Mr. Wang Installed
The Government of Central China, under Mr. Wang Ching-wei, whom Japan has established at Nanking as her protége, was duly inaugurated with a singular absence of ostentation last Saturday. The first effect of the move was to elicit a particularly pointed declaration from the State Department at Washington, affirming the fixed intention of the United States to regard the Government of General Chiang Kai-shek at Chungking as the sole legitimate Government of China. The British Government has made no such statement. It would be desirable that it should for many reasons, among them the fact that a speech by Sir Robert Craigie, the British Ambassador in Tokyo, last week, though perfectly proper in itself, has been interpreted in some quarters as foreshadowing, in the cordiality of its language, some change in this country's attitude towards Japan. It is of fundamental importance that in regard to China and Japan the British Government should pursue a policy identical with that of the United States—which, indeed, it is under moral compulsion to do so long as the basis of American policy is the Nine Power Treaty, of which Britain and France, as well as the United States, are signatories. The Chungking Government describes the in- stallation of Wang Ching-wei as Japan's last card, and certainly the playing of it will change the situation in no respect unless the recognition of the new regime by Washington, Paris and London can be secured. Of that there is, and should be, no prospect.
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