The statement made by Mr. R. A. Butler, Parliamentary Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, in the House of Commons on Tuesday night on the crisis which has arisen in Tientsin throws a new light upon the whole matter, and one which amply justifies the attitude which has been adopted by the British Government. On April 9, Mr. Cheng Shi-kang, newly-appointed Superintendent of Customs was murdered in a Tientsin cinema, the first case of violence to have occurred in the Concession since the outbreak of hostilities. On June 7, after four men had been arrested on suspicion of complicity in the assassination, a proclamation was issued that any breach of neutrality in future would be dealt with either by handing over the culprit to the "de facto" authorities for trial, or by expulsion from the Concession. Subsequent to their arrest these men were handed over to the Japanese authorities for questioning, and are alleged to have made confessions implicate ing themselves, which they later retracted when they were returned to the British authorities, averring that they had been made under torture. In view of these facts, the men strenuously denying their guilt to the British authorities, His Majesty's Government did not feel justified in giving instructions for them to be handed over to the local district court. The British Consul-
General consequently informed his Japanese colleague on June 7 that the four men would be detained pending the production of further evidence, failing which they would be expelled from the Concession. That further evidence has not up to the present time been forthcoming, and the Japanese by means of the blockade which was commenced yesterday seek to force the hand of the British authorities. The issue is no more intricate than that, and the British officials in Tientsin are being subjected to an unusual form of pressure to adopt a course of action which they cannot in justice follow. It is quite apparent that if the Japanese do possess confessions, as they claim, there could be only one possible result of their trial in the local district court, and to hand these men over would be to send them to certain death.
The suggestion has been made that a settlement of the dispute might be reached by the creation of an arbitration committee, consisting of two British, two Japanese and a neutral chairman, Mr. J. K. Caldwell, U.S. Consul-General in Tientsin, being suggested for that post. The main point of enquiry by such a committee would be to discover whether the Japanese had, or had not serious grounds for claiming the custody of the four men, and it is argued that by such a means a settlement of the whole affair might be reached without loss of prestige by either side. The suggestion is a good one; it would settle once and for all the suspicions concerning the validity of the confessions which the men are alleged to have made, and while, of course, one side or the other would have to lose its case there is no reason to believe that this would entail any loss of dignity whatever. It is hoped that this proposal will be adopted by the British Government and made to the Japanese authorities, though it seems unlikely, for it will be the finest possible test of Japanese bone fides. Acceptance of such suggestion would mean that the Japanese have a case worthy of investigation, and would clear them of the suspicion that they were merely seeking to create an incident for purposes of their own. Refusal on the other hand would merely indicate that their case is not so strong as they claim, and tend to prove the accuseds' allegations that their confessions were extracted under torture. There is, however, just one obstacle which might arise in the application of this suggestion, and that is that the Japanese army officials may be reluctant to submit their infallibility to the scrutiny of such a committee of arbitration, and it is probably on this point that this proposed means of settling the matter may fail. In that event the British may be expected to "stick it out." From the reports which have come to hand, this blockade is resorted to for its annoyance value. It is apparently not proposed to deny the British or French Concessions access to foodstuffs.
That would in fact amount to a siege involving many other nationalities besides the British and the French, and might induce an even wider interest in the whole affair than is the case at present.
It is not to be believed that this action by the Japanese Army has all the support in Japan which the former would like. Indeed it appears that there is a wide divergence of ideas on the subject of the local policy in China and the national policy as conceived in Tokyo, and it is not to be believed that responsible statesmen in Tokyo are completely happy about the manner in which events are developing in China, especially concerning the way in which the Japanese are succeeding in embroiling themselves with one nation after another. Why they should be engaged in a course of action which is estranging them from even their greatest friends it is more than a little difficult to understand, though it is more than likely that the situation is quite accurately summed up by the editor of the "Journal de Shanghai," in the course of a leading article yesterday morning, in which he said This absurd violence, these threats, the new anti-British campaign, the organisation of sabotage, in British factories by those who have promised to ensure their protection, these bullyings, these paltry vexations are all to a great extent explained by the bad humour felt in the Japanese camp as a result of the firmness of the Chinese resistance.
It is apparently realized in Tokyo that this campaign in China is even now probably as far from its end as it is from its beginning and that anything from two to three years more must pass before that Chinese resistance can be broken down. In the meantime the position is very much one Of stalemate and the Japanese Army has to show something for all the expenditure of life and treasure which the struggle has involved. Hence these alarums and excussions over the foreign settlements in China. They serve to distract public attention in Japan from the fact that spectacular warfare has long been a thing of the past, and that ahead of the Japanese in China still lies a long, grim struggle from which, even now, they have no certainty that they will emerge quite so victorious as they^hoped when they embarked upon this very tragic venture.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.