SCARE OF WAR.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 October 1921, Page 5

SCARE OF WAR.

JAPAN AND AMERICA. AMBITIONS IN PACIFIC. A SOLUTION VITAL. By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyrigtt. Received Oct. 6, 7.30 p.m. London, Oct. 6. The Daily Express, discussing the possibility of war between the United States and Japan, asks: “Will the Washington Conference avert the peril? Our information does not warrant optimism. The public must understand that the country is standing again on the verge of an abyss, and that Imperial interests in Canada, Australia and the Far East are vitally threatened.” After pointing out the causes of friction between the United States and Japan, the paper proceeds to say: “Beyond these causes of friction some indefinable impulse drives the United States to push its tentacles towards the Western Pacific, while a growing population and military ambition urge the Japanese to earmark the Pacific as their own. Unless these ambitions and impulses be reconciled rival shipbuilding will proceed, and when naval building has reached a certain point, probably about 1923, there will come another war. “Australia supported the Anglo-Japanese Treaty because of a sure knowledge that the Treaty would be her safeguard if and when the Eastern and Western Powers sprang at each other’s throats; otherwise the first rush of the Oriental onset, taking the Philippines and Guam in its stride, would fall on Australia.”—Aus.-N.Z. Cable Assn.

POLICY OF JAPAN. PLEA FOR UNDERSTANDING. MISCHIEF-MAKERS ABROAD. New York, Oct. 5. The Tokio correspondent of the Philadelphia Public Ledger interviewed Prince Tokugawa, head of the Japanese delegation to the Washington Conference, who declared: “It is my hope, which i will strive with all sincerity to make a reality, that from the conference will come ell the benefit for mankind President Harding hoped for when he called the nations together. “Every effort must be made to surround the delegates with an atmosphere of mutual trust and willingness to understand the other man’s viewpoint. We must be slow to believe the ill of others that will be told by professional agitators. who will be busy in Washington. There are mischief-makers in other countries who do not wish to see Japan and the United States good friends. Such friendships are against their interests; they even hint at a JapaneseAmerican war. We must do all we possibly can to make an absurdity of these hints. It is apparent that we in Japan suffer from rash hot-headed mischiefmaking journalists and authors, one of the worst of whom published a book entitled “A Drcam of War Between the United States and Japan.” Even to dream of such an eventuality is fantastic. “Much of the world's troubles is due to the failure of the nations to understand one another. One of the ways in which Japan is misunderstood is that she is continually charged with militarising. I hope to show that this accusation is not deserved. I am essentially a civilian. I never had a military training or connections. I am peace-loving, thus at least one Japanese delegate enters the conference in a state of mind -for making a Japanese-American war impossible.”