IS JAPAN WEAKENING?

Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20744, 2 March 1939, Page 6

IS JAPAN WEAKENING?

If the terms upon which Japan is reported to be extending peace “feelers” have been given correctly, Marshal Chiang Kai-shek will be encouraged to continue his resistance against the Japanese invasion. It is alleged that Japan proposes a Chinese Government headed by Dr. Wang Chingwei but including Chiang Kai-shek, and that Japan would be prepared to withdraw from Central China but would retain her garrisons in the north. Economic rights would be granted to other Powers to facilitate a settlement. These suggestions represent such a drastic modification of Japan’s former claims that they will be accepted with doubt until confirmation is forthcoming. Japan hitherto has declared that the war will go on until the influence of Chiang Kai-shek is wholly destroyed. It has also obviously been the intention of Japan to oust the influence of foreign Powers from the Far East. If those two aims ha\V; been abandoned, or if Japan is prepared to abandon them to secure peace, then Japan’s strength as a fighting nation must have deteriorated very seriously.

Arguments are often heard from authentic sources that Japan is nearing economic collapse; that she was well prepared for a short campaign in China but not for the prolonged and exhausting war that has developed. Her own exports and her ability to purchase necessary raw materials have declined ominously, and the standard of living of her people has been reduced to a tragically low level. What measure of relief her partial conquest of a great part of the most fertile portions of China has brought it is impossible to gauge accurately. It has been said it is impossible to “bankrupt” a nation which has reasonable internal resources, but it is true that Japan lacks internally many raw materials essential to the successful conduct of a prolonged war, and it may be that her reserves have dwindled dangerously. It seems that nothing but the lack of power to continue the effort would cause Japan to modify her demands to the extent indicated by the reported peace terms.