MANCHURIA AND THE PUBLIC MIND
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sin,—It is admittedly difficult to be as sorry for foreigners as one ought ; and in the case of inhabitants of the Eastern Hemisphere (or natives, as we call them in this country) it is almost impossible. Even so, for anyone who, like myself, is newly returned from the scene of a Far Eastern crisis the tone of European comment on recent events in Manchuria is rich in unconscious humour.
• There is much argument as to the degree of praise or blame which the League of Nations has earned by her bearing in what is regarded as a " test case." I have heard Englishmen attack (and even occasionally defend) the League with fervour, with prolixity, and often with acumen ; but always, under- lying either attack or defence, was a basic, preposterous, and rather distressing incongruity. I do not myself know much about the League of Nations, but I take it that the realization, or even the attempted realization, of its ideals postulates the existence of a certain minimum of sympathy and understanding between its members. • Of this, in the controversy aroused by the League's Manchurian policy, I have found no trace. Developments at Geneva call forth from the man in the street hot words and high sentiments and are the indirect cause of emotions ranging from anger to boredom. But the news from Manchuria itself has provoked, in my hearing, no comment which was not either calloUS or faeetiOus or both. These " Japs " and these " Chinks " who are killing each other in the snows on the other side of the world might be a kind of &Wide, rather mischievous, little animal from the way we talk about them. In the attitude of the public and of the popular Press there is no hint of an admission that a bullet ar a bereavement or exile may mean in Mukden what they meant in Flanders or even (say) on the North-West Frontier. A certain unreality, an air of the premature, must attach to our parochial. par- tisanship for-or against the League while we express it in tones which indicate that we have not yet taken sides with humanity.
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