Today is an interesting anniversary in connection with Tientsin history, for it was on June 20 that the massacre of 1870 occurred, while in connection with the Boxer Rebellion, in which the northern Treaty port was concerned, the order for the extermination of foreigners was given in Peking on the same date in 1900. This year the same city sees a portion of itself reduced to a state of siege in which one of the Allies in the Boxer Expedition is seeking to inflict gross injury upon the nationals of two other Allies because of a dispute with one of them, a dispute which has about it on the Japanese side nothing whatever commendable from either the point of honour, or that of justice. The attempt by Tokyo official circles, as indicated in the Domei message from that city appearing in these columns yesterday, to cover up what hasbeen admitted to be a much wider ie than that of handing over four Chinese accused of murder, but against whom there is in the British view insufficient proof, will carry not one iota of conviction to those who seek to approach consideration of the matter from any except the strabismic point of view of the Japanese. It has been shown that the Chinese accused are demanded merely as the specious excuse for a course of action calculated seriously to threaten, if not actually imperil, British interests in the Far East That is the only possible view which can, in the light of all the facts now available, be accepted; to accept any other would be to deny the realities of the situation. When the history of the past twenty-three months is reviewed it is clear that the policy of the Japanese actually in charge of the operations in China has been dominated by an anti-British sentiment. Not so much because of the assistance which Great Britain, acting completely within her rights as a neutral, has been affording China.—for one of the largest suppliers of war material to that government has been one of the nations united with Japan in the Anti-Comintern Pact,—but because the ultimate aim of the Japanese has been the total destruction of foreign rights and interests in this country.
It will be remembered that on several occasions anti-British sentiment has been allowed to flare up in Japan itself, as witness during the early months of the hostilities the mass meetings demanding war with Great Britain, carefully suppressed by the authorities. and now permitted to flare up with the wildest assertions against the conduct of that nation which Japan first desires io eliminate. Keeping this particular factor in mind, it is possible to consider the mutual bearing of the Tientsin and Kulangsu incidents upon each other. When the Japanese sought by force to take over control of Kulangsu, an international settlement, almost identic protests were lodged by the British, French and United States Governments, and what at one time seemed likely to be a rapid seizure of the island was prevented by the action of the three protesting Powers. The internationality of Kulangsu has up to the present at least ensured the continuance of its status, and may continue to be its best protection, for the Japanese Government is anxiously desirous of doing as little as possible to antagonize American feeling which has already been aroused to such an extent that all the Japanese devices to promote a friendlier understanding have come to naught. Tientsin presented a somewhat different, and to Japanese eyes at least a rather simpler problem. Had it been possible for the Japanese to have isolated the British Concession alone, today's telegrams indicate that she would have done so, but the propinquity of the French Concession to the British necessitated its inclusion in any siege which was contemplated of the British. If it had been possible to have excluded the French Concession from the results of any hostile act Japan contemplated against the British, there is no doubt that the Japanese would have done so, if only for the purpose of doing nothing to make Anglo-French understanding in the Far East not quite so complete as fortunately it is.
To the Japanese it seemed that, a8 different considerations applied in the two places, it might be possible to drive wedges between the Americans, British and French, and at the same time divert public attention in Japan itself from the fact that despite practically two years' warfare, what was to have been a matter of a few months now presents the likelihood of taking two or even three years more. The Japanese armies have overrun vast areas of China, but their occupation is of the scantiest, their authority running little further than the range of a rifle bullet. The Army has to have something to present to Japan to justify the blood, and money which has been lavishly poured out in an attempt to secure a military political, and economic hegemony over a country upon which it has long had its eyes. The Chinese have not been particularly accommodating in the matter, and the indications are that the Japanese Army would like to present the British and French Concessions in Tientsin to their nation as an earnest of their achievement, and a promise of bigger things to come. If they can do that by the anniversary of the Lukouchiao incident so much the better; it would serve to allay for the time being at any rate that anxiety and disapproval, which is felt in certain sections of Japanese public opinion, of the policy adopted by the Japanese army in China. Hence the shameful behaviour of the Japanese in Tientsin and the indignities they seek to heap upon unoffending British civilians in the hope of bringing about as early a surrender as possible. Even the Japanese admit, however, that the British in the northern port are digging themselves in and preparing to continue resistance. They would not be British if they did not do so, and though this struggle must become increasingly serious as the days progress, they may be expected to stick it out to the bitter end, France's Loss General sympathy will be felt with the French Navy over the loss of the submarine Phenix and her gallant crew, whose sudden disappearance off Indo-China occurred last week. Whether the oil discovered floating on the surface of the sea did in fact indicate the spot where the submarine was lost will probably forever remain a matter of speculation, for the depths of the sea around that area ace such as to make recovery of a lost submarine if not impossible at least of the greatest difficulty. The fact that obsequies have been performed over the place where the vessel disappeared indicates that the French Government has recognized that the unfortunate crew has been killed. These men died just as much for their country as if they had met their deaths in the heat of warfare. Submersions have to be performed in the ordinary course of preparation for actual war, and though they have been lost in times of peace, they have nevertheless made the great sacrifice in the interests of their country, and the greatest sympathy will be felt with France over the loss of so many of her gallant sons. Unfortunately the inability to raise the vessel deprives the French authorities of the means of discovering what caused the foundering of the Phenix. The sacrifice of the crew. therefore, has no compensating features, for investigation will not have the opportunity of increasing safeguards which might be perfected as a result. There appears to be nothing sinister about the loss of four submarines during recent months, as some people with vivid imaginations appear to think. There is no suggestion of anything ai the kind. and at the present time not a tittle of evidence to show that these accidents are the result of that sabotage which is so greatly feared in some countries. It is more probable that all of them are the result of those "acts of God" against which no human ingenuity can hope to prevail, and while superstition suggests that tragedies such as these always run in certain numbers, it is to be hoped that the tale of submarine accidents has now been told, and that, at any rate for some time to come, the world will be spared recurtences of these disasters.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.