JARRING NOTE

Evening Star, Issue 22891, 24 February 1938, Page 12

JARRING NOTE

BGTARIAHS DISAGREE ADDRESS ON JAPAN'S AGGRESSION CHALLENGED [Per United Press Association.] CHRISTCHURCH, February 24. There was a sudden conflicting note at this morning’s session of the New Zealand District Rotary Conference, when, at the end of an address by Mr Frank Milner, of Oamaru, on the Eastern crisis, Mr Angus Mitchell, of Melbourne, the official representative of Rotary International at the conference, said Mr Milner’s speech, and that of the district governor (Mr P. G. HallJones), were not the type of speech for a Rotary conference. “ Paul Harris, the founder of Rotary, laid down the ideal of friendship and co-operation,” said Mr Mitchell. “if these "two speeches are broadcast through the world much of Paul Harris’s work will be undone.” This morning Mr Milner, in outlining the Eastern situation, pictured Japan as a menace, and stressed cooperate _ action by Great Britain and the United States as the only safeguard. On Tuesday afternoon the district Governor, in discussing troubled Europe, said the aeroplane was the only effective check to the curbing of German ambition. Aeroplanes and poison gas were ancillaries, not to be spumed, of peace and justice. “ The present Sino-Japanese war is not an isolated phenomenon. It is a link in a long chain of causation. ■ It is an instalment in a long programme of aggression which Japan conceives to bo necessary in the attainment of her grandiose objective—domination of Asia and the hegemony of the Pacific.” That was the introduction given by Mr Milner to his address on the "Far Eastern crisis. Japan would not hesitate to raise the cry of the Bolshevisation of China, and summon the help of her sister Fascist States. The present situation was full of menace; that was why President Roosevelt issued his warning to the world, and why Britain celebrated with the fullest degree of publicity the completion of the Singapore base. “ Japan has unequivocally declared her sole responsibility for the maintenance of law and order in the Far East, and especially for the guardianship of China. She is fully prepared to vindicate this regional ascendancy by force of arms,” said Mr. Milner. “It is certainly not a heartening thought that, whether Japan wins out in China or not, British interests are doomed to go.