London, June 27.
When the Cabinet's Foreign Affairs Committee met last night, it had before it suggestions that the Japanese might call off their campaign in Tientsin, but on terms, according to Mr. Vernon Bartlett, Independent Progressive M.P., writing in the "News-Chronicle" today.
"It will be surprising," he says, "if within the next few days some excuse is not found for handing the four Chinese (alleged assassins of Mr, Cheng Shi-kang, former Customs Commissioner at Tientsin) to the Chinese courts or, in other words, to the Japanese."
Mr. Bartlett urges that Great Britain should strengthen China's currency as the best means to force a change in Tokyo's policy.
In its editorial today, the "News-Chronicle" also urges financial and economic aid to China on a greatly extended scale.
"There is real danger," it says, "that if we make no retort to the Japanese provocation, the Nazis may come to the conclusion that we can be counted out of Europe."
The "Daily Herald" urges British housewives to stop buying Japanese goods in order to show the Japanese Government that a policy of insult does not pay.
The "Manchester Guardian" declares: "China, not France or the United States, is our most important ally in the Far East. Most retaliatory measures suggested concern a restriction of Japanese exports to the British Empire, but it should not be forgotten that other, and less provocative, measures are open to us through aiding China.
"One answer to Japan, and not the least effective, would be to stiffen China's resistance by loans, by aeroplanes, and by tanks."
"The true front in the Far East," the paper concludes, "is not in Tientsin, Hongkong or even Singapore, but among the red hills in north-west China and the steaming valleys in the south."—Reuter.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.