Chapter 23 22. Go to the League of Nations to discuss an explanation

On the 19th, when news of the incident reached Nanjing, Chiang Kai-shek was on his way to Nanchang to "suppress the communists".In the afternoon, under the auspices of Dai Jitao, the leaderless members of the Kuomintang convened the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang to discuss countermeasures.After the meeting, two decisions were made: first, to call Chiang Kai-shek to return to Nanjing to preside over the overall situation; second, to lodge a protest with the Japanese side according to the official report, and to send a telegram to the representatives stationed abroad to announce the truth of the incident to the international community including the League of Nations.From then on, the national government embarked on a long road of trying to appeal to the League of Nations in order to protect China's legitimate interests.

Dai Jitao, director of the later established Special Diplomatic Committee, explained the Nationalist government's intention to resort to the League of Nations as follows: Although the League of Nations cannot be fully relied on, it is not absolutely impossible to rely on it. After this case happened, the Central Committee tried its best to make the League of Nations responsible for solving the case, because it maintained China's international status and reduced Japan's power to directly oppress China. The only way is here.While Japan declares that it will not accept third-party interference, but still dares not to accept the decision of the League of Nations, it is clear that Japan has serious scruples about the League of Nations.

It can be seen that the national government also expected that the role of the League of Nations might be extremely limited. Rather than hoping that the League of Nations would protect China's rights and interests, it would be better to say that it hoped that the League of Nations would contain Japan and ease Japan's pressure on China. Headquartered in Geneva, the League of Nations is composed of the General Assembly, the Executive Yuan and the Permanent Secretariat.The Secretariat is a permanent office, while the General Assembly is just a forum for member states, and its resolutions are not binding.The truly influential decisions of the League of Nations were made by the Executive Yuan.The Executive Yuan consists of five permanent members: the United States, Britain, France, Italy, and Japan (the United States did not participate in the League of Nations, in fact there were only four, and Germany became a permanent member after joining), and four (later increased to nine) elected by the General Assembly. 1) representatives of the non-permanent members.By convention, resolutions of the Executive Yuan must generally be passed unanimously.The government of the Republic of China asked the League of Nations to assert its rights to a permanent member country, and it seemed to be facing a dilemma similar to a logical paradox from the very beginning.

Weak countries have no diplomacy.Try to make compromises among the international community in order to take advantage of the conflict of interests among major powers to recover some losses for themselves—this is almost the only route that weak countries can take when they are bullied by strong countries.China was such a weak country at that time.This can't help but remind everyone of Li Hongzhang of the Qing Dynasty. After China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese War, he also wanted to use the barbarians to control the barbarians—to use the power of Russia to restrict Japan.In order to achieve this goal, he even did not hesitate to sell another benefit to Russia.However, the officials of the Republic of China government did not think that they would be as miserable as Li Hongzhang. Dai Jitao said:

In the past, there were no international organizations, and there were no covenants to abide by each other among countries, so there were only two ways to deal with foreign aggression; now that there are international organizations and public international law in the world, there should be legitimate principles besides peace and war. third way.This is not China's lack of military force, but the natural way for those who respect international faith. "No force" is actually a more beautiful expression of non-resistance.After all, there was the League of Nations at this time, and it claimed that its purpose was to "promote international cooperation and ensure international peace and security." Moreover, China had recently been elected as a non-permanent member of the League of Nations—the National Government felt that resorting to the League of Nations was not enough. There is a glimmer of hope.

A few hours after the meeting of the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang, the representative of the Nationalist Government to the League of Nations received the following telegram: It has been fully confirmed that our side did not take any provocative actions. The Japanese army openly attacked me. Although our side did not resist, they still continued to fire at me, shelling my barracks and arsenal. At 6:30 on Saturday morning, they occupied the whole city of Shenyang and its vicinity.The Chinese government requests the International Federation to immediately and effectively take appropriate measures in accordance with the terms of the covenant, so that the Japanese army will withdraw from the occupied areas and maintain peace in East Asia. The Chinese government has decided to obey any decision of the International Federation on this matter.

At this time, Shi Zhaoji was the plenipotentiary representative of the Nationalist Government in the League of Nations. Article 11 of the "League of Nations Covenant" stipulates: If there is a war or there will be a war, the League of Nations should take appropriate actions to ensure the safety of all countries; the Secretary-General may immediately convene a meeting of the Executive Yuan to deal with it upon the request of any member country.After receiving the instructions from Nanjing, Shi Zhaoji immediately asked the Secretary-General of the League of Nations, the Frenchman Du Lumont, to convene a meeting of the Executive Yuan according to this clause.

When Shi Zhaoji was making a statement to the Executive Yuan of the League of Nations, Kenkichi Yoshizawa, the representative of Japan to the League of Nations, interrupted his speech.I saw that he took out a document prepared in advance and read it. The Japanese came prepared. What he read out was the statement issued by the Japanese government on the incident. so much attention.Obviously, the Chinese representative did not expect Japan's move.After Fangze finished reading the statement, Shi Zhaoji had no choice but to end his speech with the sentence "China reserves the right to resolve this incident".That night, the Chinese representative issued a declaration on the incident, pointing out that Japan should bear full responsibility for the outbreak of the incident.

Yoshizawa is the son-in-law of Inukai Takeshi and a famous Japanese diplomat.Sure enough, he grasped the core intention of China’s resort to the League of Nations—trying to resolve the incident under the international multilateral framework, in the hope that other powers would have a restraining effect on Japan; while Japan’s intention was to avoid the intervention of a third party, requiring both China and Japan to handle the issue. Solve the problem. In this way, the situation of Japan being strong and the middle weak is of great benefit to Japan. The clear purpose made Japan and China take the lead in the game of the League of Nations from the very beginning.

The League of Nations is based in Europe, and Europeans seem to have a better understanding of this diplomatic drama performed on the stage of the League of Nations. On the 19th, the German "Berlin Guide" commented on the September 18th incident and pointed out: "It is not appropriate to regard this incident as a local problem. This matter will worry the world and will cause a serious problem for the League of Nations." On the same day, "Germany" The Times pointed out that the League of Nations will "as usual" disappoint the general expectations of this incident, and succumb to the fait accompli.

On the 22nd, the Executive Yuan of the League of Nations, according to Shi Zhaoji's request, started a discussion on the Japanese occupation of Manchuria.Shi Zhaoji stated in detail the process of Japan's invasion of Northeast China, and demanded that the League of Nations "speak up and intervene" so that the Japanese army would immediately stop military operations, restore the situation before the incident, and compensate for all losses.Japanese representative Yoshizawa tried his best to defend the Japanese army’s invasion of China, saying that the Japanese army’s actions were purely self-defense, and most of them have now withdrawn to the Manchuria Railway attached area; he said that the Japanese government, like the Chinese government, also hoped that the incident could be resolved as soon as possible, but in order to prevent the situation from deteriorating, he opposed The League of Nations intervened, urging the two countries to negotiate directly and resolve it on the spot.Shi Zhaoji also said that when Chinese territory was occupied by the Japanese army, China could not negotiate directly with the Japanese side.The two sides debated fiercely. In the end, the Executive Yuan passed the proposal of the British representative Xue Xier and authorized the chairman of the assembly, Spanish Foreign Minister Lele, to lead a committee composed of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain to continue to deal with the matter.The committee issued an urgent notice to the governments of China and Japan, advising the two sides to avoid the expansion of the situation and immediately withdraw troops through consultation between the two countries.The meeting also decided to send a committee to Manchuria to investigate. On the 23rd, the five-nation committee met to continue discussing how to deal with the incident.Shi Zhaoji proposed that in view of the fact that the Japanese side did not recognize the fact of aggression against China, he suggested that the League of Nations send an investigation committee to the northeast of China to see the situation on the ground.This move is very powerful, because even those as brutal and unreasonable as the Japanese really have no reason to object.The Committee of Five also agreed with this proposal.The situation began to become unfavorable for Japan, and China seemed to be taking the lead. But Japan has a trump card in its hands. Its status and strength as a world power are its sharp weapons to say "no" to others. On the 24th, the Japanese government ordered Fangze to reply to the Council of the League of Nations: 1. The Manchurian incident was self-defense and a local conflict in nature. In terms of relations between the two countries, the Japanese government cannot accept orders. On the 28th, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement on the aftermath of the Manchurian Incident, claiming that the Japanese government would handle it in accordance with established guidelines and that the League of Nations or other countries would never be allowed to comment.Seeing Japan's tough attitude, the five-nation committee began to back down, and the British representative was the first to stand up and began to agree that the dispute should be resolved through direct negotiations between China and Japan. After all, Shi Zhaoji was also an experienced diplomat. Seeing this situation, he repeatedly stated to the Committee of Five that as long as the League of Nations set a date for the complete withdrawal of Japanese troops from the newly occupied areas, China would abandon the League of Nations' request for an investigation team to enter.However, due to Fangze's firm opposition, the council did not make specific regulations on the withdrawal of the Japanese army. On the 30th, the chairman of the Executive Yuan meeting of the League of Nations proposed a draft ruling, the main contents of which are as follows: 1. Reiterate the Japanese government's "no territorial purpose towards Manchuria" and "continue to withdraw the army to the railway annex as soon as possible, and hope to complete it in the shortest possible time as the safety of the lives and property of its subjects is effectively guaranteed" promise. 2. Reiterate the promise made by the Chinese government that "when the Japanese army continues to retreat and the Chinese local government and police powers are restored, they will be responsible for protecting the lives and property of Japanese subjects outside the railway area". 3. Reiterate the statement that "representatives of the two countries guarantee that the respective governments will take all necessary measures to prevent the situation from expanding and deteriorating". Fourth, call on China and Japan to "use all means to promote the normalization of relations between the two countries, and promptly fulfill and complete the above-mentioned guarantees." 5. It is stipulated that another meeting will be held in Geneva on October 14 to deal with the case. After the draft was promulgated, the Chinese side expressed regret that it had not stipulated a date for Japan's withdrawal of troops, but still accepted the draft as a preliminary solution to the incident.The Japanese side readily accepted it.At the time of the vote, the draft passed unanimously with 14 votes in favor. So far, the first phase of the confrontation between China and Japan in the League of Nations has come to an end.China did not see the condemnation of the aggressors by the League of Nations, but after all, the words "withdrawal of troops" were written in the resolution, although there were many restrictions.In this arbitration, the League of Nations is not like a just judge, but more like an "impartial" referee. On "self-solve", aggression is regarded as punching attack, and being beaten is regarded as defense with head held, and both offense and defense are allowed by "rules".