The Problem of Japan
Mr. John Foster Dulles' speech at Los Angeles last Saturday, following on the circulation to the Powers interested of America's proposals for a peace treaty with Japan, brings that baffling pro-
blem at last into the range of immediate discussion. Mr. Dulles, who visited Japan as President Truman's personal representative, had the advantage of talks at Canberra with the Foreign Ministers of Australia and New Zealand, who left him in no doubt about the concern felt in those countries about security in the Pacific, and it would seem that at any rate the basis of an understanding on that point was laid. The essential task is to leave Japan, facing a Communist Russia and a Communist China across the sea that separates her from the mainland of... Asia, militarily secure without allowing her to become herself • a potential military menace. To meet that America proposes to leave a certain number of her own troops "in and about Japan "—an arrangement to which no reasonable objection could be taken. It is also proposed that Japan be encouraged to apply for membership of the United Nations, though not, it is to be assumed, with those prerogatives of a Great Power which she enjoyed in the League of Nations ; Russia, however, would almost certainly veto her application in any case. The associa- tion between the United States and Japan under the MacArthur r4ime has been far closer than between any other victorious and defeated nations, and it is natural that the first concrete peace proposals should emanate from Washington. On the face of it the proposals are practical and fair, not to say generous. But it is impossible to decide how deep Japan's conversion to democracy and peace goes, and even at the best there remain the intractable problems of her expanding population and her standard of living, which makes her competition with the West in some fields deadly. But the sooner all these matters are seriously discussed the better.
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