"In such a state of affairs the situation might be aggravated to such an extent that armed hostilities between the two countries might become unavoidable but the writer doubts whether the United States is ready to run the risk of war with Japan merely for the sake of China.
"What kind of retaliatory measures could Japan adopt against the United States if the latter embargoes the export of war supplies to this country?" Mr, Tamura asks. International law indicates, he says, that retaliation must be limited to measures similar to those against which it is aimed.
The United States is a big buyer of Japanese raw silk, but an embargo on its export to the United States would hurt Japan more than the United States. If anti-Japanese embargo actually comes into effect in the United States, such as has been demanded by certain sections of American public opinion ever since the China Incident began, Japan cannot allow international legal rules to prevent retaliation.
Japan-American relations, he points out, are closely related to China-Japan relations, and the more Japanese progress there is in China, the worse Japanese relations with the United States become: improving, on the other hand, when Japan makes concessions to the Chinese, Whether the Americans want to have conditions in East Asia restored to what they were before the China Incident started, is not clear, but it is clear that they hold the Nine-Power Treaty very preciously, and this is one reason, evidently, why they are constantly trying to inter-fore in some way or another in the East Asia situation.
Obviously, the Americans are looking forward to the day when they can gather Britain and France, expected-to-be victors over Germany, into a bloc to exert pressure on Japan, coercing the latter into abandoning her projects in China; nurse ing this vision, the Americans are intending to avoid strong in ideal action in the meantime, says Tamura.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.