Nelson Evening Mail THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1938 JAPAN’S SECRETIVE POLICY

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXI, 10 February 1938, Page 6

Nelson Evening Mail THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1938 JAPAN’S SECRETIVE POLICY

JAPAN’S decision to play a lone hand, so far as naval construction is concerned, is bound to cause ! the other great naval Powers (Britain, the United States, and France) to accelerate and expand : their shipbuilding programmes, and to pursue parallel, if not consolidated, naval policies. Japan has repudiated the principle of limitation of naval armaments, and reserves to herself the right to construct her navy, without reference to the other naval ; Powers’ desire to control naval construction in accordance with limitations agreed to by all of them. Henceforth Japan “will gang her ain gait” so far as naval construction is concerned, and that means that the other great naval Powers will be at liberty to frame and implement such shipbuilding programmes as they think fit. The result will probably be a naval shipbuilding race [between Japan and them, conjointly and severally; and it requires no genius to foretell the result. Apparently Japan’s decision is influenced by the fact that the size of America’s naval units is limited by their capacity to negotiate the Panama Canal; and, knowing that fact, the Japanese Government proposes to build battleships which will exceed both in tonnage and armament the battleships'of the American navy. But such a policy will not only cause the other great naval Powers to revise and extend their naval shipbuilding programmes: it will cause them to draw tojgether, in apprehension of what i may prove a danger common to them all, and to formulate plans for meeting it successfully. This is not the place or time in which to examine in detail the possibilities open to the three great democratic Powers, should they accept the challenge which is presented by Japan’s vaunted hegemony of the Far East, but it is to be noted that they possess in Northern Pacific waters and at Singapore strategic harbours and bases which would enable them in combination to neutralise Japan’s aggressive policies. Already two of them have used their influence effectively by inducing the withdrawal of Italian volunteers from Spain. It should not be impossible for the three of them (the United States, Britain, and France) by acting along parallel lines to induce Japan to loosen the stranglehold which she has fastened on China. Early last month President Roosevelt, bearing in mind Japan’s invasion of China, expressed his faith in democratic representative Governments to uphold and maintain peace in the world, and he concluded by saying that “peace is most greatly jeopardised in and by those nations where democracy has been discarded or has never developed.” He did not name those unhappy nations, but, if he had done so, there is no doubt that Japan wpuld have headed his list.