MENACE OF MANDATES

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 223, 20 September 1935, Page 7

MENACE OF MANDATES

Tendency of Powers to Take Possession. NORWEGIAN COMPLAINT. (Received 10 a.m.) LONDON, September 19. Tho Geneva correspondent of "The Times" states that the leader of the Norwegian delegation to the League, M. Christian Lange, drew attention at a meeting of the Political Committee to the tendency on the part of certain mandatory Powers to efface tho lino of demarcation between mandates and possessions. 110 said that if this tendency was accentuated it would constitute a real danger to the mandate system. Energetic action was necessary because it had been said that mandates were simply camouflaged colonies. M. Lange also drew attention to the harbour and other construction works on tho Japanese mandated islands in tho Pacific. The Japanese delegate to the Mandates Commission had denied that they were a disguised form of fortifications designed for use by the Japanese Fleet, and said they were intended, for civil and commercial purposes, but M. Lange declared that these explanations were unconvincing. The sums involved, he said, were greater than was necessary for civil purposes.

A Tokyo message states that replying to the discussion on mandates at Geneva the foreign spokesman declared that the suspicions of the harbour improvements Japan was making in her mandated islands, were baseless. Their purposes were purely economic and civil as had been repeatedly explained.