LEAGUE CO-OPERATION IN CHINA

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 72, 18 December 1935, Page 10

LEAGUE CO-OPERATION IN CHINA

Early this year the Secretary to the Council Committee of the League of Nations visited China for the purpose of investigating technical co-operation between the League and China. His report, which was presented to the League in October, has been published. It deals with matters of public health, communications, hydraulic works, and rural economy. In view of the fact that the visit was confined almost entirely to the North of China and to districts where the Japanese have been, and still are, fairly active in pursuing their methods of peaceful penetration into China, it is noteworthy that the report makes no mention of Japan. Far from there being chaos and disorder and unrest in these areas, it would appear from the report that the reverse is true —that good order and progress reign secure. “ 1 hough every district, every province,” says the report, ‘‘has its own characteristics . . . though the -character of the people differs in the east and the west, in the north and the south, no traveller, even merely passing through this immense territory,'■ can fail to be struck by its homogeneity or to admire the deep-rooted unity, forged by thousands of years of common history, of the nation that owns it. . . . Whenever new crops or new methods of cultivating old ones have been suggested to the Chinese peasants and shown to be practicable and profitable, they have not been slow to adopt them.” It is impossible to read the report and not be forced to the conclusion; if the observations be approximately correct, that Japan has no excuse, other than a desire for aggrandisement, for entering China. ‘‘The Chinese Government, Chinese authorities of every rank and their assistants,” it is recorded, “can now set out without fear on the path of reconstruction; public opinion, which is behind them and prepared to follow them, is already more critical of inertia or timidity than of boldness, of insufficient than of excessive initiative.” This is the language employed in describing a country which the Japanese would have us believe' is overrun by Communism and threatens Japanese interests. It would seem that, left to herself, or with the help and advice of the League of Nations Technical Committee, China would quickly effect considerable, improvements in road-making, in the health services of towns and villages, in her waterways, and in her agriculture, which is the backbone of her prosperity.