JAPANESE SERVICE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21100, 6 February 1932, Page 12

JAPANESE SERVICE.

Sir, —111 the Herald of February 2 you gave 11s a news item from tho London Daily Mail. "There must be no antiJapanese intervention. Our old friends the Japanese, etc." Willi reference to this, I beg to suggest a revival at this time of a feeling we certainly had and expressed with regard to Japan in the late war. It is not so long ago, a matter of 14 or 15 years, when, we in our loyalty, with our fathers and sons, went out to help in a "war to end war." Our troopships left these, shores, as also ships from Australia, with the flower of our manhood. 011 this mission. We know how much they accomplished. Our chief concern now is tho payment of war debts, and we are generally in a state of financial collapse, not having experienced anything like it in the history of the world. May wc not. have, at any rate, in these troublous times, a feeling of gratitude, some thanks to'the people who did us great service at, the time I mention ? Someone has said that not a troopship would liavo ever reached France, the scene of the late Great War, from these parts if it had not been for Japanese convoy. With the Schonhorst and submarines about, that statement is probably not an exaggeration. I write to say:— Let us not forget Japan and her people who came to our aid. Our mothers, fathers, sisters, wives will easily feel that sense of gratitude when they remember their loved ones; those who went away and returned and those who went away and never came back. We are all very sorry to see this terrible thing going on in the East between these two great nations. We still hope they may compose their differences; but 1 do ask that we may judge Japan, having in mind what she did for us. R. B. Williams. Taumarunni.