JAPAN’S POSITION.
AN interesting sidelight on the Japanese motives for action in China, articularly in the matter of the notorious Twenty-one Demands, is offered by Mr 0. M. Green, editor of the North China Daily News, in an article written for a recent issue of the Japan Advertiser, of Tokio. He explains that the prospect of Germany’s winning the war in 1915 or 191(1 was what impelled .Japan to action in China. “The influence of the naval party in Japan, which is notoriously pro-British, for the same kind of reason that made some of her military men pro-German, waned in proportion as the need for naval services in the war became less pressing and as the military position of Germany appeared to grow stronger,” he says. “It is not difficult to understand how the ease with which Poland, Serbia, and Rumania were overrun, the failure
at Gallipoli, and the apparent impregnability of the Western front must have impressed Japanese military critics. We can hardly blame the Japanese military leaders if they believed that at any moment they might have to reckon with n victorious Germany. The Twentyone Demands thus at least in part explain themselves as an attempt to save something on the day when Germany would be in a position to claim what she pleased in the Far East. The subsequent era of innumerable petty loans to China’s mandarins and Tuchuns is also to he explained partly by the continued uncertainties of the war, partly by the stream of unwanted gold that was flowing into Japan in return for supplies lo Europe, and for which her business men, desiring investment, turned naturally to the country to which they inevitably look to supplement the deficiencies of their own in food and raw materials. In judging Japan’s conduct we must never leave out the imperious and appalling economic problem which over oppresses her, her teeming population and native poverty.”
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Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2357, 19 November 1921, Page 2
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318JAPAN’S POSITION. Manawatu Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 2357, 19 November 1921, Page 2
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