TROUBLOUS TIMES.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5081, 28 January 1927, Page 2

TROUBLOUS TIMES.

CHINA IN THROES OF REVOLUTION BRITAIN’S ATTITUDE EXTOLLED. "We ought to be, proud of England’s attitude in connection with the trouble in China. Her forbearance will give her her proper place, in Chinese estimation, to an extent that no othe.r course of action could achieve,” said Mr F. Milner, M.A., Rector of the Waitaki Boys’ High School, in addressing members ot the R. tary Club at Wellington on Tuesday. Ln his ppening remarks Mr Milner said that the time had arrived when it was incumbent upon New Zealand to take some interest in the problems of the Pacific now calling for settlement. The problem of the greatest urgency of all undoubtedly was that cf Japan, who, he said, had made a rapid emergence into the comity of nations from practical national obscurity. He, considered the fears ot Japanese invasion a journalistic bogey. Japan’s eyes*were not on Australia or New Zealand at all. She was more interested in China and Korea. When one considered that Japan’s surplus of births over deaths was; 800,000 a year it made one wonder. How were these people going to be absorbed ? he asked. Immigration had been offered as a solution, but he was of the opinion that Japan’s immense industrial strides would absorb quite a large proportion o'f her natural increase f°r a good many years to come. "There is no great urgency about this congestion of Japan’s population,” he said. “We are deluded into the idea that we are going to have an invasion, but that is only a newspaper bogey. I say advisedly that Japan is one of thq most efficient nations of the world, if not the most efficient. She is a nation to be admired 'for her striking development in civilisation, and for her fatalistic fidelity to the Mikado, but this characteristic, instead of making her a nation of Jingoes, ready to exercise Chauvinistic tendencies on the rest off the world, will find expression ni industrial expansion. “In China,” continued Mt Milner, “there was no doubt that Bolshevistic intrigues were at work, but apart : from that we were witnessing a great revolution that was combining in one effort what took England five centuries to emerge, from. The only hPpe for the world in the case off theste countries is sympathy from the outsiders. We ought to be proud of Britain’s attitude. The application of force is not statesmanlike. Japan is adopting her own scheme, but I think it bears within it the fruit of great promise Tor the future.”