TURKEY MIGHT DECLARE WAR ON HITLER. If German troops use Bulgaria as a staging ground for aggression, that is. The latest turn-around in the Balkan crisis comes just a week after the Turks signed a non-aggression pact with the Bulgars -- a pact that many observers took to mean Turkey was backing away from her alliance with Britain and giving Hitler a green light to move. But according to the United Press, Turkish Foreign Minister Saracoglu has now issued a statement saying his country "cannot in any way remain indifferent to foreign activities which might occur in her zone of security." The Foreign Minister also said the Turks would fight any aggression "directed against her territorial integrity or her independence" -- note the distinction. It’s widely believed Turkish officials consider a German occupation of Bulgaria and invasion of Greece to be a threat to the continued "independence" of Turkey.
They’re right to think that way, of course. Nazi occupation of the remainder of the Balkans would reduce Turkey to cowed neutrality at best. And it’s heartening that British Foreign Secretary Eden is headed for Ankara (from a visit to Cairo) to discuss what the current crisis means for the Anglo-Turkish mutual-aid pact. But is Saracoglu’s sudden attack of courage too little, too late? The Associated Press says that Bulgarian police have halted all automobile traffic in the region around Sofia, the capital, and foreigners have been barred from the border areas. "The capital was ordered to be ready for a blackout at a moment’s notice, beginning Tuesday," says the A.P.
There’s still no confirmation of whether German troops are actually inside Bulgaria or not, but the Bulgars certainly seem to think they will be shortly. They don’t seem to mind much, either.
WHAT WILL JAPAN DO? Will Japan and America remain at peace with each other? Part of the answer, according to Hugh Byas in Sunday’s New York Times, depends on Russia, which figures heavily right now in the thinking of Japanese Foreign Minister Matsuoka --
"Japanese strategists see two potential enemies able to engage Japan in a life or death struggle. On their north looms Soviet Russia, gigantic, distrusted, unknown. Manchuria no longer is a buffer State, for Red soldiers and soldiers of the Rising Sun can see each other’s blockhouses across the Amur River. On their south is the Pacific, where the American fleet can force Japan to throw its whole navy into a battle which, if lost, would lay the Japanese islands open to invasion from air. It follows, like a demonstration in Euclid, that Japanese strategy requires that Japanese high policy shall prevent circumstances from arising wherein Japan might have to fight these two potential enemies at once. Mr. Matsuoka belongs to that school of Japanese statesmen who hold that understanding with Russia should be a fundamental of Japanese policy. If an enduring pact with Russia materializes, Japan’s southward drive will be invigorated. But ‘no war with America’ must remain a fixed point in Japanese policy unless and until Japan is assured of Russia’s friendly neutrality. If an when Lieut. Gen. Yoshitsugu Tatekawa, Ambassador to Russia, can wire from Moscow that the Soviets have been squared, conditions will change and the pace of the Japanese southward march will be speeded."
Seen in this light, Japan’s troop movements in Southeast Asia this past week look more like a bluff than anything else -- the Japanese wouldn’t move on Singapore and the Dutch East Indies, and risk American intervention, until their position vis-a-vis Russia is secured. And one can take comfort for now in Mr. Byas’ estimation that Japan, if guided by the Foreign Minister’s hands, might not decide on war after all -- "The riddle of the Pacific is whether [Mr. Matsuoka] is skillful enough to devise and strong enough to enforce policies which can obtain by peaceful means those economic opportunities Japan asks as rightfully hers. Or will other Japanese forces, now dazzled by the results Hitler’s power policies have obtained, use their power ruthlessly and recklessly to seize the opportunity to which they believe Japan’s imperial destiny and their European ally’s might are beckoning them."
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