"A GRATUITOUS DISPLAY "

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22268, 6 December 1937, Page 9

"A GRATUITOUS DISPLAY "

NEWSPAPER COMMENT

IN LONDON

LONDON, December 3

Ronald Monson, the Shanghai correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph,” says that the situation was of the tensest after the grenade incident. Thousands of lives were imperilled and international relations in the settlement were threatened. The promptness of the shooting of the bomb-thrower before a man hunt began saved the situation. Everyone expected machine-guns to sweep the streets, but the Japanese preserved commendable discipline. “The Times,” commenting on the Shanghai “incident,” says;— “To make a gratuitous display of military pomp in several miles of streets crowded with Chinese was to invite outrages. The Shanghai Municipal Council may well be relieved that nothing worse occurred. The Japanese were ‘trailing a coat,’ but what they hoped to gain thereby is not clear, for not even the most shortsighted of their military leaders can suppose that they will be permitted to seize control of the International Settlement on such a slender pretext as they went out of their way to manufacture.

“The Powers with interests in China have put up with a great deal from Japan, but it would be a mistake for Japan to exaggerate the amount of damage she has done them, and base on that how much further she can go with impunity. Japan has certainly gone very far, but it would be imprudent for her to subject foreign interests in China to more than what they have come to regard as fair wear and tear.”

The “Daily Telegraph,” in a leader, says: “Good luck and the restraint of the inhabitants of the International Settlement preyented isolated episodes developing into a massacre, but this merciful result owes no thanks to the Japanese parade, and it may be questioned whether perhaps the parade was not staged in the hope that the incident would be bigger. “This was not a march of triumph across conquered • territory. It was a wholly unnecessary march of provocation, and it will be agreeably surprising if dominance over the Shanghai administration by Japanese threats is not strengthened by a further grasp of power as a result of to-day’s events.

“The extra-territorial rights of the settlement are a poor- safeguard against outspoken articles in the Japanese press, and the less open movement of bombers and troops in the Canton area, which suggests that Hong Kong is a desirable acouisition in the eyes of Japan’s militarists. The local Jaoanese Consul is already protesting against anti-Japanism in Hong Kong, but the infection which the Japanese themselves disseminate so rapidly will not easily be cured.”