Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1941. WARMONGERING OR BLUFF?

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 December 1941, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 1941. WARMONGERING OR BLUFF?

AT the stage to which events have been carried in the Japan-ese-American discussions and in the FariEastern situation generally, there is a good deal to suggest that Japan .must go speedily into reverse if she is to avoid a head-on collision wit i the English-speaking democracies. There is, as there has been, much that makes it, difficult to believe that any Japanese Government can be crazy enough to plunge into, a 1 acihc war, but at their face value the latest utterances of the Japanese Prime Minister mean that Japan will make this plunge unless her blackmailing demands are conceded. It may well be believed that General Tojo’s assertions that Japan will purge or eliminate, “with a vengeance” British and American interests in East Asia have made the worst possible impression in Washington and that “it would not take many more such speeches to harden American public opinion to the point where it would welcome war with Japan.” As a reasonably dependable indication of the trend of opinion in the United States on the issue of American-Japanese relations, the results of a Gallup poll taken last month are illuminating. The question submitted was: — Do you think the United States should now take steps to prevent Japan from becoming more powerful even if this means risking war with her? To this 70 per cent of those who voted in what was intended to be a representative cross-section of American public opinion replied in the affirmative. Eighteen per cent replied in the negative and twelve per cent were uncertain. This, it has been said, is a really startling expression of opinion, for it means that only 18 per cent of Americans are actively opposed to keeping Japan from becoming more powerful, even at the risk of going to war. In light of this evidence it is clear that the Japanese people were being deceived and deluded grossly by a newspaper mouthpiece of the Japanese Foreign Office which declared recently that “the United States is far from being united with regard to the foreign policy of the Roosevelt Administration.” The position as it still stands appears to have been summed up very well by the Shanghai correspondent of the “Sydney Morning Herald” when he wrote a few weeks ago:-— If affairs should come to a showdown in the Pacific, there will be, on the one hand, a great nation whose people have had access to news and views from every possible quarter, and whose deliberate judgment it is that Japan’s actions constitute a menace . which must, at any cost, be checked; and on the other, a people which for four years past has been kept in blinkers, has been bamboozled into believing that aggression is “holy,” and has developed a dangerously swollen head as a result of the boasting and threats of its militarists. The absence-of any active or effective protest in Japan against the current trend of national policy may be understood easily. Not only have the masses of the people been kept in ignorance and deceived to the greatest extent possible as to the true character and implications of this policy, but freedom of thought and speech have been suppressed methodically by the ruling military clique. It might be thought, however, that the Japanese militarists would perceive that they are shaping a course which can only be expected to work out in disaster for their country and themselves. All that can be said at the moment is that if General Tojo and his supporters are really alive to these dangers, they are carrying a policy of bluff to extraordinary extremes. It has long been recognised that the men who now control the destinies of Japan would jump eagerly at the chance of collaborating with the European Axis Powers in a carnival of international brigandage. The spectacle afforded at the moment, however, is that of the Japanese Government, through its Prime Minister, mouthing threats of war in defence and furtherance of aggression at. a time when the military fortunes of the European aggressors are at least beginning to wane.