Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 15. 1941. “OF THE UTMOST GRAVITY.”

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 February 1941, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 15. 1941. “OF THE UTMOST GRAVITY.”

NOTE of imperative warning sounded in Australia and by our own Prime .Minister regarding the situation that is developing in the Pacific is justified only too well by news coming from various quarters abroad. In the circumstances the latest statement made in Sydney that the situation has “not deteriorated” means comparatively little. The essential and commanding fact is that Japan continues to accompany a policy of international brigandage with angry protests against the inability of the English-speaking nations and some others to understand and appreciate the purity and nobility of her aims. At the moment. Japan is declared to be making use of her ostensible role of mediation to demand naval and air bases in Thailand, to supplement those she has already extorted from Tndo-China. It is against, the background of this predatory action and many others like it that competent commentators in London have said that: — Japan appears to have forsaken an independent line of policy in deference to German wishes, and affords the spectacle of yet a second empire willing to court disaster in return for the specious promises and illusory advantages hold out to it. While opinion in Britain appears to be on all fours with that of the authorities in Australia and New Zealand, as to the seriousness of the current trend in the Pacific, the American Secretary of State (.Mr. Cordell Hull ) has stated that Im has no knowledge of reports on the urgency of the Far Eastern situation prompting the Australian War Council meeting. It is also reported, however. that American Consular officials in the Far East have been instructed to renew suggestions that women and children and non-essential men should leave. The threat of an extension of the war to the Pacific cannot but be regarded as raising exceedingly serious prospects and as making necessary every practicable measure of defence preparation in Australia and in this country. The dangers the situation holds are sufficiently obvious, but if is clear also that there is nothing else to do than to meet and cope with these dangers, if and when they take shape, with all the resolution and confidence of which we are capable. Even the most convinced advocates of appeasement, if any still survive, may be expected to acknowledge that it would be something worse than a waste of time to attempt to reason with the men who are shaping and directing the current policy of Japan, -Some extracts were given in a cablegram yesterday from a manifesto issued by the National Association, an organisation evidently formed by the totalitarian Government of Japan to help in carrying into effect its policy of plunder and aggression. The manifesto accuses the United States of returning Japan’s policy of conciliation with acts of increasing hostility. As all the world knows, the policy of conciliation thus held up to admiration has consisted of such things as the lawless seizure of Manchuria and the murderous and predatory invasion of as much of China as Japanese armies and bombing planes have been able to subjugate or wreck in nearly four and a half years of savage conflict. The “acts of increasing hostility” attributed to the United States have been the continuing refusal of the American Government and people to accept these colossal crimes as evidences of virtue and of meritorious purpose. That something more than a positive taint of lunacy appears in the current claims and propaganda of the militarist Government of Japan perhaps goes far to account tor the Far Eastern situation at the critical stage to which it has developed. In the extent, at all events, to which they are still possessed of sanity and tire capable of paying even cold and calculating regard to the interests of their country, the present rulers of Japan might be expected to shrink back with horror from the course to which they seem to be committed. In a dispassionate examination ol the facts it is plain enough that in plunging into war, Japan would be playing Germany’s game and inviting military disaster and economic rain. Apparently, however, the men at the head of affairs in Japan are incapable of sounding any other note than one of truculent defiance ami threats. Late evidence on the point appears in a presumably authoritative observation by the Japanese military organ “Yomiuri Shimlnm” that : — If President Roosevelt’s denial of danger of war in the Pacific is based on the completion of a system of full collaboration between the United States. Australia and Britain for the defence of the South Pacific against Japan, then there is nothing so dangerous. That the situation holds dangers for all concerned is not to lie denied, but there is every reason to believe that these dangers are greatest of all for Japan. With the best of the Japanese army and war material held in the morass of the war with China, as the London “Daily Telegraph has observed, Japanese imperialists might well think hard before venturing upon a final imitation of Hitler.

DEFENCE PREPARATION. •YN the war is now developing, a new urgency is imparted to questions of home drlem-e and t<> those rehnting !.> lhe protection of seaborne trade in the seas in which we are more i m med ia lel v eoneerned. Some <d those questions can bi l dealt with <ndv in condilions of Imperial and perhaps <>i international collaboration, and there are vital aspects even oi the local defence ot lhe Dominion in regard lo which we can do notiiing else than relv on the (li.v.-rnmen! Io take the most efleelive action that is possible, under the guidance of its military advisers. A great deal evidently must depend Upon the extent to which eqiii]Hiient and malerial are or can be made ,'ivaila’de. Tin l Prime Minister (Mr !• r.tser has said oi the situation now developing t hat - The War Cabinet and the Government are giving daily, ami. n fact, hourly attention to these matter.*, and the jieoplc of New Zealand can be assured that all possible steps necessary to maintam and increase New Zealand’s preparedne-;-: are being '.alien. To a ureal extent, as has been said, the (iovernmenl must, he kit to earrv <>nt its responsibditn-s. iHehniiiig that oi making whatever calls ar-' necessary, in the in!<-r<-ts <>! nalnmal security, upon the human and materia! rcsiinrcrs nt the Dominion. It does not of ueeessil;. follow, however, that lhe last word has be<-n said In the < lov.-rnni'-nt. or I lie War <‘a In m-t. on all aspects ot deieiiee policy. It is. tor example, a question whether, in the conditions now de\Hoping, tin- organisation of tin- Home Guard on a voluntary basis can po<sd>ly n<- jnsiiticd. As matters stand, men arc being enrolled compulsorily for oversells service and for -<-rvie-‘ in the I’eri itorml I’- r --- Th.limits within which compulsion is applu-H m these iiistam-cs instilii'd on the ground that the titirst men an- thus obiaiii.-d for the task in hand, in conditions fair to ;dl coHeeriicd. Il is agie.-d, h'iW<-\<-r, that men vho are ineligible tor 1 ••rr: t <-ria lor overseas service may yet lie fully capable of giving essential service ill the det’enec of their country, should the need arisu, on its o\\ ii soil, as members o! the Home (ittard I jns* .nd logical policy, and the only one consistent with tn;‘ ••*! n-iency. sttrclv is that llie best and lit te.t ot these mm •■.iionhi he si-b- -i.-d lio-f hoiiic.-dl) and m.imiatoi-ily fur ser'.w,- in the ||..i„.. (, , t t In s;;>-l; conditions a-, at'- now ■ a r<-a t --m-> ’, amt m too. iha' available stocks ot ci;:t;pi:.rami mater:.il arc means utihmited, it scetns, indeed, qtUle to justify any al'ernaiive policy.