Refuting the charge that Japanese telegraph censors "sat for three hours" on a dispatch of a foreign Dress correspondent on Thursday, a Japanese Embassy spokesman yesterday said that investigation had revealed that the allegation as made at a press conference "less than two hours after the mi had been handed over the telegraph office counter."
"I am reluctant to make this point," the spokesman said, "but as the matter was reported in some newspapers in a somewhat exaggerated way, I feel I am bound to reveal it"
Stating that he felt "particularly, awkward" in making his statement in the absence from the press conference of the correspondent who had made the charge, the spokesman declared that when the allegation was made at about 6 o'clock on Thursday afternoon the message had already been dispatched.
"I investigated the matter myself," he continued. "I found that the message took less than an hour and a half fróm the time it was handed over the counter to the time it was completely dispatched. The time necessitated for censorship could not have been more than a fraction of that time,"
'The' message: in question, the spokesman said, was of "more than 500 words."
TI reached the conviction, with pleasure," he added, "that the time elapsed was not unreasonable, considering the length of the dispatch.
This statement by the Japanese spokesman was endorsed. by an Official of one of the foreign cable companies concerned in an interview with the "Notrh-China Daily News" yesterday afternoon. The time taken by the censor, he said, was practically negligible.
Regrets for the failure of Japanese cable censors to inform a foreign correspondent for more than thirteen hours yesterday that his dispatch would have to be withdrawn, were expressed last night by a spokesman of the Japanese Embassy.
This was the first public. case of news suppression by Japanese censors installed in various cable offices on "The general tendency of Japanese policy, whether expressed or not," "The Times" goes on, "is deliberately rather than accidentally inimical to foreign interests in the Pacific, and the circumstances that many agents of that policy are irresponsible enthusiasts, who are more than ready to exceed or overlook their orders, renders tension inevitable at points where, as at Shanghai, the invaders are in direct contact with foreign communities.
"This tension," the journal proceeds, "can only be eased and the dangers resulting from it removed if the leaders of the Japanese people have not only the will but the power to keep their promises.
"The Japanese peace terms," "The Times concludes," "may have provided a basis for further unofficial negotiations, but before anything comes of them, the resources of Japan, the staying power of China and, the patience of several powerful nations may have undergone further severe tests."—Reuter.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.