International Affairs: Three Ugly Pictures

TRANSPORT, trade, development, administration—all the normal activities of the Pacific territories await the outcome of events in Europe. Anxiously, we watch the progress of the Hitler War: but the unreal and fantastic character of the thing, and the unprecedented com plexity of international affairs gener ally, give the future an appearance baffling to the ordinary man.

Britain and France will not make peace with Germany until Germany renounces Hitlerism (which means unreliableness, treachery and aggres siveness in international relationships) and until a measure of independence is restored to the Poles and Czechs.

The Allies are not attacking Germany —merely standing to arms along Germany’s western front, while they put upon Germany’s economic struc ture a stranglehold that grows stronger every week. That policy may, or may not, succeed.

Germany (population 90,000,000, in cluding Czechs and Poles) has im mense armies and air-fleets facing the Allies in the west; a doughty people apparently united behind Hitler; and—across the frontiers of Scandinavia, Russia, the Balkans and Italy—much of the world to be drawn upon for food supplies and raw material.

On these broad facts, it looks like stalemate. Either side could do in calculable damage to the other; but, if each remains staunch, neither can defeat the other.

It is a fact, however, that the developments of September and October have placed increasing ad vantages with the democracies. Ger many sacrificed her two potential

Allies (Italy and Japan) to make a pact with Russia; and now her re lations with Russia are increasingly cold. Russia has seized control of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, and is menacing Finland, while Germany— regarded as the natural protector of the Baltic States—stands impotent and foolish. Russia is trying to ex tend her influence over the Balkans, but has been virtually defied by Turkey (the ally of Britain and France); and, as Italy is equally in terested in keeping Bolshevism out of the Balkans, Italy is inclined to ally herself with Turkey, and daily is mov ing further away from the “Rome- Berlin Axis”.

Obeying the clear wish of 70 per cent, of the American people, the United States Congress swept away sufficient of the two-years-old Neu trality Act to permit the Allies to buy in America all the munitions they require. The Americans do not wish to enter another European war, but there is no doubt where their sym pathies lie. * * * EACH week shows Nazi Germany more isolated and more friend less. In the field of diplomacy, she has made some erratic, disconnected and apparently silly moves. It is clear that, in Germany’s international relationships, Hitler acts by himself and takes no advice —and Hitler, who never has been outside of Germany (except one brief visit to Rome) knows nothing of the psychology of other nations. One gets the im pression that, with the now enor mously powerful Allies waiting grimly in the west, and the sinister black shadow of a cruel, cynical and over whelming Russia creeping ever nearer

in the east, the nerve of the mono maniac is breaking. The more sensa tional newspapers, always wishful thinkers, already picture him running around shrieking, and wringing his hands.

In the meantime, what will he do next? Realising that they are deal ing with a man who has no regard for treaties or promises or frontiers, the small neutral nations—Holland, Belgium and Switzerland—are at full war strength, ready to repel the wild beast if he should invade their terri tories in a spring at Britain or France.

These are wise precautions. The possibility is there; but the prob abilities are all against it. The Ger man army chiefs will not allow their Fuhrer to sacrifice their mighty mili tary machine—their one guarantee of security in a future time, when the monomaniac and his Nazi “govern ment” shall have been swept away, and it will be necessary for the Ger mans to right-about-turn and face the eastern frontier. If Hitler were to over-run Holland, or those other neutral democracies, he would stir up against Germany the active hostility of the entire world, so that Germany inevitably would be defeated, and Western civilisation might crumble.

So far as the Hitler War is con cerned, we may expect a further period of merely stand-to-arms. The Allies will await the final collapse of the Hitler nerve and the breaking of Nazi-dom; while the Nazi gangsters, for their part, will do everything that devilish ingenuity can devise to undermine the morale of the Allies, and separate France from Britain. * * * MEANWHILE, according to hysteri cal journalists, Russia remains “completely a mystery”. She double crossed Britain and France, between

March and August; she appears to have double-crossed Germany be tween August and November. With cold and calculated purpose, she will double-cross any other nation which enters into relations with her, so long as thereby she can weaken any unit of “the capitalistic world”.

Britain and France have gone back again to Moscow, to do a little diplo matic wooing there, and maybe tighten their economic stranglehold on Germany. It is a useless waste of time. Russia’s one dominating policy is to break down the Western European property-owning system, and spread Communism: and she will have no scruples in deceiving first one side, and then another, in this Hitler War, in the hope that she can weaken them all and open the way for the outward march of the Red Armies of Bolshevism. Nothing that the Western world holds dear—the sanctity of treaties, the honouring of obligations, respect of religion, cleanliness and decency in individual conduct— matters in the sight of the Bolshevik, if only his peculiar dogma can be advanced.

Long after Hitler has gone to oc cupy his memorial niche among the freaks of history, and Germany has taken her natural alignment with Western nations, the growing menace of Russia will make us value more highly our democratic institutions, and will force us to go everlastingly armed. * * * THERE is yet another factor which threatens the orderliness of our world. We who live in the Pacific must regard the present condition of Japan as a greater menace to our security than either Nazi Germany or Russia. Japan, at the moment, seems a problem insoluble; yet the future of Japan is as much our responsibility as it is that of the harassed Govern ment in Tokio.

Japan, under a century of Occi dental tuition, has become Western ised and industrialised. To-day, be cause of that, she must expand, or perish. She must have territory for her surplus people, new sources of raw material for her factories, sure markets for her manufactures. She was a late-comer in nineteenth cen tury colonisation; so that, to-day, wherever she turns, she finds already the flag of another nation. Malaya, Cochin China, East Indies, East Africa, Philippines, New Guinea, Hawaii—any one of these great, rich territories would have met her im mediate needs, and left her to make plough-shares rather than bayonets.

As it is, her choice is a cruel one; and we, as reasoning human beings, must recognise her dilemma.

Japan, at this moment, is at a part ing of the ways. Her army is bogged in China, and her economic condition is precarious. During the two years in which her militarists directed her Government, she was committed to the policy of driving Britain out of China while Britain’s hands were tied

in Europe; and, although her Govern ment is changed, and political af fairs there now are completely in a state of flux, the campaign goes on.

Britain will not abandon her enor mous interests in China without a fight; and, if Britain fights to main tain the status quo in China or the Pacific, the United States probably will join. her. In that event, nothing could save Japan from a major dis aster.

But what good would be achieved in the Pacific if the Japanese Empire were destroyed? None. The Euro pean communities in Asia and Aus tralasia might write their own death warrant.

Let the lesson of Versailles be ap plied in the Pacific and in Eastern Asia. If the Allies, in 1920-1930, had assisted in re-building the Teutonic nations in Germany and Austria, there

would have been no Hitler War to day—and no sinister shadow creep ing across Europe from the east. If the European nations, including U.S.A., in 1940-1950, will assist Japan in solving her most urgent national problems, they may prevent, in the Pacific, something far worse than the Hitler War. There is yet time for the nations to deal with this situation; but the sands are running out. The alternative is a thing too horrible to contemplate—a period of ceaseless armament and tension, and an In evitable, ruthless war of extermination between Europeans and Asiatics. * * * Thus, international affairs to-day present three separate and uncon nected pictures of extreme ugliness— the Hitler War; Russia’s determina tion to “Bolshevise” the world; and the desperate situation of Japan.