BORDER RAIDS

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 132, 30 November 1935, Page 11

BORDER RAIDS

IN BUSSIA AND JAPAN

COUNTRIES NOT EXCITED

The rattle of rifle; fire on in open steppe near Pogranichnaya, where three times in one month troops from Manchukuo under Japanese -offlcership. have crashed across the Soviet frontier, has again called the world's, attention to what a year or two ago was.generally believed to be one of the worst danger spots to international- peace, says the Moscow correspondent 'of the "New York Times." ■- Half a dozen Manchurian and' Soviet soldiers or more, to a number not stated in any official communique, are dead as a result of these last, skirmishes. But despite the casualties, probably the longest. list since the U.S.S.R. and the Japanese vassal State of Manchukuo began to eye each other angrily across the border of Russia's maritime province, both sides today as never before are dodging-the scarehead war talk of past years. Japanese sources here insist that the raids, if made, were staged without the knowledge of and certainly without instructions from Tokio. "Soldiers are soldiers and frontier guards will run amuck," a Japanese spokesman said. "These skirmishes are not directed by the central government, as the Soviets well know, and, depend upon it, they will be settled locally and peacefully. There will be no war in the Far East'in the near future." , The Soviet Foreign Office comment was: are awaiting a reply; from The Japanese and Soviet Press.may bait each other on this new flare-up of an old issue, Japanese sources insisting that Soviet cavalry crossed the border first and that the border was not marked anyway, while "Pravda" and "Izvestia" hold that ther are frontier posts to mark.the line and that the Red horsemen are guiltless. But officials on both sides have steadfastly refused to be drawn,in, and have retained an almost unprecedented calm in Soviet-Japanese relations. WANT PEACE. Paradoxical though the situation may be, there are reasons for it. Today as never before both sides want peace. The Bolshevik problem- is obvious. Internally the huge country, industrialised far below the desired standard, focuses—as it has since 1928 —almost the entire attention of the Government and the populace on the accomplishment of the current FiveYear Plan. Externally Russia's situation has become complicated within the last year. Nazi German manoeuvres are attracting more and more attention, if not alarm. German designs in the Baltic States, particularly Memel, have become daily clearer, according to the Bolshevik viewpoint. The extension of German influence to the East, to the Ukraine, and to Czechoslovakia is believed here to be behhuTthe conservation of General Hermann Goering, Reich Air Minister, and Premier Julius Goemboes of Hungary recently. Italy's commitment in Ethiopia, the Soviet Union believes, has tended to give German Fascism an ever freer hand in Easter Europe. And if there is anything the Soviet Government would like to avoid today, it is an increase in the now-mitigated threat on its eastern frontiers. The Japanese . viewpoint as seen here is similar. Japan, it is believed in Moscow, is also reluctant to become involved in a war, except in so far as professional military circles are concerned. Japan has no problem of industrialisation or threats on her eastern frontier to the Pacific, but Japan, it is believed in Moscow, has many years of pacification in Manchukuo before she will make any attempt to expand to Soviet territory. And granted even that Japan already has sufficiently brought Manchukuo into her scheme of things, the Soviet Union is convinced that she has yet another step in mind before an attempt at fulfilling perhaps eventual plans for annexing the Maritime Province and perhaps a piece of Eastern Siberia. CHINESE BLO CFORESEEN. This step is the establishment or rather the manipulation of a northwest bloc in China as a corollary to the occupation of Manchukuo, Shansi, Shensi, Honan, Kansu, Suiyuan, and Ninghsia are the Chinese provinces involved and the Soviet Press has been busy with the theory that Japan desires "Chinese war-lord control" there. The object, it is supposed, is to eliminate all traces of Nanking control over these districts, removing them as a possible threat to the Japanese Manchukuo flank and bringing them eventually under Japanese control. Though the Soviet Union officially and actually is aggrieved at the newlyreported border violations and other issues, both Governments place great importance in tine negotiations going on in Moscow today regarding fishing rights. These rights have been, a bone of contention between the two countries over a long period. A Japanese spokesman said, "It is necessary to revise entirely the existing fishing treaty."