The Wanganui Chronicle MONDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1937. THE PANAY INCIDENT

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 301, 20 December 1937, Page 6

The Wanganui Chronicle MONDAY, DECEMBER 20, 1937. THE PANAY INCIDENT

details of the Panay incident become known its significance is heightened. It was evidently a deliberate attack upon an American warship, consciously planned and executed with a thoroughness and ruthlessness which lias characterised Ihe whole of the Japanese conduct during its onslaught, upon China.

The significance of the incident is not to be glossed over. There is a definite challenge to the West in the conduct of Japan. Every step which it has hitherto taken in the present conflict has been the forerunner of yet another step. The machine-gunning of a British Ambassador was perhaps too lightly accepted, the march through the International Settlement was a step further in the provocation which Japan has deliberately embarked upon. The firing on British shipping was .vet another step in advance of the others and it was but natural that the Japanese in the Shanghai area should come to consider that other nations did not matter.

Fortunately for the world it was an United States battleship which was singled out for this contemptuous and murderous attack. It has revealed that note-sending is no answer to bombs—as President Woodrow Wilson found out—-and that, indignant protests offer no protection against machine-gun fire. It is not surprising that tl V United States should have been so singled out for such treatment because in a way the American nation has encouraged Japan in its course of conduct. America called the Brussels Conference, the President spoke of isolating wrongdoers, and then slr. Anthony Eden found it necessary to deny that the United States of America, took the initiative and the world was confronted with a Conference for which none would accept the responsibility. It was a flying of the white flag of surrender before the Conference started.

While the attitude of the United State;; has been lacking in strength, blame should not be placed at the door of President Roosevelt and Mr. Cordell Hull. The difficulties which confront them in bringing so large a country into line in any respect are tremendous, and when action of a positive nature is demanded in order to redress matters which are as far-distant as Shanghai then those difficulties are greater than ever. The United States has the advantages of being a big country, but it has corresponding disadvantages as well and one is that within its borders there are several Americas. There arc lines of cleavage which run both from north to south and from east, to west. The Middle 'West, is an area of its own with Chicago as its focal point. None of these Americas are conscious of external relations with the exception of two points—New York and San Francisco. America has a reluctance for war, which is all to the good. Its motive for standing out of a war, however, is decidedly commercial. If others embroil themselves in war then that is their own affair, and America will make money out of it. The commercial point of view, while strong with the American people, is not the whole viewpoint and it must be remembered, particularly at this stage, that America has always been influenced by idealistic considerations. Very often this idealism is maudlin and crudely expressed, but it is there notwithstanding and it would be as well not to underrate its significance. The United States of America has much which is noble within it, and it is tremendously race conscious. It, was race consciousness as much as anything which brought about the

restriction of immigration; race consciousness has been nurtured by the presence of a negro population, while on the Pacific slope, there is an ever-present awareness that, they are facing the Pacific and a population which can underlive any American society. A challenge from Japan is something which touches a very sensitive spot in American psychology and it would appear that Japan has registered a direct hit not only on the Panov but on that “"iisitive psychological spot as well.