EASTERN EMPIRE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23704, 11 January 1939, Page 9

EASTERN EMPIRE

JAPAN’S EXPANSION OUSTING BRITISH TRADE GERMANS AND ITALIANS (United Press Association) (By Electric Telegraph—Copyright) LONDON, Jan. 6. Japan urgently wants to end the war because she intends to use China as a jumping-off ground to carry out a plan involving Japanese mastery of Siam, Burma, the Dutch East Indies and then Australia. That is the opinion of Mrs Charlotte Haldane, wife of Professor J. B. S. Haldane, of London University, who has just returned from China. ' Mrs Haldane, who was the Daily Herald’s correspondent, says that the Japanese want only to colonise China. They also need peace, because, while the war lasts, there is no possibility of commercially exploiting the conquered Chinese territories. Hence Japan’s attempt to smash the British and American trade with China, in conjunction with the creation of monopolies. Never in China’s most intense anti-foreign moments was British trade more completely swept from the rivers and railways than by the Japanese on the Yangtse and Pearl rivers. The Canton-Kowloon and CantonHankow railways have been bereft of transports while Hongkong, Shanghai and Hankow, formerly great centres of British trade, are rapidly dying commercially. If Japan finally brings China to her knees, Italy ’and Germany, as axis partners, expect to obtain China’s foreign trade, replacing Britain and France, according to the official Nazi newspaper, ’"olkischer Beobachter. The newspaper consoles German merchants whose trade has been ruined by the Japanese war. It says that participation by Italy and Germany in the development of the Tayeh ironfields, in the Yangtse Valley, now under Japanese control, has already been discussed in Tokio. .. , “ When the cannons are silent the first steamers flying the swastika will be travelling up the Yangtse. it says. • JAPANESE TRADE AGENCIES MANY TO BE ENLARGED TOKIO, Jan. 9. Preparations have been completed to enlarge 26 trade agencies abroad, including Harbin, Tientsin, Nairobi, and Teheran. New agents are being appointed at Melbourne, Bagdad, Buenos Aires, and Mozambique. The Domei Agency repots that Chinese school children in North China are compelled to learn Japanese with a view to eradicating antiJapanese sentiment.