JAPAN'S NEXT MOVE

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 27, 31 July 1940, Page 7

JAPAN'S NEXT MOVE

MAY JOIN AXIS

DEAL WITH RUSSIA

WARNING BY ARMY

DRIVE AGAINST SPIES

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright.)

(Received July 31, 10.30 a.m.) LONDON, July 30,

A Shanghai message states that neutral diplomats express the opinion that the arrests in Tokio foreshadow dramatic action by Japan, and that possibly she will join the Axis Powers in the war against Britain. Neutral sources here had no specific information, but it is said that high officers of the Japanese army state privately that Japan might agree to territorial concessions to Russia and guarantee the security of Vladivostok, in exchange for a free hand in expansion to the south. The Tokio newspaper "Miyako Shimbun" says that the War Minister, Lieut-General Tojo, told the Cabinet that the army would not, hesitate to take drastic measures against Japanese who assisted "foreign secret agents" and also against those who were proBritish. It is reported from Tokio that the gendarmerie have arrested an undisclosed number of suspected spies at Kurume and Shimonoseki. The Kurume gendarmerie announced: "With the rapid change in the international situation recently the activities of foreign spies have reached such a stage that they can no longer be overlooked." In such circumstances it was decided to effect "a wholesale raid on suspected persons on July 27 and put them under examination at Shimonoseki and Nagasaki." Additional British residents who were arrested today were Messrs. E. G. Price, of Kobe, and J. De Strafford, of Nagasaki. BRITISH AMAZEMENT. The Tokio correspondent of "The Times" says that amazement and consternation mildly describes the feelings of British residents in Japan. The Japanese publish graphs showing how British propaganda flows from the British Cabinet to the Embassy, where it is passed on to the war information committees and also to the newly-formed British library of information and culture. The committees, however, merely circulate the war news, while the library is exclusively cultural, like the Japanese institutes in the British Empire and in the United States. A statement ascribed to the Japanese War Office expatiates on the "ramifications of British propaganda and espionage," which it seems to consider to be most objectionable when functioning through legitimate channels. A Peking message states that Chinese guerrillas have been active between Yungtingmen and Fengtai recently and are reported to have wiped out a garrison of Japanese-controlled Chinese troops at Yungtingmen. Rifle and machine-gun fire is heard nightly in the vicinity of Peking.