ACTION BY JAPANESE

Southland Times, Issue 24593, 15 November 1941, Page 7

ACTION BY JAPANESE

PROVINCE NEXT TO HONG KONG

TROOP MOVEMENTS (Rec. 11 p.m.) WASHINGTON, November 14. Reports reaching here say that in addition to movements of Japanese troop-ships off Indo-China, extensive troop movements are also taking place in Kwangtung province, adjoining Hong Kong. The Chinese threaten they will bomb military bases in Indo-China if the Japanese open their attack from that territory. Major George Fielding Eliot, the well-known military writer, in an article in The New York HeraldTribune predicts that Singapore will probably get six British battleships and two or three aircraft-carriers as a result of American naval assistance in the Atlantic. This force, he says, would not be enough with which to attack the Japanese fleet in its home waters, but the Japanese would not then be able to seek out British ships near Singapore and destroy them because of English and Dutch shore-based bombers and submarines.

Japan’s doom will be scaled by the presence of these ships. She will be able to keep only a precarious link with the Asiatic mainland and her only means of relief would be to attack and destroy the superior American fleet and then turn on the British fleet. Japan is thus caught in a trap of her own making. She has not the remotest chance of victory on land or sea or in the air if she resorts io arms.

Mr Saburo Kurusu, the special Japanese envoy, on his arrival said he was engaged on a very difficult and important mission, but that he was most hopeful that peace between Japan and America might be assured. Mr Victor Purcell, Director-General of the British Malaya Ministry of Information, informed American newspaper men that Britain would offer the United States unrestricted use of the naval bases and facilities at Singapore in the event of war with Japan. He predicted that Britain, in concert with the defence' forces of other democratic Powers in the Far East, would be able to defend Singapore and all of Malaya aga'nst any possible Japanese aggression.

ANGLO-AMERICAN SOLIDARITY The Armistice Day speeches of President Roosevelt and the Secretary of the Navy, Colonel Frank Knox, coming on top of Mi- Churchill’s speech, have produced a profound impression in Japan as the final demonstration of AngloAmerican olidarity, says the Tokyo correspondent of The New York Times, Otto D. Tolischus. Their impact was such that they were presented to the Japanese public only in carefully edited versions. The Press continues to denounce the speeches as outrageous, arrogant and insulting. Mr Churchill’s statement concerning Britain’s attitude towards any hostility between the United States and Japan has been warmly welcomed in Washington, where it has been said that no nation has been more clearly told what awaits it 'f it takes the path of aggression.

The Japanese newspaper Niehi Nichi Shimbun quoted a broadcast by Mr Yoshiro Yukawa, head of the Japanese Foodstuffs Bureau, in which he declared that Thailand, Burma and Indo-China were really the Japanese Ukraine as Japan must defend her southern lifeline and eliminate all barriers.

A Chinese Army spokesman at Chungking says that military intelligence reports indicated large-scale Japanese troop movements at sea. Great numbers of warships and transports were being massed off the coast of northern Indo-China. About 100 transports and 140 Japanese warships were at Hoihow, Hoinan Island. Scores of other warships were off Kwangtung. Tension in the Pacific has not lessened, and Japanese newspapers continue to argue that Japan is threatened.