THE EASTERN CRISIS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21347, 23 November 1932, Page 10

THE EASTERN CRISIS

Amid the voices raised at Geneva in this anxious hour, that of the Earl of Lytton has most clearly enunciated what is at stake. This, he says, is "whether the principle of collective responsibility for the maintenance of peace and justice between nations shall be preserved or sacrificed." It is the fear that this principle will be sacrificed that gives the League Council's discussion a poignant interest. How stand tho disputants in the case when this principle is invoked 1 ? Not at all well. Japan is mainly concerned with challenging the accuracy and value of the Lytton Report. This protest is in order: the report is not a decision by the Council but a finding of its investigating commission, presented to elucidate facts and guide action. An appeal from its conclusions to tho Council can quite properly be made. Yet of approbation of the principle of collective responsibility for international peace and justice Japan manifests little. The assertion of a Japanese anticipation of friendly and prosperous co operation with China is all there is to the point. This assertion may have been elaborated and supported, for there is a considerable section of Japanese publicists set on achieving, in spite of this quarrel, a co-operative alliance with China: but the available details of Japan's reply to the report indicate meagre reference to this laudable ideal, and illat rejection of

the commission's proposals offsets whatever may have been said about this friendly policy. China's attitude is no better. There has been, it is true, an appeal to the League and to the Briand-Kellogg Pact, yet this appeal has been always associated with an angry charge that Japan has violated all covenants, with the intention of committing murder and robbery. To prove Japan to be solely in the wrong is the evident aim of the Chinese Government; not a word is said about Chinese responsibility for international harmony. It is asking too much of the disputants, perhaps, to expect them to remember at this juncturo that they are equally members of the League and signatories of the Pact of Paris. They have a natural anxiety to make the utmost of their divergent arguments. Still, the collective responsibility lies on them at least as much as on the other members and signatories, and the marked absence of acknowledgment of it is significant of the light regard in which they hold solemn undertakings.