That is one of the underlying' feelings pervading most of the criticism levelled at the base, The other is the old story of Great Britain deserting her erstwhile ally and preferring mollycoddle. with her new love, America, With this view goes the myth of a dark and" deep-laid Anglo-American conspiracy "to. reduce Japan to a position of isol tion, to bottle her up in the Extreme Orient and to prevent her legitimate expansion.
'The very mention by the Japan-eve press of the possibility of trade rivalry growing -s0 tierce, if such really takes on definite form, is About the best reason these papers have yet stated, not against the base, but rather' for it. It means simply, then, that the base is pro-Jected as a policy of trade insurance and that this insurance is not prompted by a belief that hostilities between the Britain of the West and the Britain of the East are inevitable, but rather that the base will be a powerful discourager of any rash schemes which may strain relations and precipitate calamity. The better section of the Japanese press admits that Great Britain is no longer moved by anything even remotely resembling lust for conquest; these also realize that the British Empire to-day will not suffer any attack on any portion of senor territory over which the Union Jack rightly fies.
Temperament To talk plainly and without cumlocution, the majority of the Japanese papers do not seem to have paid sufficient attention to the British view of the base project. They content themselves with sweeping generalities like the Washington conference being violated in spirit and principal, if not in letter, and draw far-fetched ideas that the base is a direct result of the abrogation of the Anglo-Alliance, a. dagger pointed at the heart of Japan ete. ete. ° Pessimism I for some time past corned.
This pessimism may be a Tesult of the general temperament of the Japanese people, which excitable and fatalistic, and which has grown more and more morbid in recent years as a result of a stagnation of thought and a series of economic, diplomatic and terrestrial reverses that fell blow after blow, in sudden succession, on this nation,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.