JAPAN IN CHINA

Southland Times, Issue 25361, 13 August 1935, Page 6

JAPAN IN CHINA

China is still being bundled about by the Japanese Army, which is vitally concerned with the position in Inner Mongolia. For a little while the Japanese demands relating to the Inner Mongolia province of Chahar were resisted, the Chinese negotiator, General Ho Ying-chin, who is Minister of War at Nanking and chairman of the Peking Military Council, slipping away from the northern capital in secret to Nanking to consult his colleagues. The Japanese retort to this was the concentration of troops at strategic points ready to march, and daily demonstrations by an army aeroplane over Peking. The “incident” in Chahar on June 6, on which the Japanese demands about this province were based, appears to have amounted to this: a party of Japanese secret service agents failed to obtain prompt service when they were seeking fresh supplies of petrol to speed them further on their exploratory motor tour. On this account the Chinese General commanding in Chahar was dismissed —which is as though the butcher were to censure the lamb for being slow about cutting his own throat. The Nanking Government handed in its written acceptance of the Japanese demands regarding Hopei. What else could it do? The League is impotent, Russia thankful if she can protect her own borders, America determined not to be implicated. Presumably, the next step in the Japanese advance will be a refusal to tolerate, either in Hopei or in Chahar, the appointment of any Chinese officials or officers who are not entirely amenable to the Japanese Army’s will; and when a few key posts have been filled with Japan s creatures, the state of these two provinces will hardly be distinguishable from that of Manchuria. Indeed, the Japanese will be able to thrust their way far further south and west than this before they strike upon any resistance that need give them pause. The Japanese will proceed slowly in a southward march. So far they are in “easy” ground and they are not likely to commit themselves too deeply beyond the district about Peking; but in the meantime their grip on northern China is firm.