The Timaru Herald. THURSDAY, JANUARY 28, 1932. JAPAN’S ULTIMATUM.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 19093, 28 January 1932, Page 6

The Timaru Herald. THURSDAY, JANUARY 28, 1932. JAPAN’S ULTIMATUM.

Although the Japanese military j authorities may force the more or ' less defenceless mayor of Shanghai to agree to the terms of Kipponhi ultimatum, the temper of Japanese officialdom and military caste has so completely revealed the arrogant attitude of Japan, that the whole world will he excused for wondering if treaty obligations and definite promises count for anything at Tokio. Early in December the Japanese denied officially that they had any intention of attacking Chinehow, and pious hopes were expressed that their reinforcements would be sufficient to prevent a Chinese offensive. In the eyes of the military and diplomatic authorities of the principal Powers, such a statement was little short of ridiculous, for nothing much less likely than a Chinese offensive in the existing condition of the Chinese armies could well be imagined. As a j matter of fact, tlie Chinese made no forward move, but the Japanese occupied the city! Since the invasion of Manchuria began, Japanese actions have been followed by explanations, and promises of withdrawals, but such tactics ha,ve long since ceased to 1 inspirg Confidence. The forward | movement against the ‘"bandits” ii« Manchuria —which is the j Japanese term for the Chinese I armies—has already begun, and [ of the immediate result there can jbe no doubt. The parallel with Korea, occupied in precisely the I same way and turned, on the j same sort of pretext, into a I Japanese dependency, is as obvii ous as it is ominous. There seems lat least a probability that the League’s Committee of Inquiry ! into the situation in Manchuria is to be faced with an accomplished j fact which no amount of inquiry I will alter. The sword will have decided before the pen has even

the Japanese have delivered an ultimatum to the municipal authorities in Shanghai which indicates that the failure of the Chinese authorities to reply to the Japanese demands has exhausted the patience of Tokio, and the Mayor of Shanghai was given forty-eight hours to make his surrender. It is interesting to note that Brigadier Fleming, commanding the British forces at Shanghai, has been requested by the Shanghai Municipal authorities to take the necessary defence measures for the protection of the International Settlement in collaboration with the French, American, and Italian forces. At the moment, however, no one seems to be particularly anxious to become entangled in the SinoJapanese dispute. No doubt Nippon may force the abject surrender of the Shanghai municipal authorities but what is not yet certain is that the triumph will be in fact quite as complete and satisfactory (from Japan’s point of view) as it looks on paper. It entails real immediate losses and still graver ultimate perils. Perhaps Japan can afford to despise the intense enmity which her proceedings have aroused throughout China. The boycott of her goods by the Chinese must indeed result in very great immediate loss. But perhaps it will not last; or perhaps the boycott, too, may be made the excuse for another recourse to force. But there are graver perils ahead. No intelligent Japanese can read the appeals the Chinese have addressed to the civilised world without realising what effect they are almost bound to produce in ! many countries never too well j disposed to Japan. Defiance of world opinion has rarely- paid in | the long run, and although J apan j may ignore her treaty obligations, the statesmen of Nippon cannot afford to disregard world opinion even to gratify the military aspirations of her predominant caste.

“MV BKOTHER’S KEEPER.” “Dartmoor is so dismal,” declares a one-time occupant of this frowning prison, “that men will do anything to escape the terrible monotony of its living death.” Strangely enough, it required a prison mutiny which imperilled the lives of officials and prisoners to prompt someone to reveal the conditions under which hundreds of men pass years of their lives. For the most part, the average citizen and the powers that be evade the question of prison reform. It is alleged that the walls of the cells in Dartmoor prison are so damp that water trickles on the heads of the sleeping convicts; that the porridge is uneatable; that the bread is bad. It is stated that the governor of the gaol is disliked, but of course, no controller of prisons housing desperate criminals is likely to win the affection of all his charges. “Food,” we are told, “is the principal cause of the discontent,” “the warders are decent fellows—they simply do their duty.” It is significant that the first shots of the mutiny were composed of the porridge the enraged prisoners pitched at the warders! Public opinion, will of course, demand a searching inquiry, but the average man knows little and seems to care less about the conduct of prison management. If the question is raised, it is the common practice to offer a comparison with the treatment of prisoners in the

“good old days,” and leave it at that! In the year 1602, a certain Cuthbert Pearson Foster, residing in the parish of St. Nicholas, Durham, was brought before the Ecclesiastical Court charged with “playing at nine holes upon the Sabbath Day, in time of divine service,” He was condemned to stand in the parish church during the service, clad in a white sheet. This litle story comes from the chapter on “Public Penance” in “ Bygone Punishments,” by William Andrews, a reprint after thirty years just fresh from the press of a bright little book of early history of crime. It is recounted that in the seventeenth century punishment for nonattendance at church was common. Offenders in Scotland were usually put in the “jougs”—an iron collar fastened by a chain to the wall in some public place—but sometimes penalties were more severe. In Henry YIII’s day, we are told, persistent truants were apt to lose their ears. And so on: Dips into early history reveal what unpleasant, if ingenious people our ancestors were. The “good old days” indeed!—days of hanging, burning, drawing and quartering, thumb-screw-ing, racking, the pillory and stocks (although these would be useful in certain cases to-day), ducking stools, branks or scolds' bridles, branding, pressing to death, flogging, hanging in chains, and all the other refinements! Times have changed, we are told, and to the great mass of the people all demands for prison reforms are resisted as having a tendency to pamper offenders against the law, who must suffer restraint and punishment. But the grave allegations against prison conditions in enlightened England in the year 1932, may not be so airily disregarded. The community has made itself the keeper of the law and the warden of prisoners. The mentality of the prisoner has changed, and there are men in prison, perhaps some in grisly frowning Dartmoor, who are capable of thought and a degree of suffering unmerited, as the following extract of a letter serves to show:

“Dear Barney—Well, here I am, within the grim old walls of Sing Sing, in a cell that you wouldn’t put your worst enemy in. I don’t know who planned these cells, but I suspect the devil himself had a hand in it.

“As you know, I was adrift on a piece of wreckage in the North Sea for over thirty hours in which I expected nearly every minute to be my last. I have known the agony of soul that comes to a man in the trenches when his buddies are Joeing 1 slaughtered all round him and with the brains of his best pal spattered all over his face. I have known the misery of a German prison camp where, half-starved, I sweated by day and froze by night. But all of these thing's put together' and doubled I would endure in preference to this which is just plain hell.

“It isn’t that I have been mis-treated, for I haven’t been. It is just the awful stillness and the heaviness of these walls that seem, somehow, to be pressing upon me. The War I took as a matter of course, as something necessary, but I wonder if this breaking of a man’s spirit is necessary. I suppose these walls are intended to make men penitent; it seems to me they are more apt to have the opposite effect.” It is, of course, the prerogative and the duty of the free to uphold the law and punish the offender, but it is neither the wish nor the intent of enlightened communities to break the spirit of the worst criminal, who ought to be given a chance during his incarceration to work out his own salvation. THE MONTH OF TAXES. Some rather strong remarks are being indulged in by taxpayers in all parts of the Dominion, because of the concentrated activities of taxgatherers of all descriptions during the month of February. It is pointed out that heavy demands will be made upon the financial resources of all classes of taxpayers within the next four weeks. During February local bodies will dip deeply into the pockets of ratepayers in boroughs and counties, and indirectly through the channel of the local taxgatherer hospital levies and harbour rates and sometimes power board rates, will be demanded under threats of a substantial penalty if payment on due date is not made. Then the income-tax demands have to be met before the beginning of March, when the full burden of additional taxation, which represents one hundred per cent, increase, in some cases, will be felt. Moreover, additional levies for unemployment relief are falling due shortly, and altogether it is regarded as inevitable that the concentration of these demands in so short a period, will cause a good deal of inconvenience, and in some cases positive hardship, particularly so as many 'businesses and individuals with heavily reduced incomes, yet face demands for taxes based on more prosperous times. It is clear that some less embarrassing system must be evolved. In prosperous times, the taxpayers enjoying generous incomes did not mind paying, but circumstances have wholly changed, and some better understanding and a little more appreciation of the difficulties confronting the average payer of income tax, rates, and unemployment levies, must be shown by the increasing number of deep-dip-ping and persistent taxgathering authorities.