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Japan's Expansionist Ambitions . . in Eastern Siberia Many Difficulties Confront Russia in its Defence Tojo must secure the Japanese rear in Siberia. By SIR PAUL DUKES.
Soviet's Intense Pre -Occupation in the West . . Offers Favourable Occasion For Invasion attack in Asia inevitably increases. Ever since the treaty of Portsmouth, Japan has regarded another war with Russia as eventually unavoidable. Her ambitions were always wide and have In not diminished with the years. North-eastern Asia they are no less than the control of Eastern Siberia up to Lake Baikal, which, with the river Lena to the north, and vast sandy wastes and trackless mountains to the south, constitutes in the Japanese view a natural frontier, Lake Baikal is the sixth largest lake It is nearly 400 miles in the world.
of Japanese
The Stalin-Matsuoka pact of neutrality of April, 1941, was a less sensational event that the Stalin -Hitler pact of August, 1939, but it seems as if it may lead to somewhat similar developments for which it would be wise to be well prepared. The two pacts secured Russian neutrality in the event of war with Britain and America on the part of Japan and Germany respectively. On the Russian side the agreement with Japan appeared at the time to be an astute move designed to divert Japanese attention from Russian to other directions. To Russia at that moment
recognition of the Soviet -People's Republic of Mongolia''-both under strong protest from China-a great gap was driven into what used to be Tsarist do minions. By it the Russians are out flanked in advance, and with the seizure of the northern half of Sakhalin, of be one which would doubtless Japan's first attempted moves, the defence of the Siberian seaboard and its aerodromes would become very difficult. Their loss would deprive the United States of the power to rein force the Russian air forces in Siberia. Simultaneously, the main Japanese at tack would be conducted through Man -
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*Japanese need to secure their rear conflict between Japan and the demoAs cracies appeared advantageous. "The Times" aptly expressed it: "It did not need a signed diplomatic instrument to assure Japan that Soviet Russia disinterested herself in any Japanese adventures in the southern Pacific; for nothing could better suit Russian policy than to see Japan raise up fresh enemies for herself, and dissipate her strength in distant waters." But now that Japan has reaped the advantages of that pact in the East, as Hitler had done in the West, its disadvantages to Russia are becoming apparent. The Japanese Army in Manchuria has been maintained as an independent force, able to strike without regard to hapIt would be puerpenings elsewhere. ile to suppose that Japan viewed the convenient arrangement with Moscow in any other light than Hitler did, so that with growing German pressure against Russia in Europe the likelihood
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lung and some 50 miles wide. Navigation on it is complicated by the prevalence of sudden storms and the lack of It good .bays and natural harbours, freezes solid for several months in winter, but with a very uneven surface which presents an obstacle to transport such as can be conducted over the frozen surface of Lake Ladoga and the Finnish Gulf. The trans -Siberian railway skirts its southern shore, partly along a road blasted out of the cliffs. A glance at the mar will show the difficulties confronting the Russians under present circumstances in defending themselves against a Japanese invasion. The important fortified port of Vladivostok lies in an isolated and
perilous position at the southern tip of a vulnerable pocket of the Far Eastern By the Japanese occupaTerritory. tion of Manchuria, officially recognised by Moscow in a codicil to the StalinMatsuoka pact in return for Japanese
chukuo and Mongolia northwards, with the object of cutting the trans-Siberian railway east of Lake Baikal. Japan having her Armies on the mainland already, shipping would not be a serious problem in the new adventure. Despite the pact with Japan, the Russians have not been blind to this Up to the summer of last menace. year their Far Eastern forces were said to number about 1,500,000, divided into three groups, entirely self-contained and equipped from the new industrial districts of Central and Eastern Siberia. Considerable numbers have had to be withdrawn to reinforce the European front against Germany, but precision in assessing Russian strength is not facilitated by the extreme Russian reticence in these matters, even towards the military representatives of her allies. In the summer of 1939, when hostilities broke out on the Far Eastern border, due to frontier incidents, the Japanese
emerged from the conflict second best, and were driven back with serious lossThe hero of this campaign was es. Marshal Bluecher,' whose popularity among the Russian soldiery was great, and whose subsequent disappearance is one of the major mysteries of the ensuing period. It is unknown who now has the leadership of the remaining Far Eastern Armies, or what dispositions have been made to provide for the threatened emergency. But it is not unreasonable to hope that the new industrial regions of Central Siberia, supplemented on both flanks of the Urals by the evacuated factories of Leningrad, Moscow, Kiev, Harkov and Rostov, which were largely transplanted to those regions, may prove adequate to supply military equipment both eastwards and westward,. It was reported that over 7,000 railway waggons were used to take a single llarkov factory and its workers The heroism of these to the Urals The achievements passes description. workers, men and women, travelled in conwintry trucks a month in open for ditions, feeding themselves somehow or other, overcoming the difficulties in a manner comprehensible only to Russians, camping in the open upon arrival, reconstructing the factories with their own hands; and recommending production in an incredibly short space of time. The most pressing problem with which the Soviet Government is faced is not that of military supplies, but the task of provisioning the Army and the civilian population following the loss of the richest agricultural regions. Though Moscow allows no word of it to be publicly announced, it is known that the (Continued on Back Cover.)
Guilioyle's Hotel Australia Registered at the G.P.O., Perth, for transmission by post as a newspaper.
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