The sessions of the Commission on the League of Nations and the absence of President Wilson from Paris interrupted further consideration of the Shantung Question until the latter part of March, when the Council of Four came into being.  As the subject had been fully debated in January before the Council of Ten, final decision lay with the Council of Four.  What discussions took place in the latter council I do not know on account of the secrecy which was observed as to their deliberations.  But I presume that the President stood firmly for the Chinese rights, as the matter remained undecided until the latter part of April.

On the 21st of April Baron Makino and Viscount Chinda called upon me in regard to the question, and I frankly told them that they ought to prove the justice of the Japanese claim, that they had not done it and that I doubted their ability to do so.  I found, too, that the President had proposed that the Five Powers act as trustees of the former German rights in Shantung, but that the Japanese delegates had declared that they could not consent to the proposition, which was in the nature of a compromise intended to bridge over the existing situation that, on account of the near approach of the completion of the Treaty, was becoming more and more acute.

On April 26 the President, at a conference with the American Commissioners, showed deep concern over the existing state of the controversy, and asked me to see the Japanese delegates again and endeavor to dissuade them from insisting on their demands and to induce them to consider the international trusteeship proposed.  The evening of the same day the two Japanese came by request to my office and conferred with Professor E.T.  Williams, the Commission’s principal adviser on Far Eastern affairs, and with me.  After an hour’s conversation Viscount Chinda made it very clear that Japan intended to insist on her “pound of flesh.”  It was apparent both to Mr. Williams and to me that nothing could be done to obtain even a compromise, though it was on the face favorable to Japan, since it recognized the existence of the German rights, which China claimed were annulled.

On April 28 I gave a full report of the interview to Mr. White and General Bliss at our regular morning meeting.  Later in the morning the President telephoned me and I informed him of the fixed determination of the Japanese to insist upon their claims.  What occurred between the time of my conversation with the President and the plenary session of the Conference on the Preliminaries of Peace in the afternoon, at which the Covenant of the League of Nations was adopted, I do not actually know, but the presumption is that the Japanese were promised a satisfactory settlement in regard to Shantung, since they announced that they would not press an amendment on “racial equality” at the session, an amendment upon which they had indicated they intended to insist.

After the meeting of the Conference I made the following memorandum of the situation: