"With the easy occupation of Manchuria,-and no more than the paper denunciation of their action by the rest of the world, the Japanese soon embarked on the wider policy of penetrating into China proper. On this development the author is frank and realistic; Japah must, in the eyes of her strategists, occupy North China and Inner Mongolia io outüank the red republic of the Outer Mongols, and Sever communications between China and the Soviet. And Japanese policy can see no middle course, between a China under Russian ana one under Japanese protection. To the Japanese their real enemy on the mainland of Asia, was, is and always wil be Russia Me bogy, therefore, in the minds of all Japanese is a sovietized China under Russian influence. The Japanese claim to be tne bulwai shielding China from the waves of bolshevism which, they maintain, threaten to engulf her from the north, and they ascribe to bolshevism asi manifestations of anti-Japanese feeling amongst the Chinese, closing their eyes to what is so obvious to others: that anti-Japanese, boycotts and agitation in China are the dire results of Japan's political aggression! that the Chinese as a nation are not likely to succumb to communism; and that'if anything will drive them into the arms of Russia it will be foreign aggression which they cannot otherwise (resist.
Japen's activities in China since 1931 have been in flagrant violation of her obligations unger the Kellogg Pact and the Nine Power Treaty. Yet there are, if one would understand her point of view, other aspects of the situation which should mot be overlooked. China also was, and is bound by treaty obligations which she has sought io set aside; and. as the treaty port communities can testify, the methods of the Chinese Nationalists in seeking to rid themselves of the Unequal Treaties can exceedingly exasperating. The caus: of the conflict lie in history, in China's subj; foreign Powers and in the failure of Japan to move with the times. China's the thraldom of the treaty system. struggle "to emancipate herself from meets nowadays with one understanding from ana America. But to the pre-war mentality of the Japanese, all such man testations of Chinese nationalism are a challenge provoking a resort to arms. In Japanese eyes one treaty Obligation ig as binding as another. Whether voluntarily undertaken or accepted under threats of force. What advantage is it otherwise for a motion to be strong enough to enforce its will? Japan's position in Manchuria had been built up by war and treaty; she claimed to be entitled, and. she was determined, to treat Manchuria as an autonomous dependency of China under Japanese protection. (So had Russia and Great Britain treated Mongolia and Tibet.) Why should she allow th Chinese Nalionalists to set aside her treaty rights, and the Kuomintang to unify Manchuria with the rest of China? Why, the Japanese contend, should hey not expand at ihe expense of China, when Britain. Europe and America have long ago expanded at ihe expense of half the world?
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.