THE ULTIMATUM.

Colonist, Volume LVII, Issue 13773, 10 May 1915, Page 3

THE ULTIMATUM.

JAPANESE DEMANDS MODIFIED. CHINA'S OPPOSITION YIELDING. London, May 7. Renter's correspondent states tint Japan has further modified her origin-tl proposals, and instructed the Minister at Pekin to-renew his efforts to reacn a solution. Renter's Pekin correspondent says that China has offered to yield praeti:ally everything, except a feAV demands, about which she is making proposals. The "Daily News," in a leading article, says it is not easy to find a parallel for such demands by one Power to another as Japan has made upon China. In many respects Japan's demands are more stringent than Austria's were on Serbia, which led to the European war. China has done nothing to merit such a penalty. She has offered no menace,-and she wants only to enjoy her own liberties in her own way. If China had been a. military nation she would never have been thus challenged. She lias neither the will nor the power to take an irreconcilable course against her powerful neighbour It would be grotesque to suggest-that she is responsible for the crisis. It will be the last and most bitter tragedy of the war if one of its consequences is that an unoffending nation whose independence and integrity the AngloJapanese Alliance guaranteed is despoiled by one of the (signatories to the Alliance.