THE FUTURE UNCERTAIN

Taranaki Daily News, 12 September 1935, Page 7

THE FUTURE UNCERTAIN

SINO-JAPANESE PROBLEM NEW ZEALANDER’S OBSERVATIONS CHINA’S “PASSIVE CONQUEST.” DOMINATION OF FAR EAST. Even if the world’s attention has been diverted elsewhere by more spectacular events, the Sino-Japanese situation is still at the stage of crisis in the world’s affairs. No one really knows what will happen if, with a customary fierce suddenness, some Chinese student group flares into violent hostility against the Japanese and attacks a legation guard. Japan has, by a campaign of conquest, obtained military control of Manchuria—but not only that. By a campaign of typically Oriental intrigue she has obtained political and possibly economic dominance of North China. The officials of the Nanking Government at the present time are seeded carefully by the Japanese job-master for their fiiendli* ness, or indifference, to Japanese ambitions on the mainland of Asia. Japan aims definitely at the domination of the Far East to ensure her great national plan of industrialisation. These were among numerous first-hand points of information gained in an interview from Miss A. E. Moncrieff, a New Zealand Y.M.-Y.W.C.A. official stationed at Peking, who arrived in the Dominion on furlough only recently and who was working in North China at the time of the trouble in 1932. She is at present visiting New Plymouth and will deliver a series of talks to organisations connected with the Y.W.C.A., mainly concerning the nature of her work and experiences in the East. • Miss Moncrieff is closely in touch with political and social affairs in® North China and in conversation with a reporter indicated clearly her sympathy with the Chinese people in the present trend of developments. She admitted, however, Japan’s necessity of access to raw materials and that she had modified her first unqualified hostility after a visit to Japan to investigate the Japanese viewpoint. “The situation is certainly still critical,” she said, “and although Japan is on top at the moment, virtually , controlling the Nanking Government, it is impossible to say what will happen from day to day. The Chinese inability to face the invader with a united front Miss Moncrieff attributed very largely to two causes—to the innately peaceful and compromising nature of the ch ™se peasant and to the astoundmgly high degree of illiteracy which prevented the dissemination of either knowledge or propaganda that might create interest i n a common cause. As far as China’s attitude to militarism was concerned it was well summed up in the proverb, “One does not use good iron to make nails. One does not use good men to make soldiers.” Yet said Miss Moncrieff, the ultimate outcome of Japan’s conquest must remain a matter of doubt. The Chinese bad, through the centuries, invariably absorbed the conqueror and remained the dominant rather than the subservient race. It had been the case in the successive Mongolian and Manchurian invasions. It might well become. the case with Japan. The secret of Chinas' invincibility lay in her very complacency and indifference. All that the people wanted was peace to sow and reap their crops, to live in their homes. To the great masses of them politics meant nothing.. In certain instances Japanese interference was welcomed rather than resented in that the “yoke' of the foreigner .lay lighter on their shoulders than the yoke of the turbulent local war lord. The danger of yet further trouble, Mitg Moncrieff emphasised, was the danger of provocative action by the student classes, whose patriotism flared up with unreasoning, fanatical brilliance from time to time,, and then apparently died away as suddenly as it had come. Of the s Japanese temperament Miss Moncrieff also had pertinent comment. The peculiarities of two distinct racial strains was noticeable even to the visitor, she said. A quiet, aesthetic, beautyloving streak was at war with the peculiar, savage arrogance of the Samurai. Until some compromise of the anomalies was affected by time, the ultimate future of the nation must remain in doubt. Japan undoubtedly required room for expansion, said Miss Moncrieff, and the undeveloped mining fields of Manchuria and the cotton lands of North China had been the most obvious choice, but the fact remained that Japan might have effected all she aimed at through diplomatic rather than military channels. Russia remained the mystery piece on the confused chessboard of Far Eastern politics. Rumours came of great masses of Soviet troops mobilising on the border, yet her conciliatory attitude in the question of the Manchurian section of the trans-Siberian railway would seem to indicate that she wished to avoid trouble with Japan.