Foreign News: Centre of the World!

Whom Japan has joined to her Empire the rest of the world seldom puts asunder. In 1875 she joined the Kurile Islands; next year the Loochoo Islands; in 1895 Formosa & the Pescadores Islands; in 1905 Kwantung Leased Territory, the South Manchuria Railway Zone, and the southern half of Russia’s fishy & oily-Sakhalin Island. In 1910 Japan joined Korea, then joined in 1914 not only Shantung but also numerous German South Sea Islands.

Shantung alone the Great Powers put asunder from Japan in 1922. All the rest they have let her keep. Last week Japan officially joined Manchuria, a vast and fruitful land, one-seventh as large as the U. S. The juncture took place at Changchun. Simpering Henry Pu Yi, onetime Boy Emperor of China, now known as the Regent of Manchukuo (Manchuria), presided while his Premier, Chang Hsiao-hsu, signed for Manchukuo the draft of a perpetual treaty of mutual alliance with Japan. Not, perhaps, without sarcasm (or blandishment) the Foreign Office at Tokyo explained that the language of U. S. treaty-writers had been taken as a model—brief, to the point.

The full text:

Whereas Japan has recognized the fact that Manchukuo, in accordance with the free will of its inhabitants, has organized and established itself as an independent State, and

Whereas Manchukuo has declared its intention of abiding by all international engagements entered into by China in so far as they are applicable to Manchukuo;

Now the Governments of Japan and Manchukuo have, for the purpose of establishing a perpetual relationship of good neighborhood between Japan and Manchukuo, each respecting the territorial rights of the other, and also in order to secure the peace of the Far East, agreed as follows:

1) Manchukuo shall confirm and respect, in so far as no agreement to the contrary shall be made between Manchukuo and Japan in the future, all the rights and interests possessed by Japan or her subjects within the territory of Manchukuo by virtue of Chino-Japanese treaties, agreements or other arrangements, or through Chino-Japanese contracts, private as well as public.

2) Japan and Manchukuo, recognizing that any threat to the territory or peace and order of either of the high contracting parties constitutes, at the same time, a threat to the safety and existence of the other, agree to cooperate in the maintenance of their national security, it being understood that such Japanese forces as may be necessary for this purpose shall be stationed in Manchukuo.

The joker is, of course, the clause “Manchukuo shall . . . respect … all the rights and interests possessed by Japan or her subjects within the territory of Manchukuo by virtue of Chino-Japanese treaties, agreements or other arrangements, or through Chino-Japanese contracts, private as well as public.”

This clause gives binding treaty force to everything which any Chinese and Japanese may have whispered into each other’s ears about Manchuria, either recently or so long ago that both parties to the “agreement” are dead. Quaint, under the circumstances, was the insistence of Japanese Signatory General Nobuyoshi Muto at Changchun last week that ”this treaty has no secret clause or clauses whatsoever!”

Japan’s Backers. Dismayed by the sheer number of its unheeded protests, the U. S. State Department was silent about Japan’s land grab in Manchuria last week. Not so the French Foreign Office. Ever so tactfully in their gilded and ornate Quai D’orsay, French undersecretaries assured reporters that “the French Government’s reaction, on the whole, is favorable.”

The French Munitions Trust, headed by enigmatic Eugene Schneider of Schneider-Creusot, bought Le Temps of Paris about the time Japan began to shoot. Last week Le Temps heard that the Munitions Trust may loan 100,000,000 yen ($25,000,000 current exchange) to Manchukuo. the Japanese Government guaranteeing this loan (much of which would inevitably be spent upon munitions).

In London alert correspondents who know how Foreign Secretary Sir John Simon thinks, speaks and writes asserted with confidence that they recognized him as the author of an editorial in the London Times extenuating the Treaty of Changchun.

Distinctly Simonesque, thoroughly typical of the Great Lawyer’s special pleading in many a criminal case, were the Times’s persuasive periods: “. . . On the whole, the policy of Japan has unquestionably been conducted without too nice regard for the obligations which she assumed when she signed the Covenant of the League of Nations and the Nine-Power Treaty.

“It would, nevertheless, be a mistake to hold Japan up to opprobrium. . . . She saved the country [Manchuria] from [Imperial] Russia at the beginning of the century and she has since protected it from the chaos and anarchy which have beset other parts of China. She legitimately acquired economic rights which were illegitimately obstructed by the Chinese. The Japanese frequently argue in their own defense that they only wish to do in Manchuria the civilizing work which Britain accomplished in Egypt. Historically they claim they also are following the examples in other parts of the world, of the United States, France, and other powers. . . . Public opinion in this country will be wise to suspend judgment. The same rules cannot always be applied to every case.”

Meanwhile in Manchester the famed Guardian flamed: “Subterfuges apart. Japan has torn a piece out of the living body of China. She has done this by violence which she refused to call war. although it was a war. breaking thereby the treaties which both she and China had signed, the Covenant of the League of Nations, and the Kellogg Pact.”

Conscientious English readers, accustomed to rely on both the Conservative London Times and the Liberal Manchester Guardian as twin pillars of upright journalism, were puzzled, pained. In Japan schoolchildren clutching Rising Sun flags paraded by the thousand through Tokyo, celebrating the Treaty of Changchun. “Ex Oriente Lux!” headlined Tokyo’s erudite & patriotic Kokumin Shimbun. “Light comes from the East! Japan and Manchukuo have become the centre of the world with Japan standing as the Guide to Civilization. . . . What care we for the jealousy and oppression of the Western Powers? Whatever the persecution to be suffered and the sacrifices demanded, we must surmount all obstacles!”