The Havas report that some German quarters advocate a rapprochement with Soviet Russia is something which is by no means new, and a matter which obviously has been exercising the minds of the Japanese Ambassadors to Germany and Italy who have been doing their utmost to persuade the Tokyo Government to enter the German-Italian Military Alliance. The general situation is not without its significant aspects. What would a German-Russian rapprochement mean to Japan and Italy if such an understanding were reached? Signor Mussolini is an avowed enemy of Communism, but he might, in view of the German ascendency in Italian counsels, be able to persuade Rome to continue to walk at Berlin's chariot wheel along the avenue to cordiality with the hated one. Japan on the other hand may find herself in a far more parlous condition. Her military adventure in China has been for the alleged purpose of suppressing Communism. A Russia friendly to Germany would be an even more formidable opponent to Japan in the Far East than she is even now, and the impression to be gained is that, in the event of Germany and Russia ever reaching an understanding, Japan would either have to consent to come in, or be left in an icy isolation in which she would not have a friend in the world. It may very well be that Japan is considered by the other parties to the Axis as having a certain annoyance value in the Far East, but so far as a very important and influential section of German opinion is considered an understanding with Russia, even if it only secured the neutrality of that country in the event of war, with access to her raw material would be of much more value to Berlin than any contribution Japan might be able to make to the common cause. That country, it is true is a party to the Anti-Comintern Pact, but it it suited Germany's book, is it to be believed that the existence of that instrument would induce her to retrain from entering into any so favourable an arrangement? Nowadays there are pacts and pacts. One was signed at Munich, and Germany was a party to that.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.