Obtaining the United States as an ally was the major prize for the British in December 1917, since it brought significant potential naval resources that might win the war against Germany. American ships, notably older coal-burning destroyers sent to Queenstown soon after the American entry into the war, made a huge difference; by the end of August, there were 35 ships total. The formal unification of the British and American fleets on 7 December 1917 was coincidentally proceeded by a chance munitions explosion in Halifax, Canada, on 6 December 1917 (see Picture 4). Once Britain's main naval base in North America was destroyed, and there was no possibility of ever using America's ships against her, the unification of the two navies proceeded as planned the very next day.

The 6 December 1917 munitions explosion that destroyed Halifax was caused by an American-leased ship. One of the first large-scale humanitarian aid missions by sea occurred during World War I with the creation of the non-profit Commission for the Relief of Belgium (CRB). This aid organization distributed $927,681,485.08 worth of foodstuffs and clothing to Belgium and to German-occupied areas of Northern France. Because of the Commission's almost total reliance on international shipping, the CRB was once described by critics as a “piratical state organized for benevolence”: “Like a pirate state, the CRB flew its own flag, negotiated its own treaties, secured special passports, fixed prices, issued currency, and exercised a great deal of fiscal independence.”

The director, future U.S. president Herbert Hoover, had to obtain permission first from England and Germany to let the aid ships through the maritime blockade lines. From 1 November 1914 until the summer of 1919, over 900 CRB-leased ships successfully navigated not only the British naval blockade but also German minefields and swarms of U-boats conducting unrestricted submarine warfare. By delivering essential food aid, the CRB helped the British government focus the full impact of the starvation blockade against Germany rather than against helpless neutrals in Belgium and Northern France.

Hoover's efforts were supported by the U.S. government. But the British also had to cooperate fully if this aid program was to work. Inspections of the CRB ships took place at Halifax, Canada. Beginning in August 1917, inspections of the cargoes could also be carried out during the loading process in U.S. harbors.

Most people assume that after World War II the U.S. government made a mistake not fighting in China against the communists. But the U.S. government's main goal was to try to break up the Sino-Soviet alliance. A secret CIA report from December 1948 even advised letting the Chinese communists dominate all of the mainland of China in order to accelerate this split. Once the communists succeeded in taking all of the mainland, it was necessary to make Mao Zedong as dependent on Russia as possible, so as to increase tensions. Prior to Mao's visit to Moscow in early 1950, therefore, the U.S. government refused to recognize Beijing, which meant “the Chinese Communists cannot now play off one great power against another, since they have no non-Soviet allies at the moment.” It also put extreme pressure on China by establishing the Taiwan Strait Patrol in 1950 and adopting a strategic embargo on Chinese imports.

We now know that the USSR actively intervened in the Chinese Civil War against Chiang Kai-shek and on the side of Mao Zedong and the communists. Sino-Soviet tensions were already on the rise, however, even before Mao's proclaimed victory on 1 October 1949. In August 1948, British officials were reporting that Russian officials in Dairen had begun to exclude not just Nationalist forces from the port facilities, but also “the armed forces of the Chinese Communists.” Coincidentally, right after this British report came out, the CIA submitted its own report in December 1948 that recommended the Chinese communists be allowed to dominate all of the mainland of China, without U.S. opposition, since there would probably be “no chance of a split within the Party or between the Party and the USSR,” until after the “Communist domination of China” (see Document 6).

With the beginning of the Korean conflict in 1950, the U.S. furthermore adopted a “sea denial” strategy, sending the Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait to stop a planned PRC invasion of Taiwan. Fear of communist expansion along the first island chain led the U.S. government to support Taipei during the two Taiwan Strait crises in 1954–55 and 1958. Washington also felt obliged to sign security treaties supporting Chiang Kai-shek's efforts to defend a number of offshore islands from PRC attack.

In his scholarly Notes to the Sermons, the fifth volume of The Florida Edition of the Works of Laurence Sterne, Melvyn New rightly challenges the “notion” that “we can find a mirror in Sterne's Sermons of the popular conception of the Shandean author” (17), for Sterne wrote and preached as an Anglican clergyman aiming to convey a Christian message, not to reveal his own life (21). Yet, this autobiographical disclaimer notwithstanding, we have found in our analysis of Tristram Shandy Sterne's standard of humble benevolence in Parson Yorick; we have found self-inflating and self-defeating dullness in characters like Phutatorius; we have found the paradox of benevolent dullness in the Shandys; and throughout we have found Tristram and Sterne's intent to draw readers toward Yorick by drawing them first into the laughing world of the Shandys. These same discoveries of character and authorial intent, if not authorial identity, can be made in Sterne's sermons.

Sermons on “Kindred Virtues” and the Folly of Dullness

In the preface to Marjorie David's edition of The Sermons of Mr. Yorick,2 for instance, Sterne underlines Yorick's call for charity guided by religion, a call found in the “Abuses of Conscience” sermon delivered by Trim in Tristram Shandy (2: 139–67).3 His sermons, writes Sterne (Preface: 2), will illustrate “philanthropy, and those kindred virtues to it, upon which hang all the laws of the prophets.” In his sermon titled “Inquiry After Happiness,” Sterne expands on Psalm IV, 5–6, in a Johnsonian manner, surveying vain searches for happiness in pomp and sensuality to conclude that all such “experiments” lead to disappointment and the “perplexed state” of dullness (1: 5). One can escape this defeated state, writes Sterne, only through “the joy and satisfaction of living in the true faith and fear of Thee” (1: 5). Such faith, explains Sterne in “The Case of Hezekiah and the Messenger,” demands that a human being live, as we have found that Yorick lives in Tristram Shandy, with “open and generous integrity”; one must say “the thing he thinks” and do “the thing he pretends,” not like wealthy Hezekiah, who takes credit for the gifts of God (17: 164).

Although taking place two decades after Mansfield Park (1814), the plot of Love in “the World” has similarities to Jane Austen's novel. However, the background circumstances of Love in “the World”, which seem likely to form part of the excised quarter of the Volume I manuscript, have to be concluded from the extant text. Like Mansfield Park, the key extended family in Love in “the World” involves a trio of siblings. As with Austen's Ward sisters, the marital fortunes of Sir William, George and Gertrude Marwood are very different. Sir William inherits his family's estate in England, where he settles down into married life. One plausible back-story for George Marwood is that after joining the Royal Navy he is promoted to the rank of Captain and meets the widowed Madame (or Mrs) de Fleury, who has a daughter, Alixe. The de Fleurys are known to have been among French emigrants to Canada in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. So it is at least plausible that Alixe's grandparents were also included with the thousands of French Canadians deported by the British from New France to Louisiana in the later eighteenth century. Many of these people were merchants engaged in the lucrative fur trade and other enterprises. The story's chronology suggests that Alixe was born in 1807–1808, which raises the possibility that her biological father, de Fleury, died or was separated from her mother during the War of 1812, and that her widowed mother soon afterwards decamped and possibly married Captain Marwood. Such a hypothetical back-story could explain why Alixe is an heiress and why she retained her mother's de Fleury family name. She does not mention any biological father but may have been too young at the time to remember him. In Lost and Saved, Captain Brooke is also married abroad to a widow with a young daughter. And Norton is known to have had an interest in American history, having as a child written a long poem “whose scene is laid in America, an early instance of that constant interest and liking for persons and things beyond the Atlantic which we find in her to the end of her life.” Meanwhile, Gertrude has married St Clair, a titled gentleman holding a position in the Caribbean, where the couple live and have a son, Charles.

For many days Lord Linton was considered in danger of a brain fever. His mother watched over him with unremitting assiduity and many of the strangers who formed the party at Linton Castle departed, finding it exceedingly dull to spend their time in asking after their host's health. Everard, however, remained. Emily was far too kind-hearted to care for amusement, when others were in pain either of body or mind. Besides which, she had formed a strong friendship for the strange and beautiful Madame de Calzean. To Emily, Pauline was neither cold and abstracted, nor passionless. She entered into all her feelings, smiled with her in her gladness and soothed and sympathized [her] in less happy moments. As long then as her friend remained, Emily was content to stay. And there was not a chance of their departing an hour sooner than they at first intended, as Madame de Calzean resolved to eat the excellent dinners of Linton Castle till another engagement which she had in view, should afford a promise of edible enjoyment elsewhere. It was true that Lord Linton had loved Madame de Calzean. Nay more, that he did love her with an intensity of devotion less common to his age that to his melancholy and romantic disposition. He was but nineteen when he first became acquainted with her. Two years had passed away, and his love remained as fresh in his heart as ever. That Madame de Calzean should refuse the homage of a boy ten years her junior, was perhaps only to be expected, but her refusal proceeded neither from caprice nor coldness. She had loved once, the passionate and devoted love of a pure-minded woman. And many had since sighed for the smiles of the majestic Pauline, but she pursued her own course in calm, undeviating rectitude and frequently declared her disbelief of the possibility of a woman loving truly more than once. How could she form to herself two idols or persuade her heart, after a first disappointment, to turn again to the visionary happiness it once built upon? Such were her feelings and as I never was in love except with my uncle's dairy maid (who jilted me), I leave it to others to decide whether she was right or wrong.

The USSR narrowly survived the 1920s and 1930s, perhaps surviving in part by tapping formerly unknown gold sources in Siberia and Outer Mongolia. An English-language letter dated 14 April 1924 from C. R. Bennett, a representative of an American banking consortium in China, to Wellington Koo, foreign minister of China, even warned him of a new German and Soviet consortium to mine gold in Outer Mongolia. (See Map 3.) Coincidentally, Soviet political maneuvering in Outer Mongolia during fall 1924 strengthened the Soviet government's sphere of influence there, which allowed them to exploit these gold resources. Without access to these untapped gold riches, the Soviet government might have collapsed when the Great Depression hit unexpectedly in 1929.

After its 1921 invasion of Outer Mongolia, the Soviet government repeatedly promised China that it would withdraw its troops. But during May 1924, the American vice-consul in Kalgan, Edwin F. Stanton, reported that “the present Soviet Government, acting in an advisory capacity to the Mongolian Government, but actually dictating its policies and its administration, does not intend to relinquish either political or economic control of Outer Mongolia.” In fact, Moscow's creation of the Soviet bloc in 1924 to include Outer Mongolia has been ignored by most historians as insignificant. But the untapped Mongolian gold resources made it of great financial importance.

Even while publicly agreeing Outer Mongolia was part of China, the Soviet government sought to secretly retain it. Part of the mystery surrounding Soviet envoy Lev Karakhan's unwillingness to compromise on Outer Mongolia was cleared up during April 1924, when Koo received a communication from the Moore-Bennett company which directly related to the USSR's continued occupation of Outer Mongolia. This letter warned Koo that “[An] unimpeachable commercial source has reached me to the effect a composite political commercial financial technical group is now under establishment in Moscow and Berlin for the purpose of surveying and considering means of opening up and working all of the Eastern gold and other precious mineral fields of Siberia and particularly as affecting China's interest […]” This communication appears to have been the first detailed information that Koo received that the USSR and Germany were already cooperating with each other to exploit gold mines in Outer Mongolia.

Days past and Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, Almack's and the Opera became objects of increasing interest to Alixe. Always gay, always unaffected, she was a universal favourite. Among all the different people she saw, none interested her so much as Emily Price. None of the girls she knew were so completely natural, so devoid of envy, so willing to allow all their due share of praise. The little parties at her friend's house became her favourite amusement. Even Almack’s, with all its attractions of dancing and beaux, held but the second plan in her esteem.

One evening when Lady Townley had accompanied them to Mrs Price’s, Emily said with great joy, “Ah, my brother will be here tonight, and we are all so happy. He has been staying there six weeks with a young man, a great friend of his, who broke his arm by a fall when he was hunting.” And Emily slightly coloured as she spoke. Alixe watched with great curiosity.

At last, the door opened and a party of young men entered, some of whom she knew. One of them was remarkably handsome and had his arm in a sling. He advanced immediately to Miss Price, who again blushed and looked so lovely at the moment, that her young friend almost regretted she had not an habitual colour. The last who entered Alixe instantly guessed to be Everard, from his likeness to his sister. But she was not satisfied with the resemblance. He was not the sort of being she had pictured Emily's brother, nor did she think him so handsome for a man as Miss Price for a woman. He had the same paleness of complexion, the same dark hair and high forehead, but his expression was stern almost to harshness and even his smile seemed to imply a conscious superiority that approached to contempt. Altogether, Alixe felt disappointed. She turned to speak to Emily, but she was busily engaged talking to the young man with the broken arm. In a moment, however, she turned and said, “I must introduce Everard to you, Alixe.”

This was accordingly done and the young man seated himself by Alixe; and after conversing for some minutes, he leant back behind her on their ottoman and said to his sister Emily, “Where are the Aimwells? It is very late for young ladies to arrive.”

Everard's visit to Lord Sunderland had been productive of much good. The old earl was lonely in his declining age and embraced with ardour the prospect of becoming the protector of his grand-nephews. He sent for them immediately.

“Poor Ainslie,” said the compassionate old man, “with a good education he might have made a very different man. But he was left an orphan so early and was so flattered and indulged, that his mind became ruined.” Everard did not reply. He felt he could not speak in favour of the departed and all feeling of anger had long since left his mind. The story Miss Herbert told so confusedly was true in the main. Lord Sunderland had been wavering among several of his young friends, to fix who he thought most worthy of the borough of M---, which was vacant by the death of the last occupant, a nephew of his own, and who would eventually inherit the title. The younger brother of this nephew was abroad and was too wild to think of depending on. Everard's political ideas happened secretly to coincide with those of Lord Sunderland and the feeling with which he spoke of Lord Ainslie's death and his children wrought on the heart of the old man. Everard Price had besides, in spite of his worldliness in little things, an enthusiasm and hopefulness of spirit, which is in itself a merit to the aged.

Everard's dream when he was a very young lad was Politics and if in after life the little expectations he saw of realizing his hopes, and other perhaps less worthy occupations, deadened the feeling, it returned with redoubled force now, when a sudden vision opened upon him of the consummation of his wishes, like a fairy gift, without any trouble on his part. The only cloud in this brightness was that Dunstan – Harry Dunstan, his old familiar friend, was to be his opponent. He would rather it had been any one else; even as it was, he could not help evidently wishing for success.

Easter Eve saw Alixe and her two friends together for the first evening since they had parted in the country. Lady St Clair saw that Emily Price's spirits were very low and she endeavoured to fix her attention on the things most likely to interest her.

On 17 August 1839, the Infant Custody Act, the first piece of feminist legislation to be passed in the United Kingdom, became law. The four-hundred- word act gave mothers of “unblemished reputation,” who were separated from their husbands, the right to have access to their own children. The silent architect of this groundbreaking law was the poet, songwriter, novelist and scandalous woman Caroline Norton, known in the press as “Norty” Mrs Norton.

Born Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Sheridan in 1808, she married George Norton in 1827 and had three sons: Fletcher, in 1829; Brinsley, in 1831; and William, in 1833. From the beginning it was a deeply troubled marriage: for almost a decade she was the victim of her husband's drunken violence which started on their honeymoon in Scotland. In 1831 she was asked by her husband to secure him a well-paid job from an old friend of the Sheridan family, William Lamb, Lord Melbourne, the Home Secretary in the Whig government. Mrs Norton succeeded in getting her barrister husband a job as a magistrate for east London. Several other favours for the siblings of George were demanded by him and given by Melbourne. Caroline Norton and Lord Melbourne, who was to become Prime Minister in April 1835, started an affair in 1831, that was encouraged by her husband. Norton's elder brother Lord Grantley, an Ultra Tory, wanted to topple the Whig government and instructed George Norton to cite Prime Minister Melbourne in a “criminal conversation” case, which was heard on 22 June 1836, a sultry summer's day, in the Court of Common Pleas.

“Criminal conversation” was the antique legal term for adultery: “conversation” was a euphemism for sex, “criminal” described having sex with another man's wife as criminal, alluding to the fact that a husband's property – his wife's body – had been trespassed upon. George Norton accused the Whig Prime Minister of “crim con” and sued Melbourne for the modern equivalent of about a million pounds in damages for his hurt feelings, and being denied “domestic harmony,” a euphemism for sex. The trial only lasted a day: Lord Melbourne and hence Caroline Norton were found not guilty and George Norton was humiliated and then hell-bent on revenge.

George locked Caroline out of her home in the spring of 1836 with only the clothes she was wearing.

Sometimes dates can be used for sending signals. For example, on 7 December 1902 Germany and Great Britain instituted their “peaceful blockade” of Venezuela. On 7 December 1917, the U.S. Navy merged with the British Navy to fight Germany. On 7 December 1941, the Japanese simultaneously attacked the United States at Pearl Harbor and the British in Hong Kong and Singapore. Does this date hold a special significance for Great Britain, the United States and Japan? Or was it just a simple coincidence three times?

The Venezuelan Crisis of 1902–1903 threatened to pit the United States and Great Britain against each other. Venezuela's European creditors were firm in their demands that President Castro pay off Venezuela's mounting foreign debts. Several European nations sent their fleets, and on 25 November 1902 Germany and Great Britain formally announced their intention to implement a “pacific” blockade of Venezuela. It was widely assumed that such an action might result in foreign domination of Venezuela.

President Theodore Roosevelt opposed this action as a violation of the Monroe Doctrine, and the U.S. Navy's “winter exercise” of 1902–1903 was timed to correspond exactly with this German-British threat. The blockade was declared on 7 December 1902, and for “eleven days, between 8 December and 18 December 1902, the future of U.S., British, German, and Venezuelan relations hung in the balance as Theodore Roosevelt discreetly pursued diplomatic negotiations between Venezuela and the two great European powers.”

The U.S. Navy was able to mobilize 53 ships to counter the 29 ships available to Britain and Germany in the Caribbean. War appeared more and more likely. On 16 December 1902, Parliament convened to debate the situation in Venezuela and the strains it was placing on Britain's relationship with America. Outnumbered and outgunned, on 17 December 1902, the two European nations conceded defeat, lifted the blockade and agreed to arbitrate the matter with Venezuela instead.

Great Britain's decision to back down had another, albeit unintended, result. The British Colonial Office drafted a secret memorandum raising questions about the defensibility of British possessions in the western Atlantic in the event of a conflict with the United States. The Admiralty response acknowledged that the United States would be in a position to “stop our supplies from Canada” and to secure all food imports from the United States itself, effectively cutting off two-thirds of Great Britain's food supply.

After World War II, the USSR occupied the two southernmost Kurile Islands, plus two of the Hobomai islands off Hokkaido. The Kurile Islands were considered strategically significant because Japan's naval fleet left from there to attack Pearl Harbor (see Map 5). Coincidentally, President Truman's Order No. 1 gave Stalin permission to occupy and hold parts of Japan “proper.” By never signing a peace treaty, the modern-day Russian government still controls these four islands under the guise of occupying Japan “proper.”

The Kurile chain consists of 36 islands stretching from the southern tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula to the northeastern edge of Hokkaido Island. The two most southern of these—Kunashiri and Etorofu (or in Russian: Kunashir and Iturup)—were traditionally thought by the Japanese to be part of Hokkaido Island. Through a series of nineteenth-century Russo-Japanese treaties, the Kuriles fell under the ownership of Japan: in the Treaty of Shimoda (1855) and the Treaty of St. Petersburg (1875), Japan handed over its interests in Sakhalin Island to Russia in return for total control of the Kurile Islands. Following the 1904–1905 Russo-Japanese War, the 5 September 1905 Portsmouth Peace Treaty allowed Japan to regain sovereignty over the southern half of Sakhalin. With the opening of Soviet-American negotiations for Soviet entry into the Pacific War, however, the centuries-old dispute over the Kurile Islands reemerged. Through a lengthy series of negotiations and agreements—including the Cairo Declaration, the Teheran Conference and the Yalta agreement—Stalin wove a diplomatic web that allowed the USSR to reoccupy the islands.

The October 1943 Cairo Conference, which the USSR did not attend, first raised the question of post-war territorial acquisitions. On 27 November 1943, the Allies issued the following declaration: “The three great Allies are fighting this war to restrain and punish the aggression of Japan. They covet no gain for themselves and have no thought of territorial expansion. It is their purpose that […] Japan will also be expelled from all other territories which she has taken by violence and greed.”

The British World War I campaign against the Dardanelles was initially meant to be purely a naval effort, but its failure to force a passage through Turkey's defenses required a change of strategy. The new plan was to adopt a peripheral campaign to secure the Gallipoli Peninsula. If the originally planned 24 April 1915 landing was successful, land troops could clear away the Turkish shore emplacements and field artillery, and thus permit the passage of the British fleet to Constantinople. Coincidentally, on 24 April 1915 Turkey began to purge its Armenian minority in anticipation that as fellow Christians the Armenians might back the British against the Turks. Eventually, as many as a million Armenians died as a result of this Turkish repression.

General Sir Ian Hamilton, who was commander of Eastern Command, was in charge of the Gallipoli operation. He had serious doubts that a landing operation could succeed, and was warned that the Turks might fortify the coast, turning the operation into a “second Crimea,” just like a similar landing disaster some 60 years earlier in the Crimean war. Nevertheless, when Kitchener ordered the landing to be attempted, Hamilton decided that the Anzac force would land to the north of Gaba Tepe and the 29th Division would land at five beaches near Cape Helles. While the 29th went north, the Anzacs would advance east across the peninsula to block Turkish reinforcements.

This plan was too complicated. By simultaneously landing at six different beaches, Hamilton hoped to confuse the Turkish defenses. But instead the landing parties quickly got bogged down. Rather than move immediately inland, the two forces landing at Helles Y and S beaches awaited the arrival of the main force from the south. Meanwhile, further to the north, the Anzac landing was just north of Gaba Tepe. Hamilton's mistake of not leaving the beaches immediately to attack the Turkish troops was to have dire consequences.

Among his many problems, Hamilton completely underestimated the Turkish response. In mid-March 1915, they formed a new Fifth Army commanded by General Liman von Sanders, former head of the German military mission to Turkey. Soon, the Turks had moved about 40,000 men and 100 artillery pieces to the west side of the peninsula ready to oppose the landing.

The election came on. Alixe listened with intense interest to the accounts Emily received of her brother's success. The first day, the odds were greatly in favour of Everard. The second day, Alixe made [herself] sure he would be returned. Judge then of the sorrowful surprise with which the news was received of his failure. Harry Dunstan was member for M___! What dull senseless people the inhabitants of that borough must be. Everard returned fagged and out of spirits. His pride was mortified and the great aim of his life baffled, just within view of success.

“And that old foolish Lord Sunderland was so positive of his influence,” said the disappointed candidate peevishly, as he threw himself into the chair Emily wheeled round for him.

“And the fools on whose votes I depended, gaped and hurrared and drank and fought and looked at their own cockades, till I am sure they did not know Dunstan and me apart. And there again,” continued he, growing more wrathful at the recollection, as a soldier's blood warms during the recital of his past campaigns, “there I was to be fooled and insulted. I held out my hand to Dunstan when I met him, and drew back with air of an injured hero and said, ‘Now, you have already told me you cannot wish me success and we do not meet here as friends, we that have been friends ever since we were boys at College and wrote themes to the tune of Damon and Pythias!’ Oh it was shabby, confoundedly shabby. So I left him in a very ill humour, for then he did not seem to have a chance of success.”

“Yes, the tide of fortune does seem to have changed even more quickly than usual,” said Emily.

“Quickly enough. For on Friday evening, he had about 120 votes and [by] Saturday he had upwards of three hundred and forty. And then I had to make my appearance before Lord Sunderland, to thank him for his support, to regret that support had not been more efficacious, which of course I could not often attribute to his lordship's want of zeal or influence etc, etc.

Woodrow Wilson was wrongly blamed for betraying China at the 1919 Paris peace talks due to a chance clerical error. His “secret” compromise solution to the Sino-Japanese Shandong question divided the problem into “political” versus “economic” concerns. While fighting to return to China full control over all political rights, Wilson was willing to grant Japan the economic rights that Germany had previously held in the Shandong concessions, and which the Japanese government had acquired from Beijing by means of official—albeit secret—agreements. Wilson successfully negotiated this compromise with the Japanese delegation during the last week of April 1919, immediately prior to the announcement of the Paris Peace Conference's peace treaty. Coincidentally, Wilson's secretary back in Washington neglected to release this agreement, thereby helping to precipitate the 4 May 1919 student demonstrations in China that eventually resulted in the founding of the Chinese Communist Party.

President Wilson stood up for China's national sovereignty at the Paris Peace Conference ending World War I. On 29 April 1919, Wilson expressed his concerns that Japan might wrongly acquire Germany's former political rights—considered illegal by China—in Shandong province. He even went so far as to ask the Japanese envoy, Baron Makino, several detailed questions, first about underwater cables, then about railways and mines, to make sure that Japan was not being given more rights than Germany had previously enjoyed. Wilson was especially worried about Tokyo's contention that the Japanese citizens should enjoy extraterritorial rights along the railway lines in Shandong, warning the Japanese delegates that “He must say frankly that he could not do this. He asked the Japanese representatives to cooperate with him in finding a way out. He wanted to support the dignity of Japan, but he thought that Japan gained nothing by insisting on these leased rights being vested in the government.” As for Japan's insistence on using Japanese police along the railways, Wilson clarified that “he did not mind Japan asking for these rights, but what he objected to was their imposing them.”

The Pacific Ocean has three major North-South island chains, including the so-called “first island chain” that runs from the tip of the Kamchatka Peninsula down through the Kurile Islands, the Japanese home islands, Okinawa, Taiwan and on through to the Philippines. The so-called “second island chain” splits away from Japan, and runs southward toward the Bonins, Guam and the Marshall Islands. Meanwhile, the so-called “third island chain” runs from the end of the Aleutian Trench southward along the Emperor Seamount, through Midway, and ends up in the Hawaiian Islands (see Map 1).

During the late nineteenth century, Japan expanded along the first and second island chains and into the Western Pacific. In 1876, Japan obtained all of the Kurile Islands in exchange for ceding the southern half of Sakhalin Island to Russia, and also seized the Bonin Islands, about 1,300 kilometers to the southeast of Japan. In 1879, the Ryukyu Islands were formally annexed by Japan and became the prefecture of Okinawa. Finally, after the first Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), Japan obtained the island of Taiwan—in theory in perpetuity—in 1895, which gave it unbroken control from Kamchatka to Taiwan. Japan's expansion effectively cut the U.S. sea line of communication (SLOC) to China, which was considered to be a major trading partner.

In 1897, assistant secretary of the Navy, Theodore Roosevelt, and Commander C. J. Goodrich, president, U.S. Naval War College (NWC), carried on a confidential correspondence discussing how Japan's recent expansion impacted the United States. The original letters are in the NWC Historical Archives. On 23 June 1897, Goodrich explained that a Japanese attack on the United States would have to be staged from either Dutch Harbor (Unalaska) in the Aleutians or from Hawaii: