Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, JULY 12, 1940. JAPAN AND THE AXIS.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 July 1940, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age FRIDAY, JULY 12, 1940. JAPAN AND THE AXIS.

WHILE they recognise that their own national fate, as well W as that of their kinsfolk in the Mother Country and e sewhere in the Empire, is at stake in the European conflict t people of New Zealand and Australia are bound also to ta < very close and keen interest in the most recent development of Japanese policy—a development which has taken shape in an outrageously unjust and lawless demand that Britain shou d put a stop to arms traffic, and perhaps to other traffic as well, m bv way of the Burma Road. The demand is nothing else than an attempt to make Britain a ? ass ?™ ?TXra is Japan's policy of criminal aggression against. China, lheic, the added complication, if it were needed, that most of t military and other goods now being conveyed to China ovei tl Burma Road are of other than British origin. It y as.state the other day that these goods came chiefly from Russia and the United States. , According to one of yesterday’s cablegrams the Japanese Foreign Office, Army and Navy are said to be consider mg strong final measures “ should Britain attempt to delay 1 reply”—a reply, that is to say, to the Japanese demand that Britain should reconsider the decision she is reported o iav conveyed to Tokio regarding traffic over the Burma Road It is reported also that the Japanese War Minister, General. Hat<c, is recommending to the Premier, Admiral Yonai, the stien o t enino- o f thd Tokio-Rome-Berlin Axis through the abandonment of Japan’s policy of non-involvement in the European war. Nothing would be gained by ignoring the fact that the trend of Japanese policy thus disclosed directly threatens an extension of the war to the Pacific. Moreover, even in what it may be hoped is the unlikely event of Britain submitting to the present Japanese demands, it could not be taken for granted that this threat would be averted. The recent, history of the world is far enough from affording any grounds for a belief that submission and appeasement otter a hopeful means of halting aggression. Whatever its full possibilities may be, the situation plainly provides the British Pacific Dominions with additional reasons for taking serious stock of the demands made by the war and for being prepared to meet these demands—whatever the foim they assume —in no grudging spirit. Happily it seems unlikely that the burden and responsibility of curbing a Japanese policy of aggression in the Pamttc willfall solely on Britain and her Dominions.. The United States obviously has a very great interest, in this matter ant would have even if no such entity as the British Empire existed. Not long ago, the United States Secretary of State. made an emphatic declaration of American interest, in the maintenance of the status quo in the Dutch East Indies. An elementary regard for its own vital national interests would appear to make it impossible for the United States to look with inditterence on any new extension of Japanese aggression in the Pacific. In her combined economic and naval strength, the United States probably has the means of curbing Japanese aggression without going'to war. The American Republic has at the moment an affair of its own to discuss with the Japanese in the belligerent demands that are being made for an apology for the action of United States Marines in arresting a party of armed Japanese who intruded into the defence section of the International Concession at Shanghai. The fact that such an incident has been allowed to arise and to develop, in its present shape rather suggests that the Japanese are alive to the likelihood that they would not have to reckon only with Bi’itain and the British Empire if they embarked on the course of "reckless adventure now being advocated by their more extreme militarists.

THE BETRAYAL OF FRANCE.

WITH about one-third of the elected Deputies and Senators VY absent, the French National Assembly has approved by a large majority the new constitution which has been summed up as turning France into a second-class fanning country, dominated by Greater Germany. Even that is far from conveying the whole truth of the tragic and abominable betrayal of the French nation. All that has been done by the French Government of surrender obviously has been done at the dictation and under the direct orders of Nazi taskmasters. For the time being Hitler has achieved the aim he declared m “Mem Eampi of destroying France, the country he called “Germany s implacable foe’’ and “a negroid African State on European soil, ft is to this man and his satellites that some most nnwoithj Frenchmen have meantime handed over their country,•disarmed and helpless. In the circumstances of the moment, the proposed plebiscite on the new constitution can be regarded as nothing else than a mockery.

The measure of the betrayal of France appears in the condition to Which she is now reduced. The astonishing talk, in which Marshal Petain and his associates for a time indulged, of honour being preserved, is now exposed in all its naked absurdity. Electing still to defy the enemy, to continue the war from her colonies and by every means available to her in association with her allies, France could have suit cred no humiliation or misfortune she has not no’w incurred and would have been vastly better placed to recover what she had lost. Even had the loss of her homeland territory been inevitable, which is far from being demonstrated,' her powers of effective resistance were far from being exhausted. She compares badly, today, with the gallant little nations —Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, Holland and Belgium—which, though dispossessed of their territory, are continuing the war undauntedly and in a strength that is far from negligible.

Fortunately nothing in Hie past history and greatness of France justifies a belief that she can be reduced permanently to the miserable plight to which she has been reduced meantime by traitors whose performance could hardly have been improved upon had their whole aim been to assist the deadly enemies of their country to inflict upon it the greatest possible harm. The visible effects of this treason are overwhelming, but account has yet to be taken of the root qualities of the .people of France, exhibited in centuries of brilliant history—qualities which have not only enabled the nation to rise in days of advancement and prosperity to great heights of achievement, but have time and again lifted it out of the depths of apparently irreparable calamity.