EAST AND WEST.

Taranaki Daily News, 16 June 1923, Page 5

EAST AND WEST.

DOMINATION QUESTION. FUTURE POSSIBILITIES. CIVILISATION AT STAKE. The correspondent of the Morning Post continues his articles to-day by showing the strong military and naval position Japan holds relative to the United States, and makes reference to the growing spirit of opposition in the East to Western domination. (By arrangement with Morning Post, Copyright Australian Press Association.) London, June 14. Even more than European nations America has every right to protect herself against any possible Asiatic domination of the Pacific. Her long western seaboard and the possession of the Sandwich Islands and the Philippines assure her trade valued at many millions with the Far East. She has also enormous financial interests and eoncess:ons in China. While Japan was the ally of Britain there was but little potential danger to the American flag in the Pacific, but the Washington Conference entirely altered the situation and America, for the first .time, finds herself with a very serious rivalry to her trade influence, which might easily be translated into terms of actual war. Japan’s resentment against American immigration laws finds expression in the determine--tion to exclude America from further influence on Asiatic shores. To guard her Asiatic trade route America has to keep strong armed forces at Hawaii and in the Philippines. While Japanese settlers in the Sandwich Islands already number nearly 56 per cent, of the population. in the Philippines they are not sufficiently numerous to matter. The Filipinos prefer American rule to that of Japan but, while Japan would not be foolhardy enough to commit herself to naval operations against the Sandwich Islands, it would be different in regard to the Philippines. It would not be difficult from Formosa for the Japanese navy to prevent American reinforcements reaching Manila. before a shattering blow had been inflicted on United States sovereignty in the Philippines. POSSIBLE JAPANESE OFFENSIVE.

A combined Japanese Offensive against Hong Kong and Manila could readily sterilise any joint effort made by England and America to join hands on the spot. Singapore therefore occupies a very important position from the American >s well as from the British viewpoint, since there is no other base in the Far East with an equal chance of touch between Europe and the Soutliern Pacific in the case of - war, and touch with the American coast is out cf the question. The American possessions in the Far East, if it came tc hostilities, would become merely a ripe plum for Japanese picking. There are, however, many reasons why Japan should not pick a quarrel with America. These, as always, are chieflv economic. Japan requires .io sell her silk to America and requires cotton from America. Until Japan establishes a reservoir of cotton to counteract, the loss of credit by selling silk she is not in the least. likely to take any fatal step but, given. sufficient chances for penetration of the Chinese markets, she may sooner than anticipated find herself strong enough to assume the diplomatic offensive. America has everything to lose, but nothing to gain, by picking a quarrel with Japan, while the latter has everything to gain and nothing to lose. EFFECT OF WASHINGTON TREATY. The Washington Conference and the so-called limitation of armaments, while it does not allow Japan to produce a vast number of capital ships gives what is more important to her, namely, a preponderance of light cruisers and submarines, securing her supremacy in her own and Chinese waters. With these, backed by her twenty-one army divisions, she could at • any moment take what territorial action she liked from Saghlien to South China, without any Occidental nation being able to oppose her successfully until her desires had been gained. This fact renders her diplomacy and policy in the Far East impregnable, provided she does Hot lose her head. NEW ORIENTAL ATTITUDE. *he Chinese attitude generally to America is much the same as that to Britain. Both nations are liked and trusted, but gradually, as the result of the world war, a new attitude on the part of Orientals to Occidentals has sprung up and the old-time prestige of Europeans has lost its meaning. Japan’s climb to the top of the civilised tree has led to murmurings among all other Oriental nations as to the possibility of conducting their own affairs with the least possibility of interference by western nations, and the all too common outrages on Europeans in China are an index of the way Oriental thought is swinging to self-conceit of its own. The most serious problem of the Far East is not the attitude of Japan to ita neighbours, but that of all Asiatic nations to western ones. Such being the case the preventive measures on the , part of western nations can be lightly disregarded as adventures too far from home. Whether America or England sustains the first blow the result will be the same—civilisation, as we know it, will be once more at stake, this time not in peril from our blood brothers, but from Oriental domination of the world, which would result in the enslavement of all free institutions.