BETTER RELATIONS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 August 1940, Page 5

BETTER RELATIONS

BETWEEN BRITAIN & JAPAN

ADVOCATED BY PRINCE KONOYE. CONFERENCE SUGGESTED. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON. August 24. The Japanese Prime Minister. Prince Konoye, in an article in the “Statist's” Japanese supplement, said: "I am sure that, if a handful of statesmen come forward in both Japan and England with uncircumscribed powers, it will not be difficult to rectify past miscalculations and arrange for the common interests of the two nations to be crystallised into some new concrete and friendly co-operation. "A new and better order would be ushered in. with the elimination of differences which have arisen in connection with the deplorable China emergency.

'■Japan and England should have cooperated in the face of the pressing menace of international Bolshevism, but unfortunately Japan rejected the British offer of co-operation made on the eve of the Nanking incident, while various Japanese proposals for the continuation of the Anglo-Japanese alliance in spirit fell on deaf ears in Britain.”

AMERICAN VIEWPOINT REPORTED WARNING TO JAPAN. HONG KONG, August 23. It is reliably stated that the United States has delivered a new and drastic warning to Japan that a time of reckoning must come if Japan persists in her present course in East Asia.

According to informants, the Japanese Ambassador to the United States, Mr Horinouchi, was called to the State Department a fortnight ago and given a long review of the American viewpoint, after which he was handed a written memorandum for the information of his Government.

The document reviewed in broad outline the history of Japanese and American relations since the start of the Sino-Japanese war in 1937, Stressed the rights of Americans in China, and went into detail regarding hindrances to American trade and other American rights in China. The document concluded with the assertion that these matters were not* being forgotten, and the time would certainly come when a reckoning would be necessary.

The document carried farther and brought up to date the warning contained in the address by the American Ambassador, Mr Grew, in Tokio on October 10 last when he returned from Washington.