It is to be hoped that the Japanese Government will be able to vindicate ils regard for international courtesy disposing of- the startling and serious revelations arising out of the recent visit of HMS, Medway to Keelung. 'The earlier' affair in which the Japanese took somewhat " precipitate action was smoothed out by the conciliatory attitude of the British authorities. The incident which, as Reuter now shows, took place on Oct, 7 was in a different category. There seems to be no doubt that the Japanese police, carried away by some ill. advised emotional stress, unwarrantably arrested and il-treated certain British sailors and went to the length of insulting a British ameer who, performing his duty, intervened 10 clear up the misunderstanding. From this and recent happenings in Shanghai it is not uncharitable to say that Japanese service men have been allowed to acquire exaggerated notions of their rights and duties and in particular to make a regular fetish cof impeding photography by civilians or other nationals, In Japanese passenger ships elaborate pains "are rightly taken to explain to forelgnrs entering Japan the importance of avoiding the use of a camera In certain fortiNed zones. Those zones ore carefully indicated by maps duly displayed in the ships in order to tive the smallest possible room for error. This clearly implies recognition of the general right of the public to Photograph outside those zones. Yet in the International Settlement which can by no interpretation come within the prohibited category, Japanese naval ratings have taken the law forcibly into their own hands, They have been allowed to avoid correetion by the desire of other national authorities to preserve calmness. Now in Formosa this tendency has been indulged in amazingly reckless disregard of the dignity of the Japanese navy. 'The cause seems to lie in the gradual development of a virulent xenophobia which is quite incompatible with the traditional courtesy of Japan." Sir Charles Little -has' taken' the only possible step in temporarily postpone ing his visit to Japanese waters. That. should bring prompt realization of the ditfeulty to which the i-advised lon of the Formosan police has ex-Posed the Japanese authorities,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.