THE TWO FACES OF JAPAN. A couple of stories in the New York Times highlight the conflicting currents of foreign policy in the Japanese Empire. Tuesday’s paper reports on the choice of Admiral Nomura as Japan’s next ambassador to Washington -- he’s summed up as "a straightforward man with moderate political views," whose appointment "indicates that the Konoye cabinet desires to prevent Japan’s relations with the United States from deteriorating further." The report, filed from Tokyo, says the Nomura appointment "gives great satisfaction to all who want to avoid a break with the United States, and those Japanese who deplore the policy which aligned Japan with the Axis welcome it warmly." Admiral Nomura, we are told, believes that Japan’s diplomacy toward the U.S. "should follow the middle of the road."
Sounds good. But contrast that promising development with one relayed in a story by James B. Reston in Wednesday’s Times -- "Japan...has made a new series of demands for air and naval bases in French Indo-China – bases which if strongly equipped would enable the Japanese to bomb Singapore from the Asiatic mainland and threaten the passage of United States rubber and tin supplies through the Malay Peninsula through the South China Sea." Above all, the Japanese are demanding control of Saigon, Indo-China’s administrative capital and a major naval base. They already have some troops and officials there, which I believe violates their previous agreement with French officials -- it appears now the French are powerless to stop Japan’s military from proceeding as it wishes.
However moderate Ambassador Nomura is, he’ll have a tough time convincing the Roosevelt Administration that Japan sincerely wants peace and, more importantly, has a government that is able to rein in its military men, who seem to be running their own foreign policy. But according to Wilfrid Fleisher in last Saturday’s New York Herald Tribune, there doesn’t seem to be much at all "moderate" inside the new Japan. Mr. Fleisher, who spent nine years reporting for the Herald Tribune in Tokio, says that Premier Konoye’s "new national structure" is a blueprint for a Nazi-style totalitarian dictatorship, and that "serious dissension" in political circles isn’t a reason for hope – "Signs of unrest are apparent in many quarters. But...the differences lie between factions of extremists. There is no possibility of any return to liberalism for a long and indeterminate period."
JAPAN’S MILITARY SEES WAR WITH U.S. If Wilfrid Fleisher’s New York Herald Tribune report provokes concern, a story in the current issue of Time magazine is downright alarming. It quotes extensively from a recent interview with Japanese military officials in the popular magazine Hinodé ("Rising Sun"). The statements are nothing if not straightforward.
The interviewer asks, "How will Greater East Asia be accomplished?," and Admiral Takahashi, former commander-in-chief of the Japanese fleet, responds -- "It will be constructed in several stages. In the first stage, the sphere that Japan demands includes Manchukuo, China, Indo-China, Burma, Straits Settlements, Netherlands Indies, New Caledonia, New Guinea, many islands in the West Pacific, Japan’s mandated islands and the Philippines. Australia and the rest of the East Indies can be included later." There’s no mention of the little detail that the U.S. currently owns, and defends, the Philippines.
But the interviewer gets to that -- a later question is "When will Japan and America fight?" Vice Admiral Hamada answers -- "America’s participation in the European war will automatically involve Japan.....Statesmen will try to prevent such a calamity, but the circumstances are beyond their control. There can be no settlement until Japan and America have a showdown."
Well, that’s certainly reassuring. The interviewer follows up with, "Does that mean that Japan has completed preparations for war with the United States?" A minor officer is left to reply -- "We won’t answer that one. We simply smile."
A BALKAN ATTACK BY THE NAZIS? NEVER MIND. After days and days of stories in the papers intimating that Hitler was about to launch a major offensive in the Balkans, Allen Raymond writes from Rome in Wednesday’s New York Herald Tribune that it’s probably not going to happen anytime soon, after all. "Tension in Rome over a possible imminent spread of war in the Balkans...has passed suddenly," he reports. The reasons -- no sign of any agreement soon over the status of Bulgaria, and the fact that Turkey is "armed to the teeth and moving fresh divisions toward the Bulgarian border." And the earlier reports that the Bulgarian premier and foreign minister were hastening to Berlin this week turned out to be false, although King Boris did meet twice with a high Soviet official in Sofia.
It all adds up to one thing, in Mr. Raymond’s words -- "The long-predicted Axis drive toward Britain’s oil sources in the Near East appears stymied for the moment, as the press of Rome tells how British intrigues to spread the war have been blocked by Axis diplomacy." On the other hand, it should be noted that this news comes from Italy, which otherwise seems determined to prove herself insane -- "Italy...though admitting Greek advances on Albanian soil, expects to push the Greek campaign to a victorious conclusion without any aid from German armed forces." That Mussolini's a real card.
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