THE FAR EAST WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 72, 26 March 1938, Page 11

THE FAR EAST WAR

A LEGACY OF CONFLICT

RUSSIAN THREAT TO JAPAN

Even the most industrious of general readers is likely to be ill informed regarding the background of the war now in progress in the Far East (writes H. D. Ziman in the "Daily Telegraph and Morning Post" of February 7). He is aware, it may be, that China has been in process of belated unification and that odd waves of mutiny intermittently break the surface of Japanese politics. But how and why these developments have interacted he finds it difficult to discover from the war news day by day.

The Royal'lnstitute of International Affairs (familiarly known as Chatham House) has once more performed a public service by providing essential information in an impartial and accessible form. The Institute's Information Department publishes today a 130----page pamphlet, "China and Japan," in which all the principal factors—political, economic, and military—which have combined to make China a potential field for Japanese expansion are detailed. Historically the present conflict can be considered an outgrowth from the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-5, which robbed China of Korea, Formosa, and part of Southern Manchuria. But it is more natural to regard it as an extension of the "Manchurian Affair" of 1931-33. Hence, to treat the present conflict as something essentially directed either against Communism or against Chiang Kai-shek's Government is to ignore the precedents of Japan's past action. But the condemnation of Japan which is implicit in the historical survey conducted by the anonymous authors of this monograph is not by any means one-sided. Russia, Communist and pre-Communist, has been a real threat to Japan ever since the decision was taken to construct the Trans-Siberian railway half a century ago. China has more than once appeared in Japanese eyes as a possible Russian pawn and even more frequently as a "bad neighbour" whom someone (and why not Japan?) must dominate. How far recent events fit into this framework and how far the framework is extended by Japanese propaganda to give form to Japan's imperialistic aims—:part economic, part strategic, and part religious in origins—there is ample material, in the pamphlet for the reader to decide for himself. '

The authors begin by giving the Japanese and Chinese views, of the situation, and !then analyse .the internal political factors in the two countries. From this point they recapitulate the principal events,of Far. Eastern history since the middle Of the nineteenth century, and deal in more detail with the Manchurian conflict of 1931-33, and with occurrences up to and since the outbreak of the present undeclared, war.. .

The war. itself, is.. treated rather through its outside^ repercussions than as a series of military events, and there is a particularly valuable section on the status of1 Shanghai—how it was established' and • how infringed. A number of vital documents are printed or summarised in an appendix.

It is interesting to qbserve that in the "twenty-one demands" presented in 1915 Japan attempted, to achieve by diplomatic pressure much the same supervision of the Chinese Government through permeation by Japanese officials as she subsequently imposed on Manchukuo and is now endeavouring to force upon China as a whole The Chinese escaped then by communicating the Japanese demands to the United States Government, which intervened with remarkable success