PACIFIC WAR “ONLY JUST BEGUN”

Timaru Herald, Volume CLI, Issue 22202, 20 February 1942, Page 5

PACIFIC WAR “ONLY JUST BEGUN”

Statement By Japanese Prime Minister LONDON, February 18. At a mass meeting held to celebrate the fall of Singapore, the Japanese Prime Minister (General Tojo) emphasised that the war in the Pacific had only just begun. Japan, he said, must increase her efforts, In collaboration with her Axis partners. The Italian and German Ambassadors to Tokio attended the meeting, and also spoke. A warning is given by the “Daily Telegraph” that the peace offers of the Japanese Prime Minister (General Tojo) are suspiciously similar to all earlier manifestations of this type of the Axis technique, particularly those of Hitler. The “Daily Telegraph” says: “It is worthy of note that at this moment General Tojo has been so good as to end from the Japanese Parliament protestations of benignity which will increase the general abhorrence of Japanese militarism. “The wolf has on sheep’s clothing, and it bleats. It will give Burma to the Burmese. It will admit India to the sphere of co-prosperity. Even the peoples of Australia and New Zealand may be happy if they lie down before the Japanese —as happy as the Chinese whom the Japanese airmen have ‘loved like brothers.’ “This reads almost too crudely to be true, but the summary is exact. The crudity is in General Tojo’s mind. What sort of people would they be who, having seen the Japanese make hell while the sun shines, believed in a Japanese profession of friendship? Our enemies, European and Asiatic both, have done us the favour of demonstrating that there can be no safety for us till their power for evil is extirpated.”