League of Nations

Southland Times, Issue 21849, 28 October 1932, Page 9

League of Nations

Assembly s Work

By

“Geneva.”

Frankenstein’s dismay at the monster he had made is beginning to have a parallel in the concern of the thoughtful scientist, over the achievements of his kind. There are three outstanding threats held out to us by science. It may equip us with warlike agencies sufficient to batter ourselves to bits; it may produce only less fatally than it destroys—turning out goods so profusely that our financial mechanism is swamped; it opens up the prospect of man, released from toil, drifting into a leisure that he hasn’t the resource to '•shape according to his needs. If the first of these three dangers were fulfilled the others would cease to matter. Disarmament is the alternative to general catastrophe. Mankind realizes this sufficiently well to set up conferences, but has not yet been able to guarantee their success—they have been far too inanimate. Far Eastern Perils. The Lytton Report has not proved jin emollient. Nothing will convince Japan that she is not entirely right. In the Diet of August 25 Count Uchida’s speech was concerned in showing that japan, having acted in self-defence, had not violated the Kellogg Pact; that Manchuria’s declaration of independence was entirely spontaneous, and that there was nothing in the Nine Power Treaty to forbid Japan recognizing the new state. That is Japan’s last word end it will take much to alter it. “Suicide before dishonour is of the Japanese bone and fibre.” An interesting episode in the same debate was the speech by Mr Kahu Mori, an ex-Cab-inet Minister, urging that “our present plight is due to our surrender to Western civilization” and that Japan must “return to her own spiritual life and seek to preserve Asia in accordance with her own spirit.’’ The same note was sounded in the Gaiko Tiho (Diplomatic Review), an important monthly, arguing that there was no place for the West in the Far East, where it was Japan’s destiny to lead China back to peace and order. Considering the present state of unrest in Japan such statements cannot be trifled with, especially when it is a growing opinion in Japan, fostered by many papers, shat some big challenge is needed to purify the nation and revive the true spirit of Japan. Storm clouds are again beginning to roll up on Shanghai, where the boycott is reviving, discouraged by Chinese officials but supported by the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, the lawyers and the terrorists. Again the Chinese courts refuse to punish anti-Japanese rioters and the Japanese naval shore guards are being increased. In China itself the issue lies between Communism and nationalism. The Japanese invasion has given the Chinese realists of Nanking a bad jright and they are endeavouring to increase the areas served by good government, but how this is to be done without assistance from abroad it is hard to see. This is where the League enters the field again and is at the moment giving the Chinese invaluable aid in the departments of health and education. ..One of the most striking of the direatened complications is that, if Japan were to leave the League, the three Powers most directly concerned in the fate of Manchukuo (Japan, U.S.A., and Russia) would none of them be members of the League, which goes to show the necessity for the entry of Russia and America as soon as possible. Germany. Germany is clearly bent on forcing a decision on an issue there is no possibility of avoiding. She refuses to submit 4 o armament restrictions from which other countries are free. Either therefore they must accept similar restrictions voltunarily, which is what the Italian Government has proposed at Geneva, or she will take the law into her own hands and decline to be bound by them herself. It is jtill probable that general acceptance of the Hoover plan would be regarded in Germany as a reasonable first step to equality by stages, but if there is to be no nearer approach towards the adoption of the plan than our own Government is prepared for, then a crisis involving a deliberate breach of the Treaty of Versailles—with considerable moral justification—is inevitable. No one with any realization of what Germany's present temper is can suppose her to be bluffing in this matter. * * * « “The Round Tabic.” A recent article by a contributor from the East, contains this paragraph: We have largely ourselves to blame; and unless there is a considerable change in. the attitude of the Western Powers not only towards Japan, but towards one another, we may expect the Japanese to pursue the kind of policy which seems to offer immediate benefits rather than the kind which European nations have so frequently recommended to others and so rarely tried themselves.