The long awaited statement came when on September 5 Foreign Minister Koki Hirota addressed the Japanese Diet at an emergency session. After recapitulating recent events along the Yangtze and in the Shanghai area, Mr. Hirota said that Japan could do no other than counter by force of arms the mobilization of China's vast armies, the urgent need for the moment being that Japan should assume a resolute attitude toward China and compel her to mend her ways. He averred that "Ever since the beginning of the present China affair, the Japanese Government, in pursuance of a policy of local settlement and non- aggravation, exerted every effort to effect speedy solution." He accuses the Nanking Government of failure to manifest a grain of sincerity, but, instead, concentrating armies in North China to challenge Japan, and embarking on an anti-Japanese campaign in the Yangtze Valley and elsewhere in China, jeopardising the lives of Japanese nationals engaged in business in these areas. One of the chief causes of Japan's action in China, he said, was the practice of the Nanking Government and other military regimes in China of inciting public opinion against Japan as a means of strengthening their own political powers.

Referring to the Shanghai trouble he said that hostilities in Shanghai could not be brought to an end save through the withdrawal of the Chinese regular troops from the prohibited zone and of the Peace Preservation Corps from the front lines, as laid down by the 1932 peace agreement.

With reference to the concentrating of China's military forces in the north to "tchallenge" Japan, may it not be suggested that any country has the right to concentrate its military forces to challenge an invader. By what right, it may be asked, had Japan invaded Jehol and Chahar, set up a puppet Autonomous Government in East Hopei, concentrated unnecessarily large numbers of soldiers along the entire Peking-Mukden Railway within the Great Wall and carried out extensive military manoeuvres outside the zone of occupation as prescribed by the Boxer Protocol relative to keeping open the railway from Peking to the coast? Do Japanese statesmen really think that, in the

face of such provocative actions on the part of Japan's army, the rest of the world is going to believe that Japan has been motivated by a policy of non-aggravation?

As for Mr. Hirota's accusations against the Chinese Government and military regimes of inciting public opinion against Japan, it may be pointed out that the Nanking Government, whatever it did in the past, has for some time been making sincere efforts to curb anti- Japanese propaganda. All newspapers have been strictly censored on this count, and nothing anti-Japanese allowed to appear. But the hatred of Japan in China, caused by the former's actions, is too strong and deep-seated to be controlled, and Japan's further actions in the present hostilities, such as the ruthless bombing of undefended cities and masses of civilians, only tends to increase that hatred. Japan may succeed in beating China to her knees by military force, as stated to be Japan 5 avowed intentipn by her Premier, Prince Konoye, in a public declaration in Tokyo on August 28, but such methods will never accomplish her aim of inducing friendship between the Chinese and Japanese. It only makes any future friendship on the part of the Chinese the more impossible.

The Chinese people cannot forgive and will never forget such aggression. The Mongols conquered China and instituted a strong and efficient rule. They were masters of China for over a hundred years, but in the end the Chinese rose and threw off their yoke. The Manchus conquered China at a period when this country was in a state of chaos, and again instituted a strong rule. Some of the earlier Manchu Emperors, such as Kang Hsi and Ch'ien Lung, are numbered amongst the greatest that China ever had, even the Chinese being proud of them, yet the hatred of the Manchus never died, and finally after three hundred years the Chinese revolted against them and drove them out. China's genius cannot and never will tolerate alien domination, and the sooner Japan realizes this the sooner will a permanent peace be established in the Far East.

Answering Mr. Hirota's statement regarding the cessation of hostilities in the Shanghai area being possible only if the regular Chinese forces and the Peace Preservation Corps should be withdrawn, it may be suggested that China had good reason for concentrating troops in this area. Japan's previous actions in Manchuria, Jehol, Chahar and Hopei have engendered in the Chinese Government a deep and not unfounded mistrust of that country's intentions, and it may be contended that those in charge of China's defences would have been guilty of gross negligence had they left denuded of troops and undefended so vital a point as the area on either side of the Whangpoo where it enters the Yangtze Estuary, commanding, as it does, the entrance to the heart of China. What guarantee had China that Japan would not take advantage of the absence of troops in this area to land a large military force here for an advance and attack upon Nanking? None whatever. As already stated the arrival at Woosung on August I I of a large fleet of Japanese men-of-war while negotiations over the incident of the shooting of two members of the Japanese naval landing party were still under way could only be construed by the Chinese military command as an indication that Japan intended an invasion of Chir~a at this point. Nothing could have been more nicely calculated to precipitate an attack from the Chinese.

It is useless talking about China's having violated the 1932 Truce Agreement in the Shanghai area by increasing the numerical strength of the Pao An Tui (Peace Preservation Corps), bringing regular troops into the Shanghai area and refortifying the Woosung Forts, when for several years Japan has actually been invading Chinese territory in the north under one pretext or another. Any other country but China would long ago have considered herself at war with Japan and all agreements would have been considered null and void. Incidentally, the actions and attitude of members of the Japanese naval landing party in the Shanghai area have been provocative in the extreme, and such as Japan herself would never have tolerated for a moment had they been perpetrated by foreigners on Japanese soil.

Mr. Hirota may say what he likes about Japan's honourable and peaceful intentions, but to the outside world the actions and attitude of Japan's army and navy have all the appearance of being deliberately directed towards provoking hostilities with China. This is further borne Out by statements issuing from leaders of Japan's militarist party which is now in control of the Government in that country.

Japan's case from every moral standpoint is a weak one. Nothing China has done can justify Japan in her present course of action, and the world at large can come to but one conclusion, and that is that Japan is waging a ruthless War of Aggression against China. We have always entertained much sympathy towards Japan in her endeavour to solve her great economic problems, arising from a rapidly increasing population in a comparatively small territory, but her present war on China and the way her marine, land and air forces, especially the last, are conducting it, proving beyond doubt that she is bent on territorial conquest, and that she has no regard for humanitarian principles, has placed her beyond the pale of civilization. She has forfeited both the sympathy and respect of the whole world, and can now only be looked upon as an ou~cast nation by all other nations and peoples, except, perhaps, those which have committed similar outrages against humanity or contemplate doing so.

A.de C. S.