Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Over 50 Years.] WEDNESDAY, 20th FEBRUARY, 1935 THE FAR EAST.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 20 February 1935, Page 4

Wairarapa Daily Times [Established Over 50 Years.] WEDNESDAY, 20th FEBRUARY, 1935 THE FAR EAST.

If the world means actively to seek peace and avoid war, the facts must.be faced in the Far East just as? they have had to be faced in Western Europe. There is a political school in London urging, in sympathy with American views, an “Anglo-American line-up” in withstanding Japan’s demands for equal treatment. It reasserts the old tenet that a firm Anglo-American alliance could dictate the peace of the world. Perhaps it could; but what evidence has the United States ever given that it would accept such an alliance? The United States will not join the League, much less an alliance. President Roosevelt tried the other day to get Congress to ratify American adherence to the World Court of Arbitration, and Congress shied even at that. Moreover, the claims of Japan for equal status in her own region of the world must sooner or later be fully studied, just as Germany’s claims have had to be studied. To expect any agreement on naval armaments in the Pacific while the obvious political friction remains unsettled is only playing with the question. On the European experience we should say that a regional pact in the Pacific, a treaty for mutual guarantee and security based on a recognition of the facts of the situation, is as necessary here as there. The

diplomatic work to be done in the Far East is quite as difficult as in Europe. The Nine Power Treaty’s weakness was that it rested on the pretence that the Nanking- Government was a sovereign Government capable of exerting authority throughout China. Not only is China not a sovereign State, but none of the Powers have ever treated her as such. The coming Washington Conference will have to face some old mistakes as well as a new situation.