Mr. Neville Chamberlain's statements, in the House of Commons, on the subject of the Tientsin blockade are not satisfactory, for it is not a question of what the British Government believes the Tokyo Government wishes, but what is actually going on in the northern port. Mr. Chamberlain believes that the Japanese Government shares the British desire not to widen the area of disagreement, nor to render more acute the already dificult situation, while in another passage he is reported as having said that the general position was not yet clear, ete. The facts are that the British and French Concessions in Tientsin are being subjected to what it is claimed is in fact an act of war, for, surely, a siege which aims at depriving the inhabitants of those concessions of the necessaries of life can be described as nothing else. If it is sought to regard the whole matter as a purely local incident, the work of the Japanese Army acting in disregard of Tokyo's real wishes, so well and good, but it does not face up to the realities of the situation, Tientsin cannot be divorced from Kulangsu where there is a blockade in force to prevent foodstuffs reaching the island from the mainland. That is being maintained by vessels of the Japanese Navy and is just as much an attempt to force the Kulangsu Municipal Council into submission by threatening to starve the inhabitants of the island, as is the blockade in Tientsin an endeavour to force compliance with the unjustifiable demands of the Japanese in that city. It is not. therefore, a matter so much of what are the wishes and intentions of the Tokyo Government, which will probably even now seek to assure Britain of their scrupulous respect for British rights, but of what is actually being done by the Japanese military and naval forces. Foodstuffs are being denied Britons, French and third party neutrals in both Tientsin and Kulangsu; in the former port Britons are being stripped to the buff for the purpose of making them "lose face" and at least one British woman has been manhandled by Chinese police over whom ghe Japanese have control. To seek to pursue a policy of appeasement with a Government which apparently has no control, over its military and naval forces, and is indeed dragged after them into all manner of wild adventures, may appeal to people more obsessed with doctrines than impressed by facts, and there will be nothing but uneasiness in the Far East until it is made quite plain that no matter what assurances may issue from the Tokyo Government, it is the facts of the case with which Great Britain is really concerned. To adopt any other point of view is to make sure of an unsatisfactory policy.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.