SPOTLIGHT ON POLITICS

Grey River Argus, 28 August 1939, Page 4

SPOTLIGHT ON POLITICS

| By A. L. Morton]. This has been a “black week ’, devoted to a great and partly successful offensive by the appeasement forces. It includes lhe sabotage ol t he Polish loan, the Hudson affair, and the Far Eastern surrender. Of these, the latter is by far the worst in immediate effect. The effect, of the Tokyo talks on American and Russian opinion lias been disastrous. The slightest acquaintance with recent trends in editorial expression among the leading papers of the U.S.A, would have enabled a forecast of this effect to have been made in the “Chicago Daily News”: “Chamberlain’s words seem to us imprudent, to say the least. The Japanese have no rights there judicially. Yet what Chamberlain seems to have done is to accord them full belligerent rights. The British Government ran out on us in the Manchurian affair. It- is running out on us again now.” In fact, lhe Japanese have accomplished their aim of splitting the foreign front in the Far East, and dealing with their opponents one by one. Chinese feeling is, of course, quite unreproducible. They have been well aware all through the talks that the anti-British drive was the result of the Japanese Premier Hiranuma’s knowledge that his entire export-im-port system was visibly breaking rlown. and that within five months the most serious difficulties would have been encountered in securing the essential war materials. Hiranuma has won. The Chinese call it a “Munich by instalments.” They know very well that in spite of Parliamentary denials, effective British support for the Chinese dollar will be withdrawn within the next, two months.

Let Berlin and Rome speak finally. The “Nachtausgabe” says, “British surrender in the Far East.” The “Westfaelische Landeszeitung” writes “Britain gives way all over the world.” The Rome correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph” reports that all circles regard the step as “the beginning of British decline in the Far East.” All regard it. as a prelude to European air render: