CUCKOOS IN NEST

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 May 1941, Page 8

CUCKOOS IN NEST

NAZI AGENTS IN JAPAN

AXIS STOCKS LOW.

AN AUSTRALIAN'S IMPRESSIONS

When Sir John Latham left Australia |to represent the Commonwealth Goviernment in Tokyo, with him, representI ing the Associated Press, went Mr Clive Turnbull, of the staff of the “Herald,'’ Melbourne, and he sent back from Tokyo this analysis:— What docs the average Japanese think about Germany? He thinks that his Government thought it expedient, at a time when England appeared to be in greatest danger, to tie up with Germany. and now he has begun to wonder very seriously whether it was wise.

What docs he think about Italy? He doesn’t think about Italy at all.’ It would be a mistake to think that the Japanese are pro-German or proBritish, or pro anything but Japanese.

Neither are they even anti-foreign; , here, again, they are merely pro-Japan- , ese. Certainly you find plenty of now - generally elderly business men who are ' pro-British, and plenty of militarists who are pro-Nazi. But they are not representative. The average Japanese, waiting in the Ginza and meditating on the quality of sake these days, or who is going to win the sumo wrestling tournament, cares no more about the ° respective merits and demerits of Brit- o ish and Germans than the average Aus-, T tralian cares about the respective vir-j lues of Singalese and Annamites. He is alarmed, perhaps, by what he considers American belligerence; he usually lets it go at that.

Among the minority who make policies and public opinion, of course, it if a different matter. They are beginning to wonder whether they have not been left holding the Axis bag. 3 At the time when the tripartite alli- ’• ance was entered into, a large number of Japanese firmly believed that Britain was about to collapse, and that, in co- • operation with a friendly Germany. ■ Japan could proceed to reparcel the world, taking as her share a protectorate over the East Indies, Thai, Indo- . China and Burma for a start. In the ■ first flush of enthusiasm, Nazis were 1 encouraged, or at least allowed, to enter Japarr in droves. Now there are some thousands. On one plea and another 1 they wormed their way into Japanese departments.

Because Japan was frightened of Communists, and Germany was notoriously anti-Communist, German advisers were allowed in the departments concerned with internal safety. Germany signed her agreement with the Soviet and staggered the Japanese, who are in some respects an ingenuous people But the advisers remained.

These “fifth columnists’ of Hitler likewise made their way into other departments. They have succeeded in subverting portion of the Press, and even getting anti-Jewish drivel publislied, although the average Japanese would not know a Jew from a jereboam. The German Embassy is reported to subsidise one Japanese journal to the extent of 20,000 yen a month—probably in smuggled yen at that, bought at depreciated rates in Shanghai. German language students are scattered all over the country. In Manchukuo Germans J, G . about the country, lording it over tne inhabitants.

Being unable to get their propaganda material out of Germany today, they have made Japan the base for the printing of vast quantities of German publicity, which is being dumped in the South American countries. At the same time they are stirring up anti-Ameri-can sentiment.

COSMOPOLITAN COMMUNITY. They are background workers. Their social behaviour is impeccable. There aie no frictions in Tokyo’s extraordinaiy cosmopolitan foreign community The Imperial Hotel in Tokyo is filled with a larger proportion of the world's diplomats, official and back stairs, spies and counter-spies log-rollers and lobbyists, than has probably gathered together since the great days of espionage in owitzerland in the last war. Here you find Germans and Americans, Vichy Frenchmen and De Gaulle Fienchmen. Italians, Poles, Thailanders Chinese, Indians, South Americans. Dutchmen, Scandinavians, people who have escaped from Finland over Siberian railways, refugees from Hitler, all' sorts and conditions of people from I every corner of the world. I

For the Japanese, however strict they may be about the thinking of dangerous thoughts by their own people have up to now been tolerant of the idiosyncrasies of foreigners. While a group of Nazis holds its conversation in one corner you may talk in another to a group of German refugees, political and racial, and learn how one of them had the agreeable experience of dressing Hitler down in the witness box.

This sort of tolerance by the Japanese is something that is probably not generally realised. The explanation, of course, is that the Japanese-German-Italian tie-up is purely one of expediency, or what was interpreted as expediency, and that Japan has no more intention of swallowing Nazi “ideoiogy ’ than it has of conferring upon Chiang Kai-shek the Order of the Chrysanthemum.

You find all sorts in this curious foreign community—the Communist son of an eminent Nazi, the professed Fascist who secretly hopes that Britain will win, the German who says to you, "Did you hear this—l just got it from Holland -Wnacs Hitler’s secret weapon?— the Italian navy'!’’ But the extent of the German drive for Japanese support is not to be minimised. The Nazis have made “cultujal penetration a fine art, and indeed have left other nations standing. No less a personage than Richard Strauss composed .special music for the 2600th anniversary of the Japanese Empireyou can buy the records in Tokyo today. There are finely-produced German magazines for sale at low prices printed in English, of course, for Axis and non-Axis alike must speak it in Japan. It is curious to hear someone saying in perfect English to a Japanese: "Well, did you hear the good news about the licet?" and to realise that he is a German and that it is to Gorman claims about damage to the British Fleet that he is referring.

GRIM REALITIES. In spite of all this the Japanese-arc faced by a very thought-provoking reality. That is that the China War does not show the slightest sign of conclusion: that the United States has adopted what is construed to be a threatening attitude; and that the Soviet Government is quietly squeezing the Japanese in the north, exacting a concession here, a concession there. Japan has acquired two allies, one of whom is useless in any case and (he other unable to render an;,- practical assistance. And she has around her in a far from friendly condition three of the largest and two of the most powerful counties in the world—China. Soviet Russia and the- United States. If ever a nation got. itself into a

tough spot it is Japan. It is one cf the most vulnerable countries in the world. There is no reason to suppose that its air defences are in any way adequate. Incendiary bombing from Asiatic bases or from aircraft carriers in the Pacific would set up conflagrastions in Tokio, in Yokohama, in Osaka, in Kobe which would bring again the horrors of the never-forgotten earthquake.