THE RIDDLE OF JAPAN. Time magazine’s cover story focuses on the increasingly aggressive nature of the Japanese Empire -- provoking a senseless crisis with U.S. Marines in Shanghai’s International Settlement, making noises about "protecting" French Indo-China, threatening to attack Hongkong if Britain doesn’t close the Burma Road. Part of the problem for Western diplomats seems to be figuring out who to deal with --
"Nothing is what it seems in Japanese government. The Emperor is a Divinity, and yet Japan is not an absolute monarchy. The Constitution is democratic, but the people are ruled, not rulers. Every general is responsible to the Emperor – yet the Army can do anything it wants – yet Japan is not a military dictatorship. There are five political parties, but there is no such thing as politics in the usual sense of the word: the science of government. In the last three years Japan’s Government has seemed totalitarian, but it has actually been unmitigated chaos. Japanese realize this, and have wistfully desired to do something about it. Since the Emperor, the Army, and the Constitution are in varying degrees inviolable, it was concluded that the first chaotic element to unify should be the political parties."
And according to Time, that’s where Japan stands now -- "hell-bent, with a flag in one hand and a rifle in the other, for total government, total economics, total war, total politics, total everything." Currently, the movement to combine the five parties into a single, Nazi-style organization wants to put Prince Fumimaro Konoye, a member of one of the Empire’s five oldest families and a former Premier, as the nation’s strongman. This movement, says Time, is "a terribly dangerous thing. Its formation, and its almost certain collapse, would hasten that last extremity from which all sensible Japanese have cringed -- putting the whole bloodstained mess squarely in the Army’s hands. When that extremity comes, the chaos of the past three years may seem nothing compared to the New Disorder in East Asia."
THE NAZI INVASION MIGHT BE NEAR. The Associated Press cites neutral sources Wednesday as reporting "greatly increased activities" in Dutch and Belgian dockyards. Also, say A.P.’s sources, "the Germans were apparently concentrating military supplies in the western Lowlands -- a logical jumping-off place in a mass attack." Britain is doing more than waiting for the inevitable -- War Minister Anthony Eden says the nation has prepared 1,300,000 Home Guard troops to fight for every inch of British soil, plus has re-outfitted and re-equipped French, Belgian, Czecho-Slovak, Norwegian, and Polish military units for the upcoming battle. The British claim that Germany’s current attempts to set up a "starvation blockade" via attacks from warplanes and commerce raiders have so far been for naught.
"PROTECTIVE CUSTODY" OVER COLONIES. The second Inter-American Conference of Foreign Ministers has produced the rough draft of a plan to prevent "orphaned" European colonies in the Western Hemisphere from being placed under Axis rule. According to Harold B. Hinton in Wednesday’s New York Times, the proposals under consideration at the Havana Conference provide for a "system of collective control" exercised by three trustees appointed by a committee representing the signatories. The committee would act "in case of a threatened transfer of sovereignty," and member countries would back up the trusteeship with military and naval support, where necessary.
Twenty-one nations representing North, Central and South America are working on the trusteeship plan, and ,Joseph Barnes in the New York Herald Tribune says "these proposals have already received the support" of many of the nations gathered in Havana. It’s expected that a treaty declaring "this multilateral version of the Monroe Doctrine" will in time be crafted out of these talks, for signature by the American republics.
It certainly sounds more inviting than the scheme promoted by some isolationists and trumpeted some time ago in the Chicago Tribune that the U.S. invade French and British possessions in the region, seizing them as "payment" for World War debts. Thus, we’d supposedly enhance our security by making war on Hitler’s enemies. But one troubling aspect of the multilateral plan is whether it would tie the U.S. to a long, cumbersome process for responding to Axis aggression in the Americas. Hitler and Mussolini won’t be inclined to grant us lots of time to confront a threat from them.
WHAT BRITONS (AND AMERICANS) PAY IN TAXES. The British House of Commons has just voted to raise the nation’s standard income tax rate to its highest peak ever, from 37-1/2% to 43-1/2%. Britons will also pay a new 33-1/2% luxury tax and a 16-2/3% hike on most necessities. The New York Herald Tribune offers an interesting comparison in Wednesday’s editions of how much more the British are paying in taxes these days than Americans, even with the new "super-tax" passed by Congress to fund the crash preparedness measures. Note this, and count your blessings --
A married man with two children and an annual income of $1,600 would pay no tax in the U.S., and the equivalent of $63.35 in British taxes.
A married man with two children and an annual income of $4,000 would pay $35 in U.S. taxes, and a whopping $844 equivalent in British taxes.
A married man without dependents and an annual income of $12,500 would pay $848 in U.S. taxes, and the equivalent of $5,312 in British taxes.
A married man without dependents and an annual income of $40,000 would pay $9,552 in U.S. taxes, and the equivalent of $24,452 in British taxes.
MORE DEFECTIONS FROM ROOSEVELT. I had thought the Democratic Convention was a huge success for Roosevelt -- silly me. The papers this week continue to be full of news that should alarm New Dealers. William V. Nessly writes in Tuesday’s Washington Post that no fewer than eighteen Democratic Senators will bolt the party this year to support Wendell Willkie, and "others will contribute no efforts to his defeat." Other rebels among the ranks of life-long Democrats include the President’s first Director of the Budget, Lewis Douglas, and a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, John W. Hanes. They wired Mr. Willkie a blistering condemnation of the Administration’s third-term effort --
"The developments at the recent Democratic Convention in Chicago...constitute the first organized effort in American history to keep the same national Administration in public office beyond the historic two-term period. No matter how grave the national emergency, the continuation in authority for three terms of this political machine, clothed as it is with tremendous political power, is a still graver menace to America. We submit that this effort should be resisted without regard to partisan politics by all who would preserve democracy in the United States."
Another startling departure from the President’s ranks is Vice President Garner, whose photo made the front page of Tuesday’s Post as he and his wife prepared to board a train home to Texas -- possibly to stay. He says only that he was going home to vote in the Texas primaries. But when a reporter asked him if he was ever coming back to Washington, he replied, "I’ll reserve my decision on that."
CONSCRIPTION AND THE ELECTION. Ernest Lindley writes in Wednesday’s Washington Post that the conscription issue is a political hot potato for both parties, but that it can’t wait until after the election to be confronted --
"Conscription...was shunned by both national conventions. At Philadelphia, Senator Lodge, of Massachusetts, fought for a pledge to compulsory military training, but he was able to muster on a meager handful of supporters. At Chicago no serious effort was made to commit the Democratic Party to conscription. If it had been made it would have failed or, at least, would have provoked a bitter floor fight and perhaps impelled several influential Democrats openly to bolt the party....Some form of compulsory service seems to be necessary....Weeks and days count in rearming the country. The politicians would be relieved if the conscription question could be postponed until January, or even until mid-November. But if it means a delay of from four to six months in getting an adequate Army, the Nation can’t afford to appease the politicians. At present the man power for our Army is not even ‘on order.’"
NO NEED FOR CONSCRIPTION? On the other hand, the Chicago Tribune argues editorially Wednesday that compulsory service would hurt the nation’s defense, perhaps "fatally" --
"Nothing could be worse than to concentrate millions of young men in training camps now. They would lack arms. They would lack even uniforms. Their time would be wasted and they would not unnaturally become disgruntled at the waste. Mr. Roosevelt says that when we get our arms we must have soldiers ready already trained to use them. This is silly. Without arms, what training does he propose to give a drafted army? Calisthenics? We need a highly trained army, it is true, but we cannot train soldiers to use modern weapons until we put the modern weapons in their hands. Conscription would inflict a disastrous blow to the present program of providing those weapons. At a time when our national economy is being put to the most severe strain in history by the effects of the Roosevelt depression combined with the demands of the rearmament program, it is proposed to add to that strain by withdrawing some millions of workers from productive activities. Such a course would help to build up the war hysteria that President Roosevelt has fostered so assiduously, and that is why the President is for conscription. It would not aid our defense. It would hamper it seriously and perhaps fatally."
Gracious. You’d think that compulsory service was some kind of Hitlerian plot to destroy our ability to resist invasion. It will make young men "disgruntled," while simultaneously somehow filling them (and the rest of us) with "war hysteria." And it’s simply impossible for the United States of America to build modern weapons if we also draft men simultaneously. It must be one or the other. Is the U.S. really that frail a nation? Do the Tribune editors actually read the things they write? And do they see the slightest irony in accusing others of fomenting "hysteria"?
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