We believe that the Japanese delegates have been most helpful
and worked well for peaceful ends, but by all accounts the public in Japan is ill-instructed and inclined, like American opinion, to put blame on Great Britain. Possibly the cold feeling of the Japanese for us just now harks back to the Washington Conference. Japan was very proud of her alliance with us. Her people never understood, as her statesmen did, that she exchanged it for something bigger. They felt, and- we fear they still feel, that we contemptuously threw off their allegiance in order to get closer to* the United States ; whereas one of our aims was that the Washington Treaty should bring Japan into closer and better relations with the United States without destroying the spirit of the Treaty of Alliance, and so we hoped to increase, - aniong other things, the prestige of Japan. But the Japanese, most unfortunately, have never looked upon our action in that light. We hope, however, that they are now getting a clearer view of the true position.
