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From Socialist Appeal, Vol. IV No. 24, 15 June 1940, p. 1.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
So far carefully confined to non-Administration spokesmen in Congress and in the press, the “appease Japan movement” gained steady ground during the past week.
Its growing importance was signalized by no less an authority than Senator Arthur Vandenburg, Republican presidential aspirant from Michigan. It was Vandenburg who last July in the Senate moved the resolution abrogating the 1911 Japanese-American trade treaty.
Vandenburg has now reversed himself and come out flatly for signing a new pact with the Japanese in the face of “our new vicissitudes.” In a statement on June 9, the Michigan senator said a deal with Japan now would be worth “half a navy.”
“We could serve our preparations no more realistically,” said the erstwhile anti-Japanese fire-eater, “than to write a new commercial and political treaty with Japan, if reasonably possible, which would stabilize our relations in the Far East where we most emphatically face a condition, not a theory.”
On June 9 the United Press carried a wishful dispatch from Shanghai declaring that “Japan is increasingly apprehensive over the effect that a totalitarian victory in Europe might have on the Far East and may attempt to better her relations with the United States with a view to a Japanese-American agreement to maintain the present status in the Pacific.”
As evidence of this, the United Press adduced the report that the Japanese are being more conciliatory toward Americans in the occupied areas of China.
Actually, Japan is not alarmed at all by the prospect of a totalitarian victory. On the contrary, such a victory is serving and will serve Japan’s turn in the Pacific as nothing else could. The United Press was simply trying to extend a gingerly “feeler” in the direction of Tokyo to give Washington an opportunity to observe the reaction there to possible American overtures for smoothing out the “quarrel” of past years.
The Japanese are not wasting their opportunity. On June 9 it was announced in Moscow that the long-delayed Soviet-Mongolian-Manchurian border demarcation had been put through. In Tokyo this was jubilantly heralded as the forerunner of a settlement of all Soviet-Japanese “disputes” in Japan’s favor. Having graciously accepted the proffer of appeasement from Moscow, Tokyo will wait for the next move from Washington. The Japanese can now be secure in the knowledge that the German sweep in Europe is dropping Asia in their hands. The U.S. fleet is still in the Pacific but it dare not become engaged now in a Pacific war. The Atlantic uncertainties thoroughly prevent that.
The Japanese, moreover, are flaunting their new favored position right under Washington’s nose. All Japan’s envoys in the Western hemisphere are meeting on June 18 in Washington for the announced purpose of organizing a campaign to take over in Latin America the markets lost by the belligerents!
The way things are moving in Europe, the Washington government cannot afford the luxury of a slow shift in policy. Support of the Chungking Chinese government is going to have to be dropped hard and fast and the best deal possible secured from the Japanese. The only thing that makes Washington hesitate, however, is the realization that Japan right now holds the best cards and can take what it wants without giving anything in return.
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Last updated on 2 February 2019