People here are forgetting that the US feared the Yellow Peril as much as it did the Red Menace--and for example wanted the Japanese out of Siberia (something to which Hughes and Shidehira agreed at the Washington Conference). (The Far Eastern Republic, the short-lived buffer state set up by the Soviets, publicly praised the US for helping to bring about the Japanese withdrawal.) The US was willing to recognize Japan's special rights in Manchuria but insisted that the nominal sovereignty of China there be maintained. And above all it has to be remembered that the Japan of the immediate post-World War I era was very different from the Japan of the 1930's, much more sensitive to US and world opinion, much more sensitive indeed to internal Japanese opinion which was not friendly to foreign adventures.