Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1941. JAPAN MAKES THE PLUGE.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 December 1941, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1941. JAPAN MAKES THE PLUGE.

’APART from its wider implications, and they arc very wide indeed, Japan’s action in suddenly making war on the United States will raise in this country and in other 1 acihc Dominions questions of imperative urgency relating to defence, the protection of shipping and other matters.

The news of the Japanese attacks on American bases in Hawaii and the Philippines—attacks launched while the envoys of the Tokio Government were still ostensibly talking peace m Washington—is to be read with the fact in mind that the British Prime Minister (Mr Winston Churchill) announced recently that if war occurred between the Uniteci States and Japan, a British declaration of war on Japan would follow “w.tlun the hour.”

The action of the Japanese Government wears every appearance of being that of desperate men, who find themselves no longer able to turn back in a policy which js not only in itself indefensible, but promises to bring crushing disaster on Japan. No other standpoint now seems possible for the hnglishspeakino- democracies and the Allies than that stated by the Chinese°Ambassador to Britain (Dr Wellington Koo) when he said that it might be as well to remove once for all an everpresent menace to the freedom-loving countries of the Pacific.