Cheering Section

Two of the Orient's greatest, suavest diplomats are Chinese Ambassador to France Dr. V. K. Wellington Koo and Chinese Ambassador to Great Britain Dr. Quo Taichi. Ordered to Geneva last week by Chinese Dictator Chiang Kaishek, their job was to raise the moral issue of the undeclared war Japan is now waging in China before the Assembly of the League and the conscience of the World. Too wise to beat their breasts or attempt either a pious or an ethical appeal, Dr. Koo and Dr. Quo simply arrived in Geneva much before the Assembly was to meet and conversed intelligently with the more prominent correspondents.

Soon the world read reams of Geneva dispatches in which were argued the pros and cons of what it would be best for China to do--that is, how Dr. Koo and Dr. Quo could best put their case. The flattered correspondents and the Chinese diplomats soon agreed, among other things, that China must not accuse Japan of making "war" since such an accusation might well force President Roosevelt to invoke the Neutrality Act, and from this China would suffer far more than Japan. By the time the Assembly actually met this week, Dr. Koo and Dr. Quo had not only a "good press" but almost a cheering section behind them. They promptly invoked against Japan three articles of the League Covenant: 1) famed Article Ten, under which League members "undertake to respect and preserve as against external aggression" other members; 2) Article Eleven, which binds League members to act in case of "any war or threat of war"; and 3) Article Seventeen, which in all the history of the League had never been invoked before. This last provides that "in the event of a dispute between a Member of the League (i. e. China) and a State which is not a member of the League (i. e., Japan), or between States not members of the League, the State or States not members of the League shall be invited to accept the obligations of membership in the League. . . ."

Not such fools were Dr. Koo and Dr. Quo as to imagine Japan can be caused to accept a League "invitation" to rejoin the League for the express purpose of being chastised, but should Japan refuse. Article Seventeen is so drawn that Article Sixteen automatically is invoked and under this League States are supposed to punish the offender who goes to war by applying "Sanctions."

Since application of sanctions in the case of Ethiopia backfired badly, scarcely anyone now expects the European powers to again use sanctions, unless the U. S. can be persuaded to apply them also. Dr. Koo and Dr. Quo had this point well thought out too, suavely demanded that the International Advisory Committee on Chinese-Japanese Conflicts constituted at

Geneva in 1931 and of which the U. S. is a member be summoned to "resume its labors." What China hoped concretely to wangle, in the opinion of League officials, was a decision to bar members from granting credits for the sale of armaments to Japan. And diplomatically she might forestall any Japanese assertion of belligerent rights to search and seize merchant ships. All this added up to just about the ablest set of moves Chinese could possibly make to stir the moribund League to action, and stirring were the words of Dr. Wellington Koo, although he never once spoke of "war": "Intoxicated by his last conquest, the invader [Japan] is bent upon ruthless slaughter and wanton destruction. The lives of 450,000,000 people are at stake. . . . The Japanese forces invading Chinese territory show utter disregard for all the rules of international law. The law of morality gives place to violence and anarchy. . . . Civilization and the security of the world is in the balance."

To just about everyone except Japanese apologists, the reasons why Japan acted when and as she did this year in China are three, and they are pikestaff plain: 1) Japan saw the U. S. adopt a Neutrality Act well-meaning but sufficiently cockeyed for experts to agree that its legal meshes would hamper China greatly, Japan scarcely at all; 2) Japan saw the Soviet war machine suddenly weakened by Stalin's shooting of its ablest commanders; 3) the Spanish Civil War and Mediterranean mixup have so tangled Great Britain that Japan does not fear today Far East intervention by the "Mistress of the Seas."

Given these three premises, opportunist Japan promptly drew her conclusion by invading China while the invading was better than it may be later, bad and bloody though it is.

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