THE H.B. TRIBUNE MONDAY, DECEMBER 19, 1932 JAPAN’S DILEMMA.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 7, 19 December 1932, Page 6

THE H.B. TRIBUNE MONDAY, DECEMBER 19, 1932 JAPAN’S DILEMMA.

A Shanghai message we had on. Saturday last abruptly recalls attention to the Sino-Japanese dispute over Manchuria. It told us of the impatience that is being displayed in China as the result of delays on the part of the League of Nations Assembly in dealing with the report of the Lytton commission of investigation, which has been referred to a committee of nineteen for its special consideration. This impatience is now taking shape in a proposal to organise and dispatch a big Chinese fighting force destined to offer armed opposition to Japan’s military occupation of what is still claimed to be an integral part of the Chinese Republic. This follows upon the recent reports of the complete expulsion from Manchuria of the “volunteer” forces of General Su Pingwen which had risen in ostensible revolt against the new Government of Manchukuo set up under Japanese auspices. It may well be doubted, however, whether, in the present condition of internal, affairs in China, this talk can mature into anything like effective action. At the same time, it is quite suffiicently indicative of the highly critical position that has developed and of the difficulties that stand in the way of the League in its attempt to adjust differences.

The Lytton Report has, of course, met with but scant approval either in China or in Japan, and perhaps in this we may see some evidence of strict impartiality and fairness. The trouble is to see how the ultimate findings of the League are to be enforced in case either party should refuse compliance with them. So far as responsible Japanese spokesmen have yet been heard their Government is determined that, whatever comes, the independence of the new State of Manchukuo, into which Manchuria has been converted, will have to be maintained. Any decision that does not recognise this will not meet with acceptance in Japan, even should it mean her withdrawal from the League, bf

which, of course, she is an original subscribing member, as is also China. It is very easy to see how action of this kind would cut at the very foundations of the League as an instrument • for the preservation of peace in the world. It would also at the same time point to the futility of all such professedly pacific conventions as the Kellog Pact and the like, unless backed by some specific provision for their enforce; ment.

Looking at the practical aspects of the situation it has to be realised that Japan must find some outlet somewhere for a rapidly increasing and extremely active population. That she

should seek this on the nearby mainland is only natural. On the other hand, however, there cannot but be some serious objections raised to the methods which she has adopted for establishing herself in Manchuria when regard is had for the League Covenant and the several other pacts and treaties to which she has herself a party. Whether the absolute need for more room for her expanding population can be pleaded as justification is, of course, a very serious question in which stern necessity and contractual morality are in manifest conflict. As a Japanese writer in a recent issue of the 'Spectator” puts his case, it has to be remembered that in the small territory of 140,000 square miles—only about a third bigger tbah that of our little Dominion, and only 16 per cent, of it arable—a population of 67 million, with an annual increase of another million, has to be supported. Over this evergrowing congested population has hung, for the last ten or twelve years, the cloud of an intense industrial and economic depression, causing constantly increasing difficulties in the way of governmental control. It was under conditions such as these that Japan looked to Manchuria—almost entirely neglected by continually changing and invariably inpotent Chinese Governments —for relief, more especially in the way of providing raw material for her industries. The result has been that the great mass of the Japanese people have of late lent their political support to the militarist party which alone seemed to them to give promise of any material improvement in their condition. These are the factors in the case which the more moderate section, anxious to fulfil treaty obligations as far as practicable, complain have not had sufficient consideration by the Lytton Commission in framing its report.