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Show . no immediate concern in the outcome of the present difficulty. The League of Nations, in which so happily the United States is without membership, is empowered to invoke a boycott or even to use its armed forces against a nation that it considers con-siders to be the aggressor in a war, but this country is not bound by any such agreement and, it may be safely said, certain of the powers that are members of the League would find it convenient not to use the boycott and armed forces in this situation if the United States were to sit apart. The United States has big problems prob-lems of its own to solve and has not as yet arrived at their solution. Our part in the war in the Orient should be limited to do everything we can to induce the belligerents to lay down their arms; but if they insist on fighting, fight-ing, then it is not our battle. i ANYWAY. IT IS NOT OUR RATTLE. The one tiling more certain than almost any other thing- is that about 999 out of every 1,000 Americans believe be-lieve the United States has no business busi-ness to interfere actively in any way between Japan and China in the present pres-ent controversy except to use its good offices to maintain the peace between the belligerents. The one man in the thousand who may think otherwise other-wise is the adventurer who may wish to get into the scrap, or perhaps he is one of those who believes that i jolly little war will restore prosperity to business in America. In the first place few Americans actually know the rights and the wrongs of the case. We are sympathetic sympa-thetic with China, perhaps, as we are always sympathetic with the under dog, and we are inclined to believe Japan is imperialistic and we dislike imperialism, but sometimes the under dog deserves to be the under dog and sometimes an imperialistic policy on the part of a nation is necessary for its own self-preservation. After all, China had made a pretty bad mess of her own national life. Her people have spent most of the last 20 years fighting one another. That does not mean that Japan should take advantage of this situation to crush China, of course, but the feeble position of the various Chinese governments gov-ernments has been so well understood by the great powers that for many years they have attempted by the invocation in-vocation of their so-called extra-territorial rights to dominate her national na-tional government. We are informed that China is rising ris-ing to a new conception of integrated nationalism and that is hopeful if true, but she has not, as yet, demonstrated demon-strated her ability to govern herself. Still she has the right to misgovern herself if she cannot do otherwise. But be that as it may, the other - powers naturally resent any attempt on the part of Japan to gain dominance domin-ance of China. The white races know instinctively that if the yellow races were to be allied under the leadership of Japan, the supposed racial superiority super-iority of the whites would be endangered. endan-gered. Supposing that through the alchemy of war or by any other means, Japan with her 60,000,000 should unite with China's 400,000,000 people, such union would constitute a serious menace to the white races of the world. These are things that are in the background of world politics, just now. They are not discussed by the diplomats will not be discussed by them; just whispered. But so far as the United States is concerned this conflict is between two Asiatic powers and that is all. Our interests are not directly involved involv-ed and short of some actual attack upon, cannot well be involved. If President Hoover can reconcile the belligerents, that is well and all his countrymen will approve, but we will place ourselves in peril by adopting any course that could be construed asi meddjesome. This is a conflict between two nations of . a race, not between races. And our nation, except ex-cept for the dollars its citizens may have invested in China or Japan, has |