SHADOW OVER CITIES

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 71, 21 September 1937, Page 8

SHADOW OVER CITIES

Following a well-worn precedent, Japan has been telling the Chinese that she is fighting not against the people of China, but against China's Government. Yet after weeks of undeclared war the casualties include many thousands of Chinese and not one. Government. Now Japan has a further inspiration, and, in furtherance of their effort to destroy the Chinese Government, threatens to bomb Nanking out of existence. This, too, is physically possible, and yet| in the confusion the Chinese Government might escape, and might, by travelling round the cities of China, succeed in getting them all destroyed in turn, with complete extermination of all those Chinese not capable of burrowing in mother earth. It is, therefore, becoming clear to the Chinese,' soldier and civiliaji alike, that they gain, nothing whatever from the fact that Japanese animosity is directed against the Government alone. All foreign Governments that have nationals in Nanking, the city threatened with extermination, are also aghast at any Japanese plan to burn down the whole hayloft in an attempt to discover the needle which they call the Government. Foreign Governments see that the haunting spectre of aerial bombardment of capitals, on the pretext of shortening wars, is in danger of materialising. Civilisation stands on the brink of a precedent—and of a precipice. The precise terms* of the Japanese threat to Nanking are not stated, but already the bombing of that city seems to be intensifying; and one correspondent suggests that Britain, who has 300 nationals in Nanking, will protest. Mr. Cordell Hull, the U.S. Secretary of State, has made a speech in which his references to "international anarchy" may be variously interpreted, and at the same time is confronting the awkward quesJ tion whether United States warships, in the interests of isolated neutrality, shall be directed to quit Chinese trouble areas. At the moment, the American, British, and French Admirals seem to be "standing pat," and rejecting Japan's hints to get out of the way. A development of Japanese air warfare up to extermination standards would connote almost certain injuries to neutrals, and possibly more incidents like the unsettled matter of the attack on the British Ambassador. The drift in China, and the tendency of the drift in the Mediterranean, are towards frictions which can be neither foreseen nor prevented; and in the Mediterranean the atmosphere is further poisoned by the German suggestion that the Anglo-French co-operation represents, on Mr. Eden's part, just that vendetta which he has1 expressly repudiated. A resort to gas warfare, in Spain of in China, would complete tho chain of hate and horror.

Sudh is the atmosphere in which the two mid-European dictators meet this week in Berlin. It is an atmosphere, which they have done much to create, and which may be beyond their power to dissipate. Whether they are the masters of their fates, or the dupes of their designs, must be left to history.