When Mr. Koh Ishii, deputy spokesman of the Japanese Information Board, announced Japan's readiness to mediate in conflicts in any part of the world it was not thought that he was doing anything but speaking off the record. With the fact that Mr. Matsuoka, offering to take whatever action is needed to restore normal conditions, not only in the Far East but anywhere in the world, the whole matter assumes very considerable significance. One of the parties to the Triple Alliance, with the rest of which Great Britain is at war, has come forward with an offer to mediate. It is alleged that this has been done without prior consultation with Germany, but the infiltration of Nazis into Japan's highest quarters is such that it is difficult to believe that this offer was not made with the foreknowledge of Germans in Japan if not in Berlin. The reports of the offer, it is true, gave the German spokesman in Berlin the opportunity to declare that it was generally the weaker party which sought the services of a media-for, but in this connection it is important to mote that this talk of mediation did not originate in Britain, but comes from a country having important contractual relations with her enemy.
It is declared in London that the offer will receive due consideration, but that' it is extremely improbable that Great Britain will change her policy which demands that a victory for the democratic forces of the world shall precede any talks of peace. Contrary to what the "Miyako Shimbun" may say on the matter Japan is definitely not qualified to mediate in the European war. Allied as she is with Germany and Italy it is clearly impossible for her to play the part of an honest broker, quite apart from the fact that the present is no time for endeavouring to negotiate a peace which on the face of it would amount to a temporary compromise and the prelude for yet another war. It is confidently expected that Great Britain will reply in some such terms to the message from the Japanese Foreign Minister. The German military machine has got to be put out of business once and for all, before there can be any real prospects of a durable peace.
Quite naturally there will be much speculation as to why this. offer was made at this juncture. Hitler, himself, is apparently doing the astonishing thing of keeping the "promise he made last year, when he appealed to Great Britain to return to reason, that he would make no more peace overtures. That would not, however, prevent either of his allies doing hé'j@b'for him,' and when the situation in Europe is taken into consideration, when it is realized that Hitler has to make gigantic efforts to force the issue, or remain in a state of stalemate while his Ttalian ally is being hammered, and Britain's war potential continually ' increases, it is obvious that his desire for peace is infinitely greater than Great Britain's. Nothing, it*must be emphasized, would serve Hitler's ends at the present moment better than that Britain should consent to negotiate peace which would only serve to reduce this war to a dress rehearsal for another to come a few years later in which he could hope to avoid the mistakes which have marked his conduct of this struggle.
1t is not difficult to conceive the widespread plotting which peace now would render possible. It would mean that the democracies would live under the continual shadow of war while the Tripartite Alliance could perfect its plans for a great, and what they would hope would be a final, successful stroke. That must not be allowed to occur. This war which was not of Britain's seeking must be fought to the bitter end. Mr. Churchill has assured the world that there shall be no compromise. Britain owes it to herself, to her Empire, and to all the democracies that this menace which Hitler has built up shall be destroyed. In that, and in that alone can peace be secured and maintained. By that, and by that alone will it be made possible for humanity to continue to live in freedom and work out the destiny which is before it. It is idle now to talk of peace when there can be no such thing providing any degree of permanence.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.