The statement made by Mr. R. A. Butler, Parliamentary Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, in the House of Commons on Tues day night on the crisis which has arisen in Tientsin throws a new light upon the wh matter, and one which amply justify 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 out break of hostilities. On June 7, after sour 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 cither 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 1K] when they were returned to. the British authorities, averring that they had been made under torture. In view of these Sacts, the men strenuously denying their quill the British authorities, His Majesty's Government did not feel justified in giving structions for them to be handed over {0 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 com~ menced yesterday seek to force the hand 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 deal The suggestion has been made that 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, US. Consul-General in Tientsin, being suxxested 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 the four men, and it is argued that by such a means a'scttlement of the whole affair might be reached without loss of prestige by either side. The suggestion is good one; it would settle once and for the suspicions concerning the validity of the confessions which the men ave 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, 11 is hoped that this proposal will be adopted by the British Government and made to the Japanese authorities, though it seems un= likely. for it will "be the finest possible fest of Japanese bone fides. Acceptance stich suggestion would' mean' that the Japanese have a case worthy of in= vestigation, and would clear them of the suspicion that they were merely seeking 10 create an incident for purposes of their. own. Refusal on the other hand would merely indicate that their case is not strong as they claim, and tend to accuseds' allegations' that their confessions were extracted under torture. There is, however, just one obstacle which might in the application of this suggestion, that is that the Japanese army officials may bbe reluctant to submit their infalli the scrutiny of such a committee of tion, 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 Ports which have come to hand, blockade is resorted tu for its annoy value. It is apparently not proposed deny the British or French Conces access to foodstuffs. That would in fuet -Jamount 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 present.
It is not to be believed that this sation by the Japanese Army has all the support Japan which the former would like. that there is 3 policy in Chi ional policy as conceived in Tokyo, and it is not to be believed that responsible statesmen in Tok= are completely happy about the manner in which events are developing in China, especially concerning the way in which 1 Japanese are succeeding in embroiling them= selves 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 cliff cult to understand, though it i: mere 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 sid 'This absurd violence, these threats, the new anti-Britich campaign, the organisation, fof sabotage in British taeturies by thee Who: have promised to ensure' their" protection, these Dullyines. these paltry vexations are sil great extent explained by the bad hum= our felt in the Japanese camp as a result the firmness of the Chinese resistance. is appa antly. realized in Tokyo campaign China is even now prob far from its end as ginning, 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 ¢xcussions over the foreign settlements China, They serve to distract public atte tion 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 Jong, 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.