Rotarians Rebuked

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 47, 25 February 1938, Page 6

Rotarians Rebuked

SPEECHES NOT RIGHT KIND Per Press Association. CHRISTCHURCH, Last Night. There was a sudden and 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, ot Melbourne, the official representative of Rotary International at the conference, said Mr. Milner’s speech and that of the District Governor (Mr. F. G. HallJones) trere not the type of speech for a Rotary conference. “Mr. Paul Harris, the founder of Rotary, laid down the ideal of friendship and co-operation,” said Mr. Mitchell. “If these two speeches art broadcast throughout the world much of Mr. Paul Harris’ work will be undone.” This morning, Mr. Milner, in outlining the Eastern situation, pictured Japan as a menace and stressed co-op-erative action by Great Britain and the United States as the only safeguard. On Tuesday afternoon the District Governor, in discussing troubled Europe, said that the aeroplane was the only effective check to the curbing of the Gorman ambition. Aeroplanes and poison gas were auxiliaries not to be spurned and despised of by peace and justice. BRITISH INTERESTS DOOMED JAPAN AND THE PACIFIC

CHRISTCHURCH, Last Night. “The present Sino-Japanese war is not an isolated phenomenon. It is a link in a long chain of causation; it is an instalment of a long programme of aggression which Japan conceives to be necessary in the attainment of her grandiose objective—the domination of Asia and hegemony of the Pacific.” That was the introduction given by Mr. Milner to his address on the Far Eastern crisis. Japan, he saw, would not hesitate to raise the cry of Bolshevisation of China and summon the help of her sister Fascist States. The present situation was full of menace. That was why President Roosevelt had issued a warning to the world and why Britain had celebrated with the fullest degree of publicity the completion of the Singapore base. “Japan had 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 cer tainly not a heartening thought that, whether Japan wins out in China or not, British interests are doomed to go.”