THE FAR EAST.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 203, 13 September 1937, Page 6

THE FAR EAST.

"What has Japan to gaiu? She already controls tEe enormous natural resources of Manchukuo. But if Japan deqided to utilise Western Europe's present preocoupation with the Spanish conflict and Bussia's internal dissensions as an opportunity for increasing by force of arms her hold on the five provinces, it would mean not merely a major war, calculated to overstrain her liroited financial resourceg, but the end for a long period of her reeently expregsed hopes of better understanding with Britain and America, Japan has sqcceeded in making an enewy of Russia. Her supposed attachment t» the "Berlin-Rome axis' is slender and in no way eonducive to her real inlerests, remote from Europe as they are, She can scarcely afford at this juncture to invplve herself in further war-iike commitjncnts." "We believe that Japancse pressurc," asscrts thc Birmingham Post, "pushed too far, will make Cbina a nation. We believe that Japanese pretensions, economic and commercial, pushed too far, will give Great Britain and the United States whai they have never had before a common policy- in the Far East based on positive and not merely negative co-operation. If Japan js allowed to go too far without protest, then this positive co-operation will be hound tb show itself thro'ugh Admiralties and War Offlces and not throUgh Foreign Officcs. It is still possible for Great Britain and the United States, acting together, to prevent Japan taking the last fatal step."