- Forget Pearl Harbour ?
Very few problems have been solved in the five and a half years that have elapsed between the ending of the Pacific war and the present attempt to draw up a peace treaty with Japan, and a few new ones have arisen in Korea, in China and in Japan itself. Consequently sympathy with the wish of the United States Government to get on with the drafting of the treaty is accom- panied by an acute consciousness of the difficulties that have still to be surmounted, the fears that have not been laid to rest and the questions of principle that have never been faced. If Mr. Dulles, in his tour of the Pacific as President Truman's envoy, has been able to clear up any part of the situation it will be easier to fall in with his confident prediction that he will soon be able to draft an acceptable settlement. But, unfortun- ately, most of the loose ends still seem to be hanging. No doubt Mr. Dulles himself could square his statement in Tokyo that he foresees a peace treaty which would " recognise Japan's inherent right of individual and collective self-defence " with his state- ment in Sydney that there was no intention of rearming Japan. Possibly the latter statement supersedes the former. It certainly appears difficult to hold both positions at once. Again, it would no doubt be possible to find American military backing for the theory that a line of islands must be held, stretching from the Aleutians to New Zealand. General MacArthur, whom Mr. Dulles visited in Japan. might provide it. But it is an arguable theory. It is to be hoped that Mr. Dulles's private conversations with Ministers in Tokyo and Canberra have been less confusing than his public statements. After all it is easy enough to make a case for some measure of rearmament of the Japanese. Even in Australia and New Zealand, where uneasiness about Japanese militarism dies hard, that case might be accepted, particularly if accompanied by American agreement to a Pacific defence pact. It is difficult to believe that the United States Government has not made up its mind what it wants. The time has come to bring policy right into the open.
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