TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1940. WHEN IS HOSTILITY NOT HOSTILE?

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 92, 15 October 1940, Page 8

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1940. WHEN IS HOSTILITY NOT HOSTILE?

In following the further discussion of the Tokio-Berlin-Rome pact it may be as well to recall that this pact was announced in September as an undertaking that Japan, Germany, and Italy "will all help each other if attacked by a Power not now taking part in the European war or in the China Avar." Unless words have no meaning, Japan under this pact warns the United States to keep out of the European war, as well as to keep out of war with Japan. Should the United States people decide that the overrunning of Europe and the Axis threat to Britain compel the United States to intervene in the European war, as a measure of American self-preservation, then Japan at once, and automatically, is against the United States. Japan, in fact, prohibits the United States from pursuing United States policy in Europe if United States policy amounts to war; and yet Japanese Ministers reiterate that the pact is not hostile 'to the United States. Who, except themselves, can believe this? Which version appeals to the world's common sense—the nohostility story from Tokio, or the conclusion formed by the United States Secretary to the Navy, Colonel Knox, who holds that the pact is "directed against the United States" ,as being "the largest obstacle in the ! totalitarians' path should Britain fail to stem the tide of tyranny"? President Roosevelt's spirited reaction to the pact, and the Japanese reaction to that reaction, should lead to a clarification not of what the pact means—-its meaning seems to be clear enough—but of how far Japan will go. Words are one thing, acts are another. "The Times" offers the opinion that if Japan intended that the pact should frighten Chiang Kai-shek into submission, the pact has failed; if it was designed to frighten America, its failure has been even more disastrous. But if Japan refrains from acts that would worsen the situation, then the situation is not beyond repair. But it is certainly not helped by the Japanese statement that Tokio desires to save Washington from itself, and "The Times" naturally is in doubt whether "Mr. Matsuoka's unexpected consideration for humanity in general, and for the United States in particular, is anything more than a warning couched in polite phrases." The fact that emerges from the discussion —the fact undeniable—is that the pact is hostile to the United States and hostile to Britain. Whether Japan will implement, the pact in a way amounting to actual hostilities remains to be seen. That is a question for Japan. The implementing of the pact does not depend entirely on America's making war. What will happen if Egypt and Turkey find themselves compelled to fight the Axis, and therefore bring themselves within the scope of the pact and its tripartite promise of mutual help?