JAPAN AND WORLD OPINION

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 78, 24 December 1937, Page 4

JAPAN AND WORLD OPINION

"In recent years," says the Glasgow Herald, " J apan haa. ceased to eare greatly what anyone thinks. She knows that up to a point still to be determinecj no one will do anything to implement reactions of horror or annoyance at her eonduct. She 'got away' with aggression in Manchuria six years ago. She is 'getting away' with it again, even to the extent of pleasing herself as to the form it shail take. Six Western Powers have protested against the slaughter of Chinese civilians, but they have protested singly, and their protests contain no hint of possible unpleasant consequences to Japan if she ignores them. So this new barbarism eontinues, and with it the tendency for the abnormal in war to beeome the normal. Wars without formal declaration find their natural counterpart in wars that take no account of bumane values. Aud the frightful thing abdut it for the Western world is that what is happening in China can quite easily happen in Europe. The six Western protests, five of them from European oountries, are a hopeful sign for all their apparent ineffectiveness. Not even' the Fasoist Powers, which hold human life cheap, like the speotacle of the deliberate destruction of civilian populations. Even their natural sympathy with Japan as an opponent of Communism and an aspirant for empire cannot disguise the fact that here is a diahulical principle which, applied in Europe, would rob w.ar o£ *k»t little hnmanitv it still ppssesses,"