CONCLUSION

In the preceding chapters I have confined myself largely to introducing the eye-witness accounts which, together with a few press agency and newspaper reports, form the bulk of this volume. I now add some general observations based upon this material, supplemented by personal experience gained in the course of nearly twenty years spent in the Far East.

Fragmentary accounts of the Japanese invasion of China and of the occupation of the Yangtze Delta and ultimately Nanking itself have found their way into the newspapers. It may be questioned, however, whether it was generally realized that the reports of rape and loot and general bestiality flashed over the cables could be supported by signed eye-witness accounts collected from unimpeachable sources, by authentic photographs, by films, and by official documents. All doubts as to the existence of such material should be dispelled by the publication of a selection of it in the present volume.

The wealth of evidence here given nevertheless represents only a cross-section of happenings which were an integral part of the Japanese invasion. It has been necessary to reject a great deal of similarly well documented material because of space requirements. The reader should bear in mind that the reports contained herein cover a relatively few large centers where neutral foreign observers chanced to be stationed. The happenings in rural areas of occupation as a whole, directly affecting as they did the agrarian population which constitutes more than 80 per cent of the total population of China, would fill a volume by themselves. At the same time, little mention is made in this book of such attendant factors as the systematic destruction of educational institutions such as the well-known Nankai University in Tientsin with the evident intention of annihilating the sources of higher education in China.

Apart from vague suggestions of exaggeration, the Japanese authorities have not denied that outrages were committed at Nanking and elsewhere by the Japanese army. In strict privacy, Japanese civilians of the better sort have admitted with deeply felt shame that the reports were substantially true. By official apologies the defense put forward appears to be (a) that these were but isolated incidents and (b) that the same sort of thing has happened in other wars. "Granted," says a recent Japanese pamphlet,1 "that certain atrocities have been committed by Japanese troops and that certain incidents have arisen between Japanese troops and foreigners, let us say for comparison that such cases involve say 0.1 per cent, or 0.5 per cent, or even 1 per cent, of the Japanese forces on Chinese soil. Taking the highest figure of 1 per cent, does that constitute an 'enormous' percentage of 'bad characters' among the Japanese troops when such troops number several hundred thousand men? The answer is plain to all fair-minded persons."

This line of argument is reminiscent of the maid-servant who sought to excuse her baby on the ground that "it was only a little one." In view of the large number of well substantiated cases reported it is evident that considerably more than 1 per cent of the Japanese forces in China, which would mean between four thousand and five thousand men were involved. One ventures to hope that our own British High Command would be concerned over the fact that five thousand troops had run amuck to the extent revealed in the foregoing pages. And their concern would surely be heightened by the knowledge that many of the outrages took place under the observed direction of army officers.

To suggest that the widespread violence reported in these pages with a wealth of authentic detail still represents only the exception to the rule and that for this reason one should close one's eyes to the horrors of war and the proverbial brutality of the soldiery would be to deny the very foundations of justice and ethics. If cruelty is the exception then it should be all the easier to protest against what has happened and show our abhorrence of it; if it is the rule then it is all the more necessary to prevent its repetition. Indeed, it is surely the current tendency to condone monstrosities by such arguments that is one of the most dangerous influences dragging the world back to anarchy. What we need is unconditional allegiance to law, decency, and morality, for their own sakes, and not allegiance to them only if the other fellow will subscribe to them too. Such allegiance is not allegiance, and certainly not morality, at all.

Those who try to explain away these facts with the threadbare excuse that all wars have yielded their crop of horrors tend to forget that Japan's primary offence against international decency is the fact that she is making war upon China at all. The calculated brutalities which have accompanied the war simply make that offence just so much the more serious.

Probably it will have occurred to some readers to question how far the outrages committed by the Japanese army in China were simply the result of troops running wild in the heat of victory or how far they may have represented a policy of deliberate terrorism on the part of the Japanese authorities. The facts of the case point to the latter conclusion. Military excesses are understandable, though still not excusable, where they occur immediately after the occupation of a city, especially when the occupation comes at the end of a wearisome campaign. But in Nanking, however, to quote an outstanding example, outrages by Japanese soldiery went on for three months after the occupation of the city and were still continuing when the writer left China early in April, 1938.

One is thus forced to conclude either that a considerable section of the Japanese army was out of control or that it was the wish of the Japanese High Command to strike terror into the hearts of the Chinese people in the hope that thereby the latter would be cowed into submission.

Either conclusion is equally painful, but there is no evading the choice. Nor does there seem reason to doubt that precisely similar treatment would be meted out to any country which the Japanese army might invade.

This age is supposed to have seen the awakening of the Japanese nation, highly civilized by its contacts with the West, yet boasting of an ancient culture. But in this very supposition lies the root of the troubles with which the Far East is now beset.

In his very able book The Far Eastern Crisis, the one-time American Secretary of State, Henry L. Stimson, says: "To the American Government Japan was a friendly, powerful, and sensitive neighbor which, within a short space of a single human lifetime, had emerged from the isolation of feudal military autocracy into a modern industrialized state. Under the guidance of a very far-sighted group of elder statesmen she had assimilated with extraordinary rapidity the material elements of Western civilization. Her energetic and intelligent people had made gigantic strides in the technical arts, in manufactories, and in commerce. This industrial development was1 also gradually resulting in liberalism in social and political ideas. Japan had adopted a constitution with parliamentary features and she had been extending the suffrage among her people."

Thus did Japan appear not only to the American Government but also to the peoples and governments of all Western nations. Many Chinese, too, held this view. But this is a false assumption stemming from a superficial observation of the facts and upon this error rests the whole common concept of Far Eastern politics. In the pages that follow the quotation given above, Mr. Stimson adds: "The basic inheritance of the virtues and weaknesses of militarism had been only partially modified by the developing economic and social conditions of the industrial revolution and the ideas of Western democracy which had come with it, and their government still reflected these two elements, as yet imperfectly blended and each striving for mastery. "

The modern industrialized state of which Mr. Stimson speaks is in cold reality only a vehicle for the feudal military autocracy which is Japan. Japan's common people, be they peasants or factory workers, have today almost as little say in the control of their destinies as at any time in the history of Japan. Japan is ruled by her militarists in alliance with the great family trusts which control the economic life of the country. The people have no democratic rights and liberties since the Diet is powerless; there is neither free speech nor a free press, and it is a criminal offence even to think that the Constitution--which gives absolute power to the Emperor--should be altered. Anyone who ventures to speak against the war goes to prison, as witness the arrests of hundreds of liberal professors, authors, journalists and teachers and of two Labor M.P.s in December, 1937, and February, 1938, for having "spread anti-war talk."

Wars of aggression are the time-honored remedy employed by Japan's ruling class for social discontents. So long as the myth of prosperity through easy conquest is believed, the semi-feudal land-owning-militarist caste can hope to stave off agrarian reform and preserve its economic and political power. So long as aggression is supported by the big business interests there is unity of aim amongst those who hold power. If, however, aggression became both dangerous and unprofitable ; if, in particular, economic pressure were exerted by Britain and the U.S.A. upon Japan, there would almost certainly be a split between the militarists and the plutocracy which would enable the Japanese people to win their freedom and stop the war. The mass of the Japanese people have nothing to gain, and much to lose, in this war. They are dying and being wounded while their families suffer from rising prices, longer hours of labor and a growing dearth of the necessities of life. Wounded soldiers are kept from talking to their relatives by not being allowed to see them alone, and a severe censorship prevents the Japanese people from knowing that Chinese resistance is stubborn and the war likely to go on a long time. The Government is afraid that if the truth were known the morale of the civilian population would weaken.

The financiers and big industrialists who realize their vital dependence on Britain and America would want to call a halt to aggression if we cut down their profits through a boycott and made it so difficult for Japan to buy war materials that only the totalitarian economic policies of the military could enable Japan to fight at all. Big business in Japan is far from powerless but supports the war so long as it appears profitable and not dangerous to itself.

What has happened, and is still happening, in China is something which must concern us all-advocates of collective security and isolationists alike. It is my fervent hope that the story of China's present travail and especially of those noble men and women at Nanking and elsewhere whose experiences have been recounted in the foregoing pages will serve as an inspiration to all who have at heart the cause of international justice. Surely China cannot be allowed to succumb unless mankind is prepared to renounce for many generations to come its right to decide between right and wrong and is willing to risk the repetition of such unspeakable horrors as China is suffering today.

"What can we do?" is the helpless cry of our fear-ridden governing groups. Practically, and as an immediate step, we can begin to implement our oft-repeated pledges by helping China with arms or, if that is not feasible, with financial aid. But action must not be allowed to stop there. There can be no hope of peace for any of us unless we can set up and maintain some permanent system of collective security which will protect peace-loving nations against aggression. The shadow of war will not be removed until we begin to realize that, as Hendrik Willem van Loon has pointed out in one of his books, we are all of us fellow-passengers on the same planet and the weal and woe of everybody else means the weal and woe of ourselves.

CONTENTS 目次

Chapter

Foreword (Timperley)

序（ティンパレー）

(洞富雄教授の解説）

Chapter I Nanking's Ordeal (Bates & Magee)

第一章　南京の試煉（ベイツ博士＆マギー牧師）

Chapter II Robbery, Murder and Rape (Magee)

第二章　略奪・殺人・強姦（マギー牧師）

Chapter III Promise and Performance (Bates)

第三章　約束と現実（ベイツ博士）

Chapter IV The Nightmare Continues (Bates)

第四章　悪夢は続く（ベイツ博士）

Chapter V Terror in North China

第五章　華北における暴虐

Chapter VI Cities of Dread

第六章　恐怖の都市

Chapter VII Death From the Air

第七章　空襲による死亡

Chapter VIII Organized Destruction

第八章　組織的な破壊