BRITISH POLICY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 300, 18 December 1937, Page 8

BRITISH POLICY.

SINO-JAPANESE CONFLICT. COERCION NOT FAVOURED. (By SIR ARTHUR WILT.ERT.) LONDON, October 29. Persuasion rather than coercion as a moans of stopping the Far Eastern war will be the British policy* at the Nine Tower Conference at Brussels. This is not because there is any disposition here to umler-estimate the gravity of the issues at stake in China. Still less is it due to sympathy with Jajutn. The proJapanese feeling which impeded AngloAmerican co-operation during the Manchurian crisis has been killed partly by Japan's destruction of the Washington Treaty for the limitation of naval armaments, partly by her present action. The British attitude is one of practical politics. It is dictated by the European situation. It has never varied since the Japanese started their offensive last summer. It is based upon the belief that to be overextended is as bad for a nation in times of diplomatic stress as it is for an individual in times of financial stress. The great danger of the moment is the outbreak of another world war in Europe. It is therefore Britain's duty to herself and to the world to concentrate upon the prevention of war in Europe. I First Ethiopia and then Spain have demonstrated the futility of diplomacy unsupported by effective force in these days of lawless aggression. The failure of Ethiopian sanctions \va-s due fundamentally to the fact that the British Government encouraged the League to apply them at a time when the British Navy, upon which their success depended, was not strong enough to do its work. It is now equally clear that the only way to have made non-intervention effective in Spain would have been for the French and British navies to have established a sanitarv cordon round Spain directly the civil war 'broke out. In that case Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin might have sent in aeroplanes and some men in them, but the whole business would have fizzled out for want of oil. Danger of Sanctions. Mr. Eden's supporters justify his Ethiopian failure and to some extent the failure of | Spanish non-intervention bv arguing that it J would have ibeen different had the British rearmament programme reached in 1935 and 1936 the 6tage which it will l>e at in IMS. Now that progress is being made with that programme they feel that if Britain is to regain her influence in Europe it is essential for her to keep the results of her rearmament at home, so that she may be able to talk to the dictators in the only language which tliev understand, that of words with militar'v preparedness behind them.

In the same way it is believed here that any effort to coerce Japan bv sanctions or other means would be worse than futile unless backed by force. The British experts who prepared plans for the Brussels Conference made an exhaustive study of the feasibility of economic pressure upon Japan. Obviouslv Japan is very vulnerable in that respect. She depends upon many imported raw materials. Oil sanctions would probably stop her fighting in China as successfully a ? it is. now known that they would have stopped Ttalv in Ethiopia. But it is one thing to propose sanctions and another thing to applv them The harder they hit Japan the more likelv would .Japan be to hit back. Even if she did not attack British and American interests in the Far East, there would be the question of the security of the. weaker countries which would be involved in sanctions. The Japanese might, for instance, trv to seize the oil and rubber producing possessions of Holland in Asiatic waters. She has the third bi<~est navv in the world. Are the United slates nnd Great Britain, the owners of the two biggest navies, prepared to fight to protect Holland and perhaps other small countries, even if they were not called upon to use force to make the blockade effective or to protect their own interests?

Unwilling to Risk War. That, as London sees it. is what the question of economic pressure comes down to when examined from the practical rather than from the sentimental point of view. Are the I nited States and Britain prepared to what mirht l*> a serious war for the integrity of (liina? The British answer, fur the reasons mentioned above, is in the negative. Tt. is felt that nothing except the actual outbreak of an Anglo-American-Japanese war would ii'ore encourage the bellicose influences in Europe than tho dispatch to the Far East of <my considerable liritisli force. ' Sooner or later the Japanese may be ready for mediation. In spite of their recent successes, they are still far from overthrowing the Chiang Kai-shek Government, and tlicy are infinitely further from the domination of China, which is considered here to be the ultimate aim of the militarists who control their policy. They are known to lie unprepared for a long war. London, therefore, is not "without hope that in the end they mny be ready to be rescued from their Chinese venture, in the same way as Theodore Roosevelt's peace-making activities enabled them to cash in on tlieir victory over Russia at the beginning of the century, just when the economic strain was becoming too mucli for them.—(Copvri"htN.A.X.A.)