Sino-Japanese Relations Last June Captain Nakamura, a Japanese staff-officer, was
murdered, with his three companions, by soldiers of the Mukden army, while travelling to Mongolia with full permits and credentials from the local Chinese authorities. In response to protests from the Japanese Government, the Chinese ordered an official investigation, the results of which, in spite of the efforts of the " young Marshal," Chang Ilsueh-liang, have been as barren as those of the somewhat parallel enquiry into the disap- pearance, from Shanghai, of Mr. Thorburn. This failure to exact reprisals for a brutal crime has aroused great resentment in Japan—a resentment which is fostered by the old fear that Japanese treaty rights in Manchuria arc menaced by the aspirations of Chinese nationalism. A great deal of crude anti-Japanese sentiment and propaganda receives no official discouragement in China, and a recent incident, in which Japanese aeroplanes dropped inflammatory anti-Chinese pamphlets during manoeuvres, was no more than retaliation in a rather startling form. As a bone of contention, Manchuria is beginning to look ominously provocative.
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