BRITISH & FOREIGN NEWS

Hokitika Guardian, 26 August 1926, Page 2

BRITISH & FOREIGN NEWS

[Australian & N.Z. Cable Association.] JAPAN’S MIGRATION POLICY. LONDON, Aug. 25. It will relieve a load of anxiety irom the minds of the statesmen of the United States, Australia, and Canada, says tho Daily Telegraph, in referring to the cable from Tokio that Japan intends colonising Hokkaido, and that she will cease sending any emigrants to Australia <fc Canada, or other countries where they are not wanted. The Daily Telegraph proceeds : “This action promises to postpone to a more distant and indefinite date the danger of that clash of civilised races in tins Pacific which would involve the East and West in a titanic struggle for supremacy. This declaration, moreover, is a signal proof of the real greatness of the Power which makes it. Tho dangerous question of Japanese immigration will be removed from the American and the British imperial complex of world politics.”

The “Daily Telegraph’s ’ editorial continues: “This declaration will have a direct, immediate and favourable bearing on the peace or the world. It moans the detinue recognition of tb.. fact that the policy of exclusion insisted by the- Western races is accepted, at any rate for the time being. Japan has behaved with great dignity in the lace of the growing demand for the exclusion of her nationals—a demand forced upon Governments for industrial and economic reasons, and especially by economic competition who want less to cat .and are willing to work harder and longer for less pay. There is no voice against the doctrine of a “White Australia.” Public feeling on the Canadian and the United States Pacific Coast is no less strong. Yet, from the Japanese viewpoint, the problem of an outlet for Japan’s surplus population is critical. Japan is fast becoming industrialised on tlie British pattern, and she must find outlets. She is preparing to develop her own possessions, but she may have ideas also of extending her existing settlements in the South Pacific, Mexico, Brazil and elsewhere. The problem of the Pacific remains, but by Japan’s declaration it is robbed of its most dangerous and explosive angles.” GIBRALTAR TUNNEL. PARIS, Aug. 24. Engineering circles are interested in the Spanish Government’s revival of the project for a railway tunnel from Spain to Africa, under the Straits of Gibraltar, a distance of sixteen miles. The Spaniards claim that such a tunnel would serve the interests of Britain, France and Spain, permitting trains to run from Calais to Capetown when the South African and North African lines are connected.

RUSSIA’S AIR FORCE. LONDON, Aug. 24. “Soviet Russia is already in the ranks of the first class air Powers,” says a “Morning Post” special correspondent. -■ ‘There are in Russia’s service to-day from 1200 to 1500 fighting reconnaissance and bombing machines. Ercry effort is being made to escape dependence on foreign designs. The aeronautical budget for 1925 amounted to four million sterling. AVAR gas horror. LONDON, Aug. 24. The dreadfully long-continued effects of war gas were revealed at an inquest on the sudden death of Frederick Crow, aged 27, who served in France in the King’s Royal Rifles. Ho was gassed and discharged in 1917. The doctor who made the postmortem gave evidence that Crow’s whole body and scalp were distended and discoloured green. The brain was soft and was coloured a greenish grey. The lungs "ere solid, and they gave off gas when they were cut, as did every organ of the body except the kidneys, which were normal.

Death, the doctor said, was due to dilution of the heart, through a mitral valvular disease, due to gas poisoning. A FRENCH SENSATION. PARIS, August 24. The bodies are being exhumed of two of the late wives of Gaston Guyot (the wealthy landowner, son of the Alayor of Louan). who was arrested at Alarseilles on murder charges. It has been discovered that in both cases Guyot rushed out of the bedroom at nighttime. shouting; “Call a doctor. Aly wife has shot herself while I was asleep!” Each, woman was found with a wound in her head and a revolver by her side. The body of one wife was found in a burning hayrick near Paris, her name being Alarie Loqise Beaulaguet, whose mother, in company with the police, visited the spot near Faux where her daughter was murdered. The remains of a burnt hay-rick were still there. The mother burst into tears and took airly half-consumed wisps of hay. The police, turning over the ashes, found a match box. which they are convinced had been placed there since the murder, in order to suggest on accidental fire.