Mandates & Might

Sensing that the British-Italian-Ethiopian snarl has tied white men's hands for some time to come, Japan boldly raised at Geneva last week the great question she has tried to keep hushed until now: What right has Japan, since she quit the League, to continue to hold "League-mandated" strategic islands in the Pacific?

Up for the spunky little Empire at Geneva last week spoke Japan's Minister to Poland, cocky Dr. Fumio Ito. Down the League Mandates Commission's throat he rammed a Japanese thesis that because of "the undeniable fact of world economic interdependence, the League of Nations has not ceased to interpret the expression 'all members of the League' as meaning all the countries in the world and not only members of the League, as it seems at first glance."

No Briton or other member of the Commission challenged this thesis and Dr. Ito was allowed to add, still unchallenged, that by acting "in this sense the League has worked with more or less success for years."

Trampling next on the Geneva concept of League mandates as granted and withdrawable by the League, Minister Ito barked that Japan was one of the Allied & Associated Powers which won the World War. "The situation of the Imperial Japanese Government as one of the powers which distributed the mandates and at the same time as one of the powers designated as a mandatory," he proclaimed, "cannot be affected by the fact that Japan is or is not a member of the League. . . . The real title to the mandate has been vested in the principal Allied & Associated Powers . . . and only formally and officially confirmed by the League. . . . As a result of that fact no change either in the mandatory or in the mandate's articles can be effected without the Imperial Japanese Government's express consent!"

These potent Japanese postulates Dr. Ito drove home with the excuse that Japan had been challenged last week by the Mandates Commission. Some of its more daring members, seeing Italy being jumped on, had ventured to draft questions asking Britain and France why they have not deprived Japan, as a State now outside the League, of trade privileges which only League States are supposed to enjoy with British-mandated Palestine and French-mandated Syria.

London and Paris have not cracked down on Tokyo, as their moral League duty requires, because of Japan's effective Might. At the Commission last week Dr. Ito blazed, "Japan has an inherent Right to equal treatment," with League member States in trade with Palestine, Syria and other mandates.

Since the big League drum of sanctions was being beaten against Italy by British Captain Anthony Eden next door, the Mandates Commission, in a panic lest League prestige be weakened if Dr. Ito's postulates received publicity, hushed everything up last week by agreeing not to discuss them. Also hushed was evidence reaching the Commission that Japan is fortifying her mandated islands in violation of explicit mandate statutes.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.