eric, 7, 23, 31, 35, 54, 73, 81–83, 86–88, 90–94, 98, 100, 104–107, 143, 153, 154 DSB, 137, 206, 207, 234, 236, 237, 239 Dumbarton Oaks, 230–232, 234, 244, 252 Dutch East Indies, 4, 45, 63, 70, 121, 209, 210

286

INDEX

E Eastern Bureau, 34–36, 41, 121, 132, 176, 190, 244 Economic and Finance Committee, 50 Economic and Financial Section, 20, 81, 83, 224 Economic and Social Council. See ECOSOC ECOSOC, 10, 223, 229, 231, 232, 234–237, 239–242, 251, 253 Eden, Anthony, 140, 141, 143, 144, 146–148, 153–156, 181, 220, 221, 230, 232, 251 Egypt, 121, 175, 208 Ekstrand, Eric Einar, 62, 125 Eliot, Charles, 53, 72 Epidemic Commission, 35, 90, 166, 171, 198, 199, 202 epidemic diseases cholera, 33, 34, 83, 90–92, 163, 167–169, 190, 197 malaria, 44, 45, 91, 92, 169, 188–191, 193, 194, 197, 199 plague, 33, 34, 164, 191, 192, 197 smallpox, 92, 163, 164, 167, 168 typhus, 35, 90–92, 163, 164, 168 epidemic prevention, 166 epidemiological survey, 187, 190, 191, 196, 198, 202, 228 Ethiopia, 148, 149 F Far Eastern Association of Tropical Medicine. See FEATM Far Eastern Bureau. See Eastern Bureau FEATM, 190 Felkin, Elliot, 83, 206, 207, 209 finance corporation, 99, 101 Finland, 226, 252 First World War, 1, 4, 18, 22–25, 43, 44, 47, 48, 111, 112, 187, 249

flood, 89–92, 106, 169, 170 Foreign Policy Association, 208 forum, 8, 43, 69, 79, 112, 122, 190, 250 France, 4–6, 10, 11, 22, 26–30, 32, 50, 57–59, 63, 67, 81, 82, 84, 94, 97, 111, 112, 117, 121, 132, 138, 141, 143, 144, 146, 148, 160, 166, 178, 184, 226, 233, 254 French Indochina, 63, 67, 70, 166, 188, 191, 192 Fujiwara, Tettaro, 53 Fuller, Stuart J., 136, 175 function/functionalist, 3, 18, 20, 206, 235, 237, 239, 241

G Gautier, Raymond, 229, 244 General Assembly (of the United Nations), 232, 234–236, 241, 254 Geneva Opium Conference, 55–57, 59, 61, 63–65, 136, 211 George VI, King, 235 Germany, 6, 10, 22, 29, 31, 47–49, 72, 121, 129, 130, 133, 137, 141, 142, 147, 151, 161, 229, 232 Gilbert, Prentice, 159 Goodman, Neville, 42, 170–173, 177, 178, 182–184, 198, 202, 225, 226, 228, 229, 243, 244 Gore-Booth, Paul Henry, 221, 235, 247 Grandi, Dino, 88 Greece, 72, 81, 90, 91 Greek Refugee Settlement Commission, 91 Grew, Joseph, 100, 109 Gromyko, Andrei, 230, 234

INDEX

Gu, Weijun. See Koo, V.K. Wellington (Gu Weijun) Guandong Leased Territory, 52, 53, 63 Guangzhou, 63, 163, 187 Guo, Taiqi (Quo Tai-chi), 139–142, 144, 146, 148, 159, 160, 162–164, 167 H Haas, Robert, 83, 84, 86, 89, 102, 159, 161 Halifax, Lord, 167, 168, 173–175, 183, 208, 213, 220, 221, 230 Hambro, Carl J., 224, 226 Hankey, Maurice, 20 Hankou, 90, 92, 167, 187 Hanoi, 170, 187, 190 Harada, Ken, 133, 176, 184 Harbin, 115, 118, 120 Harris, Sidney W., 117, 118, 208, 210, 219, 220, 225, 236, 241, 243, 247, 251 Health Committee, 33–36, 50, 137, 158, 165, 170, 171, 181, 251 Health Section (of the League Secretariat), 6, 24, 33–35, 65, 92, 102, 163, 164, 166–168, 175, 191 Hein, Estrid, 112, 117, 122 Henderson, Arthur (1863–1935, foreign secretary), 88 Henderson, Arthur (parliamentary under-secretary of state for India), 236 Hiroshima, 255 Hirota, Koki, 124, 145, 150–155 Hobson, John Atkinson, 18, 19, 37 Holland. See Netherlands Hong Kong, 52, 55, 57, 58, 61–63, 65, 69, 163, 164, 166, 168, 187, 198

287

Hoover, Herbert, 255 Hoo, Victor Chi-Tsai (Hu Shize), 26, 27, 117, 145, 160, 165, 171, 175, 182, 207, 208, 219, 234, 235, 243, 251 Hope-Simpson, John, 91–93, 119, 196 Hornbeck, Stanley, 211 Howe, Robert G., 177, 178, 184 Hu, Shize. See Hoo, Victor Chi-Tsai (Hu Shize) Huang, T.F. (Huang, Zifang), 92 Hudson, Manley, 229 Hull, Cordell, 109, 213, 214 Hurst, Cecil, 21, 71 Hymans, Paul, 22

I import certificate, 51, 57, 60 India government of India, 44, 46, 50–52, 59, 61 Indian Civil Service, 52, 91, 158, 196 Indian National Congress, 59 India Office. See Britain, India Office indirect rule, 9, 189, 192, 216 Information Section (of the League Secretariat), 133, 134, 176, 206 Ingram, E.M.B., 94, 107 Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR), 4, 42, 118, 119 International Bureau for the Suppression of the Traffic in Women and Children, 112 International Committee of Intellectual Cooperation, 132, 134, 176 internationalism, 4, 6, 24, 29–31, 36, 87, 94

288

INDEX

International Labour Organization (ILO), 23, 118, 119, 129, 131, 145, 176, 224, 226, 233 intervention, 6, 9, 82, 83, 188, 192, 196, 197, 199, 251 Inverchapel, Lord, 240, 246 Ishii, Itaro, 64, 76 Ishii, Kikujiro, 27, 32, 40, 41, 82 Italy, 6, 21, 22, 28, 31, 72, 93, 112, 117, 138, 141, 143, 144, 148, 149, 173, 210 Ito, Nobufumi, 98, 113, 134, 150, 151 J Jacklin, Seymour, 161, 177, 219 Japan, 4–11, 17, 21, 22, 24–34, 46–50, 52, 53, 57, 60, 61, 63–65, 67, 69, 80–82, 84–88, 91, 92, 94–100, 103, 111–122, 129–149, 162, 167, 169, 175–179, 189, 195, 197, 205, 212, 230, 234, 250, 253–255 Foreign Ministry, 30, 31, 33, 41, 49, 53, 65, 71, 84, 98, 120, 121, 131, 134, 145, 176 Home Ministry, 34, 53, 65, 114, 121 Japanese Bureau for International Conferences (in Geneva), 117, 134, 176 Japanese Bureau for the League of Nations Affairs (in Paris), 28, 30, 31, 34, 84, 98, 113, 133, 254 Japanese Imperial Army, 131, 199 Jebb, Gladwyn, 221, 234 Jennings, John M., 70, 72, 77, 246 Jiang, Jieshi. See Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) Jiangxi, 89, 158, 162, 164, 167, 181 Johnson, Bascom, 114 Johnson, Nelson T., 96

Jordan, John N., 50, 52 Jordan, William, 165, 175 K Kaku, Sagataro, 56, 57, 76 Kelen, Emery, 254, 256 Kerr, Archibald Clark, 197, 200–202 Keynes, John Maynard, 85 Knight, Henry J., 237, 238 Komarnicki, Tytus, 146, 164 Kong, Xiangxi. See Kung, H.H. (Kong Xiangxi) Koo, V.K. Wellington (Gu Weijun), 21, 26, 98, 101, 149, 151, 160, 169, 175, 231, 234, 235, 251 Korea, 52, 64, 118 Kung, H.H. (Kong Xiangxi), 172, 197 Kunming, 187–191, 193, 195, 197, 202 Kusama, Hiroshi, 34, 35, 114, 176 Kusama, Shiko, 34, 65, 113, 138, 176 L Labour party/Labour government, 56, 88, 165, 218, 233, 237 Lampson, Miles, 72, 76, 82, 94, 96, 104, 105, 107, 108 language, 22, 26–33, 53, 64, 65, 69, 115, 116, 120, 160, 193, 196, 232, 253 Lansing, Robert, 21, 49 Lasnet, Antoine, 166, 169, 171 Laval, Pierre, 147 League men, 28–31, 121, 145 League of Nations, 1–5, 8–10, 18, 20, 21, 26, 27, 31–33, 36, 49, 53, 54, 57, 62–64, 66, 68–70, 79, 80, 82, 83, 85, 87–89, 92–94, 96–98, 100, 101, 113, 114, 118, 129, 132, 134, 135,

INDEX

137, 141, 147, 160, 162, 163, 172, 173, 176, 179, 189, 191, 194–196, 198, 205, 206, 209, 211, 219, 223, 225, 226, 230, 231, 233–235, 237, 239, 241, 242, 249–254 Assembly. See Assembly (of the League of Nations) Council. See Council (of the League of Nations) Covenant. See Covenant (of the League of Nations) Secretariat. See Secretariat (of the League of Nations) League of Nations Association (Japanese), 31, 33, 184, 255 League of Nations Commission, 20–23, 135 League of Nations Health Organization. See LNHO League of Nations Union (British), 33, 144, 174, 175, 233 Leith-Ross, Frederick, 178 Lester, Sean, 91, 163, 171, 181, 198, 203, 206, 207, 219, 237, 239, 247 Lie, Trygve, 237, 239, 246, 247 Lim, Boon Keng (Lin, Wenqing), 166 Lim, Robert K.S. (Lin, Kesheng), 166 Lin, Kesheng. See Lim, Robert K.S. (Lin, Kesheng) Lin, Wenqing. See Lim, Boon Keng (Lin, Wenqing) Lindley, Francis, 95, 99, 100, 107–109, 150 Litvinov, Maxim, 119, 146, 147, 165 Liu, J. Heng, 90, 166, 195 Liu, Ruiheng. See Liu, J. Heng Lloyd George, David, 18, 19 LNHO, 23, 24, 32, 34–36, 82, 83, 90–92, 121, 132, 158, 162, 190, 229, 244

289

loans, 11, 46, 81, 82, 84–86, 97, 99–101, 103, 172, 178, 179 currency stabilization loan, 179 railway loans, 10, 82, 84, 85 Loveday, Alexander, 86, 88, 89, 106, 206, 225, 242, 243 Luisi, Paulina, 112, 122 Lytton Commission/Lytton report, 95, 96 M Mackenzie, M.D., 191 MacKillop, Douglas, 75, 76, 94, 95, 108 Madsen, Thorvald, 34, 171 Makino, Nobuaki, 21, 39, 150 Malaria Commission, 92, 190, 194 Malaya, 55, 58, 70 Malkin, Herbert William, 133, 135, 136, 151, 152 Manchukuo, 118–120, 130, 136 Manchuria, 4, 30, 91, 93, 94, 101, 102, 111, 112, 114, 115, 118–120, 131, 164, 176 Manchurian Crisis/Manchurian Incident, 1, 3, 32, 33, 91, 93, 100, 102, 103, 107, 129, 130, 139, 149, 150, 251 mandate, 2, 28, 32, 60, 102, 114, 132, 133 Mari, Benito, 158, 159, 162 Massigli, René, 144, 146, 148, 234 Matsudaira, Tsuneo, 108, 109, 125, 134 Matsuoka, Yosuke, 131 May, Herbert L., 207, 209 Mazower, Mark, 24, 37, 39 McGuire, R.E., 205, 215, 219, 221 McLaren, John, 159 Mexico, 144 Miller, David Hunter, 17, 21, 37, 38, 136, 151

290

INDEX

minorities question, 2, 29, 138 Mitrany, David, 3 Miyajima, Mikinosuke, 33, 34, 56, 132, 138, 150 Monnet, Jean, 20, 97, 99–101 Mooser, H., 166, 169, 173 Mori, Kengo, 84, 85 morphine, 47, 48, 52, 53, 246 Morrison, George Ernest, 48 Mounsey, George, 76, 77, 104, 108, 110, 140, 153 Mountbatten, Lord Louis, 214, 215, 221 Mudaliar, Ramaswami A., 236, 240 Munster, Earl of, 214 Mussolini, Benito, 149

N Nagaoka, Harukazu, 138 Nanjing, 63, 83, 89, 90, 92, 94, 105, 107, 145, 158, 159, 162, 190 National Economic Council (Chinese), 83, 86, 98, 99, 101, 158, 160 National Flood Relief Commission, 90, 92, 93 National Health Administration (Chinese), 168, 171 Nationalist government/Nationalists, 11, 33, 63, 67, 79, 80, 82–84, 86, 90, 95–97, 122, 163, 169, 171, 172, 178, 190, 191, 195, 196, 198, 208, 217, 253. See also Republic of China Netherlands, 4, 5, 28, 49, 50, 57, 59, 63, 67, 91, 121, 138, 166, 208–211, 213, 219, 220, 235 New Zealand, 165, 175, 208 Nine-power Treaty, 97, 100, 130 Nish, Ian, 3, 12, 40, 149, 150, 256 Nitobe, Inazo, 29, 31, 120, 132, 133

Noel-Baker, Philip, 22, 38, 225, 227, 228, 233–235, 237, 241, 243, 245, 251 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), 5, 112, 120–122, 208, 250, 252. See also voluntary organizations non-permanent members (of the Council), 6, 7, 79, 81, 91, 139, 140, 149, 175, 226 non-political works, 3, 223 North Manchurian Railway, 119, 125 nurse, 22, 111, 167, 197

O OAC, 5, 7–9, 23, 26, 36, 43, 49–51, 53, 54, 56, 57, 61, 63–65, 69, 72, 75, 112, 121, 122, 134–137, 145, 149, 152, 154, 175, 176, 183, 206, 207, 211, 234–237, 239, 241, 249, 250, 253 opium anti-opium movement, 45, 51, 55, 59 government monopoly of opium, 51, 60, 136, 145, 216 Inter-departmental Opium Committee, 210, 211, 217, 221, 235, 236 (The) Hague Conference, 5, 47 (The) Hague Opium Convention, 47, 49 opium eating, 9, 44, 45, 51, 61, 70, 212, 214, 219, 238, 239, 242 Opium Revenue Replacement Reserve Fund, 62, 66 opium smoking, 43, 44, 46, 47, 50, 52, 54, 55, 58, 62, 66, 67, 70, 136, 205, 207, 209–214, 217, 219, 238, 239

INDEX

‘Policy as Regards Opium in Burma’, 215–217, 221 revenue farm system, 45, 51 revenue from opium, 44–46, 51, 55 Shanghai Commission, 5 Opium Advisory Committee. See OAC Orde, Charles, 76, 77, 96, 108, 138, 139, 152, 161 Osaka, 48, 118 Ouchi, Tsune, 34, 176

P Pact of Paris, 130, 131 Paris Peace Conference, 7, 20, 26, 38, 49, 117, 133, 135 Park, Charles Leslie, 190 Pate, Maurice, 255 PCIJ, 29, 132, 138, 145, 176 PCOB, 34, 60, 132, 134, 137, 138, 150, 176, 206, 207, 209, 210, 219, 234, 236, 237, 239 Pedersen, Susan, 2, 5, 11, 12, 39, 69, 151, 202, 250, 256 People’s Republic of China, 11, 79, 253, 254 Percy, Eustace, 19, 22 Permanent Central Opium Board. See PCOB Permanent Court of International Justice. See PCIJ Permanent Mandate Commission, 2, 5, 69, 133, 134, 176, 250 permanent members (of the Council), 6, 19, 141, 240 Pethick-Lawrence, Lord, 218, 221, 238, 246, 247 Philippines, 32, 45, 46, 54, 64, 113 Phillimore, Walter, 18, 21 Pichon, Stephen, 49 Pindor, Karol, 114 Playfair, E.W., 177, 183, 184

291

Poland, 35, 90, 91, 112, 117, 144, 146, 148, 164, 165, 241 Political Section (of the League Secretariat), 7, 31, 81, 86, 133, 176 politicization, 93, 102, 251 Porter, Stephen G., 54 Pratt, John, 42, 85, 86, 88, 95, 97, 100–102, 105, 108, 124, 159, 161, 164 Princeton University, 37, 206 publicity, 2, 5, 8, 45, 60, 64, 69, 122, 137, 149, 205, 211, 238, 242, 249, 250, 252 Q Qing/Qing government/Qing dynasty, 4, 10, 33, 44, 46, 47, 50, 52, 70, 82, 115, 188, 189, 195, 230 quinine, 91, 166, 168, 194 Quo, Tai-chi. See Guo, Taiqi (Quo Tai-chi) R racial equality proposal, 32, 116 Rajchman, Ludwik, 6, 34–36, 42, 82–84, 86, 87, 89, 90, 92–96, 98–103, 105, 109, 118, 125, 159, 161, 163–167, 170–175, 177, 179, 194, 196, 227–229, 243, 251 Rance, Hubert, 237 Rappard, William, 2, 3, 12, 38, 50, 71, 74, 154, 170, 183, 219 Red Cross, 91, 111, 118, 123, 164, 167, 168, 182 Renborg, Bertil Arne, 63, 72, 74, 152, 206–208, 219 Republic of China, 4, 10, 11, 21, 22, 27, 52, 57, 67, 79, 81,

292

INDEX

83, 115, 140, 149, 162, 166, 179, 188, 195, 196, 198, 207, 208, 212, 226, 227, 230, 231, 234, 242, 243, 250, 252–254. See also Nationalist government/Nationalists Rimner, Steffen, 48, 70, 71, 74 Ristaino, Marcia R., 116, 124 Robertson, Robert Cecil, 166–168, 173, 181, 187, 189–203, 228 Roosevelt, Franklin, 213, 229, 230 Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), 118, 119 Russian women refugees, 4, 8, 112, 114, 116, 117, 120–123, 250 Russo-Japanese War, 22, 52, 115 Rüstü, Tewfik, 141 S Sakenobe, Nobumichi, 133, 151, 176 Salter, Arthur, 20, 81, 83–86, 88, 89, 100, 105, 106, 109, 159 Salween River (Nu Jiang), 193, 215, 216, 240 San Francisco, 229, 232–235, 254 Sato, Naotake, 26, 30, 31, 65, 81, 84, 104, 131, 133, 134, 151, 254 Sawada, Miki, 256 Sawada, Renzo, 254, 256 Sawada, Setsuzo, 84, 86, 87, 133, 254 Schlemmer, Raymond, 91 Scott, A.L., 177, 178, 195, 209 Seagrave, Gordon, 191–193, 197, 201, 202 Second World War, 1, 9, 25, 26, 69, 70, 114, 122, 184, 194, 205, 207, 208, 210, 225, 246, 250, 253, 255 Secretariat (of the League of Nations), 2, 4–8, 20, 23, 28, 31, 34, 35, 50, 51, 53, 80, 86–89, 94, 100, 102, 112, 120, 133, 134, 147,

161, 169, 173, 175–177, 207, 239 Security Council (of the United Nations), 232, 240 Shanghai, 5, 47, 63, 64, 75, 82, 83, 85, 90, 92, 100, 107, 115–120, 122, 124, 183, 187, 196, 201, 202, 254 Shan States, 67, 188, 190–193, 200, 215, 216, 221 Sharman, Clem H.L., 241 Shi, Siming. See Sze, Szeming (Shi Siming) Shi, Zhaoji. See Sze, Alfred Sao-ke (Shi Zhaoji) Shidehara, Kijuro, 26, 28, 30, 31, 71, 73–76, 87, 94, 105–108 Shigemitsu, Mamoru, 92, 99, 101, 105, 107, 145, 254 Shinohara, Hatsue, 13, 39, 41, 42, 130, 131, 150 Siam, 32, 50, 58, 63, 66, 67, 121, 139, 190–192, 200, 213, 216 Simon, John, 124, 125, 139, 146, 152, 153, 155 Sino-Japanese War, 9, 22, 45, 103, 157, 158, 162, 167, 175, 178, 179, 181, 183, 187 Smets, C.E.A.M., 159, 171, 200 Smuts, Jan Christiaan, 19–22, 37 Snow, Thomas M., 47, 76 Social Questions and Opium Traffic Section (of the League Secretariat), 4, 24, 63, 71, 113 Song, Ziwen. See Soong, T.V. (Song Ziwen) Sonnino, Sidney, 49 Soong, T.V. (Song Ziwen), 27, 80, 83, 84, 86, 89, 90, 92, 93, 96, 97, 105–107, 196, 227, 229 South Africa, 19, 133, 161

INDEX

Southeast Asia, 2, 4, 5, 34, 43, 50, 51, 55, 62, 69, 136, 190, 207, 214, 217, 228 South Manchurian Railway, 64, 115, 130 sovereignty, 6, 9, 197, 251 Soviet Union, 115, 116, 119, 141, 144, 145, 147, 148, 165, 226, 230, 231, 252. See also USSR Spain, 112, 141, 144, 147–149, 160 Stampar, Andrija, 158, 159, 240, 251 Stettinius, Edward, 230, 234 Stimson, Henry L., 130 Straits Settlements (Singapore, Malacca, and Penang), 44, 51, 52, 55, 61–63, 67–69, 92, 117, 121, 205, 207 Strang, William, 40, 76, 110, 143, 144, 147, 151, 153–156, 180 Strickland, Claude Francis, 162 Sugimura, Yotaro, 31, 32, 40, 56, 57, 65, 76, 81, 84, 86, 87, 89, 105, 131, 134, 135, 145 Sundquist, Alma, 114, 122 Supervisory Commission, 88, 160, 165, 170, 172, 177, 181, 183, 198 Sweetser, Arthur, 73, 134, 135, 206 Switzerland, 51, 72, 134, 170, 175, 208 Sze, Alfred Sao-ke (Shi Zhaoji), 57, 94, 232 Sze, Szeming (Shi Siming), 241 T Taiwan, 45, 46, 48, 52, 53, 56, 57, 61, 63–65, 71, 121, 253 Tanaka, Giichi, 81, 82, 104 Tawney, Richard H., 89, 118 TCC, 98, 101, 102, 109, 143, 157–161, 163–165, 169, 170, 179–182, 184

293

technical co-operation, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 35, 42, 79, 80, 93, 96, 98–100, 102–105, 108–110, 118, 129, 139, 157, 166, 168, 170, 171, 179, 191, 196, 198, 199, 227, 228, 250, 251 Theodoli, Ugo, 138 Tianjin, 44, 53, 76, 136 Tokugawa, Iyesato, 118, 120 Tollardo, Elisabetta, 28, 31, 40, 152 Treasury. See Britain, Treasury Treaty of Versailles, 10 treaty ports, 114, 115, 122, 124 Truman, Harry, 233 Tsuchida, Kaneo, 133 Tsurumi, Sanzo, 56 Tubiasz, S., 241 Turkey, 140, 141, 143, 144, 146–148, 153, 208 TWC, 8, 9, 112, 113, 116–118, 120–122, 145, 149, 250, 252 U Uchida, Yasuya, 71, 73, 98, 108, 125, 150, 151 United Kingdom. See Britain United Nations Executive Committee of the Preparatory Commission, 233–235 General Assembly. See General Assembly (of the United Nations) Preparatory Commission, 233–236 Security Council. See Security Council (of the United Nations) United Nations Conference on International Organization, 232 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), 255, 256

294

INDEX

United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), 41, 251, 255 United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), 228 United States, 1, 2, 6, 9–11, 18, 22, 23, 25, 26, 28, 29, 31, 45, 46, 48, 54, 57, 58, 61, 64, 67, 69, 72, 80, 81, 83, 84, 92, 97, 98, 104, 113, 121, 131, 133, 135–137, 145, 161, 171, 175, 178, 179, 194, 195, 206, 208–213, 215, 217–219, 223, 225, 227, 230–235, 237–242, 247, 249, 252–254 Usami, Uzuhiko, 76, 176, 183 USSR, 7, 125, 234. See also Soviet Union V Vansittart, Robert, 109, 110, 140, 153 Versailles Peace Treaty, 48, 49 Article 295, 48, 49 voluntary organizations, 4, 5, 23, 33, 61, 64, 118 W Waley, S.D., 177, 178, 184, 243 Walters, Frank P., 12, 22, 28, 30, 38–42, 90, 93, 94, 106, 118, 135, 137, 151, 153, 154, 161, 180, 181, 242 Wa States, 189, 215, 238, 239 Webster, Charles Kingsley, 233, 235 Wellesley, Victor, 72, 85, 86, 105, 108, 153, 154 Wheat and Cotton Loan, 97, 99, 101 White, Norman, 33, 34 White Russian, 114, 118, 119

Wilson, Woodrow, 18, 19, 21, 23, 25, 32, 136 withdrawal from the League of Nations, 6, 117, 122, 133–135, 138, 140, 141, 144, 145, 149, 152, 155, 174, 175, 225 women, 2, 8, 23, 24, 50, 56, 112–120, 122, 124, 125, 224, 255 Woo, George, 207 Woolf, Leonard, 19, 37 World Economic Conference, 97, 131, 151 World Health Organization (WHO), 41, 251 Wright, Mrs Hamilton, 50 Y Yan, Fuqing. See Yen, F.C. (Yan, Fuqing) Yangtze River. See Changjiang Yellow River, 164, 169, 170 Yen, F.C. (Yan, Fuqing), 171, 172, 183, 194, 195, 197, 202 Yokoyama, Masayuki, 117, 121, 124, 134, 138, 150–155 Yoshida, Shigeru, 93, 94, 107, 108 Yoshizawa, Kenkichi, 30, 84, 86–88, 94, 107, 108 Young, Arthur, 83, 107, 109 Young, N.E., 177, 178, 184 Yuan Shikai, 46, 48, 86, 172, 197 Yuasa, Umé, 111, 120, 123 Yunnan, 4, 67, 162, 164, 187–191, 193–195, 197, 198, 200, 210 Yunnan-Burma borderland, 9, 188, 189, 198, 228 Z Zanasi, Margherita, 80, 104, 125, 160, 180 Zimmern, Alfred, 19, 20, 22, 37, 38