ORIENT AND OCCIDENT

Southland Times, Issue 18969, 16 June 1923, Page 5

ORIENT AND OCCIDENT

ASIATIC DOMINATION THREAT TO CIVILISATION GRAVE FUTURE PROBLEMS. (By Arrangement with the Morning Post.) (By Telegraph—Press Assn. —Copyright). (Australian and N.Z. Cable Association.) LONDON, June 14. Even more than European nations America has every right to protect herself against any possible Asiatic domination of the Pacific. Her long western seaboard and possession of the Sandwich Islands and Philippines assure her many millions of trade with the Far East. She has also enormous financial interests and concessions in China. While Japan was an ally of Britain there was but little potential danger to the American flag in the Pacific, but the Washington Conference entirely altered the situation, and America for the first time finds herself with very serious rivalry to trade influence which might easily be translated into terms of actual war. Japan’s resentment against her immigration laws finds expression in a determination to exclude America from further influence on Asiatic shores. To guard her Asiatic trade route America has kept strong armed forces at Hawaii and the Philippines. While Japanese settlers in the Sandwich Islands already number nearly fifty-six per cent, of the population in the Philippines they are not sufficiently numerous to matter. The Filipinos prefer American rule to that of Japan, but while Japan would not be so foolhardy as to commit herself to naval operations against the Sandwich Islands, it might be different in regard to the Philippines. It would not be difficult from Formosa for the Japanese navy to prevent. American reinforcements reaching Manila before a shattering blow was inflicted on United States sovereignty in the Philippines. Combined with a Japanese offensive against Hongkong and Manila, Japan could readily sterilise any joint effort made by England and America to join hands on the spot. Singapore therefore occupies a very important position from the American as well as the British viewpoint since there is no other base in the Far East with an equal chance of touch between Europe and the Southern Pacific in case of war and touch with the American Coast is out of the question. American possessions in the Far East, if it came to hostilities, would become merely a ripe plum for Japanese picking. There are, however, many reasons, why Japan should not pick a quarrel with America. These are always chiefly economic. Japan requires to sell her silk to America and requires cotton from America. Until Japan establishes a reserve of cdtton to counteract loss of credit by selling silk, she is not in the least likely to take any fatal step but, given sufficient chances for penetration of Chinese markets, she may sooner than anticipated find herself strong enough to assume a diplomatic offensive. America has everything to lose but nothing to gain by picking a quarrel with Japan, while the latter has everything to gain and nothing to lose. The Washington Conference and so-called limitation of armaments, while it does not allow Japan to produce vast numbers of capital ships, has given what is more important to her, namely, a preponderance of light cruisers and submarines, securing her supremacy in her own and Chinese waters. With these backed by her twenty-one army divisions, she could at any moment take what territorial action she liked from Saghalien to South China without any Occidental nation being able to oppose her successfully until the desired end is gained. This fact renders her diplomacy and policy in the Far East impregnable, provided she does not lose her head.

China’s attitude generally to America is much the same as that to Britain. Both nations are liked and trusted, but gradually, as a result of the world war, a new attitude of Orientals to Occidentals has sprung up, and the old-time prestige of Europeans has lost its meaning. Japan’s climb to the top of the civilised tree led to murmurings among all other Oriental nations as to the possibility of conducting their otfh affairs with the least possibility of interference by Western nations, and all too common outrages on Europeans in China are an index of the way Oriental thought is swinging to self-conceit of its own. The most serious problem in the Far East is not the attitude of Japan to its neighbours, but that of all Asiatic nations to Western ones.

Such being the case no preventive measures on the part of Western nations can be lightly disregarded as adventures too far from home. Whether America or England sustains the first blow, the result will be the same. Civilisation, as we know it, would be once more at stake—this time not in peril from our blood brothers, but from Oriental domination of the world, which would result in the enslavement of all free institutions.