The Peace That Never Was by Ruth Henig

Author:Ruth Henig
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781912208562
Publisher: Haus Publishing
Published: 2019-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

6

The Manchurian Crisis, 1931–3

On the evening of 18 September 1931, an explosion occurred on the Japanese-run South Manchurian Railway, just north of Mukden. The track was not greatly damaged – a train bound for Mukden passed safely over the spot shortly afterwards – but the incident resulted in the mobilisation of Japan’s troops in Manchuria, skirmishes with Chinese troops around Mukden, and attacks on key points in the vicinity. Within days, Japanese army units had fanned out across South Manchuria and on 8 October, 11 Japanese planes attacked Chin-chow, well down the track on the way to Beijing.

Three days after the explosion, on 21 September, the Chinese appealed both to the League under Article 11 and to the United States under the Kellogg-Briand Pact to take action to stop the fighting. While it was not immediately clear either in Geneva or in Washington whether the Japanese or the Chinese were to blame for the outbreak of violence, there was general agreement that the crisis needed to be speedily resolved.

On 30 September, the League Council accepted the reassurances of the Japanese delegate that Japan had no warlike intentions in Manchuria and no territorial designs and that her troops would soon be withdrawn back to the railway zone, and of the Chinese delegate that Japanese lives and property in Manchuria would be safeguarded, and adjourned consideration of the dispute for two weeks.

League members had far more weighty matters on their minds in September 1931 than military skirmishes between Japanese and Chinese troops in distant Manchuria. The British government had just come off the gold standard, and was in the process of forming a national government. Political events in Germany, with the explosive growth of both right-wing nationalism and communism, were profoundly worrying. European countries and the US government were locked in acrimonious discussions about the possibilities of reducing or postponing reparation and war debt payments. And energies at Geneva were being consumed by preparations for a disarmament conference and for talks to try to promote collective economic action to counteract the deadly impact of the depression.

But it was not just the timing of the crisis which muted reactions. There were a whole host of special circumstances which shaped the perceptions of League members as the series of military clashes unfolded and, within weeks, threatened to turn into full-scale Japanese occupation of Manchuria. The 11,000-strong Japanese Kwantung army was stationed in Manchuria quite legitimately to guard the track and railway zones of the South Manchurian railway, under treaty rights dating back to Japan’s victory against Russia in the war of 1904–5 and to agreements reached with China in 1915 for the extension of the lease of the Liaodong Peninsula and nearly 700 miles of Chinese railway track. Since that time, Japan had invested heavily in her concession areas, and the industries established were contributing to a rate of economic development well ahead of the rest of China. Japan viewed Manchuria as an area vital to her future development, both as a source of

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