TOJO'S TALK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 February 1942, Page 3

TOJO'S TALK

CONTRAST WITH ABHORENT DEEDS ATTEMPT TO INFLUENCE ASIATICS. RIDICULED IN CHINA. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, February 17. A timely .warning is given that the peace offers of General Tojo, the Japanese Premier, are suspiciously similar to all the earlier manifestations of this type of Axis technique, particularly on the part of Hitler. The “Telegraph” says: “It is worthy of note that at this moment General Tojo has been so. good as to send from the Japanese Parliament protestations of benignity which will increase the general abhorrence of Japanese militarism. “The wolf has on sheep’s clothing, and it bleats. It will give Burma to the Burmese. It will admit India to the sphere of co-prosperity. Even the people of Australia and New Zealand may be happy if they lie down before the Japanese (as happy as the Chinese, whom the Japanese airmen have loved like brothers). “This reads too crudely to be true, but the summary is exact. The crudity is in Tojo’s mind. What sort of people would they be who, having seen the Japanese ‘make hell while the sun shines’ believed in a Japanese profession of friendship? Our enemies, European and Asiatic both, have done us the favour of demonstrating that there can be no safety for us till their power for evil is extirpated.” A Chungking message says authoritative Chinese circles have interpleted General Tojo’s message to the Diet as the first step in a peace campaign and has ridiculed his reference to “our Chinese brothers,” participating in the construction of the Greater East Asia. The Catholic newspaper “Iche Pao” warns the united nations that they should be prepared for a dual offensive which the Japanese are expected to launch on both the peace and war fronts now that Singapore has fallen. “China will naturally be the chief object of the peace offensive,” it says, “but the Japanese will also try to stir up all the Asiatic peoples against Britain and America. “On the war front Burma will be the principal objective of the next offensive.”