WAR IN CHINA: Non-Aggravation Policy

Non-Aggravation Policy

An unofficial war, local and exceedingly private, was waged last week on the Russo-Japanese frontier. During most of the week the Soviet Government officially ignored its existence. The Japanese, on the contrary, reported daily battles, accompanied by heavy barrages of artillery, air and tank attacks.

Having acknowledged so much, the Japanese allowed white war correspondents to approach the front, not close enough to see much fighting but close enough to see 37 nailed-up coffins said to contain the bodies of dead Russians, and the corpse of a big-boned white man in a grey-green uniform without distinguishing marks, said to be a Soviet pilot who had been shot down.

During the week, Mr. Saburo Ohta, third secretary of the Japanese embassy in Moscow, arrived in Tokyo, having crossed Siberia by railroad and taken ship at Vladivostok, not far from the battle line. Said he: “The central authorities of the Soviet Union are following a non-aggravation policy. After having been repulsed with heavy losses the Soviet troops will not attempt more counterattacks. During my trip through Siberia all was quiet and I saw no signs of disturbance in Vladivostok.”

Non-aggravation, unfortunately, had little to do with the case. The Tumen River forms the northeastern boundary of Korea, a country which Japan has held since 1910 when she snatched it from Russia’s aspiring grasp. Near the point where the Tumen flows into the sea lies Changkufeng Hill, a prominence which has unusual military importance since to the east it commands Posieta Bay which is of naval importance to Russia. To the south-west it commands the coast in the vicinity of Rashin, a Japanese naval base (see map).

Japan had no claims north of the Tumen until she took over Manchukuo six years ago. The boundary of Manchukuo joins the Tumen somewhere near Changkufeng Hill and recently the Japanese decided that the hill would be nice to hold. The Manchukuoan border was easy to argue about, since it was fixed by the Sino-Russian treaty of 1886 of which Russia holds the only known copy (China’s copy was unaccountably lost). So fortnight ago the Japanese seized the hill. The Russians fought back and all last week Japanese communiqués were filled with accounts of the repulse of Russian attacks in force. The Japanese laid great emphasis on their “restraint” when Russian planes bombed the Rashin-Hsinking railway which, since it lies in Korea, is certainly in Japanese territory.

Since Russia’s naval base at Vladivostok is frequently icebound and Rashin is an all-year port, the Soviet was already too much at a disadvantage to let Changkufeng fall into Japanese hands. This week the Russians got busy. They drove a wedge down to the Tumen north of the disputed hill, cutting off its Japanese defenders, whose only bridge across the river is higher up. Japanese officers in the area were incensed. “It is crazy,” one of them exploded to a correspondent, “for the Russians to attempt to retake Changkufeng!” Meanwhile Moscow, with something at last to boast about, admitted heavy fighting, announced that the Russian frontier had been “cleansed” of Japanese, a claim which the Japanese promptly denied. In Tokyo, the Foreign Office described conversations between its Ambassador to the Soviet Union and Foreign Commissar Litvinov which left the diplomatic situation in the air.