To the Editor of the "Nonrn-CHiNA Dany News"
Sm,—All readers must be grateful to you for raising in two recent editorials the question of an economic boycott of Japan. The question is full of difüculty and the objections noted in your editorials need to be given ihe weight they deserve. But there are certain considerations which though no doubt they have been in your mind, are often the cause of more confusion of thought.
Great Britain is not a neutral in this conflict. There is no neutrality for all States who signed the League Covenant, Not only morally but legally we are bound to assist one another when any member of the League suffers aggression. That is the whole point of the League. The "mediator" theory to which you give endorsement is largely based upon that false conception of neutrality. My neighbours house is subject to a murderous attack. I hear the shouts for help and cries of his family. You tell me to suppress my generous, my "well meaning" emotions, and ask me to sit tight until the whole thing is over in the hope, that perhaps I may be asked to Mediate between the attacker and such of the family as may be still left alive. The grounds on which the six pacifist organizations in America make their unhappy prouncements are avowedly to keep out of trouble. British hopes of being à mediator are more respectable but not likely to impress the victim as being more helpful.
Your leading articles have freely admitted that this is a war of aggression. It is repeated in your issue today and the metaphor of the housebreaker is used. It is all very, well for Sapajou in your issue of October 3 to laugh at whips employed on a raging sea. He recommends cil. 1 wish he would draw another picture, representing the aggressive housebreaker and his neighbour sitting with an oty look upon his face, preparing to mediate. they are gradually being placed by their militarists in an unenviable posi-Yon of moral isolation. As an eyewitness of several of the Japanese bombings which have resulted in the slaughter of defenceless - Chinese civilians, I feel that these unfortunate people will not have died in vain if the recent attempts at military terrorism can be used, as I think they are rightly being used, as a rallying point for a worldwide protest backed up, if necessary, by a boycott to drive the point home.
In the final paragraph of your editorial you call timely attention to the basic issues involved so far as China is concerned. Japanese aggression in China has become so well known and obvious a fact during the past few years as to be accepted without much more than a mental protest. The Japanese have now overstepped the mark, however, and things have reached a point where world opinion is becoming thoroughly aroused. The more fiercely that indignation burns the better chance there will be that the tragic con-Sequences of the misuse of military power will be made clear, even to the Japanese militarists themselves.
Too often in the past our statesmen have listened to the plea that they must not do this or that lest it make things more difficult for the liberal elements in Japan and strengthen the hands of the military faction. What has been achieved by this forbearance? To-day the last vestiges of liberalism in Japan have been stifled and the Japanese people are being told that the world applauds the Japanese army's action in China, The best service we can render to the Japanese people as well as to the world at large, it seems to me, is not to remain silent, as "R.K." urges, but to avail ourselves to the full of the present opportunity to make a clear-cut stand for decency in international conduct It is something which affects us all—and those who will come after us.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.