London, Sept. 4.
The declaration that the British Government must be "strongly equipped to defend this country, play a full part in collective security and resist any intimidation by Fascist powers" was made in. the report on international policy and defence issued to-day by the National Council of Labour. The Council represents the General Council of the Trade Union Congress, the Labour Party and the Parliamentary Labour Party.
The report outlines a two-fold policy for peace. It proposes that Powers entertaining grievances hould be invited to state their case ud should be offered, through the "League of Nations, a new system of political security and economic opportunity, which would banish from international relations both fear of war and all legitimate economic grievances.
The new system, the report continues, must form part of a general settlement which would relax the present international tension and hold out prospects for enduring peace.
The other part of the policy requires that, through the League, aggressors should be confronted with There was a terrific bang, and a scuttering of Chinese along the road—not away from the bang but towards it. They were looking for pieces of a shell which had exploded in a coal-yard off Hart Road during the anti-aircraft fire which came over the Settlement while Japanese bombers systematically dropped their "eggs" on the Chinese positions at the North Station and near Marcha Road yesterday.
The shell was evidently a small one, for it caused no damage, For a second or two after the explosion a faint grey mist could be seen around the spot. Those earliest on the scene looked at this mist with some uncertainty, until it vanished. Then the search for relics began: No one had much success, for the shell seemed to have gone the way of the mist and to have also vanished completely.
A Chinese woman who had been preparing the morning meal a few yards away from the explosion, was first out of her hut in the search for what could be picked up. Other employees of the coal-yard were soon with her. No one seemed alarmed after the burst. If there was anything to be judged by their behaviour it was that they had passed through the stage of fear, through that of indifference, and had now become keen collectors of war trophies. an emphatic superiority of armed force.
The report alleges that only "Germany, Italy and Japan," seriously threaten world peace at present, and it envisages the possibility that the trio may form an alliance.
In the event of the Labour Party coming into Power, it concludes, the Government would be unable to reverse the present programme of rearmament until a change in the international situation, caused by the advent of the Government, had
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.