A Rebuff for Japan Japan's attempt to win by diplomacy
what she is unable to achieve by arms has acted as a boomerang, the announcement of her treaty with Wang Ching-wei being more than offset by President Roosevelt's promise of financial help to the real Chinese Government. Wang Ching-wei is head of a Chinese Government in Nanking by the tolerance of the Japanese, and the treaty which he has signed would leave Japan not only in military control during the war and for two years afterwards, but even in the ultimate settlement would give Japan the right to retain troops in North China and Inner Mongolia, to station naval units in China, and to control her economic life. The terms of the treaty matter little, since a victorious Japan would do what she liked, and indeed conditions have been inserted in the treaty which would make it easy for her to do so. But Japan is not victorious. Her latest offensive against the armies of the Chungking Government has been a costly failure, and the prolongation of war far in the interior of China involving the use of at least a million men is draining her resources. At the precise moment when, in the treaty with the puppet Govern- ment, she had hoped to present the world with an accomplished fact, she is rebuffed by President Roosevelt's announcement, promising further financial aid to the tune of too million dollars for general purchases and currency stabilisation. That is the sort of reply which the Japanese Government is capable of understanding.
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