Japanese Expansion Creates Troubling Problem

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 7278, 4 October 1933, Page 7

Japanese Expansion Creates Troubling Problem

MR F MILNER SEES SINISTER ASPECTS Per Press Association AUCKLAND, Oct. 2. An urgent appeal to his follow countrymen to Tealiso the immediate need for dealing with Japan’s need for economic expansion, was made by Mr Frank Milner, C.M.G., in the course of a speech in tho Town Hall. Ho confessed that he had come back from the Banff Conferenco on Pacific Relations a disappointed man. Ho was disappointed because he had striven for many years to impress upon teachers the need for a moro generous and charitable understanding of the Japanese. For a long time he had considered they had been traduced and maligncd. During the Great War they played their part as honourable allies. From 1918 to 1931 they discharged honourably their full international obligations, and now wo had a statement from General Araki, Japanese Minister of War, that Japan had got nothing out of 'hor idealism and internationalism. They had turned their backs on idealism and a new era of-realism was replacing it. “I have to confess,” continued Mr Milner, “ that there is a real menace and that there is a really sinister aspect of the problems that arc now envisaged on tho far side of the Pacific. I do not want to bo an alarmist, but I want to tell you that this naval race on both sides of the Pacific is indicative of tremendous tension of -feeling. There is not. only a tremendous clash of feeling and of policies in regard to the open door, but there is an urge that comes from the enormous increase of Japanese population. Quite apart from the fact that the Samurai Party is in power, there are factors so large now that the Japancso people cannot restrain them.”

A total of 210,000 babies were born in Japan in a, single year, and even if the births wero to cease altogether now, there would remain the problem of finding employment in the next 20 years of 10,000,000 workers. The Japanese were not a migrating people and there was no way of finding employment for these vast millions except through industrialism. This in Japan ■presupposed access to raw materials aud to world markets. As far as raw materials went, it was mado clear at the conference that Manchuria was a mere stopgap, and that its iron and coal could not last more than a couple of years.

Tho Japanese were intensely ambitious and were badly led by tho militaristic party. They simply could not control the forces now in action. Raw materials must bo found to keep their industrialism going. They wero meeting with embargoes. They said they must have access to tho Indian market and that it was a matter of life and death. If denied access to rawmaterials by negotiating they declared they -would get them by force. Underlying all tho rosewater end idealism, and all the 3ide issues of the Banff Conference, there was that sinister tragedy envisaged across the Pacific. The position was far more acute now than it had been in 1920 and 1921. Even the New Zealand Go vernment should get to work and make its representation to the British Government that the British and American

Governments should again get together before it was too late. No question was going to be more alive and vital than this in the course of the next year, and there was a growing need for the collaboration of British and American statesmanship on the lines which had been so fruitful and beneficial to the world in avoiding the disaster in. 1920-2 L