§ Motion made, and Question proposed, "That this House do now adjourn." — [Captain Margesson.]
§ 11.44 a-m.
§ Mr. Noel-BakerI desire to raise the questions of the present conflict in the Far East between Japan and China, the negotiations which are now proceeding in Tokyo and the action which His Majesty's Government ought or ought not to take to deal with the present grave situation. For two years there has been war in China, aggressive war, with the conquest of China as its avowed objective, which violates, as the Government admit, the Kellogg Pact, the Covenant of the League of Nations and the Nine- Power Treaty, of all of which Great Britain is a signatory Power. That war has been ruthless from the outset. It has been the most savage and the most law less conflict since Grotius wrote "The Law of War and Peace" 300 years ago. The good name of Japan has been stained by acts of shameless cruelty and carnage which history will not forget, and it has involved a sum of human suffering before which the imagination reels. That aggression has been accompanied from the outset by an unbroken succession of outrages against British and other foreign residents in China. The hon. Member for Kidderminster (Sir J. Wardlaw-Milne) said the other day that the American State Department