WORLDLY SUCCESS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 15 June 1942, Page 2

WORLDLY SUCCESS

THE JAPANESE GOD INSIGHT INTO THEIR DIPLOMACY The Foreign Office in Japan is charg I eel with the conduct of foreign relation- ! , If, however, issues of major importance ! in foreign policy arc at stake the For | eign Minister has to play a subordin ate role to two other Ministers, the Minister for War and the Minister of j Marine. In Japan the Minister for War must be a General and the Minister of i Marine an Admiral, explained Sir John j Pratt, in aBB C. broadcast. Both | must be on the active list, and both , have direct access to the Emperor over the head of the Prime Minister. This ensures that no Cabinet can be formed j unless the foreign policy of the Government is one of which the army ap . proves. These constitutional arrange- j men Is are satisfactory to the Japanese. . for the policy of the Services is the 1 policy which is most popular with Unmass of the Japanese people. That;, policy is a policy of expansion by force , of arms, of treachery and of taking ad- :, vantage of the misfortunes of others to : benefit themselves. The Japanese are J , materialists of a most extreme type | J and worship nothing but worldly sue {, cess. They believe that aggression is J the road to wealth and power and the : , role of the Foreign Office is to cover , aggression with a cloak of diplomacy. Frequently the army forces the hand!' of the Government and faces the For- ! eign Office with a fait-accompli. This r does not meai) that there is any re.il !: difference of opinion about the policy j the country ought to follow. All sec- ' tions are united in believing that Japan must be the dominant power and j that both Great Britain and America ; should be driven out of the Far East, j The only differences are as to tim ing and method. When the army grows i tired of caution and decides that the I time has come to act, the people, the ■ Government, and the Foreign Office I invariably fall into line. We know from recent examples how prompt the Japanese are to exploit for their own profit the difficulties of other countries —the closing of the Burma Road after the fall of France is an in- - None of us are likely to forget how Japan sent special envoys to Washington to carry on bogus negotiations after she had already planned the . treacherous attack on Pearl Harbour. There is nothing new in this technique. Thirty years ago, when I was ConsulGeneral in Shantung, the sacred province of China, I had my first experience of how Japan uses diplomacy as a cloak for aggression. I was spending the summer of 1914 at Tsingtao, otherwise known as Kiaochow, the fortress which the Germans had built on the coast of Shantung when the Japanese Fleet dropped in for a few days’ friendly visit. The Japanese Admiral had chosen this moment to pay a return call on the German Governor of Kiaochow and for several days scores of Japanese naval officers swarmed all over Kiaochow making themselves familiar with the lie of the land. Within a few weeks war broke out in Europe and Japan sent an ultimatum to Germany demanding the surrender of Kiaochow. Her real aim was to use Shantung as a base for the domination of China. Those were the days, however, of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance and Japan was anxious to !. Great Britain and America that she had seized this golden opportunity to start deliberate aggression against China. Of course British—American attention was diverted elsewhere. She therefore posed as the champion of the independence and sovereignly of China. She declared that she had demanded the surrender of Kiaochow in order to return it to its rightful owner. But within six months she presented the notorious Twenty-one Demands. the purpose of which was to turn China into a vassal of Japan and again ex - traordinary measures were adopted in a vain attempt to cover up her tracks. The demands were presented personally and in great'secrecy to Yuan Shih Kai. the President of the Chinese Re public, with dire threats that he was not. to divulge their contents to anyone; and when the news began to leak out and Great Britain asked for explanations Japan communicated a garbled version of the Demands to the British Foreign Office. IN GREAT WAR During the first Great War Japan’s ambitious plans did not run so smoothly. She tried to swallow Shantung and she sent an expedition to Siberia and got her first taste—an unpleasant one—of the spirit of dogged resistance that • aggression arouses in the breasts of , people like Chinese and Russians. The Japanese army, moreover, had banked on a German victory and it was a ter- . rible shock when the supposedly in- ! vincible German army suffered humili- , ating defeat. Everyone supposed that ] there was now going to be a system, ;f { collective security and that the League , of Nations would assemble overwhelm- j ing force against any possible aggressor, j The Japanese therefore thought that ! they had better join the League of Na- ( tions, and not long after Versailles they j also came to a Conference at Washing- < ton and agreed to sign the Nine Power ! Treaty. Thus they entered into a 5 solemn compact to respect the indepen- ‘ dence and integrity of China, to aban- t don aggression and join with America. , the British Empire and other powei a j £ in friendly collaboration in the Far ‘ East. J There is no reason to believe that Japan was not sincere in all the pro- j mises that she made at this time. There j is only one thing that the Japanese ! j really worship and that is worldly sue- | ( cess. As aggression had proved aI < - failure, she was ready to try something j else. If the League of Nations had £ been a success and if the system of collective security had really worked „ we should have had no trouble with T Japan; but when she found that the League was not working and that Europe instead of going ahead and becoming prosperous was sinking into all kinds of economic and political difficul- c ties, the Japanese Army immediately 1 reverted to their old idea of expansion c by force of arms. As in the case of Pearl Harbour the 1 Army prepared in secret a plan com- v plete down to the last button for seizing the whole of Manchuria, and in t September. 1931. when Europe’s troubles a had seemed to reach their climax they * touched the button and put the plan into Joperation. The Foreign Office had no J part in the decision to seize Manchuria s but they at once accepted the fait ac- j f compli and for the last ten years the people have cheerfully accepted every n sacrifice that the Army's policy of ex- 1 pansion has entailed. In pursuing her policy of aggression v Japan prefers to run no unnecessary n dangers. She uses her policy to avert , the risk of interference while she can- 0 tiously feels her way towards her goal. * At Geneva during the Manchurian dis- J pute it was amazing to watch the ap P parent candour and simplicity with which Japanese diplomats would stand 1: up and give the most solemn assurances e that Japan was the champion of the 15 open door and equal opportunity. ° JAPAN’S OPPORTUNITY The policy and diplomacy of Japan have always followed a course exactly parallel to the developments in the f world situation, for the embarrassments of Europe have ever been the opportun- n ity of Japan. The great economic crisis and the fall of the pound sterling t ] in 1931 were the signal for her to seize s , Manchurte and defy the League. When . Hitler rose to power after the failure of 7 the Disarmament Conference, aggros- -1 sion was extended from Manchuria to u China herself and in 1934 the Foreign C

Office spokesman, a certain Mr Amau, gave notice to all the world that no power would be allowed to engage in activities in China without the permission of Japan. China, Japan and Manchukuo were to be turned into an economic bloc where Japan alone to the exclusion of Europe and America was to be responsible for order and stability. They called this the Japanese Monroe Doctrine, again displaying complete disregard for the plain meaning of language, for the purpose of the Amau Declaration was to ensure the enslavement, not the freedom and independence, of China. The failure of sanctions against Italy and the reoccupation of the Rhineland again gave the green light to Japan and an attempt was made to turn North China into a second Manchukuo by means of a bogus and wholly disreputable autonomy movement. The reaction to Munich was the enlargement of the economic block into the co-prosperity sphere and the New Order in East Asia. Two years later this phrase became the New Order in Greater East Asia, which was Japan's way of intimating that as France and Holland had fallen, the rich colonial empires of those two countries were to be included in the ring of satellite states whose function it was to minister to the needs of Japan. SELF-INTEREST PARAMOUNT The sinister features of Japanese diplomacy arise from the primitive tribal belief that the good of Japan overrides all considerations of honour or morality. They keep their sentiments and their material interests m water-tight compartments. They can see nothing wrong in accepting all the benefits of the Washington Conference and the Nine Power Treaty while at the same time violating their promise to abandon aggression against China. They can see no reason why the Powers should not recognise Manchukuo and continue to treat Japan as a loyal member of the League: and they spend many months negotiating at Washington in the naive belief that the State Department can be made to understand that what is for the good of Japan must necessarily transcend all moral laws. There is nothing quite like Japanese diplomacy except another Japanese institution—Bushido. For many years Japan has tried, with some success, to persuade the world that her warriors possessed a code of military honour far nobler than anything the West had ever seen. We now know that Bushido is a cloak for the cruelty and treachery of a mean and barbarous nation. With such a people as these normal relations in future might well seem to be impossible, but in fact once they have tasted the bitterness of defeat and have realised that never again will Japan be allowed the opportunity for the easy triumphs ol the last few months, a solution will not be very difficult to find. The key to it lies in the Japanese worship of worldly success.