June 1.
Marquis Ukuma has been giving to a Tokio newspaper an interesting statement of his views on a renewal of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. The veteran stateman's bark is usually worse than his bite, so we need not think too much of the veiled threat which seems traceable in the words, ''Without the Alliance angers threaten China, Siberia and India, particularly the latter. The greatest encouragement to the Reds would be the knowledge that Japan would not interfere whatever happened in India."" The statement, however, is a timely reminder that there must be a clear undertaking on Japan's part, if the Alliance is renewed, that there must be no more harbour age given to Indian Nationalists. Marquis Okuma then says that the League of Nations is not yet so solidly founded as to make alliances unnecessary; which is no more than the truth, He thinks that if it were by any means possible America should be brought into the alliance; and he says that "the British, resident in China, and the Australian are taking a superficial view and are opposing the renewal on the ground that it throws a unilateral obligation upon the British." This statement needs correction. By no means all the British resident in China nor even the most important section of them oppose renewal. They merely require that there shall be certain plain, unequivocal undertakings on Japan's part where their first-hand and not at all superficial experience of Far Eastern affairs shows them that the militarists, who have controlled Japanese policy in recent years, have been untrue to the spirit of the alliance.
The most interesting part of Marquis Okuma's statement is that, with the sole exception of the allusion to India, he mentions nothing which Japan might offer for a renewal of the alliance, notwithstanding that, as the world wags to-day and is likely to do for some time to come, it is plainly more to her advantage than Great Britain's that the alliance shall continue.
On the all-important topic of China he says nothing at all. Yet it is precisely in this region that Japan could offer a great deal for renewal; and what Britons resident in China feel first and foremost is that what Japan can promise in respect of China is precisely what the British Government trust require. For there appears no other way of securing British and Chinese interests against repetition of the acts of which complaint is made. We see it suggested that China must be consulted by Great Britain before she renews the alliance.
This sounds very pretty, but in plain fact is nonsense. Whom would she consult?
If she were to go to Peking, would there not be heard an immediate outcry among the students that some new plot was being hatched for the exploitation of China? So much is Peking detested and distrusted in this country that it blackens the character of all who have any dealings with it. There is only one safe course: that Great Britain should state publicly in simple language certain principles, which would stand the test of ordinary universal justice, and that on them she should insist in renewing the alliance,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.