 and its people of the peaceful sea and the lands and lives it touches and their meaning to us and to the generations to come. The Pacific story presented by the National Broadcasting Company as a public service and dedicated to a fuller understanding of the vast Pacific Basin. This broadcast series comes to you as another feature of the NBC Inter-American University of the Air with drama of the past and present and commentary by Owen Latimore authority on the Pacific and director of the School of International Relations Johns Hopkins University. The Manchurian Incident and its sequel. The United Nations are locked in battle on a dozen fronts. Today at last the free nations are fighting to put down the forces they failed to halt by appeasement. World War II started in the Pacific and must be recorded as a monument to the futility of appeasement. This is going to be a historical day for the League of Nations. Yeah probably be a turning point. There's Yoshizawa the Japanese delegate. Yeah, sliding into his chairs if there's nothing on his mind. He's not going to do any talking at a turn. Not that guy. The only thing he said since Japan attacked Manchuria three days ago is that there's a disturbance over there. Disturbance. Oh there comes Dr. Alfred C. the Chinese delegate. Yes, what gets me is how serene these fellas are. Japan's a China story on the other side of the world and here at Geneva the two delegates are just as composed as if. Dr. C. is going to make a formal appeal for China. China tough on C. The other the very day he takes his seat in the council here. The news breaks about the outbreak in Manchuria. He knows how to take care of himself. Look at him. Sit there just as calmly. Oh the chairman is calling the council to order. For the of the Republic of China. The League of Nations has been informed of the crisis which has existed in Manchuria since September 18th 1931. Under the terms of article 11 of the Covenant the Republic of China formally appeals to the League and requests that the council take three immediate steps. The Republic of China request first that the council take steps to prevent the further development of a situation endangering the peace of nations. Secondly that the status quo anti be reestablished in Manchuria. Third that the council determined the amount and character of such reparations as may be found due the Republic of China. The Republic of China expresses its readiness for the dispatch of a mutual. It's certainly putting it up to the League of Nations. And playing the whole Manchurian incident right in the lap of the council. The League is going to have to put up on its high legs and do something about it. Yes the Chinese government's disclaimed all responsibility for the outbreak and said that it was caused entirely by Japanese aggression. That puts Japan in a ticklish situation. It puts the League of Nations in a ticklish situation. Moldering in this far eastern controversy of 1931 was the holocaust. Which was to engulf the world. Potentially it touched the lives of half a billion people. The League of Nations was being put to the test and the world looked on. September 19th the League of Nations has requested Japan to withdraw troops from Manchuria before September 22nd. September 26th the Japanese have not withdrawn from Manchuria. Japan has asked that the League intervene and arbitrate. October 10th the Japanese have not withdrawn. The League's secretariat has expressed itself as being profoundly alarmed. October 23rd the League has passed a resolution by a vote of 13 to 1 demanding that Japan withdraw her troops from Manchuria by November 16th. The one dissenting vote was that of Japan. October 24th Japan has rejected the demand of the League to withdraw her troops. Has presented the terms on which she will negotiate and hinted that unless these terms are accepted she will withdraw from the League. With the passing days Japan's position became clear. The League rejected the Japanese terms and guaranteed the integrity of China. Daily the situation became more tense. Dr. Z said China is willing that a neutral committee be sent to Manchuria to determine the true fact. To this the Japanese representative Yoshizawa answered. Japan is unable to approve over this suggestion. In spite of this the committee was named to investigate but Japan was not to be stopped by this. It refused to yield a confiliation and instead. Well you look at this. Japan's created the state of Manchukuo. How do you like that. And they're asking the world to recognize its independence to. That'll give you some idea of what Japan thinks of the League. And now they're opening up fresh attacks on China. Where's this thing going to stop. Not going to stop brother Japan's going to keep going for somebody else. Before the Lytton Commission could make its report Japan had invaded the province of Rihou and captured Sean Hike one the entrance from Manchuria into the main portion of China. The chess moves in the Pacific were coming fast now. Japan was setting the pace. Japan against the world. The League was struggling to check her. My vote. The Council of the League of Nations approves the report of the Lytton Commission and adopts the Stimson formula of non recognition of the state of Manchukuo. The next move was up to Japan. It was not long in coming. A month after the League had approved the Lytton report Japan startled the world. Look at him. What's that all could do. He's walking out. That's what he's doing. He's leading out the whole Japanese delegation. This is a date you can write down in your little book March 27 1933. If there's any doubt about what Japan has in mind. Remember what Japan demonstrated to the rest of the world here today. 1933. A year to remember. For this year when Japan defied and fortunately wounded the League by walking out this year Hitler ascended to power. Hitler at once withdrew Germany from the disarmament conference and began re-arming. The opening moves in the chess game of World War Two were being made. Next year Japan quit the Washington Treaty for the limitation of naval armaments. The war clouds were gathering but the tide of appeasement was running high. What Japan had done in Manchuria and what Japan had done at Geneva were not lost on Mussolini in Italy. This is our opportunity to take Ethiopia. The League will do nothing. The League did nothing but refuse to recognize man Joe Kuo. The League is dead for a Nazi. I've been a soldier all of my days. That is why I talk to you. General de Bono. General de Bono. Do you contemplate opposition from Britain or France. Yes Britain will always oppose whatever threatens British interest. But if British rights are respected the government will risk no friction with us. Let me point out do you know for a Nazi that the Britain control the Suez and Azen for the security of her empire Britain cannot permit the Italian control of Ethiopia. General de Bono the British public like the people in all democracies are stupid and cowardly. They are committed to peace at any price. You have wanted to look at what happened in Manchuria General Geneva might well react to more firmly next to time. The problem of Ethiopia admits of only one solution with Geneva without Geneva or against Geneva. Geneva has ceased to be a factor so far as Italy is a concern. Geneva has ceased to be a factor in any sense for the Nazi. An operation of the size you proposed to do it. She would require enormous preparation de Bono. If you offer me all of Ethiopia on a silver platter I would refuse it. I have resolved to take Ethiopia by force. Whoever opposes it would be met by the armed hostility of our nation for two years. Preparations were made for the attack on Ethiopia. Then according to plan a boundary dispute broke out. The league sent a commission to the scene but Mussolini rejected its verdict and on October 3rd 1935 has ordered pension put into effect against Italy. They're going to try to make her thanks and start doing any good against Italy. I'll never make Mussolini back down that way. Not one of the big powers is raising a hand against Mussolini. He's going right ahead as if nobody's objecting. Addis Ababa has been captured and Ethiopia is in the bag. The only thing Highly Salati can do now is get out. Highly Salati fled to London and there helpless protested. The Western democracies took no stand against Italy and more than that the Western democracies refused all arms to Ethiopia. Is that real neutrality? Is that just The tide of appeasement was running high. In 1935 Italy sees Ethiopia. In 1936 the Spanish fascists revolted against the Republic of Spain. The wave of appeasement that had started in the Far East had spread throughout the world. But now in 1937 the policy of appeasement was to meet its first widespread resistance. On the night of July 7th 1937 the commandant of the Marine Guard at Peking received word from the Japanese commander in Peking. Well it's a strange measure. What is it sir? The Japanese are going to maneuver tonight in the dark. Commander's just informed me of the matter of routine. Did he indicate where they would maneuver? Apparently in the vicinity of the Marco Polo Bridge. Why there? Well I don't know but you can be pretty sure that it's going to make the Chinese about as comfortable as we'd be if the Japanese were maneuvering in the middle of the night around Washington at San Francisco. Yes that'll bring them pretty close to the Chinese garrison at Wamping. Wamping isn't more than a few hundred feet from the Hone River where the bridge crosses. Well it might be important Colonel that the railroad bridge that carries traffic to the heart of central China. Not only that Major it's only 10 miles from Beijing. You know it might be a good thing for us to keep an eye open. Shall I find more? Beat the gate with your gun. Yes sir. To enter. The city gate of Wamping cannot be opened until morning. Japan and open the gate at once. What is it your way? I insist upon talking to your commander but the one open gate. The commander is right here. Where is commander? I am the commander. Fired out of my troops while we were maneuvering in the dark. One of my men is missing. No shots have been fired here. Open the gate. The gates of Wamping cannot be opened until morning. I demand to search the city of Wamping for offenders. I must ask you as commander of the Japanese troops to withdraw from the gates of Wamping. I demand to enter and search the city. I regret that I am unable to satisfy your demand for my gathering. Rifle fire was almost immediately lost in the fire from Japanese artillery. As if the rain had already been set the Chinese military headquarters and the municipal officers of Wamping were demolished by the first salvo of Japanese shells. The Marco Polo bridge just outside of Beijing. The Chinese are greatly outnumbered but are making a valiant stand. The Japanese are bringing up full wartime divisions and squadrons of warplanes. The Chinese casualties are appalling including hundreds of students. If China were willing to consider the outbreak a local incident Japan was not. The Japanese seize Beijing and set out to conquer all China. And throughout the land the Chinese rose to resist them. Song Kai-shek and his highest commanders are on emergency sessions in the mountains at Kuling. Students are holding mass meetings all over the country. We've got to send support to the 29th Route Army at Beijing. General Xun Qin Yuan must get reinforcements or his loss. General Elisimo Xun Kai-shek has broken his silence. He has called upon all China to fight. He says that China must fight to the utmost or perish forever. China alone stood up against appeasement. China resisted knowing that the aggressors rampant in the world could not be appeased. But in Europe appeasement had not yet reached its grasp. It was to rise higher and higher and to reach its peak in Europe in September 1938 at Munich. Cheer that they had won peace in our time. But five days later Winston Churchill said we have suffered a total and unmitigated defeat. Do not suppose this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by supreme recovery of our moral health and martial vigor we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time. Less than a year later Germany invaded Poland but still the wave of appeasement was rising in the United States. All right so I'm just the man in the street. There's over a hundred million guys like me in the United States isn't there. Oh don't be foolish. What do you mean foolish. We're supposed to be sympathizing with China aren't we. That's not our war over there. Look if we had an embargo on scrap iron and oil. Don't let your sympathies run away with you. Do you know what an embargo would mean? Mean war with Japan. A little mean war later on if we keep on shipping them war materials. What we want to do is keep out. Japan's short of war materials that's why she's buying them from us and if she's short on them then what have we got to be afraid of. What you're overlooking is that war between China and Japan is just as natural as it is for you to breathe. That's not about business. Well it'll be our business if we keep on selling oil and metal and machinery to Japan one of these days Japan's going to be so strong that we'll have her on our neck just to assure she's on China's today. The sympathy of the vast majority was with China but Japan's militarists had risen to power. The United States condemned Japan for its lawlessness and inhumanity but appeased its militarists by continuing to sell them war materials while China was able to buy very little. Loading another shipload of scrap iron for Japan, huh? Yeah. It looks like it's any more this year than last. Look at that. Tons of old boilers, car wheels, tows, automobiles, everything. Remember what a swell time you had in your car back in 1929 before the Depression? Yeah. Sunday drives, picnics. The scrap of that car of yours probably bumped off some Chinese mother and her kids by this time. Well, the people who are selling this scrap know this certainly. Sure they know it. Do you know that last year, 1937, Japan bought nearly 1,900,000 tons of scrap from yards in the U.S.? Yes, from us. And looks as if this year they're buying even more. We can't pick on ammunition makers any more after this. At least they sold the both sides. They're not interested in the nationality of a corp. But we're selling to Japan and holding back on the shipments to China. The sentiment for an embargo grew through 1937, 1938, and 1939. And at last, in October 1940, the ban on scrap iron was passed. I thought there was a ban on selling scrap to Japan. This is scrap? This is streetcar rails pulled up from the streets of Seattle. Well, it looks like scrap to me. The law says scrap is pieces of metal less than six feet long. These rails have been cut into seven foot lengths. Well, for the... Well, don't let this get you. This is just peanuts. We can't sell scrap to Japan, so we sell iron and steel in other forms. Iron and steel barns. Plate, 40. Last year, 1940, we sold Japan 47 million pounds of iron and steel bars. This year we're going to sell at 227 million pounds. And we're going to keep on selling it to... This was 1941, only a few months before Pearl Harbor. The Japanese listened with interest to the discussions in the United States that the Japanese spokesman said, We Japanese have no fear of any change in America's foreign policy. For Americans have no real morality. Only pious phrases. What Americans have means so much more to them than what they are. That they will continue to sell to Japan whatever Japan has the money to pay for, regardless of what Japan does with it after he did it. China was still fighting Japan, still bleeding and suffering alone. The tide of appeasement had reached its crest. Behind it, marked by the ruthless policy of Japan, Germany and Italy, lay a path of blackened destruction. Venturia, 1931. Ethiopia, 1935. Spain, 1936. China, 1937. Austria, 1938. Poland, 1939. France, 1940. The United States, December 7th, 1941. Appeasement was killed at Pearl Harbor. 1931 to 1941. Ten years of appeasement of aggressors who time and again would have been halted at a lesser price than all the world has to pay for the folly of World War II. These are the documentary facts and here to tell their underlying meaning is Owen Latimore, authority on the Pacific and director of the School of International Relations, Johns Hopkins University. Mr. Latimore. When Japan invaded Manchuria in September 1931, almost exactly 12 years ago, there was a widespread feeling in America and in some European countries that something ought to be done about it. But the people who felt this way were baffled by the problem of how to express what they felt in a way that would lead to action by the government. For a century, we had got used to the habit of thinking that the Chinese did not have either the power or even the knowledge to decide the most important questions affecting their own country. Our attitude was that the really important things which happened in China were the things that got done to China by the big and powerful countries. Out of this way of thinking grew the assumption that it would be an expensive philanthropy to risk a war in attempting to save China from Japan. We didn't like what Japan was doing to China, but it never even occurred to us that the problem was one of helping China and at the same time helping ourselves by preserving a world safe to live in. We were misled by our habit of going at the whole business as if it were a question of taking big risks for China without any particular benefit to ourselves. The Chinese did not see it this way. They thought it was desperately important to make us see that the real question was not only Manchuria as Chinese territory but international security and ordinary procedure as world problems. When the Chinese brought the Manchurian crisis before the League of Nations they were not hoping to maneuver other countries into carrying China's burden but they were hoping to compel other countries especially Britain and America to face their own international responsibility. And I don't mean just technical legal responsibility. I mean responsibility in the sense that a grown-up person who earns his own living ought to regard himself as a responsible member of society. We need not suppose that the Chinese were innocent enough to think that the League of Nations was an impartial tribunal. It wasn't and that is one reason why we got ourselves into another world war. The League was a kind of spock exchange of power politics where profits and losses could be added up in committee meetings and written off in treaties. The trouble with such a way of handling the lives and interests of hundreds of millions of people is that unless governments behave like responsible trustees they end up with a terrific crash. The supposedly responsible governments of the world headed for such a crash when they sidestepped the Manchurian issue at Geneva. It is difficult to summarize the League of Nations decision on Manchuria. It sent the Lytton Commission out to see what had happened. A politely blind way of acting as if something had happened that was not already obvious to everybody. The Lytton Commission's report was a masterpiece in the dignified acceptance of humiliating treatment by Japan. Japan left the League and set up in Manchuria a dummy government under the name of Manchugua. This was a wonderful device for political racketeering. It enabled the Japanese to do exactly what they liked with a government which they had invented and which they controlled at the same time insisting that this government was independent and that they had nothing to do with it. In other words they had power without responsibility and this is one of the most dangerous weapons in politics. America countered this move with the Hoover-Stimpson doctrine of non-recognition. This was the best America could do in a situation in which America could get no other country to make a joint stand and did not want to make a stand alone. This doctrine did not confess that America had failed to rally international support against Japan but did not promise that America would not do something about it in the future. These were delaying tactics and they were skillful delaying tactics but they could not prevent knowledge of the fact that the League of Nations unable to stop Japan could not stop any other country either. Hitler seized power in Germany. Mussolini crushed Ethiopia with bombs and poisoned gas. Hitler and Mussolini together with open cynicism set up fascism in Spain. Czechoslovakia was betrayed in a way that will be forever ashamed to western civilization and the wheel turned full circle and Japan again went to war on China in 1937. Let us never again forget this lesson in the importance of Asia and now I want to make a suggestion to you on behalf of the radio station over which you have been listening to the Pacific story. To buy a war bond just call up this radio station. As a civilian who has been back and forth to the Far East since the war began I have seen with my own eyes something of what has been done by our men and our equipment and our war bonds. Two things happen to you if you have the privilege of seeing what other Americans have accomplished overseas. First you feel proud of the American men and women who are representing us over there. Second you feel pride in every war bond you can buy because it helps them with the job they are doing. It backs the attack. It was not so very long after Pearl Harbor that I flew back from China to America. All along that immense air route at that time American airmen and ground crews were keeping the planes going on just a wing and a prayer. Then last year I flew out to China again and back. By that time the thin trickle of planes had become an immense river. Great bases had been cleared and fully equipped in primitive jungles. The men who were getting the planes out where they were needed were getting more there and getting them there faster because they were being backed in the attack by the factory workers and by every man woman and child who buys a bond. The way to bring victory quicker to save lives and to help our fighting allies in all the United Nations is to back the attacks by buying bonds. You can start by calling up this radio station right now. Thank you Mr. Latimore. Next week at the same time over most of these stations we will present the Philippines in their fight for freedom with drama of the past and present and commentary by Owen Latimore authority on the Pacific and director of the school of international relations Johns Hopkins University. You may secure an illuminating handbook of the Pacific story with background information on each program in this series with suggested further reading. This Pacific story manual will be sent to you for 25 cents in coin to cover cost of printing and mailing. Address the University of California Press Berkeley California. The Pacific story is written and directed by Arnold Markworth. The musical score is composed and conducted by Thomas Palusso, your narrator Gaine Whitman. This program has been presented as a public service and another feature of the inter-american university of the air by the national broadcasting company and the independent radio stations associated with the NBC network. 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