JAPAN PREPARED

Hokitika Guardian, 17 October 1931, Page 8

JAPAN PREPARED

TROUBLE IN MANCHURIA. APATHY OF CHINESE. AMERICAN’S IMPRESSIONS. “Some 30 years ago 1 had occasion to catalogue a library in Pittsburg and in it were some books relating to New Zealand. Then l determined that I would come to the country, and now 30 years later my chance came, and l am here.”. So said Air W. H. Whitten an American, who arrived in Auckland by the Ulimaroa, in the course of a tour through the East and the Pacific. He arranged the tour expressly that lie might visit the Dominion. * '

More than by traces of the recent flood, more than by the tension \v?n. existed in Manchuria, Mr Whitten was struck in China by the appalling, devasting poverty. The peasants and coolie class had nothing. He was in the city of Mukden, in which trouble between China and Japan has been centred. A week before trouble came to a head he said, Japanese armies were engaged in battle practice in tile heart of the city. “I. stood on the steps ol my hotel,” he said, “and I watched them deploy across the street into the park. There they took advantage of all available cover, and fired actual volleys. 1 think that Japan was preparing for the trouble before it r. sis actually imminent. Further, ii the League of Nations, or public opinion of some sort, does not prevent her Japan will take Manchuria from China. She. ha's certain'treaty rights to use the railway which comes to Mukden, and she has made use of them more than was ever reasonable.” However that might be, the man in the Chinese street was amazingly apathetic towards the danger to Ins country. Mr Whitten spoke with one coolie in Mukden, who could stammer a few word of English, and he was informed that the whole matter was not the concern of his class, but of the generals of the Chinese arn ies. Lot them deal with it. THE NANKING FLOODS. In Nanking lie saw traces ol what the flood had done to the country. He was ferried across one river, expecting to be taken to the lower city station. Instead lie was landed at another point and taken across about a mile of what a war generation would have called duck-boards, to the up-town station. The planking had been raised above the level of the flood waters. The rickshas in the streets were up to their hubs in water, and the railway earring e s up to their axles. The port who carried his baggage struggled through water up to his waist. “And the worst- of the Hood was further upcountry,” added Air Whitten. When he arrived in Japan, lie was astonished at' the number of bicycles in use, and the extraordinary uses to which they were put. “It is no uncommon sight to see a man cycling unconcernedly nlong a crowded strec with a pane the size of a cabin in u basket fixed immediately behind the saddle. Then, if it is too large for the body of the machine, they have - trailer dragging behind.

“Japan has become a nation of readers, and of deep readers. It seemed to me that there were more bookshops in Tokyo than there were cigar shops in Sydney.” For that reason, be did not think that the pace at which Japan bad become Westernised had been too rapid for its assimilation bv the common people. It did not seem to be merely a veneer, with Japanese traits just below. He would have thought so before lie visited the country, but what lie had seen had changed his mind. ENCOURAGING ALL RELIGIONS. Another fact which interested him was the change in attitude of the Japanese Government toward the missionaries. Hitherto, he said, they had been luke-warm toward their activities, if not actually hostile; but now the teachers nob merely of the Christian religion, but of other religions as well, including Buddhists, were encouraged to teach in the schools- —not merely tile mission schools, but ordinary public schools. Our missionary told him that the reason for it _\vas, contained in one word—Bolshevism. The Japanese authorities thought evidently that any teaching was preferable to that of Communism.

He did not know what the ultimate effect of AVcstern teaching would be on the Japanese mind, but in bis own opinion it would be great in some direction. “Japan is at a stage when her youth are questioning everything and are willing to accept what is presented to them as reasonable and logical. 1 do not know whether it will menu the overthrow of cuTture foi Western or whether it will mean a -fusion of the two. In China it is differ**'’

I think. The Chinaman will be •’ of the things of the We*t. and then he will deliberately shut ' is mind to it, and turn again to the tbmgs of the past. China has not completely awakened.