EASTERN TENSION

Evening Post, Issue 11, 13 July 1936, Page 11

EASTERN TENSION

JAPAN AND RUSSIA

PRESSURE ON MONGOLIA

MEN AND RAILWAYS

(By Neil Wood.)

"If Japan ventures to attack the Mongolian People's Republic and seeks to destroy its independence, we shall have to help that republic." These are the words of Joseph V. Stalin, leader of Soviet Russia, in a recent interview.

There are two Mongolias hitherto tucked away between China and Russia in North-eastern Asia. Outer Mongolia, which borders Siberia for over a thousand miles, is by far the larger territory. It has a Soviet Government and is advised and largely controlled by Russia. Inner Mongolia is south of Outer Mongolia, lying as a buffer between Soviet influence in the north, and Japanese influence in Manchukuo and China to the south. Every so often we read of frontier incidents in this section of the world. They are chiefly centred on the border of Russia and Manchukuo, but as the Japanese empire pushes its influence still further westward in China, so Mongolia becomes a new powder keg in a tindered world. In the midst of all this tension stands the little autonomous Jewish Soviet Republic of Biro-Bidjan. Ever since the Japanese established the so-called independent State of Manchukuo by conquest in 1932 and set up a puppet Emperor, Japanese expansion on the mainland has not ceased. Assimilation of the Province of Jehol was the next step, and now Japan is exerting her influence on the adjoining Province of Chahar, which .is really.a part of Inner Mongolia. - APPREHENSIVE WATCHING. Soviet Russia has watched Japan's westward and northward march with apprehension, and the undoubted expansionist aims of Japan have led Russia to concentrate one of the largest armies in the world, in her far eastern area with headquarters at Khabarovsk, on the Siberian-Manchu-kuo border. Here and at Vladivostok, Russian port on the Sea of Japan to the south, the Soviet has concentrated a large section of her far-eastern ah\ fleet. Japan realises her great industrial centres are within striking distance of Russian bombers, and Japan has no comparable air force with which to retaliate. ; ' . The. empire of the Heaven-born Mikado replies with its. great navy, third largest in the world, but Russia has no wish to or intention of venturing on to the sea. Ever since the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 (in which the Japanese have never forgotten they were victors) there has been going on a railwaybuilding war, according to G. F. Eliot, an informed observer. This competitive railway building began sporadically, but has been increasing in intensity, drawing ever closer to the two Mongolias, both, at present without rail communication. Japan would be practically impregnable against any military blockade were it not for Vladivostok, less than 500 miles from the Japanese main island. But Vladivostok exists only so long as the line of communication exists, the trans-Siberian railroad. The Russians know this well, and it was the 5500 miles of railroad from Moscow to Port Arthur .that enabled the Russians to-hold out for so long against the Japanese in. 1905. ...... THE: RAILWAY NETWORK', ' rBefore the. world war the Russians realised that the trans-Siberian road was too vital a link to be left single tracked, and they ran -another. line north from Chita to Khabarovsk. When Japan created Manchukuo, said to be independent but only recognised as such by Japan and the Central American State, of San Salvador, the .Japanese military engineers set to work to take possession of the Chinese Eastern railway. This was the section of the trans-Siberian line which ran thrqugh Manchukuo. After much bickering and veiled threats back and forth, Russia finally sold the Chinese, .Eastern for as much as she could get in 1935. < Immediately more lines were builf in Manchukuo with a distinct military significance. From the new capital of Manchukuo, Hsinking, where Henry Pu-Yi rules as emperor under Japanese guidance, professing a benevolent principle known as Wang-tao, a kind of greatest-good-to-the - greatest - number philosophy, a new railway line has been built to the sea. This is to give a new outlet for raw materials and, of course, a new inlet lor Japanese troops. This line runs through Kirin to Rashin, the new port on Japanese territory. In order to deploy troops with the ■ greatest effectiveness towards the Russian frontier tier, Japanese military strategists have been throwing out new rail lines to the north. One stretches from Tsitsihar on the Chinese Eastern to Aigun on the Russian border. Another runs due north from Harbin, that cosmopolitan centre in Manchukuo with its numbers of / White Russian refugees, 'to the same, town of Aigun, on the frontier. ■ Not content iwith these, • two more lines are proposed northwards, one off the Tsitsihar line to the Amur River boundary, and another a projection north from the line out of the seaport Rashin. . \ THE RUSSIAN ANSWER.

What has been the Soviet's answer to this? As the Japanese press into Mongolia, Russia becomes more than ever worried about the vital spot on the trans-Siberian road, the trans-Bai-kal tunnels. These tunnels run through a range of mountains around the southern tip of the great Siberian lake, Baikal. If these tunnels were bombed, it would put the lines of communication out of business for some time.

The first move Russia made was to double-track the remaining section of the trans-Siberian line westward all the 2000 miles, or more to Moscow.

But still this did not s.olve the problem. The trans-Baikal'-tunnels still existed.

So a new line far to the north, out of the reach of an invading army, is proposed and plans are under way which will run a railroad over the great wastes north of the great long lake, Baikal, straight to the sea at