The Japanese Invasion of Manchuria

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The helplessness of the League of Nations in the Sino-Japanese dispute exceeds all the predictions of its most implacable enemies and critics. The self-contradictory character of the League of Nations — I should prefer, with your permission, to say its treacherous character — is most clearly represented by France. Its official delegate, Minister of Foreign Affairs Briand, is conducting the whole of the League's campaign for peace, and at the same time the entire French governmental press — with Le Temps in the lead — is supporting Japanese intervention with all its might, thus in effect disavowing its own official diplomacy. If you follow the editorials in Le Temps day after day, you might think you were reading _an organ of the general staff in Tokyo, not of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris. It is clear that the difference between the real policy of Briand and the military operations of General Honjo cannot be very great if the semiofficial French press can successfully accommodate both points of view.

Here we see once more that France, in order to support its Versailles hegemony — a hegemony which is unstable because it does not correspond to the actual relative economic weight of the country — is compelled to seek props among all the reactionary elements of Europe and the world, and to support military violence, colonial expansion, etc., wherever it turns.

But it goes without saying that the Sino-Japanese conflict, or more precisely, the military attack on China by Japan, before it could find support in Paris, had to find it in Tokyo — and in a certain sense in Nanking as well. The present dramatic developments in Manchuria have arisen directly out of the suppression of the Chinese revolution and the imminence of revolution in Japan.

The Chinese revolution of 1925-27 was a movement of national liberation and brought immense masses into action.

The Kuomintang Party, having seized the leadership of the movement, succeeded in putting down the revolution ultimately by military means. This prevented the formation of a democratic nation, weakened China, revived the struggle between cliques of generals, and therewith kindled predatory appetites, especially in Japan.

Japan's military intervention in Manchuria is, however, by no means an expression of the strength of the present Japanese state On the contrary, this step was dictated by its growing weakness. It is highly instructive to consider the analogy between the Manchurian adventure of czarism, which led to the war of 1904-05, and this adventure of the mikado's government, which will inevitably develop into war, or more precisely, a series of wars.

The czarist government in its day plunged into the situation in the East in search of a way out of the intolerable inner contradictions between a developing capitalism and the archaic, semi-feudal, agrarian-caste structure of the country. The medicine, however, only made the disease worse and led to the first Russian revolution of 1905.

The agrarian and caste stratification of Japan still remains semi-feudal At the beginning of the present century the contradiction between youthful Japanese capitalism and the old state regime had not yet fully developed. On the contrary, capitalism was successfully using the firm old feudal classes, institutions, and traditions for its own military aims. It was just this combination which gave Japan her colossal victory over czarist Russia in 1904-05.

Since that time the situation has radically changed. During the last quarter of a century the capitalist development of Japan has deeply undermined the old Japanese relations and institutions crowned by the figure of the mikado. The ruling classes are pointing out to the Japanese peasants the copious reserves of land in Manchuria. But the peasants want first to settle the agrarian problem at home. It is only on a new, democratic basis that Japan can finally take shape as a modern nation. The masters of Japan's destiny feel now approximately as the czarist monarchy felt at the beginning of the century. And by the ill-omened irony of fate, the rulers of Japan are seeking a way out on those same plains of Manchuria where the czarist monarchy received such a serious prerevolutionary wound.

Which way events will turn in the Far East in the coming days or weeks is not easy to predict Too many contradictory factors, crisscrossing in different directions, are at work. It is especially difficult to cast a balance at this juncture because the Japanese government itself, being the government of a prerevolutionary epoch, is marked by an unusual instability and tendency toward unpredictable actions.

But no matter how events stack up in the coming weeks, their general course can be predicted almost without the danger of mistake Even if it should prove possible at this time to halt the spread of Japanese military operations and thus prevent them from developing directly into major warfare along an extensive front, that would still signify nothing more than a breathing spell. The ruling circles of Japan have got a foothold in Manchuria. The League of Nations is trying to resolve the conflict (insofar as it is really trying to do this) by making new concessions to Japan at China's expense. This means that, even with the most favorable possible outcome of the current military operations, Japan will further strengthen its foothold in Manchuria.

For China, the Japanese "rights" in Manchuria will rankle like a painful sliver in a bare foot True, China is weakened by the unchallenged sway of the various Kuomintang military cliques. But China's national awakening remains a factor of immense historical importance, and it will become even greater. In order to maintain its position, Japan will inevitably be compelled to resort to ever new military expeditions. The necessity of sending new troops will in its turn create a desire to justify the expense by an enlargement of Japanese "rights" — that is, by new seizures and violations.

This process has its own automatic logic. Japan's international position will become subject to more and more strain. Military expenses will steadily increase. The original considerations of economic advantage will, as things develop, give place to considerations of military prestige Discontent will increase throughout the country. In these circumstances Manchuria may well become for the Japanese monarchy what Morocco was for the Spanish monarchy — and that, too, in a briefer time.

Might not the present developments in Manchuria lead to a war between Japan and the Soviet Union? On this question, as on the foregoing in general, I can comment, of course, only as an observer not initiated into the plans and intentions of the respective governments and judging exclusively on the basis of objective indications and the logic of things.

Any desire on the part of the Soviet government for a conflict with Japan may in any case be absolutely excluded. Upon this question it is most instructive to observe the new tack taken quite recently by the semiofficial French press. During the first weeks of the Japanese intervention, Le Temps never tired of repeating: "It is not Japan that is to be feared, but the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which is obviously getting ready for aggressive action." News stories about Soviet troop concentrations poured out as from the horn of plenty. In this way public attention was sufficiently distracted, arid the necessary time gained for the Japanese military authorities. When the weakness of the League of Nations had made itself apparent in a sufficiently convincing way, the semiofficial French press set itself the task — or rather, had the task set for it — of reconciling the governments of the great powers to the accomplished fact and getting them to go as far as possible to meet Japan. From that moment Le Temps began to assert that there could be no talk of interference by the USSR, that it was just a question of a local conflict, a provincial episode, that everything would be settled properly, just as fine as could be, that there was no need to get upset and interfere: Japan itself knew what was best for it in Manchuria.

The French press has sought an argument for these recent reassuring affirmations in the "weakness" of the USSR and the Red Army. In so doing it has made frequent use of the analogy mentioned above with the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. The analogy is very instructive, but only upon one condition: that you place a plus sign where there was a minus before, and vice versa. For if present-day Japan is not at all similar to the Japan of the beginning of the century, the Soviet Union is still less similar to czarist Russia. Of course, the Soviet revolution is far from having been completed. There are many contradictions in Soviet economic development, and these at times develop into political difficulties. To deny this would be to engage in the head-in-the-sand politics of the ostrich. But in making assessments on a broad historical scale one must keep a sense of proportion and not be distracted from fundamental factors by secondary ones. The Red Army is the historical product of three revolutions, which have awakened and educated the Russian nation and, along with it, the several nations of the Soviet Union and a number of other nations friendly with it. In the event of war — whose inevitability and necessity will be understood by the masses of the population in the USSR — the energy awakened by those three revolutions will become a mighty force. Only the blind can fail to see that!

To be sure, a Far Eastern theater of military activities would be remote Railroad connections with it present a serious difficulty. Japan's advantage in this respect is indubitable — but only in this respect. In everything else the decisive advantage would be on the side of the USSR. The Red Army alone would demonstrate its enormous superiority over the present prerevolutionary Japanese army, and that in itself could have decisive significance. But over and above that, the operations would be carried on in a country deeply hostile to Japan and friendly to the Soviet Union. For if the latter found itself forced into a war, it could, and would, wage the war only as an ally of the Chinese people in their fight for national liberation.

No matter how weakened China may be by the regime of her militarists, the colossal upheavals of two revolutions have politically prepared innumerable elements for the making of a new China. Hundreds of thousands, millions, of Chinese know how to handle weapons. Hunger and an awakened national sense drive them to take up arms. Even now, as guerrilla detachments constantly harassing the Japanese lines of communication and threatening individual Japanese units, the improvised Chinese troops constitute a serious danger to the Japanese, no less a danger than that which the Spanish guerrillas proved to be for Napoleon's occupying forces. As for a military alliance between the Soviet republic and China, that would be a veritable catastrophe for Japan.

Why then, you may ask, does the Soviet Union seek to avoid war? Are not the peaceable declarations of Moscow mere diplomatic screening for intentions that are anything but peaceful? No, I do not think so. More than that, I consider such a thing impossible. No matter what its military results might be, a war would bring the Soviet republic enormous economic hardships which would be added to the already existing economic complications. Economic construction would be halted and political difficulties would very likely result.

One could go to war, in such circumstances, only if it became absolutely inevitable. But it is not inevitable. On the contrary, even from a purely military point of view the Soviet government has not the slightest reason for haste or for running ahead to meet events. Japan will only weaken itself by its Manchurian undertaking. Conditions in the Far East — the immense distances, the general economic backwardness, and, in particular, the poorly developed rail connections — are such that there is absolutely no reason to fear an immediate, or even a relatively remote danger to the vital centers of the Soviet Union, including of course its centers in Asia.

The question of the Chinese Eastern Railroad, important as it is in itself, when viewed in this connection cannot have a decisive significance in determining the policy of the two sides. The Soviet government has announced more than once its perfect readiness to hand over the railroad to a really strong Chinese government — that is, a government that would base itself upon the awakened Chinese people To have handed it over in earlier years, to Chang Tso-lin or Chang Hsueh-liang would have meant, either directly or indirectly, to have handed it over to Japan, which would have employed it against China and against the Soviet Union.

To interpret the Soviet policy in relation to the Chinese Eastern Railroad as "imperialism" is to stand things on their head in the interests of aggressive Japanese militarism. But in any case, the question of the railroad is not an isolated question. It is a subordinate element in the great overall problem of the Far East. China will speak the last word on that problem. And the most ardent sympathies of the people of the Soviet Union will be on the side of the Chinese people, it goes without saying.

It would not be out of the way to add that, if nothing else, the present situation in Europe ought to make it clear to all thinking political people, including opponents of the USSR, that the Soviet Union does not, and could not, wish to tie its hands in the Far East You may ask what am I getting at? The possibility of the National Socialists, La, the fascists, coming to power in Germany. If this were to happen, it would mean, according to my deepest conviction, an inevitable war between fascist Germany and the Soviet republic. Then we would truly be dealing with a question of life or death. But that is a separate subject, to which we can perhaps return another time.