THE MENACE OF JAPAN.

Press, Volume LVII, Issue 17113, 7 April 1921, Page 6

THE MENACE OF JAPAN.

AMERICAN BUSINESS MAN'S WARNING. (SPECIAL TO "THE PRESS. '', WELLINGTON, April C. That the Japanese are preparing actively for war with the United States is the opinion of Mr Marcus S. HTTI, an American business man who is in Wellington at the present time. Mr Hill speaks with knowledge of the affairs of tho Far East. He has spent over six years in Japan and China, and four years in northern lhissia. He is now making his twentieth trip across the Pacific, and he is more than over convinced, after his latest visit to Japan, that the men who rule that country are pursuing a, policy that will bring them into coutiict with the United States.

"Their naval and military olhcers openly boast in newspaper articles that tliey are preparing to light America," said Mr rtilt to a reporter. "Diplomats, and olticials may deny that, out the army and the navy are getting ready. I speak Japanese, and 1 have been able to make my own observations. Air the white people in the Far East know what is going.on. The Japanese are not friendly to New Zealand and Australia. They have their knife out for the United States; they behove, rightly or wrongly, tiiat America is standing in tho way of their ambitions, ft is true that if they fight they are going to get an outrageous thrashing, but they do not believe that vet."

Mr Hill proceeded to speak of the anti-Jupnneso agitation in California. 'There was no justification at all, he said, for any suggestion that tho people of tho State of California wore acting in this matter without the support of the American nation. California had been drawing population from the other States, and its people were simply a representative group of Americans.' They had the support of the United States in their refusal to allow their territory to be overrun by Japanese. New Zealanders and Australians who had insisted on their own right to exclude Asiaties certainly ought not to have any difficulty in understanding the American attitude.

"I. learned a good deal about the Japanese while I was living in iheir country with my family," said Mr Hill. "Ihoso of us who hhvo lived in tho Orient, and not merely toured there,' know that the first honest Japanese has not yet been born. I won't say that tho Japanese are immoral, but I will say that, according to our standards, they are unmoral. They know nothing about life from our viewpoint. "Their middle-class and working families think nothing of leasing their young daughters for fixed periods to houses of prostitution. . The girls return to their homes afterwards, and arc not considered to have suffered in reputation at all. i The Japanese carry their own notions with them when they go into another country, and obviously their presence in lange numbers in an English speaking community is intolerable. "You people in New Zealand and Australia have prohibited the Japanese from entering your countries, and t2o Japanese have not protested seriously, because Great Britain is their Ally. Americans are using tho same right that you are using—the right to say who' shall enter their country—but in their case tho Japanese make a great show of offended dignity, Bimply because the attitude suits their policy. They won't admit Chinese coolies to Japan, because the Chinese labourer can live on a smaller wage and less food than the Japanese labourer. They have control of Korea, which would hold another 20,000,000 or 30,000,000 people, but they c"annot compete with tho Koreans any more than with tho Chinese, so they want to settle in California, where they would enjoy the economic advantago that the Cnincso coolie would enjoy in Japan. "We aro not going to have them in our country. The Galifornian people are enforcing their anti-Japanese .laws, and nothing that the diplomatists and the lawyers can say will make any difference."

This led Mr Hill to another point. He urged warmly that the American people and the British people ought to be getting closer together. They need notinakeanj sacrifice of national independence or identity, but they ought to know one another betterj and get rid of misunderstandings and prejudices. He said he always auvised any travel ler crossing North America to select a route that would in\oive several crossings of the border between tho United States and Canada. It was true that the German and Irish elements were strong in the United States, and that anti-British feeling was cleverly stimulated by, the Hearst newspapers, but the largo majority of the American people were friendly in their attitude towards the British Empire. He had found in his travels, on the other hand, that very many Britishers "ad a prejudice against the United States. _ It ought to be the business of responsible people in both countries to get rid of ill-feeling and to develop the goodwill that was bound to bo born of clear understanding. "1 pray from the bottom of my heart that Great Britain will not renew the Anglo-Japanese Treaty," added Mr Hill. •'! say that in all seriousness, because the treaty is a, threat to the friendship between Britain and the United States. The Japanese are openly that/in their coming war with the "United States they are going to have the. support,, or at least tho benevolent neutrality, of Great Britain. I. nave told the Japanese that they are wrong, that they had made themselves the Prussia of tnc East, and that they have not a friend in the world. I hope sincerely that the statesmen of the British Empire are going to see the wisdom of letting that treaty lapse. Tho salvation of tho world depends upon Great Britain and the United States standing together." In the course of some further conversation, Mr Hill invited tho people of the British Empire to look for the American point »f view when they were discussing, and perhaps condemning, the attitude of the United (states towards the Peace Treaty and the League of Nations. A very large majority of tho American people believed honestly that ex-President Woodrow Wilson had violated the American constitution, and abused his powers when he attempted to commit the United States to a curtailment of i' overcignty, and to a Solicy of ((.iit.nued interference in li'.ropean affairs. They felt that he had attacked the Monroe Doctrine, which to theriV was a cardinal article of national faith. Mr Wilson had possessed no authority to do what he did at Versailles. American public men had warned him, and. the Allies, in the most explicit way during the negotiations, that the Senate would not ratify hi* proposals, and the majority of ilie Senators, backed by the American nation, had done later what they believed tho interests of their country demanded.