News of the Week
THE eternal manoeuvring over the Manchurian resolution at Geneva continues still. A message from The Times Tokyo correspondent on Wednesday stated that on three cardinal points Japan was immovable —that the action taken in September, 1931, was defensive ; that the establishment of Manchukuo was a voluntary act of the people of Manchuria ; and that Manchukuo's independence is immutable. If that is true no room for compromise can conceivably exist, for the Lytton Report takes flatly the contrary line on the first two questions of fact, and on the third declares that the maintenance of status quo is no more justifiable than the restoration of the status quo ante. In those circumstances it is as well that the Foreign Office should have unofficially recalled Sir John Simon's declaration that in the event of the conciliation resolution failing he would .stand by the Lytton findings. Tokyo messages on Thursday suggested some slight modification of the Japanese attitude, but not enough to change the situation substantially. The plain question still is whether when Japan has been charged with breaking the Covenant, and when everyone (at any rate after the Lytton Report) agrees that she has broken the Covenant, the League. Assembly shall record that fact or go on searching for some means of evading or concealing the issue. By insisting on her innocence Japan has made it imperative for the League to declare that she is not
innocent. * * * *
