IRRECONCILABLE VIEWS.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 208, 18 September 1937, Page 4

IRRECONCILABLE VIEWS.

While Japan and China are deeply engaged in a desperate armed struggle of aggression on the one side and defence on the other it is interesting to have some light cast upon the different regards in which the two nations look upon one anot'her and which, to some extent at any rate, explain their rautual antipathy. This is provided for us in a very readable article contributed by Mr Robert S. Morton, to the current number of the quarterly journal of the Institute of Pacihc Relations. In the first place, he tells us that among the better class Chinese the Japanese are looked upon as a race of vulgar upstarts, who in their eyes have only recently emerged from barbarism and have altogether failed to appreciate and develop the early tuition which China bestowed upon them in eenturies past and which really gave them their first introduction to any sort of civilisation. Forms, .they say, have certainly been adopted and adapted, but there has been almost complete failure to absorb the true culture dear to the educated Chinese mind. "The popular Chinese view is that Japan has little of its own save military vices and recent evils. Whatever there is that is good and useful has coine from China in the past and from the West in our own time." On the other hand, many Japanese consider that, though China was once a leader in culture and in the mdus trial arts, she is now a degnerate nation that has fallen far behind in the march of materialistic civilisation. Such education as there may be is confined to a relative few and lacks altogether the useful aspects which the practical Japanese mind holds most in esteem. The schools, they say, turn out useless intelligentsia and fourth-rate politicians incompetent to give any effective lead to the people either in government or in industry • or commerce. Thus from their widely different mental and cultural standpoints, the Japanese and the Cihnese, as na- • tions, may be said to hold one another in something like mutual contempt. . After further pursuing this line of thought, Mr Morton points out that a natural outcome has been that the Japanese confident in their own industrial and commercial achievements, have built up the idea that economically China is their preserve, in which to apply a vigorous plan of development of which Jthe Chinese themselves are altogether uncapable. ( China, with vast natural resources and unlimited industrial j manpower," say the Japanese, "lacks economic organisation j and it is our destiny to provide it for her to the advantage of both peoples." But this cry of "economic co-operation,". finds no response among the Chinese, who recognise in it only a new slogan of acquisitive imperialistic hypocrisy. Then, Japan justifies to herself her forcible seizure of Manchuria and her further incursions into China' s northern territory on the ground that she is really only saving these regions from the hungry maw of Russia. She virtually claims that in doing this she has really constituted herself the protector of a China manifestly incapable of defending herself against Russian aggression. This is a representation of the position which, of course, can meet with no acceptance by China, who sees in Japagese action nothing else than a territorial robbery, that puts out of thought any possibility of anything like the economic co-operation which Japan declares to be her chief aim. Japan also makes a great point of saving China from the "curse of Communism" issuing from Soviet Russia. But the Chinese are not nearly so afraid of this as they were some few years ago and, for the present at any rate, regard Japan as a very much more dangerous menace than Russia. Indeed, among the Chinese a great many think that their ultimate salvation may lie in a big war between the two predatory countries, and there are shrewd suspicions that Chinese diplomacy is working towards bringing that about. / "Thus," writes Mr Morton at the conclusion of his ar'ticle, "all along the line, in views of civilisation and culture, in interpretation of national character, in judgment upon economic issues, in attitudes on current political problems, minds in Japan see black where minds in China see white— unless both see red, and then they do so in different senses." There are, however, he believes, still some men in Japan and China who have enough intelligence and faith to desire a genuine peace and honest neighbourliness between the two nations. But for the moment it is evident that their counsels can carry but very little weight while hostile passions are being stirred as they are at present.