TOPICS OF THE DAY

Waikato Times, Volume 122, Issue 20499, 16 May 1938, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY

British Interests in Far East “I would ask the House to consider,” asserted Sir Archibald Sinclair, leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Commons, “the size and importance of our interests in China. It is no mere question of the profits of a few capitalist adventurers. It touches the livelihood of scores of our fellow-countrj-men. Our total trade with China for the first nine months of last year amounted to £12,000,000, excluding Hong Kong and Manchuria, and the leased territories of China. Our investments in China amount altogether to something like £240,000,000. Our invisible exports in the shape of interest on loans, earnings of shipping—4o per cent, of the trade of China is carried in British ships-—insurance, banking and profits of private firms with immense investments in real estate are enormous. Then there is the trade of the ports of Shanghai and Hong Kong. They rank fifth and sixth among the ports of the world. There is not a port in Europe, except Rotterdam, not one in Britain except London, not one on the continent for the United States of America except New Yorii, and not one in Asia, except Kobe, which has a trade equal to the trade of Hong Kong and Shanghai. Let us make no doubt about it. The respect that the militarists of Japan will show for British interests will be in direct ratio to our capacity and resolve to defend them.”

What Might Have Been “The ideal of a European polity,” writes Scrutator in the Sunday Times (London), “in which every member is conscious of a dutv to justify its action by ail appeal to reason and fairness is a great one, and though the League of Nations, as at present organised, is not an efficient instrument for its realisation, there is always hope while the ideal itself is respected. But if foreign polities become power politics pure and simple, the ideal sets and the Dark Ages threaten to come back again. There is no immediate danger of war. There is no strong probability that we should be involved in the war if it came. But inevitably tile whole tone of international policy will be lowered and worsened; and even though peace is preserved, it will be hardly less serious in its incidence than war itself. How fair the prospect might have been 1 We have all made grievous mistakes. Would that it were possible to let the sins on both sides cancel each other out and for ns to hesrin all over afresh