JAPAN’S FUTURE

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25996, 27 December 1949, Page 5

JAPAN’S FUTURE

GENERAL ROMULO’S OPINION (Rec. 7 p.m.) NEW YORK. Dec. 23. General Carlos Romulo, the Filipino President of the United Nations General Assembly, to-day expressed doubt about the possibility of Japan becoming a democratic country. General Romulo expressed his views when he declined an invitation to serve as a member of a cainpaignsponsoring committee for the Japanese International Christian University Foundation. The invitation was sent by Mr Joseph Grew, a former United States Ambassador to Japan and the national chairman of the foundation. General Romulo, replying to Mr Grew, said: "We share your hope that Japan may ultimately be transformed into a democratic, peace-loving State, although our optiqgism is somewhat tempered by our memory, unfortunately still fresh, of the brutal nature of Japanese tyranny. I regret my inability to subscribe tc the view that Japan is potentially the strongest bulwark of peace in the Far East. I prefer to go by records, and place my hopes in the proved friends Of democracy in those nations whose devotion to freedom impelled them during the war to risk extinction in its defence and preservation.”