LEADER’S OUTBURST

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 February 1940, Page 5

LEADER’S OUTBURST

STIR IN JAPANESE DIET EXPULSION DEMANDED. CHINESE CAMPAIGN A HOLY WAR. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. NEW YORK, February 3. Mr Takao Saito, leader of the powerful Minseito Party, after attacking the Government in the Japanese Diet, demanding a statement of its war aims, later resigned from his party. While two minor parties demanded his expulsion from Parliament, the army leaders discussed a similar demand. The Minister of War, General Hata, in the Diet uncompromisingly answered Mr Saito. ‘‘The China campaign,” he said, “is a holy way aimed at the extirpation of tne pro-Communist and anti-Japanese regime and no peace short of a complete victory. A hundred thousand men have died without regret for the new order in As.ia.”

The War Office announced that Major-General Masao Nakamura was killed in action at Nanning on Christmas Day. The Shanghai correspondent of the New York “Herald-Tribune” states that five French, 24 Anhamese and 82 Chinese were killed and injured in the Japanese bombing of the French-owned Hani-Kunming railway in South China. The French killed were two women, a child and two railway employees. Is is disclosed in Washington that prior to the bombing of the railway, the American Ambassador, Mr Grew, informed Tokio that the United States was concerned over the earlier bombing of the line, which is the last railway by which the United States is able to exchange goods with China. According to the Paris correspondent of the “New York Times,’ Mr Grew is acting as an intermediary over the bombing. The French feel that much depends on whether the United States is willing to take the leadership of the Western Powers in the Far East.

The Japanese army spokesman in Shanghai claims that two; Japanese thrusts in the Nanning area (Nanning is the capital of Kwangsi Province. South China) demoralised at least 24 divisions, totalling 140,000 Chinese troops, one-third of the armies which have recently been massed for an attack on Nanning, the threat of -which has been removed. The Shanghai correspondent of the “New York Times,” Mr Hallett Abend, says: “Advancing 25 miles within a day, the Japanese captured a Chinese base at Pinyang at 5.30 p.m. yesterdaj' and encircled a Chinese concentration except for a bottleneck 15 miles across through which the demoralised Chinese are pouring under constant artillery and machine-gun lire and aerial bombing. BOMBS IN THEATRE SEVERAL CHINESE ARRESTED. NEW YORK. February 3. The Tientsin correspondent of the United Press of America says the British and French police have arrested Chinese in connection with the recent discovery of unexploded incendiary bombs in a Japanese-owned cinema. One captive is the woman principal of a Chinese school in the British Concession. COAL WANTED. NEGOTIATIONS BY JAPAN IN COLUMBIA. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. CALI (Columbia), February 3. The Japanese are negotiating for the purchase of from 10.000 to 100,000 tons of coal a month.