Tokyo, Nov. 4.
The discussion at the Imperial Conference in London of the future fof the Singapore Base has tended to bring this subject up again in the Japanese press. Ju Japanese itary and naval circles, it is taken for granted that the Base be completed, especially after the impassioned pleas made by Sir Thomas Walford, High Commissioner for New Zealand in London, land by Sir Granville Rune, High Commissioner for Australia.
Here, it will-be well to state, in a nutshell, the reaction Japan has had, and still has, with regard to the Base. Japan's stand'is that the building of the Base constitutes a new entrenchment of Europe in JAsia; is tantamount to a notice to /Asiatic peoples that they must submit to a further period of European domination, and that it represents "grim reminder," designed specify ally for China and Japan, that they will not be allowed to emigrate to the lands of the southern hemisphere—Australia and New Zealand—or challenge seriously the White Australia policy.
In their latest criticism of the Base, the papers recall that Mr. Macdonald, when leader of the Opposition, inveighed severely Jgninst its construction and made a "savage onslaught" on Mx. Baldwin fat that time. How then, they wonder, can Mr, Macdonald now see virtue in what he has so vigor. ously and so sweepingly condemned? "This rolfe face on the part of Mr. Macdonald," says the "Hochi," a powerful Tokyo daily, "is the more difficult to understand after the successful termination of the London naval conference where Mr.
Macdonald carried matters with a high hand and Japan displayed exemplary meekness and forbearance."
The contention that the Base is not aimed at Japan is pooh-pooked. Without the Base, it is argued, the threat that lies in t'e might' of Britain's navy vis-d-vie Japan was lessened by distance. and the inthe Base concluded, Great Britain will be able to concentrate is battering power withi striking distance of Japan, since the docking facilities of the Base aim at being capable of accommodating capital ships. Another point to support the the Base has Japan in is that, since Japan is the only naval power of any worthwhile significance in the East (presumably meaning the only non-white power), it is ridieulsarcastic comments on references to the Anglo-Japanese alliance alive in the spirit, wh preparations are simultaneously being made at Singapore.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.