POSSIBLE THREAT TO MALAYA

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23880, 3 February 1941, Page 6

POSSIBLE THREAT TO MALAYA

i Japanese mediation in the conflict ! between French Judo-China and , Thailand is adequately explained in j the suggestion, conveyed through j London from Singapore, that it has j been undertaken in obedience to i Axis instructions. In the first I instance it may have been independently prompted by Japan's anxiety to exercise pressure on China from the south, an anxiety that was responsible for the earlier Japanese insistence on the closing of the Burma Ho ad. The eventual failure to get from Britain more than a temporary acquiescence in that demand called for a variation of Japanese plans to hamper Chiang Kai-shek's use of a southern route as an avenue | of munitions and other requisite i supplies. Hence the threat to Indot China, whose acceptance of the

Vichy Government's control facilitated Japan's aims. But when Thailand's quarrel with Indo-China, over territorial claims on the common boundary, brought a complication apparently not foreseen in Tokio, Japanese diplomacy took yet another turn —in an effort to constrain the disputants to come to terms. Behind this move the Axis Powers have, without a doubt, been active in a determination to promote a Japanese attack on Singapore from the rear. Thus an episode in the Sino-Japanese conflict may develop, ere long, into a direct extension of the war that began in Europe. Peace between Thailand and Indo-China, on terms fashioned by Japan, could easily be used to clear the way for a Japanese assault upon Malaya in the interests of the Axis Powers. Nothing that could happen in the Orient would please them better than such a definite threat to Singapore. Burma, with Thailand, has been a bastion for this British base, but Thai obligations to Japan, especially in association with Indo-Chinese yielding to the expected Japanese demand for naval facilities in Cambodia, on the Gulf of Siam, may create a position less favourable. To counter it would become an urgent British necessity.