gIO ONE WORLD : TWO WARS

folly to allow ourselves to be lulled into a feeling of false security.
Japan, not we, is on the war-path, and that path is not a whit the
less dangerous to our own future welfare because it is camouflaged
in such righteous-sounding terms as the " New Order in Greater
East Asia including the South Seas " and the " Greater East Asia
Co-Prosperity Sphere/' If those Americans who counsel appease-
ment could read even a few of the articles by leading Japanese in
the current Japanese magazines wherein their real desires and in-
tentions are given expression, our peace-minded fellow-countrymen
would realize the utter hopelessness of a policy of appeasement.
The time for that has passed. And to those well-intentioned fellow-
countrymen who might charge me with a destructive rather than a
constructive outlook, I would say that only through the discrediting
of the Japanese extremists by the failure of their plans can we hope
to see peace in East Asia. Unarrested, the cancer will progressively
invade everything within reach until its malignant control can
perhaps never be checked. But if the cancer is arrested and rendered
impotent in its earlier stages, we may yet see Japan return to healthy
ways, when constructive instead of destructive forces may again
control. Then, as I wrote to the President, we may approach a
resumption of normal relations with Japan and a constructive re-
adjustment of the whole Pacific problem.

Britain's victory in Europe would of course alter and render
infinitely simpler our present problem out here, but it may become
open to question whether we can afford to await a British victory
or whether we should allow Japan to dig in throughout the areas
where she now visualizes far-flung control. That question, I think,
will depend upon the tempo of the Japanese advance. In the mean-
time, let us keep our powder dry and be ready—for anything.

The turning-point in the war seems to me to have come. If it
was not the entry of Greece it was surely the President's address of
December 29. We heard it on the radio ; I have read it five times and
know it almost by heart, and of course am making every effort to get it
to the attention of influential Japanese because only carefully chosen
excerpts were published in the vernacular press. It was a tremendous
speech, and if I had had the slightest doubt as to the wisdom of
Roosevelt's re-election (which I did not have), this speech would
effectually have removed any such doubt. To those of our fellow-
countrymen who want to get into bed and pull the covers over their
heads, it is an invincible clarification and an unanswerable warning.

On December 14 I wrote the following letter to the President:

DEAR FRANK,—. . . About Japan and all her works. It seems
to me to be increasingly clear that we are bound to have a showdown
some day, and the principal question at issue is whether ,it is to
our advantage to have that showdown sooner or to have it later.