Geneva and Shanghai
ROUND the world from Chinese waters and the streets of Shanghai rolls the sound of bursting bombs, of great naval guns and rifles, bringing its violent discord into the session of the Disarmament Conference of the League of Nations in which the world had hoped and prayed that harmony would reign. Dare we hope that from dis-harrnony a greater activity for good, for the peace of the world, may arise than could have been born out of a lulling sense of security ? We know that the sense of security does not go deep to-day in some countries, but conceivably the vivid news of death and destruction by man's violence, the sound in men's ears of shots fired in anger, may bring good out of evil and make keener the hatred of death-dealing armaments.
Japan will be represented at the Conference, as she has been at the meeting of the Council of the .League. There is a bitter irony in this, for we cannot believe that her civil Government deceives itself into thinking •the country guiltless of offences against the Covenant of the League, against the Washington Treaty of 1922 and against the solemn undertakings of the Kellogg Pact. The only excuse for that Government is that it cannot control its naval and military commanders, an excuse of which it is hardly likely to avail itself. These com- manders have inherited a freedom that is not understood. by Western nations with older traditions of democratic civilization. But this is a mighty poor excuse, tempting us to ask how, then, is Japan better than China, whose Government, too, has shown itself impotent to control its soldiers, whom we often call bandits in consequence?
We are conscious and profoundly grieved that Japan is rapidly alienating that affection between us which grew into an Alliance and was more strongly cemented by loyal co-operation through the Great War, and has not diminished one jot on our side through the merging of that Alliance into something wider at Washington in 1921-22. Even last autumn, when the present trouble came to a head, we had great sympathy. We deplored her violation of the Covenant, but understood how easily this might be the second step following almost insensibly upon a first which circumstances might justify. We deplored her violation of the Kellogg Pact ; but we knew by our own experience of thirty years ago how the oppression of fellow-subjects had cried out for remedy, and how no remedy but force was found. We knew from experience in Egypt the irre- sistible pressure to enter another country, not only because our own and our friends' interests called for it, but also because we could save the people from terrible suffering under misgovernment. Japan can see and believe in such sympathy, based on experience. But she must not be blind to the complete change that has come over the world since 1914. New ideals prevail of the relations between nations, and she must follow them. She has no need to fear that she will suffer
thereby, for new methods are provided for dealing with such provocation as she has had. If she had brought to the League or to the Hague her great difficulties with the China of to-day, arguing her case upon her treaties and international law, who would not have been on her side ? There would have been a general desire to give her the chance of helping the world, to devise means by which she might with deliberation and order restore the rule of law in Manchuria, restore respect for treaties, and restore security for commerce. But her commanders have flouted the League and broken their country's pledges. Even in action, as apart from policy, she has horrified the world, for her airmen have been sent deliberately to drop without warning high explosives upon an open, undefended town in which non-combatants lived by thousands, and soldiers were present at most by hundreds. Thus she followed the evil practice, unimagined until it was initiated in the Great War by a nation which pleaded desperation, as Japan cannot plead, but which was reprobated through- out the world and is still suffering her punishment.
We most earnestly plead with Japan that she will draw back even now, and lay her case frankly before the world, late as it is to ask for our sympathy. Upon the League we urge the need to show belief in itself. Already it should have sternly threatened to put into force the sanctions of the Covenant. We are not blind (as are some detractors of the League) to its influence. But for the pervading influence of the League there would have been open and general war months ago. Only this consciousness of the League for months con- fined the use of force to the neighbourhood of the Manchurian railways. But the action there led directly to the dangerous anti-Japanese feeling at Shanghai, which has led on to the present lamentable pass.
Lastly, we appeal to the other nations that are directly concerned at Shanghai and have had to bring there their troops and men-o'-war. For years, while China has been in its state of flux, jealousies here and inertia there have prevented the diplomats assembled in Peking from doing any of the good that they might have done together for China and for themselves. It is an old story, and we long to see it changed. We rejoice at the cordial co-operation of our country and the United States, as shown in Shanghai and Tokyo. Long May it last. FranCe, too, is associated with us. More potent perhaps than the distant League will be the mianimous pressure of the nations on the spot, who can fairly claim to be the friends of Japan and China alike. In their unanimity in pressing restraint upon the actors themselves in these events may lie the salvation needed. There will be temptations from both sides to relax unanimity, and temptations from short-sighted self- interest of the moment. But if they will work together honestly for peace and justice, they will achieve them.
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