CHARGE, DENIAL, SEIZURE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 60, 8 September 1937, Page 10

CHARGE, DENIAL, SEIZURE

Questions of fact are raised by Japan's denial that the attackers of the British Ambassadors-motor-cars are proved to be Japanese; and by Russia's allegation, and Italy's denial, that units of the Italian navy were responsible for the sinking of two Russian ships. International fact-finding machinery has existed for a long time. Long before the War the International Court at The Hague was created, and on many occasions special arbitrations have been mutually arranged between nations to cover questions both of fact and .of liability arising between them. All this internationalism^ culminated in the League ,of Nations, and about five years ago the League set up a Manchukuo investigation, under Lord Lytton, the report of which is history. But its omen is not good. It resulted in Japan's leaving the League of Nations. Who, then, will or can arbitrate now when Japan wid Britain, and Russia and Italy, disagree about what ought to be—at any rate in the former case— plain facts? Japan's attitude to the Lytton Commission's report, and her present refuge in a legalistic contention that proof of the attackers' nationality is not complete, are indications of how far fact-finding and peaceseeking international machinery 'has fallen into disrepute. There remains, of course, a chance, if only a chance, that Japan will yet take steps tq invite the kind of investigation that she rejected in Manchukuo; but the present indications. are not favourable. As to whether Italy sank the Russian ships, Ethiopia (Abyssinia) has already proved how lightly Italy regards the League either as factfinder or as guilt-fixer; and Herr Hitler, it will be remembered, rejected all proposals for an appeal to the International Court when he reentered the Rhineland. So international machinery rusts while militant nations act. One of the latest acts is Japan's seizure of Chinese islands in the vicinity of Hong Kong and the Philippine group. Is this the first instalment of the Japanese naval demand for southward extension as a complement to Asian penetration? The island-seizing season —either by "colonisation" or by virtue of undeclared war—seems v to be on, ushering in a new period of flying and fortification in the Pacific. In Europe, where diplomacy had begun to build hopes on a Mediterranean conference, Russia has already assumed the role of accuser. Thus her relationship to Italy will be much as it was to Italy and Germany at the Non-intervention meetings.' The precedent is not favourable to a judicial atmosphere at an international conference, which can make little progress by exchange of charge and counter-charge. Once more current events indicate how the cause of international justice has wilted under the combined attacks of four non-democratic States, and how far the world has fallen behind the spirit of The Hague Tribunal and the pre-War arbitrations, without taking into count the post-War peace architecture at Geneva, begun with the highest aspirations, yet destined to confront an armed Caesarism compared with which the Kaiserism of Wilhelm II was but a pale shadow.