American oil shipments to Japan, now being maintained on a high level, will be ended as soon as the United States Government feels it is expedient to do so, it has been learned, states the "Christian Science Monitor." Although this Government is acutely aware that every barrel of American petroleum shipped to Japan may eventually be used against it, officials feel that an oil embargo would not incapacitate Japan for some months and that it might push Tokyo into new adventures seriously jeopardizing the Anglo-American position in the Far East.
In fact, there is reason to believe the Administration has so far discouraged any attempts of American oil companies to embargo the Japanese on their own. In a recent letter to a stockholder, an official of one of the largest American oil companies wrote that "without any express order fo that effect, our Government has indicated its desire that we continue the shipments to Japan, these consisting largely of oil from a partly-owned subsidiary in the Netherlands East Indies."
Nevertheless, Washington is authoritatively reported prepared to restrict these shipments both as a means of weakening Japan and as preserving America's own stocks of fuel as soon as the opportunity arrives to do so without too drastically upsetting the Far East. These restrictions would be in line with others already imposed whereby the United States is denying a number of strategic materials and products to those nations whose present course of action it condemns, Evidence that the United States and Great Britain are united in their policy toward Japan is seen in the fact that the former, like the latter, is still selling large quantities of oil to Japan, This oil is being retailed by British concerns in the East Indies and is reported as furnishing Japan with approximately 40 per cent. of its petroleum imports. Washington and London are believed to have agreed that any drastic curtailment in oil shipments, either from the United States or from Anglo-American sources in the East Indies, would push Japan into ar immediate attack upon the Netherlands East Indies, which would raise the like'hood of war with Australia, New Zealand and the British forces in Malaya and at Singapore. This, in turn, would make an American-Japanese clash almost inevitable, it is felt.
It is also known that Japan has sufficient oil reserves to permit it to undertake a campaign of some months' duration against the Netherlands East Indies and where it might hope to find reserve stocks.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.