Logic & Chance

When Tokyo last week told of the resignation of Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo (not to be confused with Premier Hideki Tojo), many dopesters thought that Japan's long-feared attack on Siberia would shortly begin. In 1938 and 1939 Shigenori Togo was Ambassador to Russia, where he was said to have helped plan the Russo-Japanese Non-Aggression Pact. Rumor said that Jap etiquette required that he resign before Japan broke its pact.

Obviously the time was overripe in Adolf Hitler's eyes for a Japanese blast at Siberia. More than rumor said that Japan had agreed to strike Siberia when Germany reached the Volga (see p. 36). Japan's retreats in China (see p. 38) were suspicious. Perhaps many of them were by design, to release troops northward.

But the importance of little Shigenori Togo in this huge picture was grotesquely exaggerated. He is a mild, faint-voiced career diplomat who has never wielded real weight in Japanese politics. As a negotiator in Russia he was probably no more than Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka's on-the-spot agent.

Last week an eye-catching open letter to President Roosevelt was written by Kilsoo K. Haan, U.S. agent of the Korean National Front Federation, who last October warned the U.S. State Department that Japan would attack the U.S. either in December or February. Mr. Haan, whose prophecies have since varied from the uncanny to the untrue (TIME, Aug. 24), said his underground sources had informed him that the Tojo Cabinet had steadily refused Germany's pleas for a Siberian invasion, even after the Nazis reached Stalingrad's gates.

Japan might well feel that the time for Siberia was not now, or for some time to come. The logic of Japan's war called not only for attacks on Siberia, but on Australia and India (see p. 26) as well. They were all great, potentially threatening flanks of the huge new empire Japan had so speedily carved for herself.

How far would Japan follow the logic of the war she had started? Each logical step was attended by horrible chances. Perhaps she was ready to take the chances. But perhaps Japan would ignore logic's cold advice. If she merely stood her ground, she would still offer a mighty challenge to the United Nations, who had thus far only pecked at the edges of her conquests.

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