Our Future, in Asia

MR. SMITH, with a background of long journalistic experience in the Philippines, wishes to see America adopt a more dynamic Far Eastern policy, helping China more effectively, stopping supplies of war material to Japan, and sending out a part of the Pacific Fleet to Manila to show that we mean business. That such steps involve a risk of war is obvious; but the author believes that this risk can and should be taken. Mr. Smith perhaps understates the arguments that might be used against American involvement in the Oriental war: the difficulty of carrying on war many thousands of miles away from the nearest adequate American base in Hawaii, the relative smallness of the China trade (between 1935 and 1939 America sold about five times as much to Japan as to China), the uncertainty as to whether America is prepared to go in for the large-scale imperialism after the war which alone would make a war worth-while. But his work may be a fairly accurate forecast of things to come in the Orient. It is probably the best available statement of the case for an American forward policy in East Asia, and it is a useful handbook of Far Eastern information, especially in relation to the Philippines.