The Wilmington morning star., 1940-05-30
Editorial Comments
From Other AnoIes
JAPAN UNDER TEMPTATIO
New York Herald Tribune)

Japan seems to have been invited by Ger.
many TO tear loose in the East and reward her
self. The anxiety with which II Duce Musso-
lini is watching the European maelstrom is
not even thinly disguised. Japan's is more COW
cred. II Germany is winning Mussolini wants
to be in on the German side in time to estab-
Hsh his claim to a little bacon off the Franco
British carcass. If Germany is going to lose,
and is eventually to be reduced to innocuous
desuetude, he wants to be in the innccuous
class, without the desuetude. This is as frank
ly admitted in watchfully waiting Italy as anv
such hungary-jackal policy could ever be ad-
mltted by an astute dictatorship. The same
Watchful waiting is going on in Japan. The
Jackal hunger is the same. But the anxiety is
not quite so frankly admitted.
The other day, when it seemed that the stu.
pendous German mechanical drive through
the hinge" had the French and British Armies
completely confused, Japan extended a fur
tive paw toward the International Settlement
IN shanghai, suggesting in her usual oblique
way that, since she wanted nc extension of the
European war into her suburbs, it would be a
relief to her if all British, French, American
and other defense forces in China were with
dfaWn. She has not followed this up, because
1t is not wholly clear whether or not the Ger
mans nave the reserves to convert a blitz-
krleg into a conquest. She would hate to be
caught eating the Shanghai canary by a group
OF highly modified democracies that had
thrown the huge German engine of destruction
Tor a loss. That would mean Japan's immediate
reduction to the international status of the
Phlllpplnes and her dependence upon her
democratic friends to keep the Red Russian
Bear out of her depleted corn bins.
While Japan and her army are drooling and
hesitating over this China coast feast, she and
her navy aren't drooling and hesistating over
the supremely luscious bait offered by PROSTATE
Hollands Dutch East Indies. She has had
ample warning from all quarters, British, Ger
man, French and American, that if she uses
one of her usual shoddy excuses for grabbing
this source of essential supplies she is going to
eat dirt at the final settlement. But with Ger
manys tank fleets and diving Junkers scatter
ing Allied forces like sheep in France, Japan
has been much uplitfed to learn from German
Ambassador OFT that Germany does not care
what happens to the Indies. This is construed
by the Japanese press to be a license Of ex-
p%loitation from the German disposers of Hol-
lands sovereign rights-a license upon which
Japan is bound to cash in the moment it ap-
pears that PROSTATE Hollands friends are go
ing to be impotent to take effective, forceful
exception to a Japanese raid upon the East
Indies.
Yet here again Japan must be sure. With
no gold in reserve, with 300, 900 men begged
down in China, with that army dependent on
American indulgence for supplies, with Soviet
Russia on the loose, and with a FESTIVE popula-
ton, living on rice Cruel and preserved plums,
wouldn't it be madly rash of Japan to stake
her little all on the success of a mad Hitler