AMERICAN ATTITUDES TOWARD JAPAN AND CHINA, 1937-38.

The article takes a look at the American attitudes toward Japan and China in 1937-38. The Chinese Cultural Society of New York published in October 1937 a reprint of 39 editorials from American papers on the Far Eastern crisis. The editor, M. Hsitien Lin wrote in the foreword "Of some 5,000 editorials which have been examined, there is none that justifies Japanese aggression or condemns Chinese resistance. In the American press Japan is almost universally treated as the aggressor and China as the victim in the undeclared war. As to American policy, the press generally favors neither extreme isolationism nor political entanglements or alliances, but a golden mean, whereby world peace, it is hoped, may be maintained." The present study is designed to test the validity of this impression as well as to test the utility of a method of attitude measurement by press sampling. It is impossible here to enter into a discussion of the relationship between beliefs as to facts and emotional attitudes such as are measured by the indices used, except to suggest that attitudes, which are at first accompanied by emotions, may in time become beliefs regarding "facts" which are taken for granted.