March 27.
11 was only to be expected that the Japanese Cabinet would split over any question involving a broad tripartite military alliance with Germany, and Italy as a totalitarian answer to the proposed democratic united front. The signing of anti-Comintern Pacts is one thing, the definite commitment to go} to the assistance of two European Powers in. the event of war, two Powers who have nothing in common with Japan except their' dislike of Communism, is something entirely different. At the most all that Japan appears to have contemplated has been that the event of Germany warring with Soviet Russia, Japan might attack the Jatter in Siberia, the understanding also being that should Japan and Russia be involved, Germany would go to Japanese assistance by attacking Russia on her western. frontier. Just how that would be done without interfering with the security and integrity of Poland it is not easy to perceive, but joint] faction against the Soviet has always been contemplated under the anti-Comintern Pact, even if there has been no really definite] military commitment. Generally speaking opinion in Japan may be divided into three. There are sections of the Army which favour such an alliance as a means of furthering their own grandiose schemes. The Navy is not so keen as it might mean that Japan would be required to send her navy 10 Europe in the event of a European war, apparently without guarantees of compensation. The third view is that in any such arrangement Germany would be seeking more than she was willing to give. The slow progress made in Germano-Japanese trade negotiations is because their actual needs are in direct conflict with each other, both desiring foreign exchange, and both finding it dificult, if not impossible to accommodate each other in the matter. There is also the fact that}
Japan has not yet cleared up the "China Incident and until this is done, she will hardly be in a position to render that military aid against Russia which might become so necessary if she were to play her
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.