CHINESE CRISIS

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 10513, 7 April 1927, Page 6

CHINESE CRISIS

LABOUR’S ATTITUBE DEBATE IN COMMONS. (Received 9.55 a.m.) Ek ctric Telegraph—Press Association LONDON, April (5. In the House of Commons there was a crowded attendance when Mr Ramsay MacDonald initiated a debate on China. He said no one could say what was going to happen. The despatch of the Shanghai defence force had undoubtedly increased cur negotiating difficulties without increasing the protection for Britishers outside Shanghai. It liad also fed the traditional Chinese suspicion, though he believed this was without foundation, that not Shanghai but the whole of China was the immediate nest of our policy. Nobody could say before the inquiry what had happened in Nanking, therefore he urged the Government to use the League metliqd of inquiry. Personally, lie was most glad that Britain, America, and Japan to-day were sending notes and not ultimata. There should be clear statement that we still stood where we were at Christmas. If the League of Nations could make a Nanking inquiry, it would do a tremendous lot of good. He hoped that Sir Austen Chamberlain would not decline to use the League. They should know what was in the mind of the War Office in sending out more troops, and how far we were acting alone on such matters. It was not in British interests, as the market for our goods wrys circumscribed and barred by prejudice and ill-will. The Chinese had learned tlie power of boycott Mr R. Mitchcll-Banks l (Conservative) said that Mr Macdonald’s speech recalled the proverb that in the Kingdom of the blind a one-eyed man was a king. He wished that Macdonald could give some vision to hia party, but unfortunately his kingdom was governed not from the throne but from the ailte-e 1 1 amiber. Mr Macdonald had said that revolutionary propaganda in the east was based on history, but Mr MitchellBanks declared that the independent Labour Party was busy preparing history upon which to base the propaganda. If anybody spread suspicion it was the Labour Party by meetings and resolutions, and if there should he disaster, they would be its chief authors. If Sir Austen Chamberlain had to defend himself, it would bo against pushing the virtue of patience almost to a fault.