There is a plethora of comment and opinion advancing that aspect of things which shows the weaknesses of Japan and exalts the strengths of China. It is concluded by these expounders of such view that Japan may win the war but that it will 4 lose the peace.
Before subscribing n such consideration we would request the reader io patiently study the salient features, reflect on same, and, only after having a somewhat minute understanding, to arrive at an opinion.
As has been said above, we shall essay to integrate the brief present +o the long past. In gist, as derived from a consensus, the former ranges itself thus:
Japanese Shortcomings: (1) Military ability has been over-rated; (2) Japanese militarists are attempting to bite off much more than they can chew; (3) Japan cannot finance.a war extending into several years and is already feeling, after only one year, its sharp pinches; (4) There is the threat, as time unrolls, of Russia, or a coalition of Powers, stepping in against her; (5) Out of some 22
Coming nearer the present and udiing upon what may be the last phase, three unimpeachable authorities have concurred on this spina defect. The veteran China authority, Mr. J. O. P. Blend, writing again after long silence, in the Asia magazine for July 1938, under the title "The Old Weaknesses of China, quotes the fierce denunciations of Mr, Wang Ching-wei and Gen. Chang Fa-kwei Manifesto of 1929; Dr. Lin Yutang's seathing strictures on ^hinese officialdom; and the glaring highlights and exhortations of the Letter to the Chinese People"
Pearl Buck.
Turning to the strengths of Japan, it must not be lost to sight that this people rose by sheer virtue (which took generations to evolve) from a mere rock-isolated nothingness to a world Power in the space of living memo:
This moral force—odd as the w:
Japanese Army's ghastly excess Nanking—stands four-square in all s power opposed to the Chinese decadence. Even assuming the turns point for Japan's moral has set in and that of Chin generation has come, it must needs be age-long before such a reversal can iumph. Thus a military victory Japan may not, te all practic poses, be followed by her peaceful defeat, which if it does happen may take a century or so to come about.
what ure we to say, after mil tary Japan has achieved ita nbjecti in China, and Japan is faced with certain imperious necessities. as to how all the lenders of Japan—military and civil going to shape the nation's poli Tt seems overwhelmingly to be the case that its development must make of Japan an enlightened collaborator with the great people of this land, and with those enormously wealthy Mberty-loving democratic Powers, The safest guide as to the probable course of the future is to be found jin the logic of certain economic compulsions, and these reveal the coming time to be not so sombre as it might appear from the day-to-day readings. Then, one may also safely reckon pon the balance of power that exists nature, wherein no one individual or nation can have it all its own way.
It is up to the businessman, just as much today as in the last fifteen years, to take cognizance of these larger bearings and steer his affairs accordingly.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.