1 PEACEFUL CHANGE OR WAR? 75the Tariff Acts of 1928 and 1929 were ‘distinctly contrary to the spirit, if
not the letter’ of the agreements reached at the Washington Conference.
It was also pointed out that ‘although it had been generally recognized
that Japan’s best solution to for her population problem lay in speed-
ing up her industrial development’ and, thereby, ‘expanding her foreign
trade,’ when Japan in fact began to succeed in its export drive, tariffs and
quotas were used to shut out or restrict imports of Japanese goods. The
conference heard that as a result, Japan began to feel that its opportunity
for economic development was going to be permanently denied, a feeling
which served to reinforce ‘the strategic and political arguments of those
in Japan who maintained that...[Japan’s]...national destiny depended
upon security for herself a predominant position in Eastern Asia.’^231
(^231) Holland and Mitchell, eds., Problems of the Pacific, 1936, 185, 187–8. The Washington
Conference also issued in the Four-Power Treaty. Article 1 of the Four-Power Treaty
provided for the following: ‘The High Contracting Parties agree as between themselves
to respect their rights in relation to their insular possessions and insular dominions in the
Pacific Ocean. If there should develop between any of the High Contracting Parties a con-
troversy arising out of any Pacific question and involving their said rights which is not sat-
isfactorily settled by diplomacy and is likely to affect the harmonious accord now happily
subsisting between them, they shall invite the other High Contracting Paries to a joint
conference to which the whole subject will be referred for consideration and adjustment.’
Foreign Relations of the United States, Treaty Between the United States of America, the
British Empire, France, and Japan, Signed at Washington December 13, 1921. https://
avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/tr1921.asp. The Four-Power Treaty was a substitute
for the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. The United States had been very keen to see this alliance
terminated. Washington’s negative attitude towards the alliance saw the Canadian prime
minister, Arthur Meighen, argue strongly at the 1921 Imperial Conference which met
in London from June 20 to August 5 that the alliance should not be renewed, the ques-
tion of whether or not to renew the alliance being high on the conference’s agenda. As a
result of the Canadian prime minister’s efforts out and over the objections of the Australian
prime minister in particular, the conference made no decision to renew the alliance. ‘Great
Britain has ordinarily made pacific-settlement treaties applicable to all parts of the British
Commonwealth of Nations. A defensive alliance was made with Japan on January 30,
1902, and renewed in 1905 and 1911, but terminated by the Four-Power Treaty con-
cerning insular possessions.’ Quincy Wright, ‘The Working of Diplomatic Machinery in
the Pacific,’ in Holland and Mitchell, eds., Problems of the Pacific, 1936, 413. In addition
to the Four-Power Treaty and the Nine-Power Treaty, the Washington Conference issued
in the Washington Naval Treaty or Five-Power Treaty which was signed on February 6,
- ‘The serious naval rivalry between the United States and Japan in 1921 was for a
time settled by the Washington Conference agreements. The totality of these agreements,
including the substitution of the Four-Power Treaty for the Anglo-Japanese Alliance,
the limitation of armaments of Pacific naval bases, and the settlement of major political