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Of course, the author does not pretend to have made use of all of the aforementioned, but their being available has permitted him to take soundings in depth wherever it seemed necessary or wise.
The world of Chinese sources remains a problem. The author is not quite as ignorant of them as Griswold was, but he must rely mainly on the works of others who have not feared to enter that largely uncharted marshland. Of course, there are no Chinese captured documents like the remarkable Japanese collection, but there exists a vast assortment of materials, which China specialists will no doubt use to add new dimensions to many of the topics that follow. However, the present study does not attempt a detailed analysis of the dramatic changes that have taken place in China, any more than Griswold’s did. Japan and the United States remain the principal actors, with European countries, especially Britain and Russia, in minor roles, all strutting and fretting their hour on the Far Eastern stage, at the center of which looms a huge mountain—China. The scenery remains the same as Griswold’s, except for one thing. He treated the mountain as an inactive volcano. We know it was not only active but also about to erupt.
Our China documentation will come largely from the files of non-Chinese actors who, of course, understood far too little about the volcanic action being generated, although, curiously, they did know a great deal about the agencies that set the fuses. The Japanese, particularly, had an almost pathological fascination with rebels and communists, and American State Department officials used many reams of paper reporting on Bolshevik activities in China. We shall try to use these reports while realizing that they reflect but a pale image of the flames of discontent in China, whose shadows Japanese policy makers tried to strike down with swords. American policy makers largely ignored them, while concentrating instead on the Japanese swordsmen.