EAST AND WEST.

Evening Star, Issue 23694, 30 September 1940, Page 4

EAST AND WEST.

Thkre is a familiar ring in the assurance by von Ribbentrop that the new pact between Germany, Italy, and Japan, which actually alters nothing, ‘ aims at the reconstruction of peace throughout the world.” Count Ciano endorses that pretence in a statement that “ the three Powers have contributed to world peace and the great cause of establishing a just and peaceful order.” Prince Konoyc, for Japan, concurs that the object of the aggressor Powers is “ the establishment of lasting peace in the world.” The augurs winking at each other in old Rome as they drew their own interpretations from the ' entrails to bamboozle the credulous afford but u feeble precedent for this agreement. Peace never has been so dear, we arc asked to believe, to the Fascist Powers as in these last years when they have been persistentlyviolating it, a task in which they are still employed. Italy launching her poison gas against Abyssinians, or swooping on little Albania; Japan levelling Chinese cities with her bombs; Germany striking down Czccho-Slovakia and Poland, after declaring that all her differences had been settled with them, making unrest in every country on earth; they all did it for the tranquillity of mankind. There was a hint of another motive—sordid loot—in von Ribbentrop’s pecan of praise when he declared: “Any country joining tho alliance will have a voice in the redistribution of territory after the war.” But that must have been a slip. “ East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,” said Kipling. The ex-Kaiser thought the same on an unprovoked occasion when tho most insulting taunts of his Aryan scorn were directed at the Japanese. Yet likeness might see more than unlikeness when Japanese and Nazis are studied. Lack of humour —which may partly explain the peace assurances cited—is one common trait. Associated with it is what Mr John Gunther, in his ‘ Inside Asia,’ calls “ the extraordinary Japanese habit of disingenuousness—the combination of naivete- and self-deception which calls a war an ‘ incident,’ which makes the Japanese say that they wage war only because they are ‘ friends of the Chinese people.’ ” The Fascists and the Germans have both copied that idiosyncracy to perfection, if they did not have it before, and this despite the Germans’ increasing emphasis on their Aryanism. Again Mr Gunther writes: “ The Japanese Emperor, being divine, is more than the head of the State. He is the State. .... The godlike

qualities of the Emperor of Japan are difficult concepts to describe. First, wo plunge at once into mysticism.” Did the most perfervid Nazis find their example in that belief for the divinity they would bestow on Hitler? “The simple, believing Nazi soul,” writes Sir Charles Grant Robertson, Vice-Chancel-lor of Birmingham University, “ speaks of him as ‘ Saviour,’ ‘ sent from God,’ ‘ our Christ.’ Dr Ley, a Nazi Minister, instructs educational authorities: “We believe in this world in Adolf Hitler alone. . . . We believe that

the Lord God has sent us Adolf Hitler, that Germany should be established for all eternity.” In many a house and public place in Germany, according to competent observers, shrines to Hitler are set up in prominent positions, where his portrait is illuminated by candles and wreathed with floral tributes. But that worship will not last as long as the Japanese;