Far Eastern Front

"Blue," says the Barbarian Britannus in Shaw's Caesar & Cleopatra, "is the color worn by all Britons of good standing. In war we stain our bodies blue; so that though our enemies may strip us of our clothes and our lives, they cannot strip us of our respectability." Though Britons long since ceased painting themselves for battle, they were blue all over last week about their position on the Far Eastern Front of the War of Nerves. The Japanese, having stripped Far Eastern Britons of clothes and Face (Oriental for respectability), moved troops into position along the border of Hong Kong territory to be ready, if necessary, to take lives as well.

Landing in four groups in a bay to the northwest of Hong Kong, 1,000 men swept across the granite-peaked peninsula behind a curtain of bombings, unresisted except by a few peasants, some of whom were armed only with farm implements. The attackers, summarily executing any Chinese so much as seen with a gun, invested 13 miles of British border. Across the way on British soil, men of the Middlesex Regiment and Rajputana Rifles lined the barbed-wire frontier, alert for Britain's territorial integrity.

Britain's territorial integrity in Hong Kong would not be worth a bosun's whistle if Japan really attacked the possession. Last week's maneuver, though its announced purpose (like that of the occupation of Canton in October 1938) was to cut the flow of supplies into Free China, was obviously also intended as a threat to Hong Kong. The Japanese military warned British authorities 48 hours beforehand of the intended move, and brought supplies, indicating a long stay.

Later Japanese naval officers threatened to blockade Hong Kong from the sea.

In the Canton area, so near Hong Kong as to be a perfect base for attack, the Japanese are estimated to have 40,000 troops--as compared to an estimated 10,000 which Britain has based at Hong Kong. The odds are so long against them that the British command has already decided to abandon the Crown Colony in the event of a showdown. British commercial interests--such as the $50,000,000 Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp.--and the private property of the 16,000-odd British residents of Hong Kong are not deemed to be worth fighting losing battles for. Furthermore, prospect of sudden inclusion of the Comintern in the Anti-Comintern Front (see p. 21) was bound to be as much of a shock to Britain as to Japan. For if a German-Russian-Italian-Japanese bloc is its eventual result, Japan will be able to stop fretting about the Russian menace and concentrate on expansion to the South and West. In that eventuality, Britain and France are goners in the Far East.

P: Meanwhile on the Eastern Front, Northern Sector, Japan won a battle of words which has been dragging on in Tokyo since July 15: the parleys on Tientsin (where 59-year-old Widow Mary Frances Richard, a U. S. citizen, last week had her face slapped for sassing a sentry). Japan did not capture the objective she seemed to want--British acquiescence in Japanese control of North China currency; but she did achieve what she really wanted--a breakdown of the parleys. The British Government made its first strong stand in the whole engagement by firmly refusing to discuss the currency issue. There being nothing more to talk about, British Ambassador Sir Robert Craigie buzzed off to Lake Chuzenji. This left Japan in' just the self-righteous psychological position she has wanted all along: "We have tried sincere negotiation and the British have refused to cooperate." Next move: force.

This week, with greater impartiality than most diplomatic arbitrators show, the River Hai (pronounced High) flooded Tientsin--Japanese and British Concessions alike. Barbed wire on wooden trestles and wooden sheds for searching and stripping were washed away. The barbed wire blockade was off; a water blockade--of the whole city--was on. ^ In Shanghai, Sergeant W. L. Kinloch of the International Settlement police killed two Japanese-controlled Chinese policemen and wounded six others with a submachine gun, when they attacked him from the rear and, according to his claim, without provocation. Said the Japanese Embassy, after an emergency meeting of Army and Navy officers: "We take a grave view of this affair." Foreigners wondered if Japan would consider it provocation enough once and for all to settle the Settlement.

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