REPLY TO PROTEST

Evening Post, Volume CXXIX, Issue 21, 25 January 1940, Page 11

REPLY TO PROTEST

ACCEPTANCE LIKELY

CLOUDING OF THE ISSUE

(Britlsb Official Wireless.)

. (Received January 25, 11 a.m.)

RUGBY, January 24.

The reply to the Japanese protest against the removal by a British cruiser of twenty-one Germans of military age from the Japanese liner Asama Maru will be dispatched to Tokio with a minimum of delay and confidence is expressed here that there will be no difficulty in justifying the measure taken.

Regret is expressed in the Press that the question at issue has been clouded by some agitation in the streets and in the Press of Tokio.^ There are indications that the Japanese Government itself is well aware of the German Embassy's efforts to use the incident to embroil Japan with Britain.

Newspapers emphasise that in acting courteously and within Jtheir international rights there was no intention whatever to wound Japanese feelings.

Reference is made to similar action taken by both sides in the present war

and it is recalled that during the last war the Allied Powers removed more than 3500 enemy nationals of military age from' sixty-four neutral. ships. The British cruiser which stopped the Asama Maru, says the "Daily Telegraph," "did not claim the full rigour of the precedent of the last war. Not every man of military age was removed but only technicians and skilled ratings of special value to the German war effort. What difference is there between such action and Japanese claim that we should, as before 1914, only have taken those actually embodied in the forces of the Reich?

"We have no cause for complaint that neutral Powers should be watchful and | strenuous in protecting their rights. The more vigorously neutral Powers assert their just claims the better, but protests should be sent to the right address. The shipping of Japan and her, prestige were not injured when a score of Germans were taken ifrom one of her liners, but her flag has been contemptuously insulted and her mercantile mai-ine suffered heavy loss from the German war on neutrals."