JAPAN’S THREAT

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 135, 4 March 1941, Page 7

JAPAN’S THREAT

If Chungking Troops

Enter Burma

ROAD SUPPLY ROUTE

(Received March 3, 11.5 p.m.) LONDON, March 3.

Reuter reports from Hong Kong that an open threat to carry the war into Burma in the event of Chungking troops entering Burma was voiced by the spokesman of the Japanese Formosan army today. The spokesman said such action would signify actual British interference in the- Chinese-Japanese conflict. Britain, he added, would be digging her oWn grave in attempting to defend Burma with Chungking troops. Burma would become a battlefield and the Japanese would trap and crush the combined British and Chinese forces and permanently close the Burma route.

The Japanese Press has shown an anti-British tendency throughout the Indo-China-Thailand negotiations. Reports that Britain and China have reached a military agreement directed against Thailand, which have been denied more than once, continue to appear. These, it is pointed out in London, can have no object except to stir up trouble between Britain and Japan and between Britain and Thailand. In effect, they are playing the German game of endeavouring to embroil the British forces in a dispute with Japan with the hope of serving Germany’s purposes. Japanese Blockade. A Japanese spokesman in Canton declared that the Japanese occupation of Tamshu'i and other points near Hong Kong early last month resulted in the complete halting of supplies from the British Crown Colony to the interior of China. “Wide economic repercussions were felt,” said the spokesman, “not only in territory controlled by Chungking, but also in Hong Kong and Shanghai.”

The Chinese Central news agency reports that 400 Japanese officers and men were killed on February 25 when a troop train struck Chinese land mines on the Canton-Hankow railway. At a meeting of Methodist missionaries in Tokio, it whs decided to evacuate all missiouaries from Japan, Korea and North and Central China, because of the Inability to obtain funds from the United States.