ABSTRACT
WHILE JAPANESE POLICY HAD THUS BEEN REVOLVING AROUND THE Q.UESTION of a "strengthening" of the Anti-Comintern Pact right up to the moment of its destruction by its unnatural parent, Anglo-Japanese relations had been subjected to a strain more severe than at any time since my arrival in Japan. The immediate cause of this was the controversy arising out of the use, by Chinese patriotic elements, of the British Concession in Tientsin as a base of operations against the Japanese outside. This dispute created such a stir at the time and was so typical of the head-on collision between British and Japanese interests in China that I propose to tell the story of what happened in some detail. The intrinsic importance of the Tientsin incident was not confined to the issue immediately involved. Rather it may be likened to a volcano whose sudden eruption threw into the political firmament all the pent-up feelings and animosities which had been simmering and boiling beneath the surface since Japan's invasion of China two years earlier.
