A LINE OF EASTERN CONFLICT

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4264, 26 May 1936, Page 7

A LINE OF EASTERN CONFLICT

The present vague line separating Communist Russia and the Soviet protege, Outer Mongolia, from Japan’s new continental empire is to-day the longest unsettled border in the world, it lies between two vigorous nations whose populations are rapidly increasing ; each believe in a great and prosperous national future, and each regards itself as responsible for a great world mission. But the border between Japan and Russia is more than a danger line between two virile, growing Powers, it is the real border between Europe and Asia, between newest East and newest West. This border, along which Japanese and Russians and their proteges now clash and argue with one another, intrigue against one another, and occasionally shoot at one another, is approximately 3,500 miles long. It passes through one of the least-known areas of such extent in the world. it begins on the hard-gravel eastern end of the Gobi Desert, which separates the Russian-sponsored Mongols from their Japanese-sponsored kinsmen and follows the great Amur River, along which the old Czars settled their Cossack soldier communes —a thousandmile stretch through rich valleys, timbered hills, and marshy lowlands, constituting the most promising unexplored farming belt in the North Temperate Zone. Then it runs up the Ussuri River to its source in Lake Hanka, and proceeds thence to the Korean border around once proud and now hopeful Vladivostok. To this long boundary line must be added the 80-mile border which now wants —and needs —the oil and fish at both ends of the island, which cuts Sakhaliu Island in two. Japan now wants —and needs —the oil and fish at both ends of the island. North Pacific seas fishing rights are in dispute between the Soviet fishing monopoly and the Japanese fishing industry controlled and staffed by the Imperial Japanese Navy. Russia’s border territory is squeezed between Japan’s new continental empire and the tundras of the frozen north. It contains less than three persons per square mile. Probably less than a third of these have blood or race ties with European Russia. Another third consists of partly Russianised Mongol and Turk Nomads, chiefly of the tribes known as Buriats. The final third consists of Korean and Chinese settlers, and “ wild ” tribes known as Ainus (the aboriginal people of Japan), Gilyaks, Goldis, Fish-skin wearers, and so on. The great area is rich in lore. It was superficially conquered and settled about 100 years ago by the Russians, who swept from Moscow 6,000 miles over the top of Asia. But there was no thorough follow-up of exploitation. Russian bureaucracy stifled adventurous spirits. When the railway came, built and run —at a loss—for political purposes, it did little to develop the area. Then, in 1918, began the 15year period of disruption, foreign invasion, internal fighting, banditry, and Chinese misrule.—Upton Close, in ‘ New York Times Magazine.’