The Timaru Herald. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1937 JAPAN’S EXCUSE FOR FIGHTING IN CHINA.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20839, 22 September 1937, Page 6

The Timaru Herald. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1937 JAPAN’S EXCUSE FOR FIGHTING IN CHINA.

Such scant regard for the sacred obligations of treaties outlawing war as an instrument of national policy has been shown by aggressive powers within recent years, that the Japanese threat to destroy the capital city of the Republic of China does not come as a surprise. Once the military mad Japanese embarked on an extension of their invasion, of China they had to face up to the alternative of turning back and admitting defeat or going through with their campaign. But what reasons can Japan offer to the world for making ruthless war on China? The answer to this question should interest New Zealand and Australia, because Japanese eyes have already been turned to the fertile half-occupied lands in the Southern Pacific. Dr. Wellington Koo, one of the most enlightened of China’s statesmen and by no means a militarist, speaking in his ambasadorial capacity in Paris, said that there was not the slightest doubt but that Japan wanted to make North China, a “second Manchuria.” On the same day the spokesman of the Japanese Foreign Office declared: “We are determined to act decisively this time unless the Chinese radically alter their policy.” Briefly put the desire of Japan to which the leading Chinese statesmen take unequivocal exception, is to obtain control of the five northern Chinese provinces of Hopei (which includes Peiping and Tientsin), Chahar, Suiyan, Shantung and Shansi. The “policy” which Tokio demands shall be “radically altered” is China’s determination not to allow Japan to create another puppet state within the Great Wall. China’s case, moreover, can be put in a nutshell. She asks to be left alone, and most certainly to be left in full control of everything and everybody within the Great Wall. It is pointed out that it is a bare quarter of a century since China became a Republic, and she has striven not unsuccessfully to keep the flame of democracy burning in the Orient. But Japan on her part aims at being the dominant Power in the Far East, because she thinks that her ascendancy in the Orient would be best for China as well as herself. But the peoples in Australia and New Zealand and other lands washed by the waves of the Pacific ought to contemplate the impending fate of ancient Nankin and then begin to ask themselves if they are adequately prepared to resist the claim that will eventually be made that they radically alter their policy, particularly in relation to immigration and trade, to meet the wishes of the thrusting and aggressive Japanese? At the moment the world stands aghast in face of Japan’s threat, as it did when Abyssinia felt the sharp edge of the invaders’ sword and as China has felt it for years, but it is reported that Britain is likely to issue a protest against Japan's violation of the plain obligations of treaties and her offences against humanity.