OPINION DIVIDED

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXI, Issue 138, 13 May 1941, Page 6

OPINION DIVIDED

JAPAN AND AXIS. (Rec. 1.20 p.m.) TOKIO, .'\lay 12. American sources indicate a cleavage of opinion lias occurred between the Japanese army and the Tokio Government, not only on the subject of the war in China, but also regarding Japanese relations with the Axis.

Bewildering attacks on the Axis are being made by the Kokumin, the official organ of the Japanese army. In a front page editorial to-day the Kokumin declared that Japan could not look on with folded hands in the event of a German-Soviet agreement granting Russia free hand in Asia in return for larger Soviet supplies to Germany. The paper warned that Japan must guard against unilateral, opportunistic, territorial transfers of hegemony by any Power before the fundamental conditions of a new world order were realised. The Kokumin, on Saturday, attacking Nazi interference in countries outside Germany, said: National Socialism is as dangerous to Japan as Communism or Democracy.

A widely-read Japanese commentator, I’etsu Kiyosawa, said a United States declaration of war against Germane would not necessarily require Japanese retaliatory action against America, ft would he dangerous to assume that a German victory against the United States would bring peace to the Pacific.

CHINESE LEADER’S VIEW

(2.20 p.m.) CHUNGKING, May 12. Marsha] Cliiang Kai-shek, at a farewell dinner to the American Ambassador (Mr Johnson), who is goirg to Australia, predicted a Japanese attempt to grab American Pacific possessions and separate Australia and India from the Empire and Siberia from Russia. “China’s victory or defeat will be an Anglo-American victory or defeat,” he added. BLOW TO CHINESE. (Roe. 1.20 p.m.) SHANGHAI, May 12. The Japanese military authorities asserted that their forces are closing in on the Chinese troops in the southwest of Shansi Province after a battle costing the Chinese 15,000 dead and SOOO captured.