Japan Wins the War

While the western end of the Axis was crimping another little country last week (see p. 23), the eastern end did all right too. The war between Thailand and French Indo-China ended exactly where it began, in Tokyo. After three weeks of Japanese mediation, five days before the armistice was due to end, the Vichy Government announced it was prepared to make "large" territorial concessions. Said a Vichy spokesman: "We yielded to Japan, not Thailand."

From the first it was a war in which neither side stood to gain. The French, with their hands tied to the Axis, could hope only to lose as little as possible; while Thailand, easily egged into the war by Japan, could hardly hope to control whatever it won. Only likely winner was Japan, whose sword-rattling, fleet-maneuvering "mediation'' set all the Orient abuzz, and who will presumably dominate any areas ceded to Thailand.

Just how much Japan had won was not clear. Most probably she had won most of what she asked for: a strip of borderland in upper Laos province near the Burma and China lines, part of Cambodia in the south, which might make a base on the Gulf of Siam, uncomfortably close to Singapore. Most important gain of all, to Japan, was face, nearly lost during the dragged-out mediation.

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