IX weeks have elapsed since the occupation of Hankow and the re-opening of the river remains as distant a problem as ever. Local Japanese have been quoted as saying that the river would be closed for the duration of the "war" and that, is probably the real intention.
Military necessity and dangers of navigation are pleaded as the cause but, in all honesty, that must needs fail to carry conviction, for it is known that after one month of occupation 3,200 Japanese craft of all sorts and sizes were observed io have entered the port.
Of these 305 were Ocean-going ships estimated to average slightly under 4,000 tons, and drawing up to 25 feet.
Obviously, too, the shipping companies who specialize in this trade are far better equipped with shallow-draft craft, suitable for the low-water season, than the Japanese, who have actually lost many of the craft built specifically for the river trade.
Not all the stores that can be observed coming ashore in a ceaseless stream are of a military, or even of semi-military, character, and as time passes, their non-military character becomes increasingly evident. It is true that as yet Japanese goods are not in common display in shops, but it is unlikely that that will be long deferred.
Probably there is not a foreigner in Hankow who seriously doubts that the closure of the river is intended solely to stifle the trade of the foreign merchant. They ere convinced that it will be fully opened to Japanese trade as soon as Japanese merchants are in a position to resume trade and their financial and currency arrangements have been completed. To the foreign merchants it will be re-opened at such time and on such terms as the Japanese choose to dictate. The time has not yet come and the terms cannot yet be put into execution.
The closure of the river is the embodiment and the focal point of the foreigner's grievances. Clearly, however, those grievances are based at least as much on the spirit which prompts the closure as on the closure itself. It epitomizes in the most marked and complete form that general restraint on foreign trade which characterizes Japan's present policy. It is essentially in this sense that the problefh is regarded, for manifestly the mere re-opening of the river would serve no practical purpose, if that re-opening were accompanied by all manner of inhibitions and interferences such as would nullify the value of the re-opening itself,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.