To the Editor of the Nortu-Cumia Dany News"
Sm—The war mongers are busy again. The other duy. some exalted aaitwit necessarily had to proclaim his conviction that war between Japan and Soviet Russia Is "inevitable." For many years sensation-mongering news-Paper editors and notoriety-seeking scudo-intellectuals have been spouting about the "inevitability" of w war between Japan and the—United States. Apart from the harm done in stirring "up hatreds and increasing fears, the object of all this war propaganda is quite simple: itis the means of securing support for some particular policy or measure, of consolidating popular national " sentiment around some particular leader unable to gain the confidence of the masses except by conjuring up the Dorey of external aggression.
In recent years Japan's actions here in China have given cause for much anxiety, and China is still smarting under the severe blows dealt. her. Much speculation has been aroused as regards the exact alms and objectives of the Japanese in this country, For all their warlike actions it becomes increasingly clear that these objectives are those which can best be attained by. peaceful ce-operation with the Chinese. The Japanese army and faavy are magnificent dogs of war held tightly on the leash of loyalty and devotion to their Emperor. The final justification and explanation of their strength and efficiency will be the purposes to which such might is put. Tapanese militarism may prove to be only the outward or visible expression or manifestation of that rigorous mental and physical discipline to which the Japanese nation subjects tself—as any nation should, In its onquest of the world the West taught the peoples of the East the arts of modern destructive war. For all their warlike altitude the Japanese, with the Chinese, may teach the West the arts and the incomparable virtues of The Japanese have indeed shown admirable good sense in not allowing themselves to be used or to be tripped into any war which could not possibly further their own national interests, though perhaps the Interests of others.
this Red Russian regime is to be overthrown, Jet the Russians do it. Japan's leaders are (oe intelligent to embark upon any war either with Soviet Russia or the United States which would mean certain economic And political disaster, regardless of the military victories gained. Instead of a war between Japan and the United States we should, in the due and aormal course of vents, see a full and whole-hearted ce-operation between these two countries, each in the manner for which it Is best equipped. in rendering assistance and a helping hand to China in solving those daantic" problems. and completing those Immense tasks which confront her.
T cannot, indeed, are cols, some of them that war—any warms that war is the natural and logie outcome of economic conditions formal or abnormal, or that any nation necessarily must express its energy and vitality by aggression against its neighbours. Of all human follies and stupidities, the folly and stupidity of war Is the perfection, the ierne and the apotheosis. War is the result of ignorance and wrong thinking, or no thinking at all. Te is the ast resort of inept and incom potent leadership, These leaders who lead us into war are, of course, leaders at all. They are self-seeking, egotists bent on preserving their own little Interests at the cost of every thing else, These "realists" who want go to war over a "market" or an oil concession, and voicing their opinions in opposition to the "idealist or the "sentimentalist," are, of course, no realists at all. They are victim of their own ignorance, forgetting that nothing is as real as an aspira-Yon, an ideal or a strong sentiment, ood or bad. These big business men who need another war to help along, their businesses are, of course, no business men at all. They.are the scavengers, the jackals and the hyenas feasting and battening on the dead hopes, the miseries, the sufferings and the misfortunes of mankind.
Throughout the world to-lay, in the minds of men of all nations, there are new forces at work as powerful as those ideas of religious liberty and democracy which disrupted sixteenth or eighteenth-century Europe. A simple idea, a single vision of truth, may {ransform our whole thinking and thereby transform the world—just as it happened before. A second-faond portable typewriter may prove mightier than even the most modernly quipped tank. And fortunately for' those who have to pay the piper, the best-laid plans of little men "and little Machiavellis "oft gang agley.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.