Wairarapa Daily Times (Established Over 60 Years.) THURSDAY, 21st OCTOBER, 1937. BOYCOTT OF JAPAN.

Wairarapa Daily Times, 21 October 1937, Page 6

Wairarapa Daily Times (Established Over 60 Years.) THURSDAY, 21st OCTOBER, 1937. BOYCOTT OF JAPAN.

Indignation at the Japanese methods in China continues to grow throughout the world, and Japan is putting herself into a political isolation from which she can extricate herself only by the downfall of the military extremists now dictating national policy. Ip England the Archbishop of Canterbury and representatives of Nonconformist Churches, in expressing regret at the Japanese “aerial atrocities,” appeal to the militarists to renounce such measures. Other individuals and bodies are demanding sterner steps than an appeal to the conscience of Tokio generals. Proposals for a boycott of Japanese goods are being urged in a number of countries, and in some cases have already been adopted. It is futile for the Japanees to deny the main facts of their aerial bombardments, facts substantiated beyond dispute. A recent leading article of the British and impartial “North China Daily News” points out in regard to bombing operations which wrought terrible havoc in particular areas of Shanghai, that even “assuming the Japanese aeroplanes had a military objective, the actual result was quite incompatible with such an intention. Once more the victims were unfortunate refugees whose elimination or wounding can have been of no possible advantage to the exponents of aerial frightfulness.” An important point insufficiently realised is that, as Harrison Brown in the “Contemporary Review” shows by many examples, Japanese brutality in China is no new thing. “Murder, rape and robbery go on wholesale, not merely all over Manchuria, but in North China as well.” He quotes instances of Chinese being buried alive, and 300 Chinese coolies floating dead in the river near Tientsin, after they had worked on secret fortifications for the Japanese. The “Contemporary Review” article receives fresh confirmation in Sir Frederick Maze’s report, published in a British Shanghai newspaper, of the deliberate and murderous bombing by Japanese aircraft of harmless Chinese Customs ships. No impartial and honest observer would deny that the Chinese have been provocative on

many occasions and have given Japanese aggression ready excuse. But no justification can be found for the policy of frightfulness now condemned universally. The next question is whether boycotts of Japanese goods provide an effective or suitable answer. Unofficial boycotts can certainly damage seriously the trade of the nation attacked, and the Chinese boycott of Japan over Manchuria meant that Japan’s exports to China in 1932 had dropped to less than half of the total in 1929. If Pandit Nehru enforces the Congress party boycott proposed, Japan will suffer severely, as India is her second-best customer, taking onetenth of all Japan’s exports.