WARNINGS TO JAPAN

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 56, Issue 4042, 2 May 1938, Page 7

WARNINGS TO JAPAN

FOREIGN RIGHTS. ATTACKS ON CHINESE AIR FORCE It is understood that Great Britain, France, and Germany have followed the example of the United States Secretary of State, Mr. Cordell Hull, in his intimation to Japan that the United States would still hold Japan responsible for the lives and properties of Americans. It is explained at Tokio that the Japanese Note of February 15, to which Mr. Cordell Hull’s intimation was a reply, followed up an earlier suggestion for the withdrawal of nationals from the area of hostilities. The second Note urged withdrawal from a wide area north of the Yangtse, after the marking of property with national flags, the information to be submitted to the authorities with maps of the location of properties. Mr. Grew, United States Ambassador to Tokio, was instructed to inform Japan that its warnings to America that military operations were imminent in Central China, and that Americans should seek places of safety, would be no excuse, nor would it lessen Japanese responsibility. Japan is also to be informed that it is not incumbent upon Americans to take precautionary measures as requested. The Japanese have begun a series of aerial attacks in China, using squadrons usually numbering 15 planes compared with the single planes in small groups hitherto used. The Japanese are apparently concentrating on aerodromes with the purpose of smashing the Chinese Air Force before it seriously challenges Japanese supremacy. The early emergence of the Chinese Air Force as a powerful factor in. the struggle has been foreshadowed by their recent aerial activity. The Chinese claim that they brought down eight out of 59 Japanese which were raiding Nanchang, besides shooting down six planes and seizing two other machines in Kwangtung Province. They admit the loss of two machines. A Japanese bulletin, on the other hand, asserts that 59 of their planes shot down 30 out of 40 Chinese planes, and that the Japanese lost only two planes, after wrecking the hangars and other buildings as a reprisal for the recent Chinese raid on the island of Formosa. 250,000 Chinese Threatened. The Domei News Agency at Tokio ieports that a surprise attack by Japanese, following a landing from Wuhu Lake, resulted in 800 Chinese being annihilated in the mountainous area of Shanschanchen. Another unit it is claimed, has driven the Chinese from Shikichen, nine miles south of Wuhu. The operations, it was added, had prepared the way for the occupation of Shanschanchen. The Japanese spokesman at Shanghai claims that the Japanese drives along the Peiping-Hanchow railway threaten to encircle 250,000 Chinese, whose only avenue of escape is across the Yellow River towards Shensi Province. The Japanese also claim that they will soon be in a position to attack in the rear 10(5,000 Chinese who are holding fortifications centring on Lingshishien, 70 miles south-west of Taiyuan, in Shansi Province, where the Chinese have twice fruitlessly counterattacked in an effort to loosen the Japanese foothold in the Chinese front-line positions. The Chinese, despite a desperate resistance, were driven back, leaving 1500 dead. The Japanese spokesman also declared that the Chinese, in a disheartened frame of mind were retiring north of Pengpu (north-west of Nanking), although the Chinese insist that their forces are still holding the Japanese in that region, while guerrilla fighters are constantly attacking the Japanese garrisons south of Pengpu. (The Japanese have been carrying out a mass attack on Lingshihsien as part of a campaign to round up Communist guerrilla fighters in order to safeguard their flank, preparatory to an attack on Hankow).

The Mobilisation Bill. Four members of the Japanese Diet have appealed to the Minister for the Interior, Admiral Suetsugu, to stop the spread of inflammatory posters threatening members of the Diet who are opposing the Mobilisation Bill. Admiral Suetsugu promised to do his best. Apparently, the significance of the

Mobilisation Bill is only beginning to emerge. Its reference to a committee of the Diet has obviously relieved the Government of an embarrassing situation, inasmuch as it was unable to defend or explain the session’s most important measure. According to the Tokio correspondent of “The Times,” it was an unedifying exhibition which could be cited as an example of the deterioration of Parliamentary politics under a succession of bureaucratic Governments. The Tokio correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph” states that enforcement of the Mobilisation Bill, which would place Japan among the Totalitarian nations, has almost created a Cabinet crisis, and that opposition to the bill will certainly be revived in committee of the Diet to an extent possibly compelling the Government to yield to the wishes of Party leaders. Not only the Diet opposes the bill but the Press and the public are also hostile to it, he declares, while, in

the House of Peers, the Government is charged with following German and Italian examples, regardless of the Constitution or of Parliament. The Minister for War, General Sugiyama, said in the Diet that the invocation of the Munitions Industry Mobilisation Act was at present sufficient, but that the National Mobilisation Bill was intended as a safeguard in an emergency when Japan’s fate might be at stake. It could not be predicted, he said, whether it would be invoked in connection with the Chinese conflict. Admiral Suetsugu declared that it was the intention to control speech and the Press whenever this was necessary. The bill was then sent to a committee. “ The Asahi Shimbun at Tokio foreshadows the creation of a temporary Commodity Adjustment Bureau to deal with the urgent problem I of planning the demand and supply of commodities, chiefly with a view to the greater production of munitions and with industrial self-sufficiency.