Page 55 - Il Mediterraneo quale elemento del Potere Marittimo - Atti 16-18 settembre 1996

RISING SUN JN THE .MEDITERRANEAN 41

02
"Japan has no intention of seizing German Islands in the Pacific >. But on the
same 'day, in London, without giving notice to Japan, the British Government on
its own informed the press that the action of Japan would not extend to the Pacific
Ocean beyond the China Seas, except in so far as it may be necessary to protect
Japanese shipping lines in the Pacific, nor beyond Asiatic waters westward of the
China Seas, nor to any foreign territory except territory in German occupation on
the Continent of Eastern Asia 03>.

British requests for naval assistance
Request concernh1g the Pacific and Indian Oceans

Having asked Japan for geographical limitation, however, the British Navy,
recognized their lack of naval power in the Pacific and in the Mediterranean. They
reversed their policy and requested Japan to despatch naval forces to European
waters outside of the original geographical limitation on the 13th August. The Bri-
tish Navy asked the Japanese naval assistance attache, Captain Abo Kiyotane, to
deploy the cruiser Izumo which had been dispatched to Mexico, to head for Esqui-
4
malt to protect the coast of North America 0 >. Then on 2nd of September, Grey
sounded out Ambassador Inoue as to whether the Japanese Government would be
disposed to send a division of their Navy in order to cooperate with the Allies Na-
vy primarily in the Mediterranean and ultimately in the decisive theaters to cope
with the Turkish and the Austrian battleships, the German cruiser Goben and the
light cruiser Bres/au in the Mediterranean 05>.
To this requirement, Minister Kato explained to the British Ambassador Gree-
ne, on 9th September, that Japan could not afford to split its naval force to the
European waters because its operations in Tsingtao and in the Pacific Ocean were
being carried out, and since the Imperial Naval vessels were designed mainly for
home defence, it was almost impossible to gain the approval of public opinion to
6
send naval forces to Europe 0 >. Two months after the first request, on 4th No-
vember 1914, Britain again extended its request for the Japanese Army to head
for Europe and the Navy to the Dardanelles, because of Turkish participation in
the war. Greene )landed a private "most secret'' message from the First Lord .of
the Admiralty, Winston S. Churchill, to the Minister of the Navy, Vice Admiral
Yashiro Rokuro, asking for naval assistance, "as Tsingtao will be taken and the
German cruisers will probably be destroyed, we hope early in the year to be strong
enough to increase the severity of our naval pressure on the Germans by entering
the Baltic''. On this proposal, at the conversation with Kato, Greene offered the
advantages to Japan of a more powerful voice at the peace conference, if Japan
concurred to this proposal 0 >.
7
These incoherent and conflicting approaches by the British created strong ar-
guments and deep distrust within the Japanese Navy that the British had limited
Japanese naval activities in the China Sea at the begining of the war. The Navy