JAPAN AND AMERICA.

Taranaki Daily News, 22 April 1921, Page 5

JAPAN AND AMERICA.

NAVAL RIVALRY. BOTH COUNTRIES BUSY. By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. New York, April 20. The Washington correspondent of the New York Herald states that high officers in the United States navy privately informed the correspondent that trustworthy information obtained by United States secret agents reveals that Japan is building against time in an effort to more than double her navy, also that the new administration is watching Japan’s strenuous navy building with grave concern. It is understood that Japan is constructing many small craft which could be converted into submarines and destroyers, and she will strengthen her navy 50 per cent, by 1924 and 100 per cent, by 1927. The correspondent adds: "It can authoritatively be stated that it is the settled purpose of President Wilson not only to complete the 1916 American naval programme, but to maintain the navy in the highest state of efficiency. Even part disarmament is a long way off. The navy under President Harding’s guidance will be the first in the world.”

THE EXCLUSION LAWS. Washington, April 20. An association of Western Congressmen has been formed with the object of fighting in Congress for Japanese exclusion laws. Senator Johnson, who is chairman, will appoint a committee to frame an anti-Japanese immigration law, which it is hoped to pass this season. THE THREAT OF WAR. ANGLO-AMERICAN FRIENDSHIP SHOULD BE PROMOTED.

That the Japanese are preparing actively for war with the United States is the opinion of Mr. Marcus S. Hill, an American business man who is in Wellington at the present time. Mr. Hill has spent over six years in Japan and China, and four years in Northern Russia. He is now making his twentieth trip across the Pacific, and he is more than ever convinced, after his latest visit to Japan, that the men who rule that country are pursuing a policy that will bring them into conflict with the United States. "Their naval and military officers openly boast in newspaper articles that they are preparing to fight America,” said Mr. Hill to a reporter. "Diplomats and> officials may deny that, but the army and the navy are getting ready. I speak Japanese, and I have been able to make my own observations. All the white people in the Far East know what is going on. The Japanese are not friendly to New Zealand and Australia; they have their knife out for the United States. They believe, rightly or wrongly, that America is standing in the way of their ambitions. It is true that if they fight they are going to get a tremendous thrashing, but they do not believe that yet.”

Mr. Hill proceeded to speak of the artti-Japanese agitation in California. There was no justification at all,. he said, for any suggestion that the people of the State of California were acting in this matter without the support of the American nation. California had been drawing population from the other States, and its people were’ simply a representative group of Americans. They had the support of the United States in their refusal to allow their territory to be overrun by Japanese. New Zealanders and Australians, who had insisted on their own right to exclude Asiatics, certainly ought not to have any difficulty in understanding the American attitude. "I learned a good deal about the Japanese while I was living in their country with my family,” said Mr. Hill . They know nothing about life from our viewpoint. . . . The Japanese carry their own. notions of moral standards with them when they go into another country, and obviously their presence in large numbers in an English-speaking community is intolerable.

"You people in New Zealand and Australia have prohibited the Japanese from entering your countries, and the Japanese have not protested seriously because Great Britain is their ally. Americans : are using the same right that you are using—the right to say who shall enter ’ their country. But in our case the Japanese make a great show of offended ■ dignity, simply because the attitude suits their policy. They won’t admit Chinese coolies to Japan, because the Chinese laborer can live on a smaller wage and less food than the Japanese laborer. They have control of Korea, which would hold another 20,000,000 or 30,000,000 people, but they cannot compete with the Koreans any more than with the Chinese. So they want to settle in California, where they would enjoy the economic advantage the Chinese coolie would enjoy in Japan. We are not going to have them in our country. The Californian people are enforcing their anti-Japanese laws, and nothing that the and the lawyers can say will make any difference.” This led Mr. Hill to another point. He urged warmly that the American people and the British people ougnt to be getting closer together. They need not make any sacrifice of national independence or identity. But they ought to know one another better, and get rid of misunderstandings and prejudiced. He always advised'any traveller crossing North America to select a route that would involve several crossings of the border, between the United States and Canada. It was true that the German and Irish elements were strong in the United States, and that anti-British feeling was cleverly stimulated by certain newspapers, but the large majority of the American people were friendly in their attitude towards the British Empire. He had found in his travels, on the other hand, that very many Britishers had a prejudice against the United States. It ought to be the business of responsible people in both countries to get rid of ill-feeling and to develop the goodwill that was bound to be born of clear understanding.

"I pray from the bottom of my heart that Great Britain will not renew the Anglo-Japanese Treaty,” added Mr. Hill. "I say that in all seriousness, because the treaty is a threat to the friendship between Britain and the United States. The Japanese are boasting openly that in their coming war with the United States they are going to have the support, or at least the ‘benevolent neutrality,’ of Great Britain. I have told Japanese that they are wrong, that they have made themselves the Prussia of the East, and that have not a friend in

the world. I hope sincerely that the statesmen of the British Empire are going to see the wisdom of letting that treaty lapse. The salvation of the world depends upon Great Britain and the United States standing to-gether.” In the course of some further conversation Mr. Hill invited the people of the British- Empire to look for the American point of view when they were discussing, and perhaps condemning, the attitude of the United States towards the Peace Treaty and the League of Nations. A very large majority of the American people believed honestly that ex-Presi-dent Woodrow Wilson had violated the American Constitution and abused his powers when he attempted to commit the United States to a curtailment of its sovereignty and to a policy of continued interference in European affairs. They felt that he had attacked the Monroe doctrine, which to them was a cardinal article of national faith. Mr. Wilson had possessed no authority to do what he did at Versailles. American public men had warned him and the Allies in the most explicit way during the negotiations that the Senate would not ratify his proposals, and the majority of the Senators, backed by tne American nation, had done later what they believed the interests of their country demanded.