Milestone

Last week passed the second anniversary of Munich: Sept. 29, 1938.

Three Against the U. S.

The morning of Sept. 27, 1940 A.D., which corresponds to the 18th year of the Fascist Era and the 15th year of Showa (the reign of Japan's Emperor Hirohito), dawned clear and quiet in Berlin. There had been no air raid the night before and His Excellency Senor Don Ramon Serrano Suner, Spain's Minister of Government and Falangist Party Leader, had had a good night's sleep. Don Ramon, who had been a visitor in Berlin for nearly three weeks, had, as usual, very little to do. He took a stroll in the direction of the Chancellery and on the way he ran into a phalanx of plum-cheeked school children, each carrying three paper flags--German, Italian and Japanese. They were on their way to the Chancellery to welcome Italy's Foreign Minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano.

Don Ramon was not surprised to see the flags the children carried, but newspaper correspondents were. For a fortnight they had been led to expect that the big Axis doings which were obviously under way had to do with Don Ramon's country. While German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop conferred with Count Ciano and Benito Mussolini in Rome they had filed Foreign-Office-inspired dispatches about Axis designs on Gibraltar, on the Near East, on Africa--but hardly a line about the Far East. This morning they learned that they had been thoroughly hoaxed. Lean, hollow-eyed Don Ramon had been posted in Berlin as a scarecrow to keep them out of the Axis chicken yard until another batch of eggs had hatched.

When the correspondents were admitted to the vast Hall of Ambassadors in the Chancellery, they observed that Don Ramon Serrano Suner was not there. Neither was any member of the diplomatic corps except slim, suave Saburo Kurusu, who represents Japan in Berlin and has a Nazi-phobe American wife. Just outside a door that leads to the offices of Adolf Hitler a long table had been placed. Ambassador Kurusu sat there, as did Count Ciano and Herr von Ribbentrop. Before them, on the table, lay a thin document in triplicate.

At precisely 1:15 o'clock in the afternoon Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop scrawled his signature at the bottom of the first copy of the document, addressed himself to duplicate and triplicate. Count Ciano followed him and Ambassador Kurusu signed last. The signing took two minutes. As Ambassador Kurusu laid down his pen the door behind him opened. With a nervous, catlike walk Adolf Hitler came in. He shook hands with the Italian and Japanese emissaries, sat down next to Ciano. Joachim von Ribbentrop stood up and through a battery of microphones proceeded to tell the world that Japan had joined the Axis.

"New Order of Things." The agreement contained only 419 words, consisted of a preamble and six short articles. The preamble was bombastic, the articles curt, clear, complete. Excerpts:

Preamble: "The Governments of Germany, Italy and Japan . . . have decided to stand by and cooperate with one another in regard to their efforts in Greater East Asia and regions of Europe respectively, wherein it is their prime purpose to establish and maintain a new order of things calculated to promote and maintain the mutual prosperity and welfare of the peoples concerned. . . .

Article I: "Japan recognizes and respects the leadership of Germany and Italy in the establishment of a new order in Europe.

Article II: "Germany and Italy recognize and respect the leadership of Japan in the establishment of a new order in Greater East Asia.

Article III: "Germany, Italy and Japan . . . undertake to assist one another with all political, economic and military means when one of the three contracting powers is attacked by a power at present not involved in the European war or the Chinese-Japanese conflict.

Article IV: "With the view to implementing the present pact, joint technical commissions, members of which are to be appointed by the respective governments of Germany, Italy and Japan, will meet without delay.

Article V : "Germany, Italy and Japan affirm that the aforesaid terms do not in any way affect the political status which exists at present between each of the three contracting parties and Soviet Russia.

Article VI: "The present pact . . . shall remain in force ten years. . . . The high contracting parties shall at the request of any of them enter into negotiations for its renewal."

250,000,000 Strong. While Adolf Hitler glowered at the table top, Joachim von Ribbentrop launched into a speech which made clearer than crystal a fact that was crystal-clear already: the treaty was an alliance against the U. S. Cried he:

"The pact which has been signed is a military alliance between three of the mightiest States on earth. . . . It is to help to bring peace to the world as quickly as possible. . . . Any State, should it harbor the intention of mixing in the final phase of the solution of these problems in Europe or Eastern Asia, or attacking one State signatory to this three-power pact, will have to take on the entire concentrated might of three nations with more than 250,000,000 inhabitants."

What Germany, Italy and Japan had said to the U. S. was simply this: if the U. S. joins Britain in the European war, Japan will attack in the Pacific; if the U. S. interferes in the Chinese war or tries to stop Japanese expansion, Germany and Italy will attack in the Atlantic. If the U. S. can be frightened into isolation, the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis thinks it can pick the British Empire to pieces.

No bombshell through the roof of the U. S. State Department was this treaty. Secretary of State Cordell Hull laconically observed that it was merely another brick in the structure of anti-U. S. Japanese foreign policy, which he apparently had despaired of altering as long ago as 1936. But nobody could deny that the treaty was a diplomatic defeat for the U. S., which for the first time in its history was now encircled by enemies.

From the standpoint of power politics the pact amounted to raising the ante in the hope of frightening the U. S. into dropping its hand so the Axis could rake in the pot. But if the Axis hoped to frighten the U. S. out of its everything-short-of-war policy of helping Great Britain, it had almost certainly failed. Since U. S. security in the Atlantic -- hence liberty to maintain her Fleet in the Pacific--depends on the British Fleet, the U. S. could now do no less than help Britain more.

The Gamble. Ever since the war began Germany has tried to bring in Japan on her side. Lately U. S. aid to Great Britain has been an increasing menace to Germany. A month ago Germany began putting heavy pressure on Japan. One of Joachim von Ribbentrop's smart, tough young men, Heinrich von Stahmer, went to Moscow, told Joseph Stalin's man Molotov what was afoot, and continued on to Tokyo. There he was known as ''Germany's masked special envoy." Nearly every day he went to see Yosuke Matsuoka, Japan's ambitious, daring Foreign Minister who is the backbone of Premier Prince Fumimaro Konoye.

Germany needed Japan, not only to try to neutralize the U. S., but to threaten the Far Eastern part of the British Empire: Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand. Foreign Minister Matsuoka believed Japan could gamble on Germany's winning the war before the U. S. was ready, willing, or able to join up against the Axis in World War II. After two weeks of argument he won over Prince Konoye and the Emperor.

What Is East Asia? Japan's gains from the treaty were not so obvious as those of Germany and Italy. And Japan's risks were greater. But if the U. S. is kept from effective action in the Far East, Japan may eventually realize her East Asian dream. Last week no authoritative spokesman would define the term Greater East Asia, but the newspaper Nichi Nichi, which often speaks with authority, drew its boundaries in an article last month. Said Nichi Nichi:

"It is bound on the west by a continuous chain of mountains forming a Great Divide." Tracing this chain of mountains from the Bering Strait southwestward to the Arabian Sea, Nichi Nichi drew a line which almost coincides with the frontiers of Siberia, giving Japan's Greater East Asia all of China, French Indo-China, Siam, Burma and India. The coast line of East Asia, said Nichi Nichi, extends "from Northern Nippon southward to Indonesia, then westward to Ceylon. Asia's history shows how long there has been intercourse along this coast line. No matter how we look at this East Asia, it is a natural and inseparable unit."

Before embarking on a political course which may yet bring war with the U. S., Japan took one last look backward. Foreign Office spokesmen spoke regretfully of U. S. hostility to Japanese aims, of continued pressure culminating in last week's embargo of scrap iron. Japan is still not abandoning hope of improving relations with the U. S., said the Foreign Office's Spokesman No. 1, slightly cockeyed, definitely popeyed, swart, squat Ya-kichiro Suma.

In Moscow the text of the treaty was digested for 24 hours before its text was published. Not until three days after it was signed did Pravda offer the skimpy comment that Russia had known about it in advance.

Russia, long the most hated nation in the world, became by virtue of the treaty the most sought-after power in the world. U. S. Ambassador Laurence Steinhardt, who had vacationed in the U. S. while the treaty was being cooked up, paid a hurried call on Foreign Commissar Viacheslav Molotov. British Ambassador Sir Stafford Cripps got busy. Japanese Ambassador Yoshitsugu Tatekawa, who hates Communists but loves the "simple, pure-minded Russians," conferred with German Ambassador Count Friedrich Werner von der Schulenburg about the non-aggression treaty Japan hopes to negotiate with the U. S. S. R. to safeguard her northern frontier while she conquers Greater East Asia. Comrades Stalin & Molotov said nothing. Well they know that, while Russia's interests lie with a victory of the London-Washington Axis, the Berlin-Tokyo Axis has the U. S. S. R. also encircled.

As Foreign Minister Molotov prepared to confer with Germany's Ribbentrop, Berlin let it be known that in the new world Germany hopes to create, Russia would have her sphere of influence. This sphere would lie between German Europe and Japanese East Asia, but its exact boundaries were not marked. Russia does and must always fear German expansion eastward more than anything else, and it was doubtful last week if anything Joachim von Ribbentrop could say or sign would reassure Comrade Stalin on that point. Best bet was that Russia would continue to play ball with the Axis against Great Britain for self-protection, but would stand ready to change sides if ever Britain and the U. S. appeared about to win the game.

What of China? If Russia and Japan can reach an agreement on spheres of influence in China, China may find herself Poland. But if Russia continues to send supplies to the Chinese, China may gain by the pact. Last week the U. S. gave China a $25,000,000 credit, and Britain will doubtless reopen the Burma Road. Both Britain and the U. S. now desperately need China's aid in keeping Japan too busy to spread out into the East Indies.

"The turning point of history" was what Japan's Prince Konoye called the treaty. Reactions throughout the world showed that this might be true. To China a U. S.-Japanese war appeared inevitable. To Spain the U. S. seemed faced with a dilemma: intervene immediately or abandon Britain. Spanish newspapers said nothing of Spain's dilemma-- to fight or to eat-- as Don Ramon Serrano Suner left Berlin for Rome.

To Latin America it seemed that the war must become worldwide, with South America as the prize. South America's outspoken hostility to the three Axis powers made the U. S. thank God it had made friends with its neighbors in the south. Both German and Italian newspapers warned that the initial Axis attack, if it came, would be directed at South America.

London saw the English-speaking nations welded into one unit. Said the News Chronicle: "If the English-speaking world has taken on all the aggressors at once, it will survive and win." In Canada an immediate U. S. -British alliance was urged by the Toronto Globe & Mail.

Madness or Order? In the minds of many men by last week the sombre conviction had grown that their world was spinning into insanity. "A mad world, debt-burdened and bankrupt, with repudiation, disaster and chaos threatening," Publisher Roy Howard called it after a trip through the Far East. Everywhere there were symptoms of madness.

Saxons fought Anglo-Saxons and destroyed the monuments their cultures had built. Off the coast of Africa, Frenchmen fought Frenchmen and their former allies, the British. In Indo-China Frenchmen fought their conqueror's allies, the Japanese. In China, yellow men fought yellow men, even as white men fought white men in Europe and black men fought black men--on white men's orders --in Africa.

Nations allied themselves with nations to destroy other nations, knowing that once their task was completed they would turn on their allies, even as Britain and France had turned on each other.

But, mad or not, the world was taking sides in a mighty battle of continents. There was order in all the moves. The battle lines were now clearly drawn between free capitalism and autarchy, between the semi-democracies and the totalitarians, between what Publisher Howard called the Have Gots and the Have Nots. Against the 250,000,000 people Joachim von Ribbentrop boasted of, the British Empire and China had 959,000,000. The U. S. and South America had another 200,000,000. In resources the Have Nots were outmatched. In immediate war power they were far superior.

Battle of the Oceans. The great battle had already begun. Pundit Walter Lippmann called it the Battle of the Oceans. The day before the pact was signed he wrote: "The battles over England and northern Europe and in the English Channel, at Gibraltar, toward Egypt and Suez, at Dakar in Africa and in French Indo-China are the opening battles of a great campaign in which there is at stake . . . the mastery of the oceans of the world.

"These battles . . . are strategically one great battle. . . . For if [Germany, Italy and Japan] are to become the undisputed masters of Europe, Asia and Africa, they must be masters of the seas. . . . At the present time we control the Panama passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific and Britain controls the other passage. While this control remains, the German, Italian and Japanese Navies are divided: the passages through which they must pass in order to concentrate their forces for a decisive blow are plugged in the English Channel, at Gibraltar, Suez and Singapore. . . . The grand objective of the Axis is to crush sea power in its main base in the British Isles, and at the same time to clear a passageway from Europe to the Pacific. . . . If this objective is obtained, we shall stand on the defensive in the two oceans."

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