JAPAN’S INTENTIONS

Patea Mail, 14 May 1941, Page 4

JAPAN’S INTENTIONS

TRYING- A BLUFF At least three interpretation.;; of Japan *s present attitude arc possible, says the Spectator. She may have been trying a bluff ami be now in process of retreating, impressed by the obvious readiness of Britain and the United States, to face -whatever may have to be faced in the Pacifici. She may have had no seriously aggressive intentions at all, the attribution sof them to her being due to malignant British and American propaganda. Or she may have had serious aggressive intentions, assiduously, fostered by her Axis partners, which she has never genuinely abandoned. It is safest to attach importance to the third hypothesis. The speeches of the Japanese Foreign Minister, Japan’s attempts to establish herself in Indochina, and her persistent talk about the establishment of a “new order” in Asia under her auspices abundantly justify the misgivings felt in the British American and Australian capitals. And it does not follow that all the grounds for misgiving have been publicly proclaimed. The ,Japanese official spokesman is now talking of British and American defensive preparations at Singapore and in some pacific, islands as a cause for alarm Japan — which, as the spokesman well knows, is palpably absurd. The temptation for Japan to try to profit by Britain’s preoccupations in Europe, is no doubt strong, oven without Germany to egg her on, but a serious contemplation of the campaign against the Dutch East Indies, the United States Pacific fleet and Great Britain’s very substantial land, sea and .air forces in the Far East should bo a factor making powerfully for peace. The conclusion of a Russo-Japanese pact might admittedly work the other way. (Since the Spectator wrote, such a. pact has been signed).