A NEW VIEW

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 585, 17 July 1933, Page 7

A NEW VIEW

a japanese opinion of great britain's methods. REFUSES TO FACE FACTS. Meeting the other day in Sydney the alert and intelligent Japanlese gentieman who, at the age of 40, has been controlling the foreign commercial affairs of his Japanese corporation in London, I led him to talk of Britain and her present difficulties, says a correspondent to the Sunday Sun. Mr. Matsu — that is not his name — was educated at Oxford and is a cosmopolitan. "You are gettig on well inn Jehol," I said. "Yes. I think we shall restore order thene, and keep it." "Keep order, or keep Jehol?" He smiled. - "Both, I think. Do you object? Your country," he went on, "has become great by redueing unruly people to order, and widening •its sphere of influence." "But what about the League of Nations?" I asked. "Oh, that," said Mr. Matsu. "It does not deal in realities. If the League really believed in disarmament, something would have been done in the last year. Nothing has been done and the armament people in Europe have been busy. I cannot deny that Britain has set a wonderful example, but I am very sorry th'at a country which has been so kind to me and once the great ally of my country, has hardly any army, an air force smaller than even Italy, and is weaker at sea, in destroyers and submarines, than Japan, France and Italy. "Well, tell me, Mr. Matsu," I said "what in your opdnion, as a man f the world in the broadest sense, is wrong with Britain," "She refuses to face facts," Mr. Matsu quietly replied. "It was the same before the Great War, though Germany had openly prepared for years. After the war you spent money you could not alford, not facing the fact that you had been destroymg money at a million a day. You made noble disarmament gestures, offered to pay America your war debts in full, and wipe out a great deal of what you allies owed you. "It is not," went on Mr. Matsu, that you English are fools. You are gentlemen and confiding idealists in a difficult and materialistic world and trying to escape into 'Cloudcuckootown.' Japan is a realist as France. We would not treat Ireland as you have done, nor India as you appear to be doing." However, I believe and hope," said Mr. Matsu smiling, "that Britain will muddle through, to use your own phrase. I think that Britain is not now so proud of muddling through as she used to be. It is a very costly way of doing things."