76 J.-A. PEMBERTON
Some at the conference suggested that if no changes were made in the
‘policies of other countries vis-à-vis Japan’ such that Japan would con-
tinue to be denied equality of economic opportunity, there was likely to
be ‘an explosion.’^232
At the conference, Japanese members raised objections to suggestions
that by its actions in Manchuria, Japan was guilty of violating the Nine-
Power Treaty, Article 1 of which insisted on respect for the political inde-
pendence and territorial and administrative integrity of China. Article 1
further insisted on ‘the principle of equal opportunity for the commerce
and industry of all nations throughout the territory of China’ and that
signatories ‘refrain from taking advantage of conditions in China in
order to seek special rights or privileges which could abridge the rights
of subjects or citizens of friendly States, and from countenancing action
inimical to the security of such States.’ According to the record of the
conference’s proceedings, it was clear that Japanese members felt that
it was China rather than Japan that had violated the treaty. It was clear
that they ‘felt that anti-Japanese activities in China constituted a defi-
nite violation of the treaty in that they were “inimical to the security of
Japan”’; no less clear, according to the record of proceedings, was ‘the
implication that Japan did not intend to relinquish the strategic gains
of her continental policy and that present Japanese leaders could not be
expected to accept a new settlement which did not confirm her “special
position” in North China as well as Manchuria.’^233 The dispute concern-
ing whether the Nine-Power Treaty had been violated and how it had
been violated prompted one member to suggest that the matter might
problems in regard to China, contributed to this result no less than the treaty limiting
naval armaments and establishing the 5: 5: 3 ratio. Essentially the principles of the treaty
were maintained and extended to cruisers in the London Conference of 1930, although
there the problem concerned Anglo-American naval relations as much as, if not more
than, American-Japanese naval relations. The problem has again arisen with the denunci-
ation of the Naval Treaties [by Japan in December 1934] which took effect on December
31, 1936.’ Wright, ‘The Working of Diplomatic Machinery in the Pacific,’ in Holland and
Mitchell, eds., Problems of the Pacific, 1936, 412.
(^232) Ibid., 181.
(^233) Foreign Relations of the United States: Treaty Between the United States of America,
Belgium, the British Empire, China, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, and Portugal,
Signed at Washington February 6, 1922, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/tr22-
01.asp, and Holland and Mitchell, eds., Problems of the Pacific, 1936 , 187.