It is commonly reported that the anti-British campaign now being sponsored by the Japanese in China and, to a lesser extent that in Japan self, has been undertaken on the advice. of the Axis partners in Europe. Of these partners, said, Germany is convinced of the usclessness of further major offensives in China by the Japanese army, believing that they can only be costly in terms of money and men and Achieve little that cannot be attained in other ways. Of course, reports like these should be taken with every reserve, but the advice against major offensives, at least, is so sensible that it gives the whole rumour the ring of truth. The anti-British campaign in Japan is more easily accounted fo: by the desire of the Japanese army to build up such a powerful body of public opinion in support of their demands in the Tientsin dispute that the Tokyo government's hands will be forced, and mode-Fate counsels in the forthcoming Anglo-Japanese conversations will not prevail. What the Japan-Jose hope to gain by encouraging anti-British Propagandu in China, it is a little diMeult ta Understand. There could be no worse way of stopping British assistance to General Chiang Kal-shek and the Chinese national government. than by making it obvious that Britain's chances of trade in China are finished if the 'Japanese are allowed to have their way. Yet this is precisely what the Japanese—or better, the Japanese army~are doing. Apart from this fact, the prevention of normal trading by British' factories in China creates a problem of unemployment which the Japanese or the Japanese-sponsored local governments will have {to solve. With the country sadly in need of all the employment it can get, it is, to say the least, @ shortsighted policy deliberately to derive innocent workers of the chance to earn their living. And it does nothing to increase the confidence of the Chinere labouring classes in their new rulers.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.