JAPAN'S AIMS IN PACIFIC

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 197, 6 September 1937, Page 7

JAPAN'S AIMS IN PACIFIC

—Press Association.)

''N.Z. Wrong to Regard Them as Remote Coneern" RHODES SCHOLAR'S VIEW

(By Telegraph

AUCKLAND, This Day. "It is wrong for the Dominions in tho Pacific to regard Japan 's present onslaught on Ch'na as of only demote coneern to them," said Mr Ian Milner, New Zealand Rhodes Scholar, who returned hy the Niagara accompanied by his father, Mr Frrnk Milner, reetor of Waitaki Boys' High School, who has been lecturing in New South Wales on British and American eo-operation. "Japan to-day," said Mr Ian Milnqr, "is virtually Fascist "under a military dictatorship, and unless her aggressive

designs in China are.arrested it mny not be long before the security o^f Singapore comes under a sliadow." It was true, he added, that Japau's energies to-day were wholly absorbed in the struggle with China, but tlie economic penetration of the Japanese in the Pliillipines and fortification of the mandated islauds neai'by suggested possible aggression by Japan in the directiori of the Malay Peninsula. The oi], rubbor and tin of Borneo and British Malay alone wero sufficient induccmenl to attract the Japanese, antl if a soulhward expansion occurred it would touch closely Australia and so invQlve New Zealaad.