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 of affording relief for the present and future population problems of other parts of China. They deny the statement that the Japanese are principally responsible for the economic development of Manchuria, and point to their own colonisation enterprises, especially since 1925, to their railway development, and other enterprises, in refutation of these claims.

Japanese interests in Manchuria differ both in character and degree from those of any other foreign country. Deep in the mind of every Japanese is the memory of their country's great struggle with Russia in 1901–05, fought on the plains of Manchuria, at Mukden and Liaoyang, along the line of the South Manchuria Railway, at the Yalu River, and in the Liaotung Peninsula. To the Japanese the war with Russia will ever be remembered as a life-and-death struggle fought in self-defence against the menace of Russian encroachments. The facts that a hundred thousand Japanese soldiers died in this war and that two billonbillion [sic] gold yen were expended have created in Japanese minds a determination that these sacrifices shall not have been made in vain.

Japanese interest in Manchuria, however, began ten years before that war. The war with China, in 1894–95, principally over Korea, was largely fought at Port Arthur and on the plains of Manchuria; and the Treaty of Peace signed at Shimonoseki ceded to Japan in full sovereignty the Liaotung Peninsula. To the Japanese, the fact that Russia. France and Germany forced them to renounce this cession does not affect their conviction that Japan obtained this part of Manchuria as the result of a successful war and thereby acquired a moral right to it which still exists.

Manchuria has been frequently referred to as the "life-line" of Japan. Manchuria adjoins Korea, now Japanese territory. The vision of a China, uniﬁed, strong and hostile, a nation of four hundred millions, dominant in Manchuria and in Eastern Asia, is disturbing to many Japanese. But to the greater number, when they speak of menace to their national existence and of the necessity for self-defence, they have in mind Russia rather than China. Fundamental, therefore, among the interests of Japan in Manchuria is the strategic importance of this territory.

There are those in Japan who think that she should entrench herself firmly in Manchuria against the possibility of attack from the U.S.S.R. They have an ever-present anxiety lest Korean malcontents in league with Russian Communists in the nearby Maritime Province might in future invite, or co-operate with, some new military advance from the North. They regard Manchuria as a buffer region against both the U.S.S.R, and the rest of China. Especially in the minds of Japanese military men, the right claimed, under agreements with Russia and China, to station a few thousand railway guards along the South Manchuria Railway is small recompense for the enormous sacrifices of their country in the Russo-Japanese War, and a meagre security against the possibility of attack from that direction.

Patriotic sentiment, the paramount need for military defence, and the exceptional treaty rights all combine to create the claim to a "special position" in Manchuria. The Japanese conception of this "special position" is not limited to what is legally defined in treaties and agreements either with China or with other States. Feelings and historical association, which are the heritage of the Russo-Japanese War, and pride in the achievements of Japanese enterprise in Manchuria for the last quarter-conturycentury [sic], are an indefinable but real part of the Japanese claim to a "special position", it is only natural, therefore, that the Japanese use of this expression in diplomatic language should be obscure, and that other States should have found it difficult, if not impossible, to recognise it by international instruments.

The Japanese Government, since the Russo-Japanese War, has at various times sought to obtain from Russia, France, the United Kingdom