ABSTRACT
The Senate of the United States failed to ratify the Versailles Treaty of June 1919. The Harding Administration then sought to establish a new order in Asia, based on the Nine-Power Treaty guaranteeing the integrity of China and on naval disarmament as agreed at the Washington Conference. This was what A. Whitney Griswold, writing in 1938, called 'the apotheosis of the traditional Far Eastern Policy of the United States.' But for Japan it meant major sacrifices: the acceptance of the Open Door and the suspension of the Lansing-Ishii Agreement, the ending of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, the withdrawal from the Shantung Peninsula, and an inferior naval status. As Thomas Bailey comments, 'Japan was induced or forced to retreat all along the line to the acute dissatisfaction of her more vocal newspapers and politicians.' As the Nationalists moved north, the Japanese leaders were undecided about their foreign policy towards the situation in the region.
