Navy Week

Japan's Army has had such an extended jamboree on the vast continent of China that it has forgotten how insular the little homeland is. Last week, after six sudden setbacks, Japan's puzzled militarists were forced to recollect.

No matter how many military conquests Japan undertakes, the two most important requisites of the island Empire are the same as Britain's: 1) trade; 2) a Navy to insure it. With war in Europe commandeering the bottoms and bullets of all of Ja pan's maritime suppliers and naval rivals ex cept the U. S., Japan has had to orient her policy toward her democratic neighbor across the Pacific, and therefore toward the neigh bor's democratic friends, Britain and France.

Japan's Army began its week of bungles by warning the French owners of the vital Haiphong-Yunnan Railway, which aside from the Burma highway is the last uninterrupted trade route into Southwest China, to stop supplying China within two weeks, or else have every bridge bombed.

By way of sample, bombers crippled the vital Eighty-Three Kilometre Bridge (just inside China's border) so badly that the whole line from Indo-China may be broken for a month. Tokyo hastened to hush up the warning over the Army's head.

Second shock to the Army was being told by the Tokyo Government that the U. S. was doing absolutely nothing about renewing its trade treaty with Japan, which lapses next week. While this did not mean any immediate hardship, it did mean that at any moment the U. S. might declare an embargo which would stop 74% of the Army's war supplies. Last week Colonel Henry L. Stimson, who as Secretary of State (1929-33) constantly opposed Japanese ambitions, urged just such an embargo.

Next, establishment of the Wang Ching-wei puppetry was again postponed. Puppet-elect Wang's "final" terms had been accepted by Army, China Affairs Board and tottering Cabinet, but the defection of Chinese support for the regime, and political troubles in Japan, meant new delays.

Desperate shortages of coal and rice in Japan sent home morale toppling. The Army, supposed to be importing huge quantities of coal from North China, rice from the South, was blamed.

New U. S. naval proposals, providing for expansion of over 25% and renewing plans for the fortification of Guam, put the Japanese Navy in a strong position--able to capitalize on the White Menace.

All these factors contributed to the week's culminating blow. As expected, the weak Abe Cabinet fell. But definitely not as expected, and to the Army's bitter confusion, the Cabinet which took its place was not militaristic, not chauvinistic, not even mystic--was for down-to-earth opportunism rather than any magic cliche of expansion. Worst of all, its Premier was a Navy man. And of all the Navy men in Japan, he was Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai --the tall, boyish, amiable, aristocratic, experienced (thrice Navy Minister), pro-U. S., moderate Naval Commander in Chief who last summer threw a monkey wrench into the proposed Rome-Berlin-Tokyo military machine. As Navy Minister he refused to put his great fleet at the disposal of two major countries with minor navies.

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