DIPLOMATIC DOCUMENTS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 22 December 1942, Page 5

DIPLOMATIC DOCUMENTS

ARMISTICE—PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE STARTING POINT FOR PRESENT WAR Washington, Dec. 20. The State Department has published two volumes of diplomatic documents covering the period from the armistice in 1918 until the beginning of the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, showing that the period which had been hailed as the beginning of a new and better epoch was in reality the starling point for the present war. Typical examples are that the American delegate at the Peace Conference, General Bliss, told Mr Lansing on 9th January 1919 “that the claims of the Italian Government which requests Ethiopia and Albania are based solely on the assumed revival of w'ar in the not distant future.” Again the United States Minister to China, Mr Paul Reinsch, reported to the State Department on 6th January, 1919, "that the methods applied by the Japanese masters can lead only to evil and destruction and the Japanese will not be stopped by considerations of fairness or justice.” At the same time the American Ambassador to Tokio, Mr Roland Morris, reported: "Japanese leaders want supremacy in the Far East, therefore they do not favour the limitation of armaments.”

The Assistant-Secretary of State, Mr Brekenbridge Long, in a confidential memorandum on 14th December. 1918, said 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 expresses the hope that they will enable us to profit from history and avoid pitfalls similar to those into which we blundered after the last war.—P.A.