German Guilt

In Releasing Barbaric Japs Upon Peaceful Pacific Countries

THE organising and military genius of Germany is directing Japan in her far-flung attacks on Pacific lands; and therefore, for all time, there goes to Germany the opprobrium of using a semi-human and barbaric Asiatic race to attack European civilisation in the Pacific.

“Semi-human” and “barbaric” are strong terms, but they are justified com pletely by the story of what the Japs did to British men and women when they captured Hongkong, and by the horrors which attended the Jap occu pation of the Chinese city of Nanking.

We knew, instinctively, what to expect from Japanese: Hongkong confirmed our worst fears.

Someone will say: “But Japan was Britain’s ally in 1914-18. Why howl now, because she is Germany’s ally?”

There is a vast difference between then and now. Then, all the care of British statesmanship was exercised to keep the Japanese forces from fighting against Europeans. Actually, Japan never was a belligerent, in 1914-18. Her ships were .used freely in guard duty, and some of her troops assisted the British, French and Americans in occupying Asiatic ports; but Britain was most scrupulous in keeping the Japs away from the main theatres of war.

Nazi Germany has no such scruples.

Hitler’s minions cheer like anything to see Japanese hordes over-running the well-governed countries of Britain, America, Holland and Prance, and masses of bewildered natives, trained under centuries of European rule, surrendered to the charge of a nation whose idea of colonisation is to enslave or exterminate the indigenous race.

That, in fact, is the greatest of the many tragedies which have attended the Japanese seizure of all those Asiatic and Pacific countries—the abandonment by Europeans of the native peoples for whom they have cared for so long.

The central idea of our rule always

has been that we should cultivate and hold the esteem and respect of the native peoples. We have done that—the French and Dutch even more than the British—and now we surrender them to the Japanese! Can we ever recover their confidence and goodwill?