Among the subjects tentatively suggested by the Government of the United States in September, 1921, to the governments invited to participate in a conference on “ Limitation of Armament” and on “ Pacific and Far Eastern Questions” was that of the application of the principles that might be decided upon in questions relating to China to the territorial and administrative integrity of that state. When the Committee on Pacific and Far Eastern Questions took up the general discussion of matters within its purview, the expressions of high intention toward China on the part of the different interested Powers were so unanimous that it was deemed advisable to draw up immediately a statement of principle embodying these sentiments. At the first meeting of the committee the Chinese delegation had presented a group of statements of principle, of which the first reads: “ The Powers engage to respect and observe the territorial integrity and political and administrative independence of the Chinese Republic,” and the fifth as follows: “ Immediately or as soon as circumstances will permit, existing limitations upon China's political, jurisdictional and administrative freedom of action are to be removed.”

On October 10, 1923, the permanent constitution of the republic of China was promulgated. The “Double Ten,” already a national commemoration day, becomes fittingly the date of the long-awaited culmination of the constitutional movement inaugurated by the revolution of 1911. Although the national assembly was the same legislature which, sitting as a constituent body, completed the first draft of the constitution in 1913 and passed the larger part of it through its second reading in 1916–17, the actual periods devoted to committee work and discussion were limited to the time, not amounting altogether to three years, during which the assembly was permitted by military and political exigencies to remain in session.

The circumstances which led to the creation of the Far Eastern Republic as a new Russian state on terms of such perfect amity with the mother country that it was recognized immediately by her and received her warm financial and diplomatic support run back to the revolutions of 1917 in Russia. In Siberia the March Revolution was heartily welcomed and the Zemstvos took over the government. The bulk of the population was content with the abolition of Tzarism but the minority of communists started a Bolshevistic propaganda which succeeded after the November revolution, due to the energy of the communists, the armed help of Moscow and the apathy of the peasants. There was, however, a second minority composed of supporters of the old regime and its opposition to the organization of a soviet system in Siberia led to civil war.

For more than two thousand years the government of China exhibited, in the main, the elements which characterized it when, in the reign of Ch'in Shih Huang Ti (221–209 B.C.), feudalism was abolished and a centralized system inaugurated. Through successive dynasties the changes introduced were in matters of detail. These facts admonish to unusual caution in the accepttance of the present system at its face value. “Republic,” “president,” “cabinet,” “parliament,” “courts,” “democracy,” —these are titles of Western institutions which continued to stand for the corresponding institutions in China when the latter were established upon the model of the former. Even in Western states the meaning of these terms varies, as does their application in actual government. It would be strange if a decade of republicanism in China had evolved a political organization which still remains largely an ideal among nations which have spent centuries of effort toward its attainment. New terms are applied more readily than old ways are altered. Different clothes may be a disguise, not a sure gauge of habitat or occupation. The more one strives to understand present political forces in China, the more is he driven to study the old régime.

The United States, fighting a war for independence from the greatest of maritime Powers at a time when the belligerent and neutral worlds were united against England because of her maintenance of the ancient rules of maritime warfare, naturally incorporated into its first treaty, the commercial agreement of 1778 with France, the "twin maxims" of Utrecht: free ships, free goods, enemy ships, enemy goods. The greater freedom which the first of these principles expressed agreed with the interests and the temper of the new republic, since in but one of its subsequent treaties has it included the opposing regulations upheld by the mother country. Treaties of 1782 with the United Provinces, 1783 with Sweden, and 1800 with France stipulated that free ships should make free goods and enemy ships, enemy goods.