Evening Post

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 74, 28 March 1944, Page 4

Evening Post

TUESDAY, MARCH 28, 1944,

WHAT FOOLS!,

"What foojs!" says Mr. Churchill in his broadcast, "the Japanese ruling caste were to bring against _ themselves the mighty latent war energy of the great American Republic." Folly, indeed, reached a high point when Pearl Harbour was treacherously attacked on Sunday, December 7, 1941; but 1941 was a year of folly, in which both Germany and Japan rivalled each other in consummate foolishness. Just as the arch-criminal, wise in all the arts of financial crime, burglary, and murder, is ever prone to make some silly slip on which avenging justice pounces, for a clue, so did the superaggressionists of the West and the East, within a narrow period of six months, place round their own necks the fatal noose. Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad; and it was a temporary suicidal mania, injected by some mysterious influence, that caused Germany to attack Russia and Japan to attack America, thereby signing the death warrant both of themselves and of each other. Their folly cannot be rationalised by any-far-fetched theory that Germany in June, 1941, could safely tackle Russia plus Britain, because Japan in December, 1941, intended to attack America and to monopolise America's war energies. It was clear from the outset that no such monopoly could be exercised by Japan. Roosevelt's bold endorsement of the principle that Germany must be overthrown first finally scotched any idea that Japan could divert American forces and leave Germany a clear ring against Russians and Britons.

Another far-fetched theory—that Hess could persuade Britain, in May, 1941, to sanction Germany's pending attack on. Russia—must be placed in the same category of unwisdom. If Hitler in 1941 really planned xo attack Russia after having first detached Britain from the war, the folly of his suicidal action is not diminished, but increased.. Neither the slim hope that Britain would swallow the bait offered by Hess, nor the equally slim prospect of Japan's monopolising America's war'effort, can lift the halo of lunacy that overhangs the war waged on Russia by a Dictator whose sense of "timing," up to that event, had I seemed perfect. In estimating the foolishness to which the British Prime Minister "refers, it has to be remembered that Hitler's war on Russia and Japan's war on America and Britain were both acts of initiative—uncompelled, deliberately planned, the product of the unconstrained war genius of the leaders of Germany and Japan. Hitler was under no actual need to attack Russia. Tojo was under no need to attack America. Tojo could have merely joined Hitler in trying to secure the skin of the British lion. But each of them, Hitler and Tojo, went out of his way to antagonise the maximum war force in sight. Well may Churchill exclaim "What fools!" and well may the prayers of the devout be awarded credit for the madfiess that descended on the two archaggressors at peak moments of their otherwise well executed designs. As a fitting corollary to Roosevelt's adherence in 1942 to the principle of "overthrow Hitler first," Churchill now repeats that "the British Empire and Commonwealth of Nations had pledged themselves to fight side by side with the United States against the Japanese no matter what it cost or how long the war in the Pacific lasted. Actually, Britain had suffered from Japanese injury even greater than that which had aroused the armed wrath of the American Union." No one who knows Britain has ever thought that the priority given to the German war by Roosevelt in 1942-43 would be rewarded by any British slackness against Japan. Churchill merely repledges a faith that cannot "fail.

Besides pointing out that Japan's crime on Sunday, December 7, 1941, places her on a pinnacle of folly, Churchill distributes praise as well as blame to her conduct of the war. He considers that the Japanese are prudent in not risking their battle' fleet in a general engagement for the defence of their outer defence lines (such as the Marshalls, the Solomons, Rabaul), but he points out that the same policy of conservation has not been applied sufficiently to' their shipping and air forces to save them from serious aerial attrition and from crippling loss of ships, especially oil tankers. How, then, does their advanced insular arc, viewed as an instrument of strategy, emerge from this study? Surely it emerges very badly, for the great initial naval success gained by Japan at Pearl Harbour—the first fruit of her ultimately suicidal attack on America —was not followed up sufficiently to prevent the United States Navy from recovering, from building itself up to supremacy, and from hitting back at the insular arc with air force and land force. Clearly, the degree of Japanese success at Pearl Harbour was not enough, because the insular arc now cannot be held without battle fleet losses that Japan dare not incur, and without shipping and air losses which she has dared to incur but really cannot afford. All this chain of events since Pearl Harbour merely spells more Japanese suicide, as a result of which, .according to Churchill, the Japanese already "are showing great weakness." He is "proud of the contribution made by Australia and New Zealand against' Japan," and he reminds them of that debt to America which they should never forget: "The United States operations had shielded Australia and New Zealand from ■Japanese aggression and from mortal peril during the period when the Mother Country was at full stretch in the struggle against Germany and Italy, and that would never be forgotten in any land where the Union Jack flew."