A FORM OF WAR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 August 1939, Page 5

A FORM OF WAR

APPLICATION OF SANCTIONS. If America wants to help China defeat Japan, it must do so dirdhtly by declaring the United States the enemy of Japan, asserts Mr Alfred M. Bingham, editor of the American journal “Common Sense.” It is important to remember that economic sanctions are a form of Warfare. They involve the use of force, with the intention of inflicting the maximum amount of damage on the “enemy.” And the “enemy” is not an abstraction —a nation in any depersonalised sense, “Japan," or even the Japanese Government —but real individual persons, capable of feeling pain and hatred. The decisive weapon in the defeat of Germany in 1918 was the economic blockade; and the persons who suffered from that economic weapon were German women and children. Herr Hitler's philosophy was determined in no small degree by the suffering and hatred that resulted from the blockade. We are horrified when we read of Japanese air raids in which the chief victims are women and babies. But if America imposes sanctions on Japan, the chief victims will likewise be women and babies. It may be argued that their suffering will be less than that of the Chinese women and babies. That is anybody's guess: perhaps the imposition of sanctions will only prolong the agonv. But now. at least, we are hot wilfully inflicting the suffering, whereas if we take active piirt through sanctions we shall be wielding the weapons ourselves.