JAPANESE DRIVE SOUTHWARD

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 225, 21 June 1939, Page 9

JAPANESE DRIVE SOUTHWARD

Naval Strategy And Trade SWIFT ADVANCE MADE SINCE 1937 While the Japanese army is etnbogged in China and her Government draws the eyes of the world to the Western trade concessions, the Japanese navy, almost unnoticed, has been making an advance far into the South Pacific, where Britain, France, the United States and Holland have important colonial possessions. Making this observation, the following article, written by Guenther Stein in Hong Kong for the London “Spectator,’ is of special interest. The first step was the occupation, in 393", of the Pratas Shoals, a group of small islands, some 150 miles off Hong Kong, under the Chinese Government. The islands have since been used as a minor base for Japanese men-of-war and naval planes. The second step, in February, 1939, was the occupation of the big Chinese island of Hainan, in Toughing Bay, some 200 miles to the south-west of Hong Kong. It faces the important French Indo-Chinese port of Haiphong on the one side, and the French leased territory of Kwang Chow-wan on the other. 'There is every indication that the Japanese have come to stay in the island, the military and economic importance of which the Japanese Navy had been emphasizing for many years. Assurances Ignored. The third step, taken in the same month, without any publicity, was the raising of the Japanese flag on the Paracel Islands, a hundred miles south of Hainan, and off the coast of French Indo-China. France, some time ago, had tried to forestall the Japanese occupation of a foothold so precariously near to its colony. Japan’s “retaliatory” action against that move ignored former assurances given to France that Japan had no designs on the islands. The fourth step, late in March, was the outright annexation by Japan of the Sprattley Island group, another five hundred miles further south than tlie Paracels. The islands, which are uninhabited, had been regarded as British till 1933, when they were claimed and occupied by France, on account of their strategic position near French Indo-China. Meanwhile, a further number ot reefs and islands, widely dispersed between the coasts of French Indo-China, British Borneo and tlie Philippines, have been occupied by the Japanese. Navy, and it is known that it is Japan’s intention immediately to developHhem into an important strategic It is feared in French and British circles that Japan’s next move may be the occupation of the fairly big and wealthy, but. entirely undefended Naluna Islands, an outlying, isolated part of the Hutch East Indies, another four to five hundred miles further to the south, and within less than one flying hour of Singapore. Japan has already advanced her naval position by some 1100 geographical miles- to the south-west of her colony, Formosa. She is already within 1000 miles of Singapore and the Equator, only some 250 miles from British Borneo, and within the same distance of the Southern Philippines, to the northern and eastern parts of which she is near enough from Formosa and from the South Sea Islands, which used to be German. Vast Control. Japan already controls half of the vast coastline of French Indo-China. and the highly important international shipping route from Singapore in the south to Manila and 1-loiig Kong in the north. It is now much easier for Japan than it was before to cut off these two centres of American and British interest in the Far East, and it is infinitely more practicable for her than formerly to attack either French Indo-China, British Borneo, or the Philippines. None of these recent moves has resulted in any more than diplomatic protests, such as became a matter of almost weekly routine for the Tokio Ambassadors of the democratic Powers. The pretence of “military necessity in connexion with the war against China,” which Japan still used to justify the first two moves, was dropped in the later ones. Another, even more transparent, excuse was deemed sufficient to be given to the Western Powers of whom Japan knows well enough that they are not in a position to. challenge her at present: Japanse economic interests in those island groups had to be safeguarded. It has long been a favourite policy of the Japanese Navy to send groups of men, led by navy officers, to all the out-of-the-way islands, not only in the south, but in the whole of the Pacific, in which: it seemed worth their while to take a tentative interest. If necessary, Japan would have her Robinson Crus’oes in such places, to be “protected” by means of annexation. The world may hear still more in the future of islands far away from Japan which will suddenly be claimed as the “discoveries” or the objects of “vested economic interests” on the part of Japanese nationals. But Japan has real economic interests, of a potential kind, in that part of the world. Such interests provide at least an additional, if not even the main motive for that long-intended southward move which the Japanese Navy, at last, seems to be preparing in earnest. For all the territories which the new spearhead of Japan’s expansion is threatening are very rich in raw materials such as Japan is lacking, and as even the ownership of the whole of China cannot give her. Eyes on Borneo. British Borneo has important oilfields "which, in their present state of no more than superficial development, already produce about twice as much oil as Japan’s own wells at home; and the adjoining Dutch Borneo is even wealthier in oil resources. Borneo and French Indo-China, too, already produce much rubber, and could yield infinitely more of it than they do at present. Boreno has tremendous resources of timber, some of which Japan is already working on concession. It has good coal, and gold, and its mainly undeveloped and partly even unprospected territories offer many other temptations to the naval empirebuilders of Japan. French Indo-China is rich in metals, coal, tropical products, and rice. The Philippines, too, apart from having much desirable land for the settlement of Japanese, or at least of Chinese farmers who might be made to work there

for the masters of a New East. Asia, would also give Japan very great advantages witli regard to raw material supplies. Whatever her immediate intentions may lie, she lias now established exceedingly important advance posts in the South Pacific. And the Western Powers may be late in realizing that the Japanese agitation for a “Southward Push” which wont on for years, was meant quite seriously, and that it may at last, have come to materialize, while their own defences in those areas are still pitiably weak.