Stop and Search

Since Japan has not formally declared war on China, under international law the Japanese have no right to interfere with foreign China-bound shipping. Lawful or not, however, Japan last week assumed that right and proceeded to stop on the high seas not only a British liner and a French freighter but, what was more remarkable, a German ship.

All three halts took place just outside British-owned Hong Kong waters. The British Peninsular & Oriental liner Ranpura was signaled to stop by a Japanese cruiser which fired two shots across her bow. Four officers and a party of marines boarded the ship, demanded to examine the ship's log. The captain refused, radioed Hong Kong for help. After loitering aboard ship for 20 minutes, the Japanese withdrew. The French freighter Aramis, whose skipper was not so tough, was not only halted by a destroyer but armed marines searched her. The captain of the German Hamburg-Amerika liner Sauerland, giant swastikas painted on her sides, was asked to show his papers and, when he did, was then allowed to continue.

Stronger-than-usual British and French protests were lodged at Tokyo's Foreign Office. Embarrassed more than angered were the Germans, associates of Japan in the anti-Comintern Pact, but they also protested. While by week's end the Japanese had given no official answer, her Navy spokesman at Shanghai announced that Japan would search for "military supplies" any ship operating within 200 miles of the Chinese coast. The spokesman added: "It is not a question of rights, but of what the Japanese Naval authorities demand."

With Manchukuo (Japanese) and Mongolian (Russian) troops skirmishing again on the Soviet-protected Outer Mongolian border, with Japan still refusing to evacuate her troops from the International Settlement at Kulangsu, with the Japanese authorities getting bolder and bolder in their demands for control of the Shanghai International Settlement, it began to appear that the Japanese were becoming desperate about the war still dragging on in China, just as in 1917 the Germans began to be desperate enough to torpedo neutral shipping again. A Shanghai spokesman hinted, however, that U. S. ships would escape the search-&-seizure methods applied to ships of other nationalities. That was understandable, since the U. S. has in the Pacific the only Navy that could protect its seagoing nationals.

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