WAR OR PEACE IN THE PACIFIC? Some contradictory indications in the papers the last couple of days over whether war is about to break out in East Asia -- either Japan vs. Britain or Japan vs. Britain and America. On the one hand, the British are mining the sea approaches to Singapore, according to an Associated Press story from yesterday. The A.P. says the action came as the British stand "on guard against the possibility of an actual Japanese campaign or a mere smokescreen to divert British attention from any European plans of the Axis." Britain had already placed troops, ships, and planes at Malaya’s border with Thailand to protect against a Japanese thrust in that direction.
There are other indications of trouble -- (1) the Japanese press is reporting rumors, datelined Bangkok, that a British-Japanese war is about to break out; (2) Japan is said to be setting up a military air base at Saigon, in southern Indo-China, which is only about 630 miles from Singapore and well within bombing range; (3) British officials have renewed their advisory of last fall that Britons evacuate Japanese-held areas of China; and (4) an official Chinese report claims the Japanese have stationed ten divisions in the vicinity of Southeast Asia.
So what does one make of Hugh Byas’s sunny article in Sunday’s New York Times reporting that a number of events the past few days have "appreciably lightened the strain" on Japan’s public, who’ve been worried about rumors of imminent war? Mr. Byas, the Times’ Tokyo correspondent, cites a statement by President Roosevelt that "minimizes" reports that war is nearer, and the words of an anonymous Australian spokesman that the situation in the Pacific is not deteriorating. Then, there are the official steps being taken by the Japanese public to reassure its citizens that an Anglo-American war isn’t on the horizon. And Mr. Byas adds that "putting these indications together and adding their own subconscious conviction that war with the United States would be a disaster that any Japanese government must try to avoid, the [Japanese] press tonight seemed considerably relieved."
Well, good for them. I hope they’re right to be relieved. But Japan’s military doesn’t much bother these days to listen to directives from their empire’s own government, much less the views of the press. And I get the nagging feeling from all this that Japan is planning to strike soon at British outposts in East Asia -- by "soon" I mean the second Hitler begins the long-awaited all-out Nazi assault on Great Britain later in the spring.
BULGARIANS WANT TO STAY OUT. Also in Sunday’s New York Times, C.L. Sulzberger writes from Sofia that rural Bulgarians don’t care a fig about this war, and are exasperated that they could end up in the middle of it --
"Eighty per cent of the population from the North Carpathians to the Marmora Sea comprises peasant farmers whose interests are crops, weather, and prices, the easiest way to live and die in conflict with the soil and not each other....The peasant does not much care whether he sells his goods to Germany or Britain, as long as he receives a price enabling him to live. He resents interference in his own affairs and he detests battles which not only kill but ruin crops, commandeer livestock and abolish fair prices. For this wish he has got nothing but war and the threat of war. The Balkan powder box is again smoking, and as usual it is some one far removed who is playing around with the fuse. The peasant says, ‘This is getting nowhere. During the war we will be occupied by Germany and possibly bombed by England. And after the war we will be occupied by Russia, and what will be left by then?’"
One can still sympathize with these sentiments while noting that neither this hypothetical peasant, or Mr. Sulzberger himself, seem to appreciate the cause-and-effect nature of the sentence, "The peasant does not much care...For this wish he has got nothing but war." Indeed, a lot of people in the neutral nations profess not to "care" about whether or not a bloodthirsty Nazi tyranny rules Europe, and a number of these neutrals have ended up occupied by the Germans. If the Bulgarians had pledged to fight, in conjunction with the Turks and the Yugoslavs, Hitler surely would be more reticent about his demands for troop passage through Bulgarian territory. But the rule seems to be is that if a nation’s people don’t care whether they sell to Germany or Britain, they’ll most assuredly end up selling to Germany. The German bayonets stabbing across their lightly-defended borders will see to that.
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