WAR IN FAR EAST

Evening Star, Issue 23094, 21 October 1938, Page 12

WAR IN FAR EAST

PARADOXES SHOWN JAPAN'S STRANGE COURSE The Sino-Japanese conflict may well be called a war of paradoxes, writes William Henry Chamberlin from Tokio in the ‘ Christian Science Monitor.’ In surprisingly many respects its realities have run counter to its slogans. The most striking of these paradoxes, perhaps, is that, on Japan’s part, it has been a war to win a friend. Whenever a Japanese statesman or unofficial spokesman discusses war aims, a “friendly” or “sincere” attitude on the part of China ranks high among Japan’s professed objectives. The incongruity between the end which is professedly sought and the means which aie being used to achieve it (widespread military invasion and air bombings, with all the attendant misery for the civilian population) does not seem to impress the Japanese mind. An English language Japanese newspaper here recently observed, correctly, if a trifle naively, that “ Stalin may learn some day that he will never become popular among the people by killing so many.” The same reasoning might conceivably be applied to the underlying philosophy of Japan’s war to win a friend. . A second paradox lies in the tact that, while Japan’s military leaders unquestionably believe that they are fighting Communism and undesirable Soviet influences in China, the net result of the first year of war has been to make Communism, or at least the Chinese Communists, more powerful and more respectable, while Japan has been weakened vis-a-vis the Soviet Union. _ „ THE UNION CEMENTED.

The Japanese invasion has furnished much of the cement that has thus tar held the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communists together, despite the mutual antagonisms and suspicions that can scarcely have evaporated alto r gether after a decade of very fierce civil strife. By shelving their social revolutionary (programme for an indefinite period and taking an active part in the struggle against Japan througn the guerrilla war which they have been carrying on in Shansi and Hopei Provinces, the Chinese Communists have increased their chances of playing an important role in the Chinese State after the war. In sti'll another sense the war has caused conditions in which Comniunism might be expected to flourish. Millions of people have been uprooted and driven from their homes by the ravages of war, accompanied in some cases by devastating floods. If the example of Russia, where Communism in the beginning derived a good deal of its popular support from the despair and bitterness over an unsuccessful war, is of any general historical value, extremist ideas in China might most easily find followers among those classes which have lost all their property and savings through the war. THE WAR MOVES SOUTH. Although the new Minister of Education, General Sadao Aragi, adheres to the idea that Japan is fighting the Soviet Union in China, the actual centre of gravity of the war has been swinging steadily further away from Russia, to the, Yangtze Valley, and ever further south. Great bodies of Japanese troops flounder in the ooze and mud of the valleys of the Yellow and Yangsze Rivers. Japanese aeroplanes raid Canton and Hainan Island, at the'other extremity of China from the Russian border. The Japanese military effort is expanding itself in blows at objectives which are very far indeed removed from the region of Soviet special interests, Eastern Siberia and Outer Mongolia. Incidentally, Soviet influence in China is almost inevitably strengthened by a war which has forced China to look for military help, especially in aeroplanes, very largely from (Russia A final (paradox is that, just when Japan has opened with the sword access for its goods to a territory inhabited by more than 100,000,000 Chinese, there is a positive effort to discourage the exportation of Japanese goods to China. The answer to this puzzle is that Japan is gasping, like a fish out of water, for currencies which can freely be used for the purchase of munitions and essential raw materials Neither China nor Manchukuo can supply such currencies, so there is now a marked effort to divert the stream of Japanese exports away from these nearby Asiatic markets and towards countries where the currencies possess international buying power. This is only one example of a larger paradox that the more Japan swallows, in a military sense, the more her capacity for economic digestion contracts, thanks to the sacrifices in capital and resources which must be made to carry on the war.