FO371-23515 — Page 259

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all other nations.

9.

The

unfortunately there is a reverse to thepicture.

foreigner has a legitimate grievance against his treatment.

None the less prejudice should not blind our eyes to the very

substantial achievements of the government in the directions

just indicated.

10. It le probable that if the Japanese professions had

been lesa extravagant, if they ceased to parade 'tanchoukuo as

an impossibly perfect paradise and their own aims as mure al-

truism, appreciation of their achievements would be less grudg-

ing.

Japan did not overturn the chinese administration to

liberate 30,000,000 inhabitants crying for aid but because the

Japanese military considered, probably correctly, that Japan's

rights under the Portsmouth and subsequent Chinese treaties,

on the basis of which she had built up an imperium in imperio

in South Manchuria, were being undermined by the Chinese.

Similarly when we come to study the form of government set up

in Manchoukuo we are faced with layers of high-sounding phrases

which have to be stripped away before we come to the bed-rock

of actual faot.

(2) Fora of Government

11. The declaration of the new government on March lat 1932

detailed the misdeeds of the previous régime and the sufferings

of the people under its oppression. It then enunciated the

principles under which the new government would proceed. State- craft should be founded on t'ien tao (the way of heaven) and

the government must conform to the will of the people. A cynic

would observe that we have here two conflicting methods of

government but that too much stress is not to be laid on the

second of the two methods is shown by a later statenent in the

same declaration that it would be the internal policy of the

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