How Strong Is Japan?
HOW strong is Japan? On the answer to this question depends the destiny of East Asia. The most varied guesses have been ventured. Japan is interpreted now as a nation of military and industrial supermen, now as a bluffer, a giant with clay feet ready to crumble at the first serious pressure.
Between Japan and the foreign observer are several walls to be surmounted. First there interposes the jealous secrecy over all information having even a remote bearing on military and naval matters. Sometimes this system is carried to ridiculous extremes. Names of Japanese units which took part in military operations years ago are carefully deleted in books and magazines. An unsuspecting foreign tourist is likely to be haled before the police if he photographs a bunch of Japanese radishes in a fortified zone.
But exaggerated and even absurd as the system of Japanese counter-espionage may be, it serves to keep foreign observers pretty much in the dark about many essential features of the services and of the industries which cater to war needs.
A second wall opposes in the personality of the average Japanese, which is apt to be reserved and repressed. And a third, and most effective, rampart is the Japanese written language, knowledge of which is restricted to an extremely small class of specialists. These infinitely complicated hieroglyphs shut off the majority of even serious foreign students of Japan from direct contact with her books and publications, and are an admirable smoke screen against a potential enemy. A captured Japanese dispatch in time of war would demand a major deciphering operation.
Finally, even when physical Japan has been reckoned up, with all her fighting strength, her power in actual and potential industry, her weight in finance and her weakness in raw materials, there still remain the intangible factors which almost defy resolution. How solid are the traditional foundations of Japanese society, with its reverence for the patriarchal Emperor and the family system? How much of the Japanese way of life is ingrained and deep-rooted, how much merely the result of tradition and police regimentation and likely to crack under the shock of a major crisis? How perilous, from the standpoint of the existing order, are the ‘dangerous thoughts’ which the police are always on the alert to detect and repress?
Many elements enter into a calculation of Japan’s strength and weakness; the most important of them seem to fall into three categories—military, economic, and moral.
I
What of Japan’s weapons of striking power, the army and the navy? As regards equipment and modern weapons, the Japanese army, despite recent intensive efforts at rearmament, is distinctly inferior to those of the large continental European powers. In many fields it has not progressed far beyond the stage which had been reached at the end of the World War. The tanks are of outdated models; the airplanes are inferior to those of the Soviet Union, Germany, and France in number, speed, and quality; the cavalry is still inadequately supplemented with mechanized units.
On the other hand, Japan enjoys a wide margin of superiority over China in the training, discipline, and equipment of her troops; the best proof of which is the easy victories which Japanese units have in the past won over much larger Chinese forces. An exception to this rule, the prolonged resistance of the Chinese on the outskirts of Shanghai in 1932, was only made possible by the mistaken military pride of the Japanese commanders, who persisted in making frontal attacks on a strong natural position which could have been, and eventually was, taken without difficulty by means of a flanking movement.
Geographical considerations make it most unlikely that Japan will ever be compelled to fight a Western army, except perhaps that of the Soviet Union. And while the Soviet Union to-day is superior to Japan in the number and probably also in the quality of its tanks and airplanes, it faces the permanent disadvantage of having its main centres of industry and population situated many thousands of miles away from the prospective scene of hostilities.
Japan’s economy is being increasingly organized on a wartime basis, with mobilization plans highly perfected. A foreign observer at one of the recent field manœuvres of the Japanese army remarked that while the showing of airplanes and other modern technical weapons was not impressive, by Western standards, the fighting spirit of the troops was incomparable. In bayonet charges the officers had to hold back the men from turning a sham fight into a real one.
The army prides itself highly on its morale, sustained by a very intensive system of propaganda which begins before the conscript is called to the colors and continues after he has completed his term of service and passed into the reserve. An officer once told a foreign colleague that no attention is paid in training to retreating operations because the Japanese army will never retreat. Some military men are afraid that previous easy victories, coupled with lack of experience in the type of fighting that characterized the World War, may lead to overconfidence and disastrous results; but the majority believe that what they consider the unique Japanese spirit will be an important asset in future wars.
A distinctive feature of the Japanese army is its extreme simplicity. It is for use, not for ornament. Officers and men often do not shave for days at a time; soldiers do not march in step unless they are on parade.
Soon after I arrived in Japan, I obtained an appointment with a high officer in the War Department. I was surprised to find him sitting unshaved in a tiny room with the dingiest kind of furniture. But this officer, as I realized later, was living up to the code of Bushido, or mediæval knighthood, which prescribes self-denial and absence of ostentation as virtues of a warrior. This point is also emphasized in the precepts to soldiers and sailors drawn up by the Emperor Meiji, which include the following passage: —
The soldier and the sailor should make simplicity their aim. If you do not make simplicity your aim you will become effeminate and frivolous and acquire fondness for luxurious and extravagant ways. You will finally grow selfish and sordid and sink to the last degree of baseness, so that neither loyalty nor valor will avail to save you from the contempt of the world.
Here, as not infrequently happens, moral virtue is extracted from economic necessity. With her finances in chronic disorder Japan cannot afford to pamper her troops. Officers and men alike are obliged to subsist on a régime of austere frugality, in which food is still more plentiful and better-balanced than the diet of the peasant recruit at home.
The Japanese military system calls for deliberate hardening exercises. An especially hot day in summer or an especially cold day in winter will be chosen for an all-day march; and in winter gloves and vests are forbidden. At the end of a stiff march, troops will be put through vigorous setting-up exercises. Endurance, ability to bear any extreme of weather, any physical hardship, is regarded as a military virtue second only to courage itself.
The Japanese navy has kept pace with modern inventions better than the army, although it is inferior to the navies of the United States and Great Britain in capital ships, seaplanes, and guns. On sea as on land, however, Japan enjoys the advantage of proximity to the probable war zone. Any conflict in which Japan might become involved with Great Britain or America would have to be fought out in the waters of the Western Pacific, close to her home bases. And her defensive position, with one important exception, is immensely strong.
Japan proper faces a huge ocean, across which an attacking fleet would be compelled to voyage thousands of miles, and enjoys the further protective advantage of island outposts covering the three main directions from which an attack might be expected. The Kurile Islands, stretching out in a northeastern direction from Hokkaido to Kamchatka, are a defensive barrier against an attack from Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. The approach from the south, from Singapore or the Philippines, is covered by Formosa and the Loochoo Islands, while the far-flung South Seas Mandated Islands are ideally situated for defense against an American fleet, based on Hawaii.
Behind this position are narrow seas, the Japan Sea and the Yellow Sea; communication with Japan’s continental dependencies, Korea and Manchukuo, is short and easy. As Denlinger and Gary say, in War in the Pacific, ‘There is not a naval power in the world that possesses the strength of geographic position that is Japan’s.’
The weak spot in Japan’s scheme of sea and air defense may be summed up in one word: Vladivostok. This Soviet Far Eastern outpost is only seven hundred miles from Tokyo, by direct air line, and the flotilla of submarines there might inflict serious damage to Japanese communications with the continent in the event of war. Moreover, the concentration of Japan’s main industries in four areas (Tokyo-Yokohama, Osaka-Kobe, Nagoya, and North Kyushu) provides tempting targets for air bombardment.
The navy, like the army, zealously cherishes and cultivates the spirit of exalted nationalism that is practically a religion in Japan. The idea that death is always to be preferred to surrender is inculcated and reënforced by the example of the transport Kinshu Maru, which, when placed in a hopeless position in the Russo-Japanese War, refusing offers of surrender, went down with all on board, officers and men giving three last banzais for the Emperor.
The Japanese navy was originally modeled along British lines. The uniform is suggestive of the British, and English is the foreign language most generally spoken by naval officers, whereas their colleagues in the army are more likely to know German. The navy has, however, entirely passed out of the stage of tutelage and has developed a number of original features. A Japanese warship carries an unusually large number of officers, with the idea of having a substitute ready to take the place of any officer who may be killed in action. The quarters of the sailors, while kept scrupulously clean, are cramped, by Western standards, and there has been an effort to utilize this saving on space by providing thicker armor plate and otherwise increasing the fighting efficiency of the vessel.
Although the conscription system prevails for the navy, as for the army, a great proportion of the sailors are volunteers; Japan’s large class of fishermen provides natural recruits for the service. The Japanese naval officer, like his military colleague, takes his work with fanatical seriousness and often shows a certain pride in having no interests outside his profession. Morale and discipline both in the army and in the navy are good. Despite the explosion of February 26, there is no indication that the tendency to form hostile cliques has spread to the lower ranks or undermined the traditional devotion to duty of the Japanese private soldier.
II
The degree of a country’s military preparedness is inseparably bound up with its industrial and financial condition. And in this field, despite the progress of the heavy industries during the last years, despite the present and prospective plans for husbanding raw materials and providing synthetic substitutes, Japan is confronted with grave difficulties which would become almost insurmountable in the event of a protracted war with one or more first-class powers.
Any large war would immediately and seriously dislocate Japan’s balance of international payments, which is already revealing a deficit under the milder strain of accelerated war preparations. Vastly larger quantities of oil, rubber, cotton, wool, iron, and nonferrous metals would be required for war needs; at the same time much of the plant and equipment now devoted to export industry would be taken over for war purposes. A huge gap would immediately manifest itself between the swollen volume of imports and the small quantity of exports.
And the means of bridging this gap over any prolonged period would be severely limited. Japan’s present gold reserve is about $450,000,000. Foreign deposits and securities are reckoned at almost 1,500,000,000 gold yen (approximately $1,250,000,000 at the present day); but against this must be set a sum of almost 750,000,000 gold yen which Japan owes abroad. Inasmuch as only part of the foreign holdings are liquid, it is doubtful whether the total amount of gold and foreign exchange which Japan could muster in the event of war would be much in excess of $1,000,000,000 — a small reserve for such an expensive enterprise as a modern war.
Merely in her preparation for war, Japan has only been able to balance her budget by substantial annual bond issues. The beginning of a large-scale conflict would mean the end of financial stability and uncontrollable inflation. The murdered Finance Minister, Korekiyo Takahashi, had strong evidence to support him when he said: ‘If Japan wants to avoid financial shipwreck she can permit herself no external or internal “national emergencies.”’
To be sure, history is full of wars which have been fought long after one or both of the combatants were bankrupt. A system of war socialism (already foreshadowed in the peacetime economic structure of the Soviet Union, Germany, Italy, and Japan), characterized by rigid rationing of foodstuffs and commodities, would make it possible to carry on war with little regard for technical financial considerations. But Japan’s poverty in gold and foreign currency would represent a very serious handicap in a long war which would require large imports of raw materials and some types of munitions. The chances of foreign financial aid, in the present state of world politics, are slight. Japan has not floated any loans on foreign markets since the occupation of Manchuria and the subsequent deficit financing. A wartime loan would be such a poor financial risk that it would probably be granted only as an actual subsidy by an ally anxious to help Japan win the war. And it is very doubtful whether Japan could find any such ally to-day. Germany, the country with which she is on the best terms, is obviously in no position to extend financial aid.
Finance has always been a limiting factor in Japan’s development. The Russo-Japanese War was ended on terms insufficiently favorable to public opinion because the government had virtually exhausted its financial resources. And Japan’s relative poverty is a handicap in peacetime as well as in wartime expansion. Even if political relations between Japan and China were better than they are, it is doubtful whether large investments of Japanese capital in China would be possible, especially while Manchukuo annually absorbs sums which are large in relation to Japan’s surplus capital.
Two factors have kept Japan poor in accumulated wealth, despite the striking progress of shipping, foreign trade, and some branches of industry. Apart from silk, which has greatly diminished in value during the last few years, and canned sea food, Japan’s main exports are almost all manufactured out of raw materials that must be purchased abroad. Moreover, the empire contains no very rich deposits of gold or other precious metals. Poverty in capital is not only a potential handicap in war but a serious drawback to Japan in the constant international competition for trade and other advantages in China.
The food situation, while it might be adjusted in the beginning by the introduction of a rationing system and the placing of the whole nation on a Japanese diet, would present growing difficulties as the war continued. For Japanese agriculture, with its few machines and beasts of burden, depends very largely on patient human toil. The withdrawal of millions of working hands for service at the front, for work in munitions factories and other war activities, would almost certainly cause a progressive decline in productivity.
In short, the economic omens for Japan at war would be generally unfavorable, unless there were reasonable assurance that the war would end in a quick and decisive victory. Neither the nervous and volatile Japanese national temperament nor the precariously balanced Japanese national economy is well adapted to the grim struggle of attrition.
III
How strong is the existing order in Japan, an order based on uneasy compromise, an unstable coalition of the military leaders, big business, the bureaucracy, and the political parties? Some ardently anti-Japanese publicists cherish the hope that even the small shock of a war with China, to say nothing of the major shock of a war with the Soviet Union, would be sufficient to overthrow the present system and herald fundamental social revolution.
This, I suspect, is wishful thinking, with little basis in Japanese realities. It is certainly significant that there has been no revolutionary outbreak in Japan remotely comparable in nationwide scope and depth with the ‘dress rehearsal’ of the Russian Revolution which took place in 1905.
The most serious popular dissatisfaction in the present century occurred in the summer of 1918, when there were widespread rice riots as a protest against the extremely high price which prevailed as a result of wartime inflation and profiteering. The all-powerful police, for once, were reduced to helplessness, and there was much burning of stores and warehouses belonging to firms which were accused of profiteering. But this was a large riot, not a revolution, and subsided as soon as the government made a few promises and brought up a few troops.
The best refutation of the idea that the Japanese masses are seething with suppressed revolutionary ardor was surely furnished by the course of the February 26 revolt. Here was a situation where one might reasonably have anticipated nation-wide riots, strikes, and disturbances. Yet there was not a ripple of violence outside the small area of Tokyo which the insurgents had occupied. The enormous majority of the Japanese people went about their business as if nothing were happening.
To say that Japan, on the basis of available evidence, is not burning with revolutionary fire is not to suggest that the Japanese are living in a state of idyllic contentment. And Japan did not escape the world-wide trend toward industrial unrest, despite the fact that labor is weakly organized in the Island Empire, where less than 15 per cent of the 3,000,000 factory workers are tradeunion members. If one may judge from the figures of the first, three months, 1937 will be the most disturbed year in industrial relations which Japan has experienced during the last decade. During this period 704 labor disputes, affecting 63,197 persons, were registered. During the entire year 1936 there were only 1922 disputes, involving 90,310 workers. The main cause of the wave of strikes during the first months of 1937 was the sharp upturn in the cost of living.
The material position of the workers has been deteriorating since 1931. While retail prices between 1931 and the spring of 1937 rose by more than 25 per cent, earnings of industrial workers during the same period increased by only about 2 per cent. Even this slight increase was made possible only through overtime work, because the tendency of hourly wage rates until very recently has been downward, not upward. To be sure, real wages have not declined as much as these figures would indicate, because the number of workers employed has risen substantially, especially during the last two years, and newly employed workers, as less skilled, naturally receive lower than average pay. But the purchasing power of the average worker, especially of the woman worker, has been falling.
Because of the weakness of tradeunion organization and because of the drastic methods which the police often employ against ‘agitators,’ Japanese workers are apt to resort to indirect means in order to gain their objectives. For instance, when the bus and streetcar workers in Tokyo wanted an increase in pay in the spring of 1937, they did not walk out in a body. Instead they worked out an elaborate scheme of ‘go slow’ tactics. Buses and cars which ordinarily are driven at a rapid pace crawled along and made long stops. As a result a good deal of inconvenience was inflicted; after several days of this ‘go slow’ strike the workers were granted an increase in pay, although a smaller one than they had demanded. The same methods were employed by the 3400 workers in an airplane plant belonging to the Mitsubishi Company in Nagoya.
A still more original trick was employed by 700 municipal bus workers who wished to help strikers on one of the suburban bus lines. The bus company was also the proprietor of a large Tokyo department store which operated a restaurant. So day after day a horde of bus workers poured into the restaurant, taking every available place at the busiest time and sitting there for hours over five-sen cups of coffee, thereby crowding out the regular patrons and inflicting financial loss on the company.
The strike wave has affected classes of people who ordinarily have nothing to do with the labor movement. A group of Osaka geishas attracted international attention when they walked out of their houses as a protest against conditions and demanded, among other things, the right to organize their own labor exchange. Their method was to occupy a picturesque Buddhist temple and to carry out a ‘sit-down’ strike. Sympathizers sent them enough money and provisions to sustain a long siege; and ultimately they received a partial satisfaction. More recently seventy taxi dancers in one of the Tokyo dance halls walked out, demanding higher pay and easier working conditions. Most bizarre of all was the ‘strike’ of a number of women in one of the brothels, who laid their grievances before the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Board. The police, who are always ready to act as arbiters in labor disputes and often intervene on their own initiative, decided that the manager of the house should hand over the business to his son, who promised to give the women better treatment.
A few mild sit-down strikes have been practised, although Japanese workers have not yet dared to occupy any large plant. What they have done on several occasions is to barricade themselves in clubs or other public buildings, refusing to come out until favorable consideration is promised for their demands.
The strike wave of early 1937 was an indication that living standards of Japanese workers cannot be forced down too far without provoking resistance. But there was nothing revolutionary about it; production suffered much less than has been the case in America and in France during periods of labor unrest. The most customary settlement of the Japanese labor disputes was on the basis of a 10 per cent wage increase, which roughly covered the increase in the cost of living since 1936. While real wages have declined since 1931, they are still above the pre-war level. The worker, like the peasant, whose struggle for existence is usually much harder, has benefited to a limited extent from Japan’s industrial progress, which has placed home-manufactured bicycles, cheap phonographs and radio sets, canned food, and other articles of consumption within reach of the masses.
Many things in the Japanese social and economic structure are resistant to social revolution. The relatively small number of big factories; the distribution of much industrial work among millions of little peasant and artisan households; the predominance of the small holder in agriculture — these are tangible factors which are matched in the intangible sphere by the long training in the family system, the conservative influence of the innumerable shrines and legends of the gods, the propaganda that is carried on in schools for such qualities as loyalty, obedience, hard work, thrift.
So a revolution from below, a sweeping revolt of the masses, seems very unlikely, unless under the stimulus of some crushing military defeat. Revolution from above, in the sense of a coup d’état, peaceful or violent, which would place the army in the position of undisputed master of the country, is more possible. But such a political change would not greatly affect the everyday ways of Japanese life.
IV
Japan’s dream of dominating East Asia was put to a decisive test by the struggle with China which began in July 1937 and is still in full course at the time of writing. Up to that rupture it had seemed that new centres of resistance to Japanese expansion had formed which might create a different balance of power in the Far East to replace the one which had been overthrown when Japan occupied Manchuria and denounced the Washington naval agreements.
But the international situation in 1937 was unmistakably favorable to a Japanese settlement of accounts with China. The Soviet Union had been gravely weakened by the execution of many of its leading generals on mysterious charges of treason. Great Britain was preoccupied with the Spanish civil war and with the generally threatening European situation and was in no position to dispatch any considerable naval force to Far Eastern waters. The American attitude toward foreign conflicts was firmly isolationist.
There is no positive evidence that the fighting which started in a skirmish near Peiping and has already involved hundreds of thousands of men on both sides in various parts of China was the premeditated beginning of a calculated scheme of conquest. But at every stage in the widening course of hostilities the Japanese demands outran the Chinese willingness or ability to comply. By the time serious fighting had started in the Shanghai area Japan’s political and military leaders were abandoning their original slogan, ‘non-aggravation of the incident,’putting aside hopes of a short and relatively inexpensive campaign in North China, and preparing, in the quaint language of Japanese official communiqués, ‘positively to chastise the lawless Chinese.’
Japan’s war aims have not been stated with any great clarity by her statesmen, but they have been indicated by the activities of her soldiers. When hundreds of thousands of men have been mobilized and a sum almost equal to the whole year’s budget has been appropriated within two months after the outbreak of hostilities, it is clear that no petty concessions will satisfy Japan’s ambitions. Repudiations of territorial ambitions may be technically sincere, but they are meaningless, because political changes can be brought about through the creation of new puppet states, on the model of Manchukuo.
There is strong reason to believe that Japan has three definite aspirations in China. The first is the creation of a régime in North China that will be entirely subservient to Japanese wishes. Along with a completely dependent Chinese administration in Peiping and Tientsin, a new Mongolian state, the frontiers of which are still indeterminate, seems to be taking shape. And Japan’s ambitions are not restricted to the Peiping-Tientsin area. They include Shantung, where Japanese possess extensive economic interests, and Shansi, with its coal mines.
A Japanese-controlled North China, it is believed, will mean more cotton for the mills of Osaka and a new barrier to Soviet influence from the north. The coal of Shansi and the iron of Chahar are also important considerations; Japan’s growing continental empire is expected to provide a large part of the raw-material base for the heavy industry indispensable to a first-class imperial power.
Japan’s second aspiration is for a government in Nanking which will be only a little less subservient than the new régime in North China. A Japanese diplomat, Mr. Toshio Shiratori, formulated an idea that would certainly find approval in Japanese military circles when he recently advocated, in terms that would suggest either naïveté or cynical irony, a complete Japanese military protectorate over China: —
‘I should like to suggest that China abolish all the armaments throughout the country and entrust Japan with the maintenance of peace and order. It is my belief that, if left in charge of Japan, China will certainly find herself more strongly defended than otherwise. She is in danger of being beaten by Japan only when she maintains troops, but she will have nothing to beat if she has no troops. For China it is dangerous to keep troops, and it is safe to give up armaments.’
Japan hopes to achieve by her present military effort a new government in Nanking receptive to every Japanese wish, from ‘economic coéperation,’ in the sense of wholesale penetration, to a ‘military alliance’ along the lines of Mr. Shiratori’s proposal. It is widely believed in Tokyo that, even though Chiang Kai-shek himself may prove intransigent, some Chinese will be found to negotiate with after the futility of resistance has been clearly demonstrated.
A third probable demand is for a change in the status of Shanghai, which has now twice been the scene of fierce fighting. A combination of the foreign and Chinese parts of Shanghai under a single administration with the status of a free city is an idea that finds favor in some Japanese circles. That Japanese influence in Shanghai will be immensely strengthened if the war turns out favorably may be taken for granted.
In short, ‘Japan over Asia’ to-day has become a living reality, for which Japanese soldiers and sailors and airmen go to their deaths with traditional courage, and for which the Japanese masses will have to pinch and scrape still more as the war bills fall due for payment.
The immediate response of the Japanese people to the war has been one of unanimous patriotism. Doubts and criticisms are uttered in hushed voices, if at all. Not a voice has been raised in the Diet in criticism of the war. The outward signs are all of enthusiasm: resounding cheers for the reservists who depart daily for the front; women collecting a thousand stitches on garments for soldiers, in the belief that this will serve as a talisman; long lines of people, from middleaged business men to little schoolgirls, filing into the War and Navy Departments to make voluntary offerings for the benefit of the soldiers and sailors.
What are the chances that Japan will realize her bold stake on Oriental empire, and bring all China, in one form or another, within the orbit of her political and economic influence? The time factor is, I believe, of vital, if not paramount, importance. If Japan can crush effective Chinese resistance within six months, the military and political side of her venture will have succeeded, although the very broad question of whether Japan will have the surplus resources for effective economic exploitation will remain to be answered. On the other hand, if China after a year still has forces in the field, perhaps armed from Russia, Japan’s ultimate victory is likely to prove a Pyrrhic one. Financial and economic difficulties will multiply; stocks of gold and foreign exchange will run low; the country will be seriously weakened in the event of a clash with some power better armed than China.
Even apart from the possible extension of the conflict to a point where Japan’s limited resources would be seriously strained, it remains a grave question whether Japan has not appeared too late on the imperial stage. To-day the masses, even in backward and largely illiterate countries, are far more nationally conscious than they were during the empire-building days of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. There have already been abundant indications, both in Manchukuo and in North China, that Japan’s problems are by no means ended when the process of military occupation is completed. The unrivaled Chinese capacity for sabotage may make the fruits of conquest turn sour.
Japan’s latest forward leap in China has grave and far-reaching international implications. Although there has certainly been no deliberate effort to irritate other powers, such ‘incidents’ as the wounding of the British Ambassador in China, Sir Hughe Montgomery Knatchbull-Hugessen, by a Japanese aviator are illustrations of the risks of international complications which may be encountered when warfare is carried on in close proximity to large foreign communities. Japanese efforts to prevent arms from reaching China are likely to provoke disputes with other powers. The risks of embroilment with Russia are enhanced when a Japanese army, flushed with victory, pushes into Inner Mongolia and approaches the frontier of the Soviet protectorate, Outer Mongolia.
July 1937 was a very fateful month in the history of Japan and China. It marked the beginning of what seems likely to be a decisive test of national power, a test which many people in both countries had foreseen and yet which had been postponed and evaded so often that optimists were beginning to believe it might be escaped altogether. Every ounce of Japanese national strength has been mobilized to meet an emergency that has been steadily expanding in proportions ever since it started and shows no signs of abating in the near future.
It may be that July 1937 will also be a fateful month in the history of the world. The same impersonal forces that have made for a relentless widening of the scope of Japanese operations in China may lead, in spite of the strong desire of other powers to remain isolated, to the transformation of the Japanese ‘punitive expedition’ in China into an international war. In this case Lukowkiao might achieve the mournful celebrity of Serajevo.