Real Danger

Japan Remains A Real Danger To Pacific Peace

That exceedingly well-informed Aus tralian journalist, Malcolm "H. Ellis (“Ek Dum,” of “The Bulletin) is in Japan just now; and some of the things he has said in “The Bulletin” are of in terest to every intelligent observer in the Pacific.

He has expressed astonishment at the remarkable industrial recovery of Japan; but the thing which really has startled him is the evidence, on every side, of the phenomenal increase in the Jap population. A net increase each year of over a million presents a political problem which cannot be ignored.

Moscow’s long-range plan is the in clusion, in the Soviet sphere, of practic ally all Asia —1947-48 Communist activ ities in China, in all Southeastern countries, and in Indonesia are sufficient evidence of that. Moscow’s greatest weak ness, in that plan, is the lack of an in dustrial potential. Japan quickly could regain her position as one of .the greatest manufacturing countries of the world.

Japan already is overcrowded; as an other million Jap babies arrive, each year, the problem quickly becomes acute. As Ellis says, the Japs must either stop breeding, or we must provide them with new living-space. If we don’t, Russia will; and Russia thus would solve her immediate problem of finding an in dustrial potential for Communist Asia.

This is not a matter of to-morrow, or of next decade —it is with us to-day, as urgent and as ugly as any problem in this harassed old world. We of the' Pacific have witnessed one Japanese swarming; we do not wish to experience another.

The Americans hold control efficiently over the conquered nation. The countless tribe of Plann rs continue their useless clamour. But the Japs keep on breeding (a simple calculation shows me that 20 new Japs were added to the population since I parted to write this short article) —and no one seems to be concerned with the problem of their future accommo dation. —R.

A Guadalcanal romance has deprived the BSI Secretariat of Miss Meg Lewis, who was on the office staff at Vila before she was transferred to Honiara.. She left by TOA on October 17 for Honolulu, via Suva, where she will be married to Lieut.

George Deeming, at present serving with the US p rsonnel on Guadalcanal, but shortly to go on leave in Honolulu, on his way to a new appointment in the Philip pines.