As it happens there docs not! seem to have been any ground for this final judgment, In fact there is every reason to believe that Mr. Nuchbour did pick up the message out of the air and that he did not]
Publish it until he had held it for something like 18 hours, during ich ti ing to confirm Christmas joke, the therefore someone controlling a powerful radio sending! Plant and there are very few in this part of the world that are not under! official control, while few irresponsible operators would have enough savvy to invent the story as it came through:
The Legations of course denied all Knowledge of the yarn that is when: responsible spokesmen could found, for, with the anti-Christia movement threatened and the local war coming to an unknown climax, the majority of our sturdy repr sentatives were golfing or climbing tthe hills and the Chinese thing-ch'a were very much in charge of dip-Iemaey and the safeguarding of our persons and property. In the Japanese Legation, a small detegation of journalists learned that there was no official confirmation whatever of Mr. Nachbour's sensational story and were told further that, if it were true, the civilian sta of the With all this in mind, and granting the impossibility of any such abrupt decision on the part of the Fowers to set things right in China og Mr. Nachhour suggested, there no still some reason to. believe that something of the sort has been mooted.
The best reason of all is the voe: ferous Japanese condemnation of intervention. Whenever Japan makes up her mind to do something desperate or drastic, she precedes her [campaign with violent denunciations fu the press, and through every official channel, of sll who might possibly, but really have not, suggested that she was capable of such step. We have had yards of this sort of thing ever since the Kuo Sung-ling campaign against Manchuria started. Everyone knows that, Japan will not for a, moment tole rate civil war along Chinese lines, jin South Manchuria; but no sooner was such n war threatened than every Japanese organ of publicity. Jand every articulate Japanese official China commenced assuring the Chinese and foreign world that intervention was out of the question and that nothing. would please Japan more than to. be overridden.and trampled upon in Manchuria so long as the lives of Japan's nationals were safeguarded. To those of ts who are used to read Japan's assurances, these excited before-the-fact démentis said clearly that if anything went wrong in Manchuria, if the status quo were in any way disturbed a very large section of the Japanese army would, be there to see that nothing detrimental to Japanese interests happened and that the winner in the local feud, whoever he might be, subscribed fully to Japan's terms before he commenced to lay hands on the fruits of victory.
Further than this, those who clect} to study Japanese policy in China
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.