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From Socialist Appeal, Vol. IV No. 29, 20 July 1940, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
On the eve. of the German attack on the British Isles, Britain is maneuvering in a hasty and desperate effort to ward off Japanese blows on its wholly unprotected Asiatic flank. Last week the Japanese, dazzled by the prospects opened up for them by the disappearance of British power from the East, began putting the heat on. Their first step was to choke off the Burma supply route to China, just as they have already closed the rail and road links between French Indochina and the Chinese southwest.
Japanese forces began ringing the south. China British citadel of Hongkong. The British authorities there, thrown into a real panic, started evacuating their women and children. On July 13 the British yielded and announced that shipment of arms and war supplies through Burma would stop – for a period of three months.
What the British want is to gain time. What the Japanese want first of all is an end to their bogged-down war in China in order to be free to exploit the broad advantages they see opening to them.
The new situation places the Chinese government at Chungking on the sharp end of the spike. The resistance of Chiang Kai-shek and Co. to the Japanese has been based upon the support of the U.S. and Britain. If that support defaults now – as seemingly it must – Chiang will have to seek a new principal.
He need not at all turn at once in supplication to Japan. The triangular situation involving Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union leaves him Still with ample room for maneuvering. Germany, be it remembered, never entirely severed its friendly connections with Chiang even after it entered into its famous anti-Comintern pact with Japan.
Secondly, there is the continuing source of supply from the Soviet Union. The Japanese are not likely to succeed in pinching off the last remaining road from the outside world into the unoccupied portions of China, the road from the Soviet Turkestan frontier. Nor is Stalin likely to stop playing along with Chiang at a time when renewal of Soviet-Japanese strife seems not far off. The fact that the Soviet Union and Germany are latently in conflict despite their pact provides the canny Chiang and Chungking with a perfect set-up for keeping his own pot-boiling. No, Chungking is not likely to play along with the British “peace.” Chiang Kai-shek has too little to hope for now from making terms with Tokyo.
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