The Pittsburgh Press (June 2, 1941)
U.S. WILLING TO AID JAPS IF THEY’LL ABANDON AXIS
By Edgar Ansel Mowrer
Washington, June 2 –
While American military chiefs are quite prepared for a two-ocean war, it is obvious that nobody wants it. That explains the more or less authorized statements that this country would see no harm in economic concessions to Japan if the Japs disassociate themselves from the Axis and call off the war to China.
The United States, according to some “purely private” spokesmen, would even help to fix up an honorable peace between Japan and China, which is what the Japs say they are seeking. The trouble is that the Japanese notion of what is honorable does not coincide with that of the United States, still less with that of China.
To the Japs,
Japan is entitled to have dominion over East Asia by right of its might. Those who deny or question this right are not “sincere.”
To the United States,
Japanese hostility in the Far East is less a danger than a nuisance, a nuisance we have no intention of allowing to become a danger, by, say, the conquest of Singapore.
To the Chinese,
The Japs are a vastly overrated lot whom even unprepared and unmilitary China has nearly exhausted.
The question of who is right may soon be decided. For if Suez falls into German hands, with Egypt, the Axis will take over Spain, people here feel. The fall of Suez and Gibraltar, together with Axis penetration of the Red Sea, may well be the signal for Japanese attack on Britain and on the Netherlands in the Far East.
None can say whether this would take the form of attempted seizure of the Netherlands Indies and threat to British communications, or to a land attack from Siam on British Burma, or of direct land and sea attack on Singapore itself, in any such attack, Japan would have to contend with the British and Dutch Far Eastern forces, with Chinese, and very likely with American naval and air forces as well.
The fact is that this country is now committed to seeing that what we send to China reaches China. The key is the Burma Road.
A plan is now well underway to provide the Chinese with 35 Douglas-transport planes, to act as freight carriers over the more dangerous section of the road. Each plane could make two round trips daily. Result: 200 tons of freight would start for China from Burma every day. Protected by the American fighters, this 200 tons of freight would get to China every day.