Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1941. THE MADNESS OF JAPAN.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 December 1941, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1941. THE MADNESS OF JAPAN.

yet the situation brought about by Japan’s sudden and treacherous attack on American and other forces and territories in the Pacific is far from being defined completely and clearly in all its details. Some time will be needed to disentangle reliable and unreliable reports, dependable news and mere rumour. One thing established beyond all doubt, however, is the infamous depth of duplicity to which the rulers of Japan have descended. It has been observed fairly in London that from this standpoint the Japanese have excelled even their taskmaster, Hitler. Not only were the attacks, reported yesterday, on Hawaiian and other bases, made while the Japanese envoys in Washington were still professedly seeking a peaceful understanding with the United States, but it is obvious that these attacks must have been planned and prepared for weeks beforehand. It is now apparent to the whole world, as the American Secretary of State, Mr Cordell Hull, has said, that Japan, in her whole conduct of the negotiations, was infamously, false and fraudulent. With a good many details of the results, of Japan’s stab in the back attacks awaiting confirmation or deniaj, no reason appears for altering an opinion that the plunge into war on the greatest scale now made by the Tokio Government is suggestive of despair and madness. An opinion expressed in some quarters that Japan is committing national suicide would be over-optimistic if it implied that she is bound to meet immediate and overwhelming military disaster, but that she is headed for ultimate disaster hardly seems to admit of doubt. Japan is possessed of a powerful navy, and as an undivided entity it may possess some advantages over the forces, stronger in the aggregate, which will be arrayed against it. Even when allowance is made for the accumulation of reserves, however, she is badly placed, where warlike and other supplies are concerned, to carry on a war of any great duration. Her air force, though numerically strong, is declared to be largely out of date. Against the admitted advantages of strategic .position she enjoys there is to be placed the fact that she is highly vulnerable to air attack from Siberia. One of a number of interesting questions awaiting determination is whether Russia is or is not at once to be included among the nations leagued against Japan. It certainly would be foolish to minimise the seriousness of the position now brought about in the Pacific. Some aspects of this position, not least where the protection of seaborne commerce is concerned, may prove to be very serious indeed. While, however, the nations whom Japan has attacked are in a position to face all their problems, not lightly, but with confidence and calm determination, Japan’s own ultimate outlook is as dark as it well could be. It is so little promising that even the militarists by whom she is dominated must be supposed to have plunged their nation into extended war rather because they were impotent and helpless to alter the evil course to which they were committed than for any better reason. For ten years, Japan has been pursuing actively a course of predatory aggression, with great apparent gains of territory and with virtual impunity, save for the heavy drain and strain imposed on her national resources by the heroic resistance of China during more than four years of war. To the men who shaped and directed this policy of aggression, and who have ' extended it brazenly in gambling on the hope of an Axis victory in the present world conflict, any alternative may have seemed preferable to the terms they were offered by the United States —a comprehensive non-aggression pact, conditional on Japan abandoning the policy of aggression, withdrawing all her forces from China, Indo-China and Thailand and terminating her alliance with the European Axis Powers. The rulers of Japan in any case have chosen the alternative of war, but that even they can look at all hopefully to the outcome for Japan seems hardly credible.