It cannot be gain said that the foreign community are gravely perturbed at the menace to their rights and their position, of which there are ever increasing manifestations. They feel that, as has indeed been stated by a Japanese official of not inconsiderable standing, the Japanese are concerned solely with their own interests—Chinese and foreign interests count with them for nothing. To their mind, in military Parlance, strategy and tactics are being combined to encompass their elimination. Strategy is based on the indefinite closure of the n a closure which it is thought will persist until certain economic ana frrancial objectives are realized and y felt that restriction and version of trade and economic rights and interests are fundamental to those objectives. Tactics consist aking the foreigners position me and even untenable, whilst ho wider strategical scheme is being developed. It is a policy of pin-pricks, such as would matter little were they not so obviously calculated to make the foreigner lose face, a policy of making him realize that the Japanese is his master and therefore of degrading him in the eyes of the Chinese people.
The foreigner is in a difficult position., Individually, irrespective of nationality, he would like to liquidate his interests and get out. But that is rarely possible, and in any case it would be an admission of defeat and would be playing the spanese game. He is therefore more likely to plead for sterner support from his own Government. He feels it to be intolerable that Japan, in chosing doubtless for good reasons, to fight this as an undeclared war, should be permitted to trample third-party rights and interests under-foot in a manner which makes their position very akin to that of belligerents in actual war. Why, they argue, should she be allowed te have it both ways, to eat her cake and have it?
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.