HITLER, MUSSOLINI CONFER AGAIN. An Associated Press dispatch from Friday hinted that "big things were in the offing" at the third wartime meeting between Hitler and Mussolini, but Saturday’s story in the New York Times by C. Brooks Peters carries little in the way of real information. Mr. Peters describes the communique issued after this Brenner Pass summit as "perfunctory," revealing little except that the conference was three hours long. But Mr. Peters sees signs these discussions were more contentious than past talks held between the two dictators.
Allen Raymond’s story in the New York Herald Tribune is more informative, telling us the "sweeping" agenda included "the supply services of the warring alliance, the military situation in the eastern Mediterranean and relations with the United States." It’s likely that Germany and Italy are now reconciling themselves to a long war. Hence, they’re turning their attention toward taking the Suez Canal and cutting off British forces from the oil of the Near East. It can't be said enough times -- such a strategy, if successful, could be more dangerous to Britain in the long run than a German attempt at a cross-Channel invasion.
JAPAN’S PRIME MINISTER WARNS AMERICA. The newest Axis partner seems more willing than her cohorts to lay it on the line. Hugh Byas writes in Saturday’s New York Times that Japan’s premier, Prince Konoye, told a group of Tokyo newspapermen that America is risking war unless the U.S. government changes course and accepts the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo vision of a "new order" for the world. Mr. Byas reports that the premier "reaffirmed Japan’s vision of the world divided into great regional superstates, each led by the locally strongest military power. If the United States recognized Japan’s leadership in East Asia, he said, Japan would recognize United States leadership of the Americas."
And if we continue to object to Japanese massacres in China and threats of aggression elsewhere, or to Hitler’s attempts to erase Britain from the map and terrorize the continent’s innocents into submission, then Prince Konoye says that "there will be no other course...than to go to war."
Give the Prince credit for honesty -- the Axis powers see the world the way Chicago gangsters see their city, and he makes no bones about it. We’d be fools not to comprehend that America can’t stand up for what’s right in today’s world without being ready to risk war. And we’d be doubly foolish to listen to the congressional isolationists who blame Japan’s fantastic view of the world on President Roosevelt, for having the discourtesy to quit arming the Japanese militarists.
JAPAN CAN BE STOPPED WITHOUT WAR, IF... Writing in Saturday’s New York Herald Tribune, Major George Fielding Eliot believes that Japanese aggression can still be stopped short of war if -- (1) the Roosevelt Administration extends its embargo on sales of scrap iron to include oil and other raw materials, and (2) the democracies face Japan in concert --
"The time has come to deal with the isolated and weakened member of the Triple Axis, at a time when her new friends are completely powerless to aid her -- just as Italy ought to have been dealt with in September, 1939, and was not: to the bitter cost of her opponents. A complete British-American embargo on all Japanese imports and exports, plus increased aid to China and adequate strengthening of Far Eastern positions, backed by an American-British-Australian agreement to protect the Dutch East Indies and halt Japan in her tracks: this is the policy that will do the job, that will give new hope to the free peoples of the world, that will demonstrate as no words can ever do the fundamental weakness and futility of the new Axis."
Major Eliot emphasizes this can’t be done without a coordinated effort -- "Acting together, our ships and British bases and Dutch troops – the problem is comparatively simple. Alone, none of the three can do very much....It is the combination that Japan needs fear, not any of the three singly. It is the combination that would bring Japan to reason."
ROOSEVELT’S "SURPRISE" -- WAR THIS MONTH? Then again, a bipartisan group of isolationists in Congress are now expressing fears that President Roosevelt will pull a "surprise" in October that would provoke a grave war crisis with Japan, thus sealing Roosevelt’s re-election. Here’s the theory, according to Chesly Manly in Saturday's Chicago Tribune --
"Many Republicans and Democratic isolationists...expect a crisis with explosive possibilities in American relations with Japan immediately after Oct. 18, when Great Britain is expected to reopen the Burma road, only avenue of war supplies for China except from the soviet union. Great Britain yielded to Japanese demands in July and closed the road until Oct. 18. Since then the Roosevelt administration has been putting pressure on the British to reopen the road. If it is reopened, as expected in Washington, Japan is expected to retaliate against British interests in the far east. The fear of the noninterventionists is that Great Britain will hold the United States responsible for the consequences and that drastic action against Japan will be taken by the administration on the very eve of the Presidential election."
Supposedly this plot also involves an Administration attempt to "get congress out of Washington" while the war crisis is being engineered. This ignores, of course, the fact that no conspiracy would be needed to keep Congress in recess right now, since the vast majority of congressmen are back home, hell-bent on getting re-elected.
Anyway, Majority Leader McCormick has answered this isolationist hooey quite well, saying he resented "such reflections on any President, Democrat or Republican."
STATEHOOD FOR HAWAII? An editorial in the Washington Post points out that residents of Hawaii are voting on a statehood referendum this November, which, if approved by majority vote, would send the issue to Congress for consideration. And although the Post says "there would seem to be little logical or historical ground for refusal," Hawaii would be a unique candidate for statehood in a couple of striking ways --
"A considerable portion of the Hawaiian-born Japanese...show a not unnatural disposition to cling to their hereditary customs and language, and to retain a close cultural relationship with Japan. Some of them are suspected, whether justly or unjustly, of employing their American citizenship to further Japanese purposes and interests. Overshadowing every other consideration at this time is the fact that control of the Hawaiian Islands is strategically indispensable to the defense of the United States. So the question of Statehood cannot be decided on grounds of precedent or constitutional theory. At present all other factors must be subordinated to the place of Hawaii in our defense system."
SURPRISINGLY POPULAR GREENERY. From Time magazine’s Miscellany section -- "In Cleveland, Mrs. Rebecca Butler found out why people kept pulling up stalks from her hedge. Police discovered that it consisted of marijuana."
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