News of the Week
THE American and Japanese Notes published on Thursday provide an interesting commentary on the leading article on a later page of this issue. The American statement is by far the more important, 'for the Japanese Government, in language in which 'it is singularly difficult to discover sober intention,- rests -the whole of its case on the claim that Japan has been throughout, and still is, the innocent victim of Chinese aggression. On that the readers of the daily Press for the last six weeks are competent to form judgements of their own. If they need assistance Mr. Stimson, the American Secretary of. State, is at hand to furnish it. The gist of his highly important letter to Senator Borah on American policy is contained in the declaration, in regard to the Kellogg Pact and the Nine Power Treaty, that " a situa- tion has developed which cannot under any circumstances be reconciled with the obligations of the covenants of these two treaties, and if the treaties had been faithfully observed such a situation could not have arisen." Lest there should be any doubt as to the bearing of that remark
it is added that " no evidence has conic to us to indicate that due compliance with them could have interfered with the adequate protection of the legitimate rights in China of the signatories of these Treaties and their nationals." All this, of course, applies equally to the League Covenant, with which America is not mnecened. Mr. Stimson does not, as Mr. Borah would obviously have desired, bind the United States in any way to refrain front economic action against Japan, and it is extremely significant that the Japanese Ambassador at Washington should have definitely warned his fellow-eountryMen not to build too much on the fact that certain Anterieatt Senators oppose such action. American opinion, the 286 Ambassador adds, is, becoming more hostile every clay.
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