IN THE FAR EAST

Evening Post, Volume XCII, Issue 40, 16 August 1916, Page 2

IN THE FAR EAST

FIGHTING IN MANCHURIA

JAPANESE ATTACKED BY

CHINESE

(AUSTRALIAN-NEW ZEALAND CABLE ASSOCIATION.) TOKIO, 15th August.

Chinese troops attacked Japanese at 'Cheng-Chiatun, near Mukden (capital of Manchuria). There were several Japanese casualties.

The Chinese are besieging the barracks. The Japanese are rushing up reinforcements.

In a leading article, commenting on the attitude of Japan towards the Entente, and the Mikado of Japan's congratulatory telegram to the Tsar of Russia on the Russian victories in Galicia and the fall of Czernowitz, London Daily Telegraph in its issue of 19th June says : — "feuch an incident is probably unique —especially when we remember how recently the two countries were at war. The Russo-Japanese campaign was fought in ISO 4 ; the peace of Portsmouth was signed in 1905. And yet only twelve years after a series of sanguinary battles, the most destructive which had ever occurred until the present war threw all past records into oblivion, we find Tokio and Petrograd exchanging the sincerest amenities. Time is a kindly god; he heals the deepest scars. The truth, however, in 'the present case is as satisfactory for ns as it must be distasteful to the enemy. What are the superior considerations, the higher obligations, which unite in common bands races so divergent as Eastern and Western, and give them a single purpose despite the minor differences which divide them? It is 'the reasonable fear of Teutonic intrigue, of the endless machinations of Germany, designed for no other end than her absolute world-supremacy. There is no love lost between Japan and Germany. Long since the Island Kingdom of the East had discovered who were her friends and who were her foes. For years past German agents have been busy in China- for no other reason than to disturb the relations between Pekin and Tokio. M. Andre Cheradame, the French publicist, than whom there could be no more competent authority, tells us in a recent book that Chinese newspapers have been bought by Berlin, eaohhelping to spread throughout the Celestial Empire the theory of Teutonic invincibility. 'Thanks to them",' remarked the Frank fort Gazette not long ago, 'every coolie knows to-day thai Germany is victorious.' Our enemy's policy! has, it is true, included some strange inconsistencies. In the North of China it supported the Presidency of Yuan-Shi-Kai, and we believe, as.a matter of fact, that German officers occupy important posts in the Chinese army. In the south, however, it encouraged republican and popular feeling against Yuan's dictatorship." If we ask why such divergent aims are pursued, the answer is that the great object is to create such a situation in China as shall absorb the attention of Japanese statesmen and prevent them from interference in Europe. What Germany desires is to apply her method of ':peacfui interpenetration " to the Celestial Kingdom, and to dominate and exploit it in exactly the same fashion, as she has treated "Turkey. It is true, of course, that the idea of a' separate peace has already been (suggested to Tokio, but that is purely opportune tactics, enforced by the necessity of the moment. In reality Germany will never forgive Japan for having driven her out of Kiau-cbau, and her hope is that some clay, with the aid of v Chinese army, led by German officers, she may turn the tables of her adversary. Inasmuch as China has 300,000,000 of population, while Japan has only 55,000,000, the strength of battalions would be in that eventuality on the side of Germany's ally. Such, at any rate, is one feverish episode in that vast Teutonic dream, or nightmare, which is called Pan-German-ism) and which we are glad to say recent events have seriously disturbed. But if the far-reaching policy of Berlin was to lay the foundations of a great central European State, extending from Hamburg to the Persian Gtdf, flanked with outlying spheres of influence in China and Asia, we can easily see why Japanese interests should be strongly enlisted with the Entente Powers, and why the Mikado proclaims to the world his sympathy with the Tsar. In very material ways, also, Japan has given assistajice. She has supplied munitions of war, and We are already hearing stories of huge and deadly guns on the Eastern front devised and manufactured by Japanese engineers. She has aided in the convoy of merchant ships and transports, and we know how valuable ha*s been her help to us in the Pacific. And she, like all of us, must be proud of the exploite of her Russian ally."