Tokyo, Oct. 2.
"A little quarrel with the first, second, third, fifth, seventh eighth' chapters, but very critical of the sixth, which reduces the value of the whole report, as it appears to have been written under the strongest prejudice." This appears to sum up the initial reaction of the Foreign Office to the Lytton Report.
a speaking, the ism of the Report is that it unduly' confined to Manchuria and too little devoted to China and the Far East generally, and that the Commission would not have inelyded the ninth and tenth chapters HE it lad "properly understood the scope of its functions under the League's resolution," it is admitted, how-iver, that these two chapters contain "some wholesome conclusions.
The main points criticised elsewhere are the assertion in Chapter VIII that Japan's contention to a special position in Manchuria is incompatible with the Nine-Power Treaty and the assertion in Chapter IV that the blowing up of the railway near Mukden on the night of September 18 last year was ingulf cient to justify military action and that the action taken afterwards overstepped the bounds of self-defence.
'According to a spokesman of the Foreign Office, the Government took the view that' the man on the spot
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.