JAPAN TAKES STOCK OF GERMANY'S ATTACK ON RUSSIA 347

has threatened to arrest several prominent people in the extremist
camp but that he has desisted owing to warnings that he would
be assassinated if he should try to do so. (From what I know of
Hiranuma this story does not ring true.) It may at least be said
that these rumours, whether there is anything in them or not, probably
reflect an acuie cleavage of opinion among the leaders in Japan, and
we believe that a positive and dynamic policy which would create
new involvements and commitments is unlikely just now in the absence
of a unanimous or clearly dominant school of thought.

In the process of settling the last World War, Japan secured for
herself a place among the great powers which gave her considerable
self-satisfaction, and it was not fully appreciated until Japan's in-
vasion of Manchuria came before the League of Nations to what
extent she had become involved in purely European problems of
no vital concern to her. Following Japan's withdrawal from the
League in 1932, it will be remembered that Japan at that time an-
nounced her intention to liquidate her European commitments and
to confine herself to East Asia, and after the outbreak of the present
war she officially confirmed that policy and labelled it " a free and
independent policy." This policy was followed with some show of
determination for eight years, but it was sharply reversed when
Japan concluded the Tripartite Alliance, which again involved her
in European affairs, and an increasing realization had been develop-
ing for some time before the German attack on Soviet Russia that
Japan, in allying herself with Germany and Italy, had assumed certain
avoidable risks.

There is a great difference between the German and Japanese
conceptions of the German bloc and the Japanese bloc, and especi-
ally of the secondary place which Japan is expected to take in the
new scheme. Japan, in fact, has begun to take notice of Germany's
desire for a privileged position in China regardless of the New Order
in East Asia, and she has begun to wonder whether she can afford
to rely on German promises and whether, if Germany should be
victorious in the war, all will be well for Japan. Matsuoka has
repeatedly been challenged to refute the evidence of Germany's
deliberate deception of Japan in attacking Soviet Russia in the face of
the advice which Hitler is alleged to have given Matsuoka in Berlin,
that Japan should improve Soviet-Japanese relations by concluding
a pact with the Soviet Union. I would not go so far as to say that
there has been a complete collapse of Japanese confidence in German
good faith, but I do not think that that confidence is to-day sufficiently
robust to justify any initiatives tending to serve German interests more
closely than the interests of Japan herself.

I therefore believe that in the light of the German-Soviet war no
reformulation of Japanese policy would have been possible without
considering the three factors hereinbefore mentioned, namely, (i) the
lack of a united opinion in Japan, (2) the desire to restrict the risks
in th$ European war so far as possible in the light of