TOUGH TASK AHEAD

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4555, 5 March 1942, Page 4

TOUGH TASK AHEAD

REALISTIC PACIFIC BOOK

“JAPAN UNMASKED’’ “ If war comes, it will be a long struggle, in spite of the optimism of those persons who say we could destroy the Japanese Navy in short order. We’d have to get that navy first, and there is no reason to suppose that the Japanese high command will order the Imperial Fleet to come out into the mid-Pacific to do battle . . That prediction is made by Hallett Abend, ' New York Times ’ correspondent of long standing in the East, in “ Japan Unmasked,” a book which he wrote mainly towards the end of 1940 and completed in February of 1941. It is a prophecy that demands respect, for most of the other forecasts made in the book have come to pass —within a year of the writing. In the author’s view, war by Japan became inevitable when, instead of making a tactful retreat from her impossible position in China, she burned her bridges by Joining the BerlinRome Axis and then extended recognition to her puppet Government at Nanking. Japan, in fact, chose to gamble on her own ability to continue a campaign of aggression, to gamble on the patience and forbearance of the United States, and to gamble on the possible dissolution of the British Empire, All or nothing!—dictator of East Asia and the East Indies, or defeat and disarmament and reduction to the place of a third-class Power: those became Tokio’s alternatives a year ago, and in that knowledge she has been awaiting the moment to strike. Japan would, it is held, have struck in 1939, but for the shock of surprise with which she received news of the Berlin-Moscow agreement concluded in August. , SAW NO ALTERNATIVE

For a year after that Japan hesitated. What decided her policy was the collapse of France and Holland—giving an opening in Indo-China and the East Indies—and the attitude of America, which made it clear that reconciliation with Washington was impossible unless Japan was prepared to relinquish all gains made by aggression since 1937The official teT’ms of the Axis treaty apparently do not give Japan any advantages at all, but there are, it is suggested, secret clauses which give Japan complete control of French Indo-China and the East Indies, pledge Germany and Italy to adjust matters in Chjna, and pledge Germany to help effect the conclusion of a binding non-aggression pact between Russia and Japan, On this basis the “ rule or ruin ” clique in the Japanese army—a score or so of fanatical visionaries, many of them dangerously ignorant of the rest of the world—determined to plunge their country into war. It was this Knowledge, expressed in despatches to his newspaper, that caused Abend to be attacked by Japanese in Shanghai. He was assaulted and searched and had his papers stolen, and eventually he had to leave to avoid assassination. Apart from the basic conviction that the Japanese militaristic clique was determined to strike, the shrewd American Journalist reached several important conclusions as a result of his long and close observation of Eastern affairs. Hong Kong, it seemed to him, could not long withstand attack if the Japanese struck at its water supply- Thailand would almost certainly link up with Japan and give the aggressor airfields within 400 miles of Singapore, And the prospect of America holding the Philippines, as he saw the situation, was not encouraging. What of Singapore? "If the United States had a large proportion of her fleet there,” Abend writes, “ our position would be vastly enhanced. But once Japan makes an assault on that key position, it will be too »ate for us to get there.”

PRAISE FOR DUTCH Japan, it is added, probably intended an attack on Singapore all along, and America’s action in refraining from sending her fleet there—lest Japan be seriously angered—may go down in history as another blunder of the democracies. Of all the white peoples of the East, the ones showing the most awareness of the Japanese menace, up to a year ago, were the Dutch of those “ Isles of Courage,” the East Indies. Their air. raid precautions, the visitor differed sharply from the slackness of Singapore, Hong Kong and Manila; their preparations for destruction were complete, and they had taken far more adequate steps than any other place in the East to deal with potential fifth-columnists.

“ Foreign Minister Matsuoka,” the author concludes, “has well said that a conflict in the Pacific would be a tragedy for mankind. The end might be a beaten and a bankrupt Japan—a sullen and resentful people, who would seek to arm for revenge. A Japan victorious, however, would also be a tragedy for that portion of mankind fated to live under the Japanese yoke, and submit to arrogant exploitation by a greedy and unscrupulous militarydominated regime. " The year 1941 may be the midnight of the long darkness; assuredly the twilight begun in 1914 has now deepened into dark. How long the night will be no prophet can know, but it may safely be said that as yet there is no first hint of the dawn.”

The present copy of “ Japan Unmasked ” is the English edition.