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No.121.
THE WEEK
By
Claude Cockburn
34 VICTORIA STREET
LONDON. S.W.1
September 11th 1935
FACTS ABOUT A MURDER
******
Suppressed, for reasons which will become grimly apparent, by three
Governments, there reach us to-day from Pekin the real facts of the
kidnapping and murder of the well—known British Journalist Gareth Jones last
month in the territory north of the Great Wall of China.
the truth is as significant
as it is startling: for it throws an unmistakeably lurid light alike
on the immediate plane of the Japanese in north-eastern Asia, and on the
attitude towards these plans of two of the other Governments concerned -
facts together composing a situation which may yet compared with Abyssinia
for the headlines.
What the Public heard.
It will
be recalled that Gareth Jones, and Doctor Mueller, the correspondent of the
Official German Deutsche Nachrichten Buro, were kidnapped at the end of July
when travelling from Dolonor to Kalgan, in eastern Chahar province, which
lies between the present western boundary of Manchukuo, the eastern boundary
of Mongolia, and north of the Great Wall.
It is a
territory from which the Japanese recently demanded the evacuation of
Chinese troops.
Mueller
was subsequently released, and arrived at the beginning of August in Pekin.
He held conversations with the British and German diplomatic authorities
regarding steps to be taken for the release of Jones.
It was
announced that everyone, including the Japanese, was doing their best; and
that Jones’ early release was expected.
Then
came the news that Jones had been murdered, which flared across the front
pages of the British press for a day or so, accompanied by announcements
that the British Government was going to make a strong protest to the
Chinese authorities: after which the affair dropped out of sight with a
suddenness which attracted some attention in Fleet Street at the time, even
in view of the competing crises which filled the front pages at the same
period. So much for the facts given to the public.
Dr. Mueller talks.
Here is
the even uglier truth.
Then
Dr. Mueller arrived after his release, he gave an interview to a certain
number of Journalists, in which he fully described the real circumstances
of the kidnapping. The same information was of course given by Dr; Mueller
to the British and German authorities.
His
interview revealed that what he and Jones had really bumped into was nothing
less than the early stages of a Japanese attempt to repeat in Chahar the
coup which began to shake the world when Manchuria was invaded in 1931.
It was
on July 25th that they arrived at Dolonor, What was their astonishment to
find the place be-flagged with the flags of a Japanese controlled
“independents Government supported by the presence of a full
mechanised brigade of Japanese troops, composed of four thousand men and
four hundred automobiles, among which were included a number of tanks.
They
observed, said Mueller, that the crews of the tanks were in part made up of
émigré White Guards.
Astonished by these facts, they visited the Japanese headquarters.
There
they found an Indian gentleman who explained that he had once been a member
of the Indian National Assembly but was now head of the Pan-asiatic League
-- the Japanese organisation for the extension of Japanese domination over
Asia.
Mueller
told those to whom he disclosed these facts, that when the Indian was
questioned as to why the town of Dolonor was so stiff with Japanese troops,
the reply was that they had come “to protect the population.”
Dynamite
It was
after leaving the Japanese Headquarters that the climax of their discoveries
was reached. As they passed through the town they came upon a notice board,
and upon the notice board was boldly written:
“Headquarters of the autonomous Government of East Chahar”.
The
significance of the notice board was unmistakeable. They had
stumbled into the very middle of an event designed to alter the
history of Asia.
They
copied the wording on the notice board.
It was
at this point that they were arrested.
Back at
Japanese headquarters, the Indian of the Pan-asiatic League informed them
that they were under arrest on suspicion of espionage. They had been makng
notes, examining military transports etc.
They
were then grilled by a succession of Japanese officers, kept under arrest
for several hours, and finally told that during the rest of their stay in
Dolonor, they must not leave the hotel where they were staying. When they
left Dolonor, there were three roads they could take.
The Recommendation
The
Japanese, so Dr.. Mueller told our informant in Pekin, “strongly
recommended” one of those roads. .They took that road, and it was on that
road that the “bandits” captured them
About
the bandits one fact became strangely clear they were total strangers to
Chahar, and were obviously not the dangerous elements of the location” which
then Japanese Officials have so often referred to. On the contrary they had
to ask their way about the area wherever they went.
This, just before they decided to release Mueller they explained
themselves They said that they were not, in the technical sense of the word,
bandits at all. They were Chinese nationalists from Jehol. They had there
been recruited by the, Japanese, who, retained their families .“under
control” as a form of hostage for the “good behaviour” of the hired
“bandits”.
They had
then been brought over t. Chahar and ordered to go about “making
disturbances. This, they explained, they were doing, despite their patriotic
detestation of the Japanese.
Apparently - on this point
Dr. Mueller was not clear --- it was either because they had misunderstood
their instructions or else because they wanted to double-cross the Japanese
in a manner that would yet not get their families back in Jehol into
trouble, they agreed to release Mueller,
That,
we repeat, is the story told by Dr. Mueller to Certain journalists and to
the British and German officials on his release.
In the
light of it, the subsequent events take on peculiarly sinister aspect.
For it
amounts to this:
Gareth
Jones was kidnapped because he had run into the secret
of the next Japanese drive for Asia”.
He was
sent by the Japanese along the road to his kidnapping.
He was
murdered in a Japanese sphere of influence, and no ransom was ever collected
by these singular bandits; because he had found out the first facts about an
attempt to repeat in Chahar the adventure of Manchukuo.
The
British and German authorities concerned, are both the agents of Governments
which for the same reason - the hope of securing useful allies
against the influence of Soviet Russia -- are strongly averse to doing or
saying anything disagreeable to certain Japanese designs, .
After
Gareth Jones was murdered, the British, announced they would protest to the
Chinese.
But the
fact is that before he was murdered, all these merry gentlemen who knew the
facts of the story, and were nominally engaged in trying to save his
life, were in fact sitting round playing a neat little game of “Murder”.
They
were all “doing their best”. Except that they suppressed the essential
facts, to ease the Japanese feelings and help to conceal what was -- and is
-- going on in Chahar. They sat by and kept mum while the Japanese
authorities blandly announced at they too were “doing their best”.
And
while the amiable diplomatic game was in progress in making, Gareth Jones
was allowed, to be murdered in Chahar, for fear of disturbing the “good
relations between the three “Understanding” Governments of Tokyo, London,
and Berlin.
A
curious feature of the affair is the position of Mr Lloyd George
Gareth
Jones was at one time a member of the Lloyd George Secretariat, and at, the
first news of the kidnapping, Lloyd George went to the Foreign Office for
information and, it was suggested to stimulate action.
A
little later, Lloyd George gave out a curious press statement wherein he
‘suggested that Gareth Jones had been murdered not out of pure banditry but
because he had probably unearthed some dangerous political, secret.
And
after that Lloyd George said nothing, and, the newspapers wrote the
customary obituaries “deep regret” etcetera.
There
arises the question: Why did Lloyd George who had obviously got a sniff of
the truth somewhere, presumably at the Foreign Office suddenly shut up and
say nothing ? Is it in other words to be supposed that the imperial
considerations involved, are of so powerful a character that’ the Foreign
Office was able to persuade Lloyd George to silence ?
As for
the Germans, their attitude is fully intelligible, since they have a
military “understanding” with Japan, and in any case could scarcely have
been expected to be more active on behalf of a British subject who happened
to be the victim of a calculated murder plot than the British Government
itself, which on some occasions has been quite active in such cases.
As for
the journalists to whom the Mueller story was given our information is that
they did “all they could:’ they cabled the, facts all right. And later the
Foreign Office “advised” against’ publication.
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