On Sunday last the Haves Agency published in Paris news
of the forthcoming entente, between France and Japan. It is not usual, as the Times correspondent points out, for a Government to announce a fact of this sort before the Agree- ment is signed, but as a premature statement had been made, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs confirmed the rumours on the subject. The Franco-Japanese understanding is not likely to be concluded before the end of the negotiations between Russia and Japan. It is understood that it contains guarantees of the integrity and independence of China and of the territorial possessions of the signatories. After the Russo- Japanese War there was much anxiety in France about the security of French Indo-China. The approaching understanding will finally remove all uneasiness by guaranteeing the status quo. With four Powers—Britain, Japan, France, and Russia— virtually pledged to a kind of Monroe doctrine in the Far East, it indeed looks as though peace might be preserved there indefi- nitely. Another point is that practically all thought of danger
arising from the British-Japanese Alliance may be dismisSed. In an interview published in the .71fatin on Wednesday Mr. Korino, the Japanese Ambassador in Paris, said that a further under- standing between Japan and the United States was a possibility to be considered, but that there was no reason for such an agreement between Japan and Germany, the latter holding nothing in the Far East but the leased territory of Kiao-chow.
