JAPAN

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 62, Issue 4423, 9 May 1941, Page 3

JAPAN

A MENACING ATTITUDE. “Japan does not need to fight either America or the Soviet in order to make some minor, though by no means insignificant contributions to her allies. Merely by threatening the Dutch East Indies, Malaya, Singapore, the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand, she anchors the American Navy in the Pacific, and draws to the Philippines American bombers that might otherwise be doing service over Germany. A Japanese invasion of the Dutch East Indies alone would not strike either Britain or the United States a mortal blow. In the first place, it would be no easy task for Japan to dominate a land area of 734,000 square miles, extending 3200 miles from west to east on both sides of the Equator. Here is a theatre of war in which the Dutch, British and Dominion naval and air defences, though small, could harass the invader indefinitely. Secondly, Japan could not cripple the British nor prevent an American wai’ effort by stopping the flow of Oil and rubber from the Dutch East Indies. Both nations have abundant alternate sources of oil. Their dependence on East Indian rubber sources-is greater, but both England and the United States are far more dependent for this commodity on the Malay States (from which the United States draws nearly 70 per cent, of its supply), a region under perhaps greater danger from Japan than the more conspicuous East Indies.”—From a study of “Far Eastern Diplomacy,” by A. Whitney Griswold in the American “Foreign Affairs.”