RUSSIA AND JAPAN

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23851, 30 December 1940, Page 6

RUSSIA AND JAPAN

Tension between Russia and ipan is not in the least surprising.

At any time in the last forty years there could have befallen the open rupture of February, 1001, which introduced the war that humiliated Russia and left Japan a legacy of deep-rooted ill-will. Geography and power politics have together made mutual understanding extraordinarily difficult. Russia's persistent desire to nossess an ice-free port on the shore of the Pacific, and Japan's determination to attain an unchallengeable dominance in East Asia, mean an imminent risk of more than wordy war. Time and again fierce boundary clashes on the continent, between Russia and Japanese-controlled Manchuria, have threatened to develop into a resumption of major hostilities, as the story of the Chinese Eastern Railway tells. In recent years each of the habitual rivals has striven to establish an advantageous influence in China, and since Japan adopted belligerent methods to obtain this superiority Russia has almost continuously given support, to the Chinese, in spite of Marshal Chiang Kai-shek's antipathy to Communism. Thus nn atmosphere of reciprocal distrust has made sincere amity impossible. The outbreak of a war in Europe that soon made Russia a virtual ally of Germany and afterwards brought Japan into a relationship almost identical has been entirely unproductive of real friendship. Japan's new ambassador in Moscow has fruitlessly striven to achieve an improvement in relations. What the ultimate effect of this disturbing factor upon the already unstable Axis-Japan pact will be nobody can forecast, yet the fact that it introduces an obvious element of uncertainty is itself important. Friction between those whom Hitler would count as his friends may prove embarrassing.