Japans Great Illiuisioin

Waikato Times, Volume 113, Issue 18874, 18 February 1933, Page 11 (Supplement)

Japans Great Illiuisioin

A Shadow on the Western Future.

(By Glenn Frank in To-day.)

THERE IS MORE than a family row between fighting Orientals going on in the Far East. Issues of world Import are involved! . Despite official isolation of the V nUetl States from the wiles and wars of the rest of the world, forces are astir in the SinoJapanese war zone that may affect profoundly the American future. And, for that matter, the future of the whole Western world 1 We have an interest we dare not dodge in the moods and manoeuvres of a militarised Japan. And it is an interest that lies beyond economics. It roots in the fact that the security and supremacy of the West may be challenged by the current clash in the East i£, the cult of force now in control of Japanese policy can impose Its drastic will upon a dishevelled China. I am not undertaking to revive the Kaiser’s Yellow Peril or give fresh currency of Mr Stoddard’s rising Tide of Colour. W* can afford to be suspicious of theories so neat and perils so perfect I But there is more than meets the eye in the East to-day. Sheer self-interest dictates that we go behind the Deoeptlve Facade of Offlolal Pronouncements ■ and unoover the real threat to the Western future that lies colled at the heart of the Japanese venture. There is all the more reason why westerners should come to grips with the world Implications of Japanese policy because we are in no small measure responsible for its Initiation. We must be severely realistio about its outoome, but we can hardly be self-righteous aboyi Its origin. It is let us be honest—a case of Western chickens coming home to roost. For In the eight*, years that have slipped by since Commodore Perry sailed Into Uraga Bay with his squadron of war ships and his cargo of sewing machines, making a breach la the ancient wall of Japanese tradition and opening her life to the Impact of Western Influence and Western invention, Japan has taken her cue from the West. The West has Inspired Japan with a great Incentive I The West has Infected Japan with a great illusion I And all that is happening now In the SinoJapanese oonfllot is the ripe fruit —logical or illogical—of this inspiration and this infeotion. The master copyist of modern times, Japan Haa Sedulously Played the Ape to the vices as well as to the virtues of Western civilisation. The “great is machinislng Japan. The "great illusion’’ is militarising her. The “great Incentive” has led Japan to transfer her spiritual citizenship from the dreaming East to the doing West. The “great illusion” has made Japan victim of the belief, long held by a shortsighted West, that the economic dilemmas that harass an adolescent machine economy can be solved by war, that oonquest and colonisation abroad are substitutes for economio statesmanship at home. And Japan is falling victim to the “great illusion” because she has followed the “great incentive” so faithfully. Let me speak :n turn of this Western Inspiration and West-

ern infection, of what they have meant to Japan to date, and of what they may mean to the West in the future. By a sheer act of will power Japan seceded from the slow-paced Orient and knelt before the Occidental altars of physical science and Industrial technology, p* 1 e dramatically proved that a planned civilisation is possible by tills deliberate Westernisation of her life. And she has both reaped the profits and realised the perils Involved in a machine civilisation. She has harnessed science and technology alike to her industry and to her agriculture. And she is today in the same economic plight that the West is suffering. The surplus energy of her population is suffering from inadequate outlet. She is pressed to And markets for the surplus productive capacity of her increasingly mechanised industries. As with the United States, in Japan the teohnologlc.il processes for making goods has developed faster than the economio policies for making customers. She has Improved distribution. The Ironlo Combination of Surplus and Hunger faces Japan as it faces the West. It is a oonstant struggle for Japan to secure the money necessary to meet her obligations abroad and to finance her Industrial, political, educational, social and military enterprises. AH this has come to Japan in the wake of her deliberate transfer of her life to the Western way of science and technology. And now, clutching for a way out of her difficulty, the forces in control of her policy surrender to the great illusion. The great illusion is her belief that she oan solve her problems by conquest and colonisation. The West long followed that illusion and is only now awakening to the faot that wars of conquest can, at best, bu. postpone the day when the world must solve Its economio problems by wiser economic planning and policy. The threat to the Western future Involved In the present Slno-Japanese clash la Just this: If Japan can now win her great gamble, she may make a profound impression upon the young millions of China, the Impression that, after all, the world belongs to the people with a mailed flat. In China, as elsewhere, youth is In a mood of disillusionment as they see the avenues to economic success barred to individuals, and natl'ons"J>y economic dislocation. It Is dangerous to Dramatis® the Seeming Success of War when youth Is In such a mood. If enough of the youth of the Orient can be won to believe in force and to despair of progress through statesmanship, we may see a unity of movement in the Orient that will during the next fifty years set millions marching to challenge the security and supremacy rf the West. Tiie material resources essential to modern war are Inadequate and scattered in the Orient. But any unfleation of the East under the spell of military victory can upset the peace and progress of mankind for a long time to come, even if the venture should ultimately fail. The great illusion must be smashed if the mothers and fathers of this generation do not want the livfes and fortunes of their children put in serious jeopardy.