OFFICIALLY DENIED

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 85, 7 October 1940, Page 7

OFFICIALLY DENIED

MR. MATSUOKA'S WORDS

RELATIONS WITH U.S.A.

TOKIO, October 5,

The Foreign Office spokesman, Mr, Y. Suma, denied that the Foreign Minister. Mr. ■ Matsuoka, had made th« statement on Japan's relations with the United States, which was reported yesterday. He alleged that the report was a garbled version of an interview which Mr. Matsuoka gave to a contributor to the "Liberty" magazine.

(Received October 7, 10 a.m.)

TOKIO, October 6.

Mr. Matsuoka has also denied th« statements attributed to him, especially the words "I fling a challenge to America." He said it could not be imagined that any - person in such a position as a Foreign Minister could have said that. "I made no such remarks," he concluded.

According to the report in question, which was published on Saturday* Mr. Matsuoka said that Japan would be compelled to fight the United States if the United State.-, entered the European war or insisted on -tha preservation of the status quo in the Pacific. He said: "I flung this challenge to America—'lf she blindly and stubbornly sticks to 'the Pacific status quo we will fight, for ijt is better to perish than to maintain the status quo.'"

Mr, Matsuoka was also reported to have said that the alliance between Japan and the Axis was- frankly intended to keep America out of the European war, but Americans must understand it as a peace pact. He added that Japan could no longer be" strangled in her efforts to establish a new order in East Asia and that whether the European war became ft world war depended upon America.