ON THE WANE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 19, 23 January 1937, Page 11

ON THE WANE

COMMUNISM IN EAST

NEW JAPANESE PACT

PROPAGANDA FEARED

Japan, in explaining her new vows with Nazi Germany, has protested Q against cynical suggestions that they might be aimed in reality not at the r , Communist propaganda machine, the Third International, but at the Soviet £ Union. How genuine are these protes-1 0 tations, asks Sterling Fisher, jun., in ,t] I the "New York Times." p I There is no doubt that Japan has enj tertained a fear o£ Marxist props[ganda. The Government began raid- t ling the Nippon Communist Society in 1914 and 1915. In 1927 the society t I revived, only to meet wholesale aricsts land suppression in 1928. _ When it again came to life in 1931, just in time to try to influence elections, the Justice c Department grew frantic. It changed s Ihe maximum penalty for subversive actions from ten years' imprisonment c to death. Its agents descended drama- j tically and suddenly upon college class c rooms and pulled away suspected students to gaol. By 1933 the hysteria had j reached its height, despite the small known membership of radical groups. Within two months more than 2000 . students, educators, agitators, labourers, and even peers were dragged ( through the mills of examination, and . many are still behind the bars. It is quite obvious that this twenty- \ two-year history of the growth of suspicion into fear and then into terror j 1 cannot be dismissed as a mere pretence or a pretext. It is real. j MARXISM WANING IN THE EAST. ; Yet one must qualify this concession I to the genuineness of Japan's motive in 1 entering the pact with Germany. The ] weight of evidence in the Far East just now is that aggressive communism as ] a revolutionary doctrine is on the i wane; that Japan has, in fact, waited for the moment of its lowest ebb in a ; decade to come out in a dramatic } united front against it. This is explainable in part as the momentum , from an old fear. More than that, j though, it results from the fact that in • the average Japanese mind Communism and the Soviet Union are inextric- . ably identified. In Japan, Communists are thought of . less as advocates of a proletarian State ; than as insidious agents of Japan's : dreaded historical enemy. To the Tokio- • ite the term "Reds" brings a vision of Russian soldiers of the Red Army. How completely, to the Japanese, the Red and the Russian are Identified is ; seen in a remark made to the writer ; by a high Japanese Official: — I "Tsarist Russia menaced Japan with her aggressions in the Far East; Red Russia is doing the same. The form of Government has changed, but the people remain the same. The way they threaten us along the borders of Manchukuo with their vast army, I think they must actually be mad." It is therefore, in this sense, unavoid- . able that the agreement with Germany is, for Japan, anti-Soviet and anti-Red . Army. The evidence that it is these no less than subversive Red doctrine that Japan has in mind is found in three important sources; in the attitudes and statements of Japanese leaders at the frontiers of the Japanese advance—that ! is, near the borders of Russian territory; in the present Communist «situa- , tion in Japan, and in the Communist ' situation, in China. Consider the first of these sources: If Japan feared Red ideology more ' than she did Red armies of the Soviet, that fear should be evident among her chieftains on the Asiatic continent. Yet in more than two months in North China and Manchukuo the writer heard ) few expressions of concern over Marx- ' ism but many of anxiety over Russia's 1 military might. Examples were many, ' but two of the more important will ' serve to show the trend of thought. ! JAPAN IN SIBERIA. There was Lieutenant-General Kenji ' Dolhara, whom I saw in Peking while ; he was in the midst of his most active t intrigue for creating a five-province 1 autonomous State out of North China. I "What is going to' happen in Inner ■ Mongolia?" was one question put to I him. I "Why, it will have to be made into ■ an autonomous regioia," he declared, * "allied with Japan, Manchukuo, and " China against the Soviet menace." 3 Then, in Manchukuo, there was Chuichi Ohashi, a Vice Foreign Minis--3 ter in title but virtually a Prime Min- * isler in powers. In a comfortable " chair in the Army and Navy Club of 1 Hsinking, the capital, Mr. Ohashi held forth with zest for an hour upon the 5 threat to Manchukuo —the threat not ' of the Comintern but of Voroshiloff's ' Far Eastern army. His programme ' for restoring good relations with Rus- ' sia had in it nothing about suppression of Red propaganda. Instead, its highly " practice, though not modest, terms ' called for Russia to withdraw from » Siberia her 400,000 to 500,000 soldiers, 3 demolish thousands of concrete forts r along the border, and take back to f Europe the 650 Far Eastern tanks, 700 * aeroplanes, and 56 submarines. Therein after the Soviet was to "fulfill 2 the terms of the Russo-Japanese Treaty 1 of 1924 by allowing Japanese to exf ploit freely Siberia's resources." If Russia does not thus end her * "menacing attitude," he concluded, it might in the long run become necese sary for Japan herself to remove it by severing Siberia. c SOCIALISTIC AIMS. S On looking at the present domestic * Communist situation in Japan, one I finds a strange situation indeed. For ° the very army that causes an alliance '• to be formed against the Communist I' International has, in two mutinies, shown violent evidence that, while abhorring the name Communism, it shares some of its radical objectives. Consider how aptly the. following ex- ■" cerpt from a description of the aims * of the secret Red organisation in Japan also fits the professed goal of Japan's extremist army men: "It aims at and works for the abolition of Parliamentary government, n the destruction or revision of capitalc istic control of industry, and reactionary labour laws, the relief of unem--0 ployment, and the improvement of all e labour managements." 0 Young men of Japan's army staged their bloody coups in May, 1932, and February. 1936, trying to achieve socialistic ends. Their risings were e often termed abroad "Fascistic," but the army, largely proletarian in origins, is actually struggling, though somewhat blindly, for proletarian control. If Japan needs, therefore, to fear radicalism, it is not an importation but a domestic product with which she must be concerned. Finally, in China, the Communist situation is now such ; as to inspire t not greater but le.ss fear in Japan, j Japan's alliance with Germany against the hammer and sickle comes at a time II when that banner flies over less than is 5 per cent, of China. e In 1934 Chinese Communism was well organised, had been established in its Kiangsi capital for six years, and was a actively contending for recognition c abroad" as Hie legitimate Government of China. Today, heavily reduced by ii Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's unn ceasing attacks—"7o per cent, diplon malic and 30 per cent, military"—l lie g Reds have fled their old capital, cled serfed Kiangsi and virtually hidden themselves in the mountain fastnesses