A Spectator's Notebook
IREAD with gloomy astonishment Mr. Baldwin's state ment in the House of Commons on Monday that he hoped very much that the present Sino-Japanese dispute was practically over. What on 'earth does being practi- cally over mean ? Is it really Mr. Baldwin's considered view that now that Japan has added the seizure of Jehol to the seizure of Manchuria a nicely rounded fait accompli has been created and we tan all go comfortably to sleep and forget it ? Nothing, of course, would suit Japan's book better, and nothing would be more fatal to everything the League of Nations stands for. Mr. Baldwin, I believe, once wrote for The Spectator. He might do a great deal worse than read one article, at any rate, that appeared in it as lately as last week, from the pen of his own former colleague . in office, Lord Lytton, who demonstrated convincingly why the seizure of Jehol left the situation completely unchanged, and what steps the League ought to be taking now to deal with it. If a dispute is to be regarded as practically over when the aggressor nation (it was the British Government as much as any other which stigmatized Japan as an aggressor) has completed its seizure of other people's territory, the law of the jungle will be well established once more. It remains to be seen, for that matter, whether Japan really has finished.
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