Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, AUGUST 12, 1941. FOR JAPAN TO DECIDE.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 August 1941, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, AUGUST 12, 1941. FOR JAPAN TO DECIDE.

QOME of tlie latest observations of the Japanese Press on the situation that has developed in the Pacific are a peculiar jumble of blatant and blustering war talk and of vaguely stated reservations. Tokio newspapers, it is reported, have frankly warned their readers that Britain is ready to go to war if Japan continues to move southward and add, according to a cablegram, "that if Britain fights she will have the full support of the United States and the East Indies.” This statement might well be accepted as the basis of a common sense decision to maintain the peace of Hie Pacific, but a number of the Japanese newspapers find in it instead a basis for now threats, and the “Niclii Nichi Shimbun” surpasses itself by declaring that Japan, by her own power, will not hesitate to reject any action by Britain, the United States, or any other nation under Anglo-Ame-rican influence trespassing on Thailand's independence. It is as well known to Japan as to the rest of the world that Britain and the United Stales have no designs against Thailand’s independence and it follows that it Japan’s pretended solicitude for that independence were sincere, much would be done to abate the present. Pacific crisis. The actual position is that the crisis has come to a head because Japan threatens to invade and overthrow the independence of Thailand in order to use that country as a base of attack on Singapore and the Netherlands East Indies. Unfortunately it is obvious that the Japanese newspapers are not expressing independent and straightforward opinions on Hie situation, but are acting as part of Hie propaganda machinery of a Government which is intent on an extension of predatory aggression, but is at present a little uncertain about facing the risks that extension must involve. The Japanese Government is deepening the crisis by its duplicity and by its refusal to face realities and clear up the facts. Its talk of encirclement is a myth invented for propaganda purposes. The only thing the Japanese have to fear, as the Australian Minister of External Affairs (Sir Frederick Stewart) has said, is a combination of the countries threatened by them. No one, in Japan or anywhere else, can doubt that the countries of the British Empire, the United States, and Hie Netherlands East Indies sincerely desire to maintain peace in the Pacific, but there can be no question of allowing Japan to treat Thailand as she has treated Tndo-China and so to round off her preparations for an attack on Singapore and the territories it guards. As another Australian Minister, Air \V. Al. Hughes, has said, it is for Japan to decide whether there is to be peace or war in the Pacific. If there is any hope that Japan may abate her policy of aggression, that hope arises from the extent, to which she has been disappointed and discouraged by the course of events in Europe, not least on the Eastern front. Japan evidently had counted upon sweeping German successes against Russia to ease and simplify her position in the Far East. She no doubt hoped that Russia would bo reduced to subjection and that the English-speaking nations would be so completely absorbed in opposing Nazi Germany that she would be able to develop her own policy of aggression with comparative impunity. Hopes of this kind are being disappointed so completely that even the. Japanese militarists may perceive the necessity of qualifying their policy with an element of caution and may decide to wait upon events. It remains true, however, that there is every indication that under hei; present rulers Japan will be limited and restrained in a policy of predatory and entirely unscrupulous aggression only by fear of the consequences.