Mr. Neville Chamberlain's unreserved acceptance of President Franklin Roosevelt's offer of co-operation in strengthening civilization's defences against the lawlessness now menacing international relationships is an event of first-class importance. Mr. Chamberlain was not concerned solely with China, nor was Mr. Roosevelt. The extreme delicacy of the situation in Spain, or rather the controversies arising from that situation is evidently impressed on the minds of the American President and British Prime Minister alike. Yet in his reference to the Far East Mr. Chamberlain was not less precise than Mr. Roosevelt. Readers of this journal will perhaps note that he emphasized the very point which has been strongly urged in these columns during the last few days. Deprecating the cruelty of modern warfare in its attacks on non-combatants, Mr. Chamberlain advised that natural indignation at those horrors should not obscure the real charge of disregard of solemn treaties. That is exactly why this journal, realizing the highly technical issues involved in aerial bombing, as exemplified by Prof. Shinobu's exposition of the jurist's view of the subject, ventured to express the fear lest the emotions of the boycott campaign should relegate to the background the far more important problem of the invasion of China and the challenge which it has offered to accepted international codes. There can be little doubt that the broad targets presented by the boycott agitation came as an unexpected blessing to Japanese apologists. They have at once raised the cry of "atrocity-mongering" against which balanced judgments have a justifiable prejudice; they have attempted to discount the accuracy of reports, with the clear suggestion that the whole turmoil is nothing more than specious propaganda, Certain ingenuous foreigners, predisposed to such opinions by an inveterate bias. against the Chinese, have conspicuously fallen for this device. In truth it is as unwise to give full vent to general charges against Japan's air operations as it is to pretend that there is no conventional limit to the use of the aeroplane as an offensive weapon. Japan deserves fair play. The problem of peacefully solving this crisis turns on the policy which has launched her naval, military and aerial expeditionary forces against the Government of China, Controversy over the manner in which those forces have conducted themselves distracts attention from the main issue. It stimulates the fervour of extreme idolaters at the shrine of Japanese militarism.
Mr. Chamberlain, as the mouthpiece of Great Britain, implicitly rebukes that obscurantism. He nails firmly to the mast those principles which it has become the fashion of modern superficiality to deride or ignore. It is not surprising to learn that the Italian Ambassador at Tokyo has burnt Signor Mussolini's boats. Despite the recent solemn statements of Count Ciano, Italy is now stated to be ranged completely on the side of Japan. No military consequences are intended but it is difficult to dissociate that decision from events in the Mediterranean. Signor Mussolini has not eased the burden of Italy's representatives in China. Mr. Chamberlain does not conceal from the country the serious complications which have arisen from the Spanish upheaval. Those who recall the definite pledges given by Signor Mussolini in January last cannot be blamed if they confess to bewilderment at the unashamed admission that Italian intervention in Spain is continuing and developing. Here again the question of relying on the validity of the diplomatic assurance has to be gravely canvassed. Statesmen have to decide whether their assertions have to receive credence from those who have business with them. When Japanese spokesmen declare that they have no territorial ambitions in China, that their country has made no assault on Chinese integrity, that they have no enmity against the Chinese people, that their invading forces here have at all times scrupulously observed various canons of humanitarian conduct, the listener has to pinch himself hard to be sure that he is living in a world of reality and not in a cloudy realm of fantastic absurdity. Nevertheless it is essential that these comparatively unimportant eccentricities of propaganda should not divert the attention of the world from the main issue which the proposed conference of the signatories of the Nine, Power Treaty will have to take into account.
If Japan is convinced of the righteousness of her cause she should have no fear of the outcome of this conference. Her spokesmen have on various occasions affirmed that the Nine Power Treaty is dead. The question is who has killed it, if the statement is correct? Certainly it has not been explicitly repudiated by any other signatory and it is not unreal sonable to suggest that even if it be dead its sponsors have the right to hold a post mortem. Mr. Chamberlain has been criticized in Europe because he concentrated on the inconvenient issue of honesty in diplomatic dealings and ignored what is described as the communist menace. There he showed his good sense. Strange as it may seem to Tokyo, any British statesman who wasted the time of his audience in elevating communism to the status of a major problem would be laughed out of court. In so far as communism is an expression of political or economic theory, it can be absorbed by the ordinary processes of British freedom of discussion. Where it assumes the significance of a totalitarian doctrine it falls naturally within the scope of those polities which are based on that doctrine. Japan is bidding for anti-communist sympathy. Yet her contention that the Chinese Government is consequently indicted is painfully thin. It acquires colour—and that demonstrably pallid—only from the fact that her own actions have dramatically rallied Chinese communists to support of their Government. The solidarity of view now established between London and Washington. brushes these trivial irrelevancies aside. It insists on a plain study of Far Eastern tendencies and thereby Japan can be assured that her legitimate grievances will receive full and sympathetic consideration. The speeches of Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Chamberlain leave no room for misapprehension. There is nothing bellicose about them. They rather insist that the nations should be invited to return to the state in which problems can be examined and solved by the inter change of opinions round the conference table. If there is any sincerity in the claims to peaceful ambitions preferred by Italy and Japan the response to the proposals for joint deliberation on Far Eastern affairs will be unreservedly affirmative. Japan asserts that she has no territorial aims, Her presence at the conference would therefore be as valuable as it would be helpful to her. There is no intention to humiliate her. Errors of policy will not be pilloried. They will be faithfully considered in the light of her own statements of the case, as modified by China's representations where valid. What is the alternative?
The military situation still eludes the considered assessment of experts. Yet it cannot altogether be enthusiastically accepted by Japan. Even if it rapidly develops in destruction of China's hopes of resistance, the outcome will leave most onerous commitments for Japan. Does not the long view impel conviction that the Anglo-Saxon lead deserves earnest consideration from all concerned in maintaining the stability of the Far East—the fundamental problem on which Japan professes to concentrate such unremitting attention?
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.