PACT PROPAGANDA IN TOKIO.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 April 1941, Page 4

PACT PROPAGANDA IN TOKIO.

/'t OOD grounds appear to exist for the statement of an American V x correspondent now in Tokio, Mr Walter Duranty, that the RussoJapanese agreement “has been hailed with perhaps excessive enthusiasm” in the Japanese capital. The Konoye Cabinet and its Foreign Minister, Mr Matsuoka, grappling with great difficulties, naturally are making the most of-the talking value of the new pact, but that the position of the Japanese Government has been strengthened in any material particular has yet to appear. If Mr Duranty is right in believing that the pact is simply what it purports to be, and contains no secret clauses, the agreement is merely one of mutual neutrality. This means that Russia has undertaken not,to attack Japan should the latter country become involved in war in the Pacific. Japan, on her part, has undertaken not to make war on Russia should that country be attacked by a third Power, which could hardly be any other than Germany.

If this is, in essentials, the effect of the agreement, little enough foundation is afforded for the joyous anticipations it appears to have awakened in the minds of the more exuberant and aggressive spirits in Japan—those, for example, who are giving grounds for the statement that: “Political observers in Tokio expect that Japan will now feel free to adopt a more aggressive southward policy, with a resultant worsening of Japanese relations with the United States.” These observers believe also, it is reported, that Japan’s next move will be to make very strong efforts to settle the Chinese war through Soviet mediation. There is no evifience, however, that the Soviet is at all inclined to lighten Japan’s difficulties by putting pressure on General Chiang Kai-shek and endeavouring to terminate the Sino-Japancse war on terms satisfactory to Japan. On the contrary, reports from Chungking state that the Soviet has given an assurance that its present policy of aid to China will stand unchanged.

Perhaps the most authoritative comments made on the SovietJapanese Pact are those of Mr Cordell Hull, who has said that “the significance of the pact could easily be over-estimated” and that: "It seemed to be descriptive of a situation which had in effect existed between the two countries for some time past.”

The assertion of a Chinese newspaper that war in the Pacific is now inevitable could be accepted as valid only if it had to be assumed that Japan was committed inevitably to a policy of desperation. The main obstacles to the policy of extended aggression on which her militarists are bent are, as they have been, that she is involved heavily in an exhausting struggle in China and that she could hardly hope to engage in southern expansion, for example by an attack on the Dutch East Indies, without coming into collision with the British Empire and the United States.

Fears of an attack by Russia no doubt have had their part in influencing Japanese policy, but that these fears have assumed as decisive importance as the more direct and obvious consequences of a policy of extended aggression seems altogether unlikely. Faced by the prospect of indefinitely extending conflict in China, unless she chooses to terminate her predatory invasion of that country. Japan evidently is illplaced to challenge the English-speaking nations in the Pacific. There is, as has been said, no evidence whatever that Chinese resistance will be weakened in the slightest degree by the conclusion of the SovietJapanese neutrality pact. That being so, it would appear that the significance and effect of the pact are being over-estimated and exaggerated extravagantly by the Japanese militarists and by some external commentators as well.