Tuesday, February 4, 1941

JAPAN’S "CREEPING INVASION" OF INDO-CHINA. While all the attention has been focused on the European war, there’s been a significant development elsewhere -- Japan has mediated an end to the border war between Thailand and French Indo-China. (The Vichy government accepted Japan’s offer of mediation after being "advised" to by Germany). What’s significant is that the peace terms are extremely favorable to -- Japan! According to Douglas Robertson in Sunday’s New York Times, Japanese diplomats have used this opportunity to force upon the French a parallel agreement containing the following terms --

"1. Japan gets a virtual monopoly on Indo-China’s production of rice, rubber, and coal. 2. Japanese interests will have a free hand in the exploitation of French Indo-China’s natural resources, especially minerals. 3. Japanese military garrisons will be established on the border between Indo-China and China proper. 4. Japanese inspectors will be stationed in all of Indo-China’s custom houses. 5. A Japanese naval base will be established at Cam Rahn Bay, while the Japanese will acquire also a defense concession at Saigon. 6. Indo-China will allow Japan the free use of all the present air bases established in French Indo-China, while new bases will be established wherever deemed necessary."

While this amounts to de facto Japanese control over the political and economic life of Indo-China, Prince Konoye’s government still sees fit -- for the time being -- to leave the hapless French authorities nominally in control. Not that that matters much in the long run. An article in the current Newsweek says Tokyo will soon push Thailand’s government to allow construction of Japanese air bases on Thai territory. The Thai capital, Bangkok, is just over 800 miles from the great British base at Singapore. The Dutch East Indies, rich in raw materials, might well soon receive the Indo-China treatment too.

Japan’s military men are putting their forces in a favorable position to attack British interests in East Asia, especially if Britain begins to falter in the wake of the expected German invasion. And not so incidentally, a Japan that controlled Indo-China, the East Indies, Singapore, and Hong Kong would put American troops and interests in the Phillippines in great peril. It looks likely that in the Pacific, as well as in Europe, we will need to get military aid to the British in a hurry, in order to protect ourselves.

HOW THE NAZIS COULD CONQUER SOUTH AMERICA. The isolationists make it sound like a Hitler assault on the Western Hemisphere is as fantastic as a Nazi invasion of the Moon. But the New York Herald Tribune’s Dorothy Thompson spells out just how chillingly easy it might be for Germany to peacefully seize control of lands south of the border through a "creeping invasion" of her own, if she wins the war in Europe --

"Every year Europe purchases South American products to the tune of $2,500,000,000. Every year the United States purchases South American products to the tune of $200,000,000 to $300,000,000. Every year Europe sells manufactured goods to South American for over a billion dollars and the United States sells for $600,000,000. But we can only sell if South America has the money with which to buy. And that money she must get as the result of the turnover of all of her trade. Now, if the Nazis win in Europe, they will, at one stroke, have become South America’s sole, greatest, and absolutely indispensable European customer, as South America is an absolutely indispensable source of certain foods and raw materials for Europe. And if the United States attempts to interfere with or cut down that trade we shall become the worst enemy of South America. South American ports will be crowded with German ships; Nazi commercial, technical and eventually military advisors will be in every South American republic. To keep in with these Nazi representatives will be a necessity for every South American government, and the end will be a series of Nazi states south of the Rio Grande. With extreme rapidity, the Latin-American states will be as peacefully penetrated, reorganized and reoriented by the Master of Europe, plus his Italian and Spanish satellites, as Spain itself has been."

Miss Thompson points out that no amount of American military preparedness could throw the Germans out, once this happens -- "What are we going to do about all this, even if we have seapower and airpower to burn? Are we going to go down and blast out the Nazis by force? Then we shall become an ‘aggressor nation’ and Germany will become ‘the defender of Latin-American independence.’ The Nazis won’t have to invade Latin-America; they will be invited in to defend Latin-American freedom, trade, and prosperity against ‘the Colossus of the North!’ And against that ‘menace’ airdromes built by the Nazis for ‘purely commercial purposes’ will shortly be supplied by the Nazis with bombers and fighters."

SECRETARY KNOX, THEN AND NOW. The lend-lease bill has cleared the House Foreign Affairs Committee and may get a full House vote by this week-end, but the last days of the hearings provided one more bit of theater. Senator Nye and the isolationist press had a merry old time when Secretary Knox testified in defense of the Administration’s proposed war powers -- they dredged up statements the War Secretary made a year ago, and longer, when he was a somewhat more partisan Republican than he is now. And some of them were doozies. Such as --

"Mr. Roosevelt is without doubt the greatest autocrat of all time."

"[The President]...gets his way by either beating the drums of emergency or slipping things across quietly."

"[There is] the itch for totalitarian powers in the White House."

Senator Nye seized upon such statements, made well before Mr. Knox’s appointment as War Secretary, as somehow proving that the Roosevelt Administration is fanning "an alleged emergency, a so-called crisis." But while the Senator had great fun with Knox’s old remarks (as well as the Chicago Tribune, which lavishly front-paged the Nye-Knox exchange), the isolationist crowd seemed to completely miss the Secretary’s main point. Which was -- "I’m not ashamed that I was a Republican all my life, but I’m not functioning as one now....We are presented with a grave national crisis in which we should adjourn politics and abandon partisanship -- approach things from a non-partisan viewpoint as an American."

He’s right. The world changed completely in May and June, 1940, and we don’t have the luxury of partisan hyperbole any more. Secretary Knox gets it. Senator Nye, alas, still does not. It’s appropriate to be concerned about President Roosevelt’s careless use of power and to put safeguards in lend-lease that will protect the prerogatives of Congress. But it’s way out of bounds, and lacking in any kind of class, to accuse the Administration, as Nye does, of ginning up a phony crisis, or, as a Chicago Tribune front-page cartoon puts it, of attempting to "Hitlerize America."