The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. FRIDAY, JANUARY 6, 1933. THE LEAGUE AND MANCHURIA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 4, 6 January 1933, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

FRIDAY, JANUARY 6, 1933. THE LEAGUE AND MANCHURIA.

For, the cause thai lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

Japan has taken advantage of the inaction of the League in regard to Manchuria to invade Jehol, which separates Manehukuo from China proper, and threatens a definite penetration of Chinese territory. The League | is thus confronted with a fresh proof of Japan's determination to ignore Geneva and proceed only in accordance with her own, interests. The Manchurian dispute has proved the most complicated and obstinate with which the League hae had to deal. The difficulty has arisen from a rivalry of races, a rivalry which is always the least easy to compose. On both sides extreme nationalism has been displayed, and the Lytton Report has made it clear that neither country is blameless for the violent turn which events have taken. This partly explains the reluctance of the League to take any definite action, and its very evident desire that the dispute should be settled between the parties themselves. The Report explains that the situation before last September was without, parallel. Japan enjoyed extensive economic and administrative privileges in Manchuria, and the Japanese had lost 100,000 lives in saving this territory from the Russians. Japan had the right to maintain troops in the country, and her military movements last September entailed no crossing of a frontier. There seems little doubt that conditions in Manchuria were very unsettled, and there was no government of real authority in China capable of maintaining order. Manchuria, however, is, as the Report declares, "unalterably Chinese." Of its 30,000,000 inhabitants, no more than about 230,000 are Japanese, in addition to some 800,000 Korean Japanese subjects. The Report is definite in its findings that the new State of Manehukuo was not founded by the spontaneous wish of the inhabitants, and the League cannot recognise this new State because its existence conflicts absolutely with the findings of its own -Commission. Japanese policy in Manchuria has also been at variance with the Nine Power Treaty of 1922, under which the signatories undertook to. respect the sovereignty, independence and territorial and administrative integrity of China. Both the League and the United States are bound to recognise no settlement which would infringe the sovereignty and integrity of China, and the recognition of Manehukuo would infringe both these Chinese rights. So far the League has been content to go slow in the hope that matters* would somehow settle themselves. Japan's invasion of Jehol has dashed this hqpe, and unless the League takes some definite action to uphold its position, its prestige must inevitably suffer.