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Italy launched its piratical invasion of Ethiopia, many eagerly turned their eyes toward the self-proclaimed "champion" of the darker peoples. Were we not assured by Japanese agents and apologists that the might of the Empire of the Rising Sun would be exerted on behalf of the menaced Ethiopian people? Were we not assured that the whole world was about to be given proof that imperialist Japan was in reality the champion and the defender of the colored peoples?

And what happened? Everybody now knows that Japan's rulers did not lift a finger to help the heroic Ethiopian people. On the contrary, the Japanese government sabotaged every move designed to hinder the fascist aggressors and to aid the Ethiopian people.

And did not the Japanese government in 1936 shamelessly give its approval to the rape of Ethiopia by extending formal recognition of Mussolini's "Ethiopian Empire," thereby sabotaging Emperor Haile Selassie's efforts to block Mussolini's campaign for international recognition of his pretensions to rule the Ethiopian people?

Japan's seizure of Manchuria cast a shadow over Ethiopia. Japan's methods in Manchuria were used later on as a model by Mussolini in his war against Ethiopia. Mussolini emulated Japan's policy of attacking without a declaration of war. The Italian dictator's confidence in preparing for the seizure of Ethiopia, his arrogance in dealing with the League of Nations, were largely inspired by Japan's earlier successes in Manchuria, its violation of the League of Nations Covenant guaranteeing the territorial integrity of member nations, its successful defiance of the League.

Thus we have the spectacle of the "protector" of the darker peoples not only endorsing the rape of Ethiopia but inspiring that rape by its own lawless adventures in the Far East.

IV. Japan and the Soviet Union - Two Policies Toward China

Let us compare the policy of military fascist Japan toward China with the policy of another great power and neighbor of China - the socialist Soviet Union.

From its inception, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics denounced the imperialistic foreign policy of the former tsarist regime.

Only July 25, 1919, when the Soviet government was a scant year and a half old, it declared its policy toward China. It relinquished all conquests made in China by tsarist imperialism, and proposed friendly relations with China on the basis of complete equality. The first point of the proclamation states that the "Government of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republics declares all treaties concluded by the previous government with China to be null and void; it relinquishes all conquests of Chinese territory and all Russian concessions in China; it returns to China for all time everything of which that country had been robbed by the tsarist government and the Russian bourgeoisie, and it does so without demanding compensation."

In 1924, when the Soviet Union concluded a treaty with China on the basis of the policy enunciated in 1919, the world was provided with an example of how a socialist nation, rejecting the predatory aims of imperialism, treats a weaker neighbor. It was the first treaty China had ever signed on the basis of full equality and friendship. In 1937, a pact of nonaggression between China and the Soviet Union was signed - a