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Show No Retreat Aggressor diplomacy has now ' openly moved to immobilize the United States. That is the meaning mean-ing of the new treaty announced by Germany, Italy, and Japan. This aggreement provides for mutual assisance among these States should the United States enter the European war. But its effect obviously is intended not simply to keep the United States out of Europe but to tie Americans' Ameri-cans' hands even where American Ameri-can interests are concerned. This treaty matters to Japan because Tokyo hopes with its aid to get a clear path for its aggression in Asia. It matters to Germany and because they hope to use it to isolate Britain until that country coun-try can be subdued. But, put Japanese hopes together to-gether with those of the Axis and they spell final and dangerous isolation also for the United States. The events that began in Manchuria Man-churia have come full circle. The aggression that could be permitted permitt-ed far away has come home to all of us. The thing let loose in Manchuria Man-churia has moved through Ethiopia Ethio-pia to Europe, Via Spain. Its more subtle pressures have already al-ready been felt in the New World. And in the Far East it has now shown itself frankly as a world-wide movement that threatens directly the interests of Americans. Thus the Expert-Import Bank's grant of S25,000,000 additional credit to China is a national defense de-fense measure. And President Roosevelt's ban on scrap metal shipments becomes not merely an aid-to-China measure but a stroke for self-defense. This is a period of show-down not only across the English Channel but across the Pacific. The tardily awakened understanding under-standing among Americans of what British sea power has meant to them has at last produced produc-ed a national eagerness to help Britain in its war against the Third Reich. But more education about sea power may be needed to awaken Americans to their position in the world. If peace is to be restored to the world, peaceable nations must control what Walter Lippmann has so graphically termed the "door" of the oceans. These are (1) the Panama Canal, (2) the English Channel-Mediterranean-Suez-Singapore route. One is in American hands, the other still is controlled by Britain. As Mr. Lippmann points out, while they are thus controlled, a concentration concentra-tion of the naval power of the anu-dVmociatic triangle is impossible. im-possible. The dangers of the alternative al-ternative situation are abvious. There is no safe retreat from the position in which the United States finds itself. This petition has not been assumed through aid to Britain. It exsisted before the war in Europe began. It is a fact of history, politics, geography, geogra-phy, economics and morality combined. com-bined. The possibility that Britain and the United States will share Britain's Bri-tain's naval bases in the Pacific has driven aggressor-diplomacy out into the open. But whatever ihe reactions of Toyko to the stiffening of America's attitude whether the Japanese war lords become less or apparently more controllable by reason the United States should press vigorously vigor-ously along the lines now indicated indicat-ed by the loan to China, the embargo em-bargo on scrap metals, and the extension of its naval power in cooperation with Britain. The Monitor. |