TALKS IN TOKIO

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19693, 27 July 1938, Page 7

TALKS IN TOKIO

AFFAIRS OF BRITAIN

INTERESTS IN CHINA

AREA UNDER JAPANESE

SETTLEMENT SOUGHT

(British Official Wireless.)

Reed. 2.10 p.m

RUGBY, July 25

Conversations which ore to take place in the next few days between the British Ambassador to Japan, Sir Robert Craigie, and the Japanese Ministers, in which matters affecting British interests in the areas of China occupied by the Japanese will be reviewed, were mentioned in the House of Commons to-day by the Foreign Under-Secretary, Mr. R. A. Butler, in reply to one of a number of questions on the Japanese action in relation to British rights and interests in Shanghai and elsewhere. One of these matters was the freedom of transit for British merchant shipping on the inland waterways of China.

As to the reopening of foreignowned factories in the occupied area, inside and outside the International Settlement, and the question of the Shanghai-Nanking railway, Mr. Butter said that the Foreign Secretary, Viscount Halifax, had impressed upon Sir Robert Craigie the importance he attached to an earlv settlement.

Mr. Butler also stated that Japan so far had made no advance towards a settlement of cases of assault by Japanese against British subjects in Shanghai, and Sir Robert Craigie was continuing to press the matter.

lie referred, in another reply, to reports that Japan proposed to take over all the existing Chinese-owned mills in the areas under Japanese control, and said that Sir Robert Craigie had brought to the notice of Japan that t.iore were substantial British interests in many of these mills.