JAPAN’S AIM

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 56, Issue 4046, 11 May 1938, Page 5

JAPAN’S AIM

TO SQUEEZE OUT FOREIGNERS. Japan means *to continue the wi with China until China is under her domination. So Prince Konoe, her Prime Minister, told the Press the other day. He | said that Japan would use all possible I means, military and other, to crush the Government of Chiang Kai-shek. The Japanese fighting forces have thus triumphed on the home front as well as on the battle front, says Sir Arthur Willert in the “Sunday Express.” The launching of the invasion of China last summer was due to their ascendency at Tokio. The Prime Minister’s statement shows that the representatives of the business men and moderates were downed at the great Imperial Council which the Emperor recently held. One reason for their defeat is probably the fact that Japan is less badly off financially than w. are inclined to think. Her war is, of course, costing her a lot. But her export trade has been booming and she is pretty well selfsupporting so far as food goes. She ought, therefore, to have considerable sums abroad for the purchase of stuff for her war industries. In any case the old fighting spirit of Japan has over-ridden the caution of the modern business man. The extreme nationalists are led by the officers of the army, navy and air force. They are the heirs of the Samuri, and they glorify force. Japan’s new leaders favour expansion by conquest and colonisation. They glorify force and dream of the “day” when their armies shall march,

like the German militarists before the Great War. They were behind the conquest of Manchuria in 1932. They presided over the subsequent seizure of other neighbouring Chinese territories. Their good qualities are singleminded patriotism, bravery and tirelessness. The moderates agree that Japan needs to expand, but they hoped that she would be able to do so by peaceful processes of commerce and “good neighbourliness.” The whole population of Japan feel that their country is entitled to a special position in China. Racial pride and economic necessity both inspire the claim. Racial pride demands that Japan should be allowed to control her own corner of the world, or at least to settle her own affairs with China as she likes; economic necessity forces her to seek outside markets and supplies of raw material. China is, to her mind, the only place where she can go for them in view of the fact that the white races have pre-empted the rest of the globe. So the domination of China and the squeezing out of the foreigner are linked together in the minds of millions of Japanese as the twin objectives of their war. And the squeezing out of the foreigners means the getting of American and British and European trade into their own hands and the elimination of the influence of Russia. That has already happened in Korea and Manchukuo, the two parts of the Asiatic mainland which the Japanese control.