JAPANESE BLACKMAIL.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 7 October 1940, Page 4

JAPANESE BLACKMAIL.

'J'HROUGII the official Domei News Agency, the Japanese Government has denied and repudiated a statement reported to have been made by its Foreign Minister, Mr Matsuoka, to an American interviewer—a statement that Japan will declare war on the United States if the hitter enters the European war or insists on maintaining the status quo in the Pacific. The Japanese Prime Minister (Prince Konoye) has stated, however, that:—

Should the United States challenge Germany, Italy and Japan, we are ready to accept the challenge and fight to the finish.

It is'obvious that Prince Konoye’s declaration embodies all that is essential in the statement attributed to Mr Matsuoka, the accuracy of which the Japanese Government has denied. The Japanese Prime Minister’s words can be taken to mean nothing else than that if the United States ventures to challenge the policy of aggression in which Japan and her allies in the Tripartite Pact are engaged, Japan, will declare war on the United Stales. The American Secretary of the Navy, Colonel Knox, has made the only appropriate reply to Prince Konoye in stating that the United States will never submit tamely to intimidation and that: “If a fight is forced upon us, we shall be ready for it.”

The Japanese threat to the United States obviously is a threat also to the British Empire. At its face value, Prince Konoye’s statement is an attempt io intimidate both the United States and the British Empire and to gain, by methods of blackmail, complete freedom and immunity in a policy of international brigandage. Assuming that Prince Konoye means what he says, the only question calling for consideration by the English-speaking countries prill concern the measures and methods by which Japan may best be prevented from carrying her declared purpose info effect.

Although it has been said of Prince Konoye that his job is to keep the political machinery of Japan in high gear for new aggression, the possibility appears that his defiance of the United Stales embodies a considerable element of bluff. While he has the support of militarist extremists ■who see in the existing stalo of world affairs a “golden opportunity” for Japanese aggression and brigandage, he also depends for support on the leaders of Japanese industry. The general attitude ol this influential group is one of readiness to support aggression where it is safe, but of rooted opposition to dangerous and irresponsible aggression. It might be supposed that aggression carried to the point of entailing war with the United States ami the British Empire would fall automatically into the last-mentioned category. Events must soon determine, in anv ease, just what significance is to be attached to the Japanese Prime Minister’s declaration.