JAPAN’S POSITION

Taranaki Daily News, 23 February 1935, Page 22 (Supplement)

JAPAN’S POSITION

SITUATION IN THE EAST. EQUALITY MEANS SUPERIORITY. Japan’s position in the world has given cause for much anxiety since she gave notice to withdraw from the League and made war on China in defiance of her pledge of peace, and now there has come about a deadlock in the Naval talks concerning her abandonment of the Washington Naval Treaty. Japan refuses to agree to any further pact that deprives her of what she calls equality. The present ratio agreed by Britain, America, and Japan for capital ships is; Britain 5, America 5, Japan 3, and this is denounced by Japan as unfair and humiliating. The present treaty ends with 1936, and it looks as though Japan has made up her mind to consult only what she believes to be her own interests. In that case America will build more than Japan. The British Government will also have to survey the situation anew. The Japanese claim to equality of big ships cannot be admitted, because she has not equality of need for defence. The United States has two long separated ocean coastlines. To reach the Atlantic from the Pacific, or vice versa, her ships have to make the long voyage via the Panama Canal. The British Empire is even more difficult to defend. Its coasts are in every part of the world. Even the present ratio of 5,5, 3 leaves her weak in the Pacific as compared with Japan. The Japanese claim for so-called equality is thus seen, on examination, to be a claim for sheer superiority of naval strength in the Pacific. So far, the preliminary talks have been confined to representatives of the three countries immediately concerned; but France and Italy have also a question of equality to settle. Italy claims equality of strength with France while offering to reduce her Navy to any extent that France will agree upon. France has no disposition to any such agreement." Less than nothing has thus been so far achieved in advance of the formal discussions of the Five Naval Powers in London next summer. Japan still retains certain islands in the Pacific which were placed under her tutelage and protection by the Peace Treaty of Versailles. These are: The Carolines, 500 small islands form-, ing an archipelago in the North-West Pacific and bought by Germany from Spain in 1899. The area is 400 square miles and the population 52,000. The Mariannes (also known as the Ladrones) forming 'a chain of islands 1500 miles east of the Philippines. The chief island, Guam, is American, and the remainder have a population of about 2700. The Marshall Islands, which lie east of the Carolines. They were occupied by Germany in 1906. The population is 15,000. All these Pa.clfic Islands lie north of the Equator, and Germany clamours for their return to her. Very serious complaints about the Japanese control of the Pacific Islands have been made to the Commission. These include such charges as that the islands are being fortified, that airports are being constructed in them which only the Japanese are permitted to use, that the ports have been barred to foreign warships and also to an Anglican bishop and an American astronomical expedition. Japan has been asked at Geneva to renlv to these charge®