Archives Reveal Seeds Of War Sown In 1918-19.

Northern Advocate, 21 December 1942, Page 3

Archives Reveal Seeds Of War Sown In 1918-19.

(Received 12 Noon) WASHINGTON. December 20. The State Department has published two volumes of diplomatic documents covering the period from the Armistice 1918, until the beginning of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919.- showing that the period whic hwas hailed as the beginning of a new and better epoch was. in reality the starting point for the present war. Typical examples are when the American delegate to the peace conference (General Bliss) told Admiral Lansing on January 9, 1919: “The claims of the Italian Government which requests Ethiopia and Albania, are based on the assumed revival of war in the not distant future.” The United States Minister to China (Mr. Paul Reinsch) reported to the State Department on January 6, 1919: “The methods applied by Japanese masters can lead only to evil and destruction and the Japanese will not be stopped by considerations of fairness and justice."

At the same time the American Ambassador to Tokio (Mr. Roland Morris) reported: “The Japanese leaders want supremacy in the Far East, therefore they did not favour limitation of armaments."

The Assistant Secretary for State (Mr. Brekenbridge Long) in a confidential memorandum on December 14, 1918, said that Japan’s mandates in the Pacific will be “a potential menace to the United States and the Philippines."

Prefacing the publication of the documents, the State Department hopes that they will enable us to profit from History and avoid the pitfalls similar to those into which five blundered after the last war.