COMPARISON WITH 1927

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 222, 19 August 1937, Page 9

COMPARISON WITH 1927

WHAT BRITAIN DID THEN. (British Official Wireless.) Received August 19, 11.18 a.m. RUGBY, Aug. 18. With reference to a comparison which has been drawn in a statement issued by the Japanese Foreign Office between the present Japanese operations at Shanghai and the British action in 1927, when a division was sent to Shanghai to protect British interests, the newspapers point out there is in fact no analogy. In 1927 British interests were in danger from an attack from disorganised Chinese soldiery. Sufficiently large force to prevent their entry into the Settlement were dispatched and the British Government was careful not to use its forces either for aggression or for political purposes. The result of this policy afforded, it is claimed, testimony of its wisdom. . . The present position, on the other hand, is that the Japanese in Shanghai are menaced by an attack from organised Chinese armies. If there were no Japanese troops in Shanghai it is very unlikely that such an attack would be made and any danger to Japanese residents arising from the chronic ill-will of the Chinese population could have been met with* extra police precautions and by special measures which the other Powers would have been only too glad to concert. The Times says: “In 1927 China was in the throes of civil war. There was no fighting; there were strikes. Communist propaganda had inflamed almost all the native sections. When the National troops entered Shanghai the' native quarters were given over to massacre and pillage, and only a strong force of British soldiers prevented the rabble and panic-stricken soldiery from over-running the International Settlement. Great Britain, in 1927, merely did what she is doing now; she sent reinforcements to safeguard life and property, and the presence of the reinforcements had a calming effect.”