The Press MONDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1941. Mr Matsuoka Out of Step

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23262, 24 February 1941, Page 6

The Press MONDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1941. Mr Matsuoka Out of Step

Mr Matsuoka continues to strengthen his reputation as the most inept Japanese Foreign Minister for at least a decade. Last week, if the narrative of events contained in recent cable messages is reliable, Mr Anthony Eden communicated to him a Note in which were set out the British Government’s anxieties and suspicions concerning the nature and purpose of Japanese mediation in the dispute between Thailand and Indo-China. The justification for these suspicions is sufficiently obvious. Both groups of delegates have travelled on Japanese warships, the preliminary negotiations have taken place on a Japanese cruiser, and a Japanese destroyer has appeared off the Thai capital. The general expectation is that the Japanese Government will shortly claim the right to send military observers .nd even armed forces to the two countries to supervise the carrying out of the peacn settlement. It may further be assumed that slow progress of the negotiations is due, not to the inability of the parties to settle their own differences, but to their unwillingness to yield to demands by Japan. For the present, however, it suits the Japanese Government to pretend that it is playing the role of honest broker without ulterior motives. Japanese mediation in the dispute between Thailand and Indo-China, Mr Matsuoka told Mr Eden, had no relation to any supposed scheme of domination in southeastern Asia; it was merely one more manifestation of the peaceful intentions of the Japanese Government, which would be prepared to mediate " in any dispute in any part “of the world.” Whether this last phrase was loaded with hidden meaning or whether (as is more probable) it was merely one of Mr Matsuoka’s rhetorical flourishes may never be known. The one certainty is that Mr Matsuoka is the centre of a diplomatic and political storm. Both in Great Britain and the United States his unconditional willingness to mediate in any international dispute has been taken to mean either that the Japanese. Government wants to see an end of the war in Europe or that the German Government has chosen this way of indicating that it is ready to call off the attack on Great Britain. Either interpretation is objectionable in Berlin; and the German Government, after issuing a series of furious denials, has taken the curious step of presenting Mr Matsuoka with a .formal note of protest. In the meantime, Mr Matsuoka is under a brisk fire of questions and criticism from Japanese patriots who seem to fear, that he has gone too far in protesting his country’s pacific intentions. In itself, the incident is trivial enough. As a sign of .the confusion and doubt which surround Japanese policy it is highly significant. For nearly a decade now successive ■ Japanese Governments have been striving unsuccessfully to justify to their own people and the world the irresponsible imperialism of the military leaders. The China affair, whatever its outcomq in terms of battles won and lost, must already be accounted a colossal disaster for Japan, yet all the militarists can offer in reparation for their blunder .is another imperialist venture even more vast and more hazardous. Mr Matsuoka, as Foreign Minister, has the impossible task of attempting-to show the militarists the appalling dangers which beset such a course and at the same time of attempting to prove to the world that Japanese policy is eminently reasonable. In the circumstances it is hardly surprising that he has become something of a dual personality, at one moment protesting that Japan has no territorial ambitions and;at another claiming all east Asia and half the Pacific as her sphere of control, at one moment affirming Japan's earnest desire for peace and at another proclaiming that she will march to her goal regardless of the cost. Overwrought, trucillcnt, and bewildered, Mr Matsuoka is the contemporary Japan.-