ABSTRACT
THE PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE WITH THE ENTRY of the United States into the World War in April, 1917, issues to be settled at the peace conference at the close of the war began to be discussed more widely and concretely in Japan. Thus, immediately after the usual address on foreign affairs delivered at the beginning of the Thirty-ninth Diet (June 26, 1917) by Viscount Motono, Baron Korekiyo Takahashi rose to interpellate the government on Japan’s attitude toward peace. He referred to the celebrated pronouncements of President Wilson, and corresponding declarations made by responsible spokesmen in Great Britain, France, Italy, and Russia. In reply, Viscount Motono assured the Peers that, though the government felt it unadvisable at the time to make public the aims and aspirations of Japan at the peace conference, it entertained no apprehension as to the support that would be forthcoming from the Allied powers at the conference.1 In the afternoon of the same day Representative Kotaro Mochizuki interpellated the foreign minister as to measures undertaken to insure the fate of Kiaochaowan and German South Sea Islands now under Japanese occupation. Viscount Motono replied in the same manner as he did in the Upper House, and likewise assured the Representatives that the government had taken appropriate measures to protect the rights and interests of Japan concerning the German concessions in Shantung and future disposition of South Sea Islands, and that he was certain that there would be no opposition at the peace conference from the Allied powers to such measures as might be deemed necessary to insure the peace of the Far
same attitude of refusing to state the Japanese conditions of peace or its policies at the conference.3
