H.B. TRIBUNE MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1931 ORIENTAL WAR-CLOUDS.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXI, Issue 279, 9 November 1931, Page 6

H.B. TRIBUNE MONDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1931 ORIENTAL WAR-CLOUDS.

The trouble between China and Japan in Manchuria has during the last week or two assumed a very ugly aspect, and latest rcports ail speak of armed clashes that seem to involve continually increasing numbers. This is a development that the messages themselves make obvious, but what is really a more ominous aspect of the position is to be gathered only from a look at the maps. This will reveal that the area within which Japanese military movements have lately taken place has spread a long way to the west of the region of Japan’s reeo gnised “ special interests. ’ ’ These latter, so far as the present difficulty originated, are practically centred on the railway that runs from Dairen (Port Arthur) through Mukden, the Manchurian capital, to Harbin. There it connects up with the line which runs from west to east through Manchuria, reaching the coat at the Siberian port of Vladivostok, belonging to Russia. The Dairen-Harbin line was in large part built with Russian capital under concession from the Chinese Government granted towards the end of last century. It, however, fell into the hand of Japan as part of the spoils of the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-5, being formally ceded under the Portsmouth Treaty of Peace. The line with its terminus at Vladivostok was also constructed with Russian capital and is a continuation of the trans-Siberian line that stretches away back to join up with Russia’s European railway system. As the result of quite recent negotiations this Manchurian line is under joint Russo-Chinese control and management. Since taking over the Dairen-Harbin concession, Japan has not only spent a lot of money upon completing and perfecting the railway, but, under further concession from China, has constructed a line that connects Mukden with the railway system in Japanese Korea, linking up with the port of Seoul. So far as can be gathered from the data

available Japan is entitled under the Chinese concessions to maintain in Mmichuria a military force designed to protect the working of these two last mentioned lines from interference or disturbance. It was on the ground that roving bands of undisciplined Chinese soldiery were working deliberate damage to the Dairen-Harbin line that Japan first took action. Even this movement was declared by China to be without real justification in actual occurrences. But latterly Japan has presumed to assert some right to protect also the Sino-Russian line, and the fighting on the Nonni river of which we hear means that considerable bodies of Japanese troops have penetrated westward as far as Tsitsihar. This, of course, provides the Soviet Government with some fair warrant for intervention, and in this,’ no doubt, lies the chief danger of the trouble spreading beyond the two Powers originally and more directly concerned, it being hinted a few days back that other Eastern European nations besides Russia might become implicated. How seriously the situation was regarded even five or six weeks ago is indicated by the fact that the Council of the League of Nations, which had then finished off all the other business before it, decided to continue in session until Japan had complied with her undertaking given to withdraw her troops to positions within the authorised DairenHarbin zone. Since then, however, Japan has found in China’s alleged incapacity or neglect to control her own soldiery justification not only for ignoring this promise, but also for assuming the right to carry her protection of the lines far beyond her recognised sphere. From one of today’s messages it is to be gathered that the Council in no way agrees with this attitude. But seemingly, despite all the dis ciplinary provisions of the League’s Cpvenant, to which both China and Japan were original signatories, the Council would ap'pear to be powerless to do more than enter a definite protest. A reperusal of the Covenant makes it a little difficult to understand this apparent impotence. Still it was virtually admitted by the London “Times” a few weeks back when it said that “in the matter of the Far Eastern dispute the Council had no other weapon but the concentration of world opinion upon the pacific measures it recommended.”