JAPAN & RUSSIA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 January 1944, Page 3

JAPAN & RUSSIA

HITLER TRYING TO GOAD ALLY INTO EARLY ATTACK ON VLADIVOSTOK ACCORDING TC ISTANBUL CORRESPONDENT. REPORTED DOUBLE DEALING IN TOKIO. - (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, January 12. Berlin's diplomatic machinery has opened a campaign to goad the Japanese into attacking Russia with “Pearl Harbour” treachery, says the Istanbul correspondent of the “Daily Express.” Hitler apparently believes that only a sudden Japanese blow against Russia can avert a terrible catastrophe for his armies in Russia.

Hitler is trying to instil fear in the Japanese that if they do not strike immediately Russia, Britain and America will concertedly attack the heart of the Japanese empire. The German Foreign Office has warned General Oshima, the Japanese Ambassador in Berlin, that Marshal Stalin has agreed to attack in the Far East as soon as the second front opens in the' west, and Hitler is playing one of his last aces by urging Japan to- attempt a blitz on Vladivostok.

There is very indication, however, from the reports which have leaked out about the German dealings with the Japanese that Tokio is most reluctant to end her attitude of armed neutrality toward Russia, the correspondent says. He has the strongest evidence that Japanese diplomats, in the hope of maintaining this uneasy neutrality, have not scrupled in the past few, weeks 'to pass on to Russia military! information concerning troop movements and dispositions which must have been of great practical value to the Russian High Command.