Lansing-Ishii

Peking dispatches declare that the Lansing-Ishii pact is about to be junked, and diplomatic silence is taken as confirmation of the report.

In the war-year 1917, Viscount Ishii, who, with untiring nerves, has represented his Emperor in every great capital of the world, came on a mission to the United States. Before he departed he induced Mr. Lansing to promulgate an agreement whereby, the United States recognized the "special interests" of Japan in China. Despite all kinds of assurances from Mr. Lansing, the world believed that America was abandoning her insistence upon the "open door." Whatever the Lansing- Ishii agreement may or may not have really meant, its promulgation was considered as a conspicuous example of the occasional clumsiness which characterizes American diplomacy.

At the time of the Washington Conference in November, 1921, it became fairly clear that the Lansing-Ishii agreement was moribund. President Harding practically said so. The powers swore not to encroach upon China, and Mr. Wang went home happier even though Baron Shidibara declared: "To say that Japan has special interests in China is simply to state a plain and actual fact."

But the note Mr. Lansing had signed in 1917 had not been torn up. That duty was left to Mr. Charles B. Warren, who has just returned from his post as Ambassador to Tokyo after having persuaded the Japanese Government to forget that any such note had ever been written.

The press congratulates Ambassador Warren upon his careful diplomacy, and the Japanese Government upon this further evidence of its good faith toward China.

The Imperial Diet concluded its session after enacting the entire government program.