EVENING POST.

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 42, 19 February 1942, Page 6

EVENING POST.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 1942;

A JAPANNED ASIA

Following the Hitler model, the expected Japanese peace drive has begun, but with a difference. The Nazis, in their appeal to their nonGerman brethren in Europe, are hampered by their propagandist past, for the kernel of their doctrine is a master race (the Germans) that shall rule lesser races, and be itself in thrall to a master or Fuhrer. The slime of this mastership doctrine still adheres to any "brotherly" offer that Hitler may make to the "lesser breeds" of Europe, just as the slime of Hitler's anti-Bolshevik past stuck like glue to the Russian pact which he contracted with smug complacency in August, 1939, only to break without notice in June, 1941. The nonGermans of Europe know from the Nazis' own lips just what to expect from German mastery. Has not one Nazi authority declared with unction that conquered peoples will be enslaved; that they "will by no means be denied the blessings of illiteracy"; that Germany "will leave them only their eyes to weep with"? So much has been made plain by the Nazis concerning the master race and the thraldom of other races, that Germany's New Order was besmirched in advance. But possibly Japan's "co-prosperity" (the Asiatic New Order) is less compromised by advertised mastership theory. If so, the difference is one only of degree. Just as "Europe for the Europeans" means a Europe prostituted to Germany, so "Asia for the Asiatics" means a Japanned Asia. Neither Germany nor Japan contemplates the freeing of any other race, in Europe or in Asia, than the master race. If the Axis wins, both continents will know a slavery more intense than anything that has happened since the Middle Ages. , General Tojo says that Japan will give Burma to the Burmese. That is Tofo's sacred word. The same sacred word was behind Kurusu's protestations in Washington of peaceful intent at the moment when the Japanese opened battle on Sunday, December 7. Tojo's "protestations of benignity" to Asiatics will, says the "Daily-Telegraph," "increase the general abhorrence of Japanese militarism- The tvolf lias on sheep's clothing, and it bleats. ... It will admit India to the sphere of coprosperity. Even the people of Australia and New Zealand may be happy if they lie down before the Japanese— as happy as the Chinese, whom the Japanese airmen have loved like brothers. This reads too crudely to be true, but the summary [of what Tojo said] is exact. The crudity is in Tojo's mind." Chungking equally Repudiates Tojo's assertion of love for "our Chinese brothers." The Hitler plan would put Britain outside Europe and the Tojo plan would put Britain and America outside Asia and Asia's" confines. But who in the world honestly believes that European and Asiatic liberty would thereby be increased, apart from the liberty of the two master races to exploit all others? If anyone in New Zealand or Australia imagines that a compromise peace based on realisation of Japan's Asiatic co-prosperity plan would bring permanent peace to the Pacific, his judgment flies in the face of all facts and all experience. There may be no certain way of permanently reinsuring Pacific peace, but if there is one measure that would render certain an invasion of Australasian territory within twenty years, that measure would be Japan's "co-prosperity." To tolerate it would be our suicide and is unthinkable.