SEARCHING QUESTIONS IN COMMONS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 June 1939, Page 5

SEARCHING QUESTIONS IN COMMONS

Statement by Mr Chamberlain

ENDEAVOURS TO CLARIFY SITUATION

HOPES THAT SETTLEMENT WILL BE POSSIBLE

(British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, .11.10 a.m.) RUGBY, June 19

Tim Foreign Minister (Viscount, .Halifax) received the Japanese Ambassador (Mr M. Sliigemitsu) and discussed questions at issue in Tientsin. . . This interview was referred to by the Prime Minister (jlr Neville Chamberlain) in the House of Commons in an answer in which it was also stated that Sir It. Craigie (British Ambassador) was endeavouring at Tokio to clarify the situation. Mr Chamberlain’s Tientsin statement was in answer to half a dozen searching questions. He began with a recital, of local developments since the blockade started. After stating that protests had been addressed by Mr Jamieson to his Japanese colleague in Tientsin and that Sir R. Craigie had been instructed to take up these matters with Japan, Mr Chamberlain went on. to inform the House of Britain's views. He emphasised that the general position was not yet clear and continued: “It would appear that the original demand for the handing over of four' men had been conflised by the introduction of the larger issue of policy measures. No formal representations have been received from Japan on this subject and it. is still hoped that a. local settlement will be found possible. Britain cannot but believe that Japan shares her own desire not to widen the area of disagreement or to render more acute an already difficult situation. At the same time, Britain is fully alive to the reactions of the present dispute on the position of other British and international settlements in China.”

Mr Chamberlain added that Britain was continuing to keep tile closest touch with France and America.

In London it is felt that the serious deterioration of AngloJapanese relations which seemed to be threatened towards the close of last week was a result of the introduction of extraneous matters into the original difference on the textile question between the British and Japanese in North China, and that if, as is hoped is the case, there exists a disposition on the Japanese, as much as on the British side, to clarify the consequent conclusion and keep discussion to the simple points of difference, they should be capable of amicable settlement locally.