I wished, however, that the Prime Minister had drawn more
sharp attention to the political ineptitude of the Japanese move. It may be true that by springing this strategic surprise upon the United States the Japanese have been able to secure for themselves much initial advantage and considerable temporary success. As a short-term manoeuvre their base and brutal act may return a rich dividend. Yet this war is not a short-term war ; it is a long-term war ; it is a war to the death, and we have no doubt whatsoever as to where the corpses will lie. The Japanese as a whole are more intelligent than the Germans and should have realised that Ribbentrop diplomacy cannot succeed in the end. It would have been possible for them to attack Malaya only and to have represented President Roosevelt as a dictator determined to drag his unwilling country into a world- war for the sake of English investments in rubber plantations. With one swoop the Japanese High Command cut the ground, and even the feet, away from American isolationists. They in- flicted upon the United States what is perhaps the greatest outrage ever perpetrated by one Power upon another. The blaze of the bombs at Pearl Harbour and Guam boiled the American soul into a molten mass which in a few days will cool into icy steel. Mr. Churchill indicated to the House that he was aware that the Japanese had sacrificed future political necessities to immediate military advantage. He stressed with marked emphasis the fact that the assault on America was made under the authority of the Japanese High Command and not under that of the Imperial Japanese Government. The final fatal word of com- mand was given not from Tokyo but from Berlin. Once again German diplomacy has shown its complete lack of political fore- sight. Once again diplomatic prudence has been sacrificed to smash and grab. * * *
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