Japan and the League MI the news from Tokyo goes
to emphasize the gravity of the situation the League of Nations will have to face when the Lytton Report comes before it in three or four weeks' time. Japan will deliberately have created afait accompli by recognizing the Manchukuo Government, inaugurated and maintained under its auspices, and the prevailing temper in the Diet is both provocative and defiant. So far as ideas of an organized Asia under Japanese leadership are entertained they are wildly visionary, for Japan's bitterest enemies are in Asia and she stands completely alone there. But the problem of how to deal with a nation which insists on being its own interpreter of international obligations remains, and it is mere blind evasion to relegate it to a secondary place as a League of Nations affair. It is an affair for all the Governments of the world, primarily those of the Great Powers, among which our own, in view of the past intimacy of association between this country and Japan, should be specially • fitted for playing a mediator's part. But it will do more harm than good if it appears for a moment to be condoning illegality. The Cabinet's first duty is to stand resolutely by the declara- tions both the League of Nations and the United States Government have made.
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