Pro-Japanese manuscript on the Manchurian Crisis, entitled 'John Chinaman & <?> Jap at Grips. How the Trouble Arose. Brigandage versus Enterprise'.

12mo, 11 pp. Text clear and legible. On one side each of eleven leaves of lightly-aged paper, with slight creasing at foot of some leaves. The pages are numbered, and the article is incomplete, cutting off halfway through a sentence on p.11. An interesting and well-informed analysis, from an unashamedly pro-Japanese viewpoint. Edmonds warns against jumping to 'hasty conclusions as a result of the attitude of the League of Nations', which he accuses of not having 'properly gripped the situation any more than did the members of the Lytton Commission who were sent out to report on the subject last year' (the Report appeared in October 1932). Edmonds sees the crisis as 'a question of Barbarism versus Civilisation', a fight between 'on the one hand the supposed Chinese authority which has never exercised control over the country but has allowed banditry to proceed unmolested under the late self-appointed Marshal Chang Zo-lin himself a bandit of the first water whom I remember as a cattle driver in Peking, & subsequently under his son, the half-educated Chang Hsueh-liang, & on the other we have the virile Japanese invaders, establishing successful industries, carrying law & order in their progress through the country, & making the life of the Chinese one of peace & comfort.' However he regards the claim 'on the part of Tokio [sic]' that 'they have no territorial aggrandisement in view' as 'so much eye-wash' and 'the customary mendacity of Eastern governments'. The final sentence concludes with the confident assertion that 'the fine discipline & finished strategy of the Japanese army will in a comparatively short period drive them [Chang Hsueh-liang's forces] from their fortresses & put them safe beyond the <...>'. An accompanying leaf carries a long autograph 'Caption for photograph' (12mo, 1 p) of 'The Great Wall of China near Jehol', in it Edmonds is described as 'Cousin of the late Viscount Rhondda' and former 'special correspondent in the Far East for the "Pall Mall Gazette" '. A little more biographical information is contained in Edmond's letter on 'Morrison of Peking', The Times, 2 June 1920.