Oct. 6
Agreeing with this journal's view that Japan's aggression in China is the main issue arising from the present crisis, the Rev. Ronald Rees and pseudonymous correspondents deserving no less respect, traverse its firm objections to the advocacy ofa boycott or the exercise of economic pressure with the ostensible purpose of ending that aggression, without the use of arms. Courtesy demands an effort to reply. A Chinese correspondent unwittingly' puts a weapon ready to hand. He cites the schoolboy's crude "sanction" of sending to Coventry. How seldom does that achieve its purpose; how often do the—tyrannical majority eventually have the uncomfortable feeling that the solitary victim of their immature assumption of the powers of judge, jury' and executioner is in the right. Were a boycott of Japan established the same result would accrue, and the real delinquency be forgotten. A' boycott must lead to violence. he picketer who seeks to "persuade" the shopkeeper not to sell or the customer not to buy the forbidden goods, is bound sooner or Jater to awaken the stubborn spirit of liberty which may assert itself, first in harsh words and then, perhaps, in delual physical resistance. From that to rioting is a short, step. The idea that a boycott would stiffen the moderate man in Japan against his militarists is poor psychology. - It would create sense of resentment which would rather take refuge in national solidarity, seeing that an attack on the nation's economy Is intended. A boycott is as. indiscriminate -as certain forms of bombing from the air. It finds sup~ port from unscrupulous traders as a useful stimulus to their business, an artificial buttress against fair competition. It may) penalize the Japanese who object to war an instrument of policy just as much as those who deliberately rely on aggression. It is anti-social act similar to all measures of oppression, such as excluding a man from 9 club because, of his political convictions, threatening a newspaper through its adver-fisement columns. It invites reprisals, It stirs up hatred. It brings its exploiters to the threshold of war. It recoils on the heads of those who apply" it, for it disturbs the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.