Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1941. JAPAN AND THE AXIS.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 October 1941, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age SATURDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1941. JAPAN AND THE AXIS.

JT is anything but. good news that the Konoye Cabinet in Japan is likely to be reconstructed and that Mr Yosuke Matsuoka, who as Foreign Minister led his country into the Axis Pact, probably will return to office with strong extremist support. Though it hardly deserves the description of “moderate” applied to it in one of yesterday’s cablegrams, the Konoye Cabinet as it is at present constituted has exercised a measure of caution in some aspects of its foreign policy and has avoided, though by a somewhat narrow.margin, the final folly and wickedness of precipitating war on the greatest scale in the Pacific. The return to power of Mr Matsuoka, might easily mean that Japan would be committed to a policy of reckless aggression, regardless of the consequences to herself or to any other nation.

Japan is in an almost hopeless position because her national affairs and international relationships are in the hands of men who have awakened aspirations and hopes only to be satisfied, or pursued, in an extension of lawless aggression which would be reasonably certain to work out in disaster. The position was defined by Mr Churchill when he returned from his Atlantic conference with President Roosevelt. Having denounced the invading and harrying, af the bidding of Japanese military factions, of the 500 million inhabitants of China, Mr Churchill said of these factions:—

Now they stretch a grasping hand into the southern seas of China. They snatch Indo-China from the wretched Vichy French. They menace, by their movements, Siam. They menace the Singapore British link with Australasia and menace the Philippine Islands, which are under, the protection of the United States. It is certain that this has 1 got to stop.

Observing that the United States was labouring with infinite patience to arrive at a fair and amicable settlement which would give Japan the utmost reassurance for her legitimale interests, the British Prime Minister added:—

We earnestly hope these negotiations will succeed. But this I must say, that if these hopes should fail we shall, of course, range ourselves unhesitatingly at the side of the United States.

Although n'o explicit account has been given of the actual course of the American-Japanese negotiations, apparently well-inform-ed commentators in the United States have declared that Air Churchill’s warning to Japan is considered as having full American endorsement and as expressing the position of Washington as fully as it does that of London.

Endorsing that view, in a recent article, Mr Joseph G. Harrison, Washington staff correspondent to the “Christian Science Monitor,” stated further that it was axiomatic

that some radical development in the Far East, either through an agreement between Japan and the Western Powers or through further Japanese aggression, cannot be postponed for long. It is pointed out that Japanese trade with the United States, the British Empire, and the Netherlands Indies has almost ceased and that this fact alone would make it difficult for Japan to permit the present situation to continue for long.

For what it is worth, the latest news from Tokio suggests that the rulers of-Japan, instead of abating their aggression and seeking agreement with the English-speaking Powers on the only terms that are possible, are inclined instead to stake all their hopes on a reckless gamble in further aggression. That decision, if it is made, will be deeply regrettable from the standpoint of all concerned. Tt is tolerably certain that it will be not least regrettable, in the end, from the standpoint of Japan.