When the new Japan was in the making, the Lord Hotta, one of its founders, laid down

the line to be followed:--

Our object must always be to lay the foundation for securing hegemony over all

nations. We must, when we are strong, punish the nations which are contrary to the

principle. We must declare our protection over harmless nations. The nations of the

world will come to look up to our Emperor as the Great Ruler of all the nations. They

will follow our policy and submit to our judgment.

"In the middle of the twentieth century Japan will meet Europe on the plains of Asia

and wrest from her the mastery of the world", said Prime Minister Count Okuma.

"Our great missions from heaven are to promote our national expansion and to liberate

the peoples of the Orient, who are groaning under the oppression of the white race",

wrote General Tada, Commander of the Japanese Army in China.

And the Japanese who dies for this mission, whether criminal or good man, general or

private or common citizen, at the moment of shouting `Banzai' to the Emperor, becomes

united in the Great Life of the Universe and lives for ever as a guardian deity of the

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For forty years Japan has been patiently, steadily, unremittingly, preparing the

conquest of China. She has attacked from without, she has undermined from within: she

has advanced, paused, even retreated:  she has use money and arms, threats and

cajolements. The means have been skillfully varied: the end has never changed.

Already she has carved out of China a continental empire far larger than her own

territory. She took Formosa and the Pescadores in 1895, the Liaotung peninsula in 1905;

she annexed Korea in 1910.

Those were the prelude. In 1931 came the big advance. In less than five years Japan

had conquered and brought under her own dominion the three provinces of Manchuria,

Jehol, and Chahar. She controls Hopei and Seiyuan, and can take them when she

chooses. An area as big as half Europe, with a population as big as that of Germany,

containing one of the biggest cities in Asia, with incalculable resources.

Mussolini's conquest of Abyssinia is petty larceny by comparison with this great steal.

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Checked for the moment in Mongolia, the drive has turned again southward towards

the heart of China. But it may turn, it may be forced to turn, westward again, to deal with

the Chinese Communist armies (no negligible force) which are now in Shenshi and

Suppose (it is more than likely) that Tokyo orders an "anti-Red" campaign: that the

Red Armies (which are Chinese peasant armies) retreat westward to the Mongolian

border: that they ask aid in their extremity from the Russians? Supposing a dozen other

alternatives? Every time you come back to the stark facts. Japan, under the double

influence of economic need and religious fervour, is moving forward steadily,

unceasingly to the conquest of China, of all the East, of all Asia.