SANCTIONS AGAINST SILK?

Southland Times, Issue 23308, 18 September 1937, Page 13

SANCTIONS AGAINST SILK?

By

H. R. KNICKERBOCKER

HONG KONG, September 7. At the end of a long flight from London, I landed last night at Canton and struck the middle of the war trouble, which had just extended so far south.

The steamer Fatshan, which carried us on to Hong Kong, was teeming with deck loads of Canton refugees.

South China is all aflame with antiJapanese sentiment. _ ' Flying from Hanoi (French IndoChina) to Canton, our Chinese aeroplane passed over a score of large towns filled with drilling troops.

Every time we landed the Chinese crowded about us.

They inquired whether I had come to join the Chinese army, whether America would help China, and what Britain and Russia were going to do.

The contrast between the old and the new China was demonstrated in bizarre fashion at the Liuchow aerodrome.

There steel-helmeted soldiers guarding 40 of the latest war planes carried tiny cages of twittering love birds. Canton itself is on a war footing. Every bank and commercial building is protected by sandbags against expected aerial bombing attacks. The city’s 1,000,000 inhabitants bump blindly about the darkened streets after dusk, when the curfew plunges all into darkness.

Twice already the Japanese have raided the town. The Cantonese are convinced that they will come again to revenge themselves for the losses inflicted upon them by the famous Chinese 19th Route Army. Insistently European residents ask one question:

“Why do not the United States and other members of the League of Nations join in imposing sanctions against Japan?

“The threat of the loss of her export trade to America is the only thing which will check her,” they say. Their slogan is: “Silk sanctions alone can save us.” •. They realize, however, that the application of sanctions is most improbable, and, as thousands of Americans and other Europeans abandon their possessions and flee to safety, a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness grows. Europeans in Canton, like those in every other British and American community with which I had contact between Alexandria and Hong Kong, are more and more convinced that Japan has chosen the hour of her campaign shrewdly. It is agreed everywhere that she intends to utilize to the full the moment when the British Navy is tied to its Home waters through apprehension of developments in Europe. Japan’s other spur to action is the conviction that a pacifist United States will be unwilling to engage in a war to protect her Chinese trade and in--1 vestments.