-The Far Eastern Menace
It is more necessary than ever that the attitude -ot Washington and Geneva should be co-ordinated, for clouds arc gathering rather than dispersing in Eastern Asia. The wrangle about the date and conditions of Japan's evacuation of the territory she holds at Shanghai has dragged on for six weeks, but the Assembly Com- mittee at Geneva has refused firmly to listen to the plea, which had too much British backing, that Japan shmild only go when conditions had returned to nornud and be herself the sole judge of wheu that might he. The neutral Ministers at Shanghai and the Assembly at Geneva are to fix the date for withdrawal, though no one is anxious to face the question of what to do ii Japan declines to observe it. But the real danger is Manchuria, not Shanghai. Rumours of Russo-Japancse tension are too common for the reports of the past week to cause violent alarm, and the suggestion that Japan is secretly inciting the new Miutchukuo Government to send troops marching on Peking has little ring of reality about it. But smoke on the Mongolian frontier may sometimes have fire behind it all the same, and the mood of the Japanese militarists is not such that the idea of un adventure in that quarter can be ruled out. In any ease the real struggle between Tokyo and Geneva will come when the Lytton C 'ssion, which is now entering Manchuria, reports, and the question of the permanence of Japan's occupation, disguised but vont- pletely effective, has to be faced in earnest.
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