Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, AUGUST 28, 1941. THE PACIFIC WAR THREAT.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 August 1941, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age THURSDAY, AUGUST 28, 1941. THE PACIFIC WAR THREAT.

O, with the authority derived from an intimate firsthand knowledge of his subject, Mr Hallett Abend, who was for fourteen years the “New York Times” correspondent in the Far East, has declared that although “there are men in Washington who continue to hope that Tokio will see the error of its way in time to conciliate England and America and keep the peace, it is already too late—Japan cannot reverse her policies.” Plainly as it stands out that the Far Eastern situation is, as the New Zealand Premier (Mr Fraser) has just called it, very critical, it is still entirely open to Japan to avert an extension of war in the Pacific.

This would entail, however, an abandonment of her policy of aggression, and that abandonment some of her militarists will refuse even to contemplate. The outcome no doubt depends on whether men ruthlessly intent on aggression at all costs are or are not to be allowed finally to determine the policy of Japan at a fateful epoch in her* own history and that of the world.

Any actual news available at the moment from Japan is incomplete and indecisive. There are reports, for instance, of a. bitter struggle within the Konoye Cabinet between the Army, which wants action and the Navy, -which prefers caution, desiring a final effort to remove major differences with Britain and the United States. Another cablegram, received yesterday, reported a statement by the Japanese Foreign Office spokesman, Mr Ishii, that: —■

Japan would welcome negotiation with the United States to ease the tension in the Far East, if we can come to a reasonable conclusion.

On its apparent, meaning, this statement might be regarded as a. promising approach to understanding and agreement. Unfortunately, however, official Japan has its own peculiar ideas as to what is reasonable. Spokesmen for the Japanese Government have been talking lately about its patience being strained to the limit. Against the background of facts, that assertion appears as nothing else than an ineffective attempt to gain by terrorism immunity in crime.

As all the world knows, Japan has extended a policy of international brigandage from China to Tndo-China and is showing a strong inclination to extend it still further afield. It is because she has been warned by Britain and America not. to invade Thailand, or to interfere with the flow of supplies to Russia, that Japan complains of her patience being intolerably strained.

While it must be hoped that there are more or less important sections in Japan which share the desire for peace entertained by the English-speaking nations, the question .of whether the irreconcilable- Japanese militarists are or are not to have their way is not unlikely to be determined by the course of the war in Russia and elsewhere in the immediate future. Discussing the position from that standpoint, recently, when it was announced that the Counsellor to the Japanese Embassy in. Washington (Mr Wakasugi) was proceeding to Tokio to report, the New York “Herald-Tribune” observed:—

If Russia collapses, or Vichy agrees to make the South Atlantic a German playground, then Japan will surge onward. Otherwise, Japan will pray fervently that no one will notice how far out on the limb she is, and what she is poised to do. Unfortunately, the spotlight has caught Japan on the limb, . and no matter what Hitler does, the spotlight will stay —which seems to be what Mr Wakasugi is hurrying home to report.

It, seems only too probable that Mr Abend’s diagnosis is accurate and that Japan has gone so far in a policy of blatant aggression that something in the nature of an internal revolution would be needed to bring about a reversal of her policy. The powerful and resplute resistance of the. Russians and the strengthening of the Allied position in the Middle East undoubtedly have had some restraining effect on the Japanese militarists, but whether that restraint will be finally effective is at best an open question.