Japanese Barbarity
The appalling story of atrocities committed on military prisoners and civilians by the Japanese army at Hong Kong told to the House of Commons by Mr. Eden must dispel any idea that in the Japanese we have an enemy less barbarous than the Nazis at their worst. He told of officers and men bound hand and foot and bayoneted to death ; of women, both Asiatic and European, raped and murdered ; of refusal to permit the collection of the wounded and the burial of the dead ; and the Japanese commander's curt dismissal of the representations of General Maltby. Our thoughts go out to that far larger number of prisoners who fell into Japanese hands at Singapore. Mr. Eden spoke of the "nauseating hypocrisy " of the Japanese claims that
their armies were animated by the lofty precepts of the traditional chivalry—Bushido. This feudal code, which imposed its honourable obligations upon the knightly class in the past, has suffered a sea-change under the influences of a disintegrating modernism in which the more sinister elements in " civilisation " have been most readily absorbed. Even if excuse be made for the masses of the Japanese army not far removed from barbarism, there is no such excuse for leaders who have sanctioned and indeed ordered excesses. The civilisation of the Japanese military class is no more than skin-deep. What we see here is the ancient barbarism made infinitely worse by the cult of the newer barbar- ism copied from the Nazis. Our forces in the Far East have to face a foe whose power and cleverness are combined with savagery.
