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The Japanese finances appear to be at a low ebb. In 18 months the Japanese Debt amounts to 120 milliards of French francs; at the outset of hostilities the Debt was 10 milliards of yen. Japan no longer funds credit abroad; her trade in world exports is eclipsed and her foreign market lost. Her light industry is blocked and her heavy industry, devoted to the needs of the Army, consequently operates without yield. The number of unemployed is increasing, also the cost of living. According to reliable sources, her gold reserve is exhausted: the recent Decree enacting general financial mobilization confirms this state of affairs, which for our enemies is alarming.

Japan's preposterous ambitions are now known. Not long ago the Japanese Government denied the authenticity of the Tanaka Plan; today this programme in its entirety has been put into execution; their Continental policy is openly pursued: successive domination of Manchuria, Mongolia, Norther, Central and Southern China: the domination of the whole Chinese world must constitute in their minds the substantial starting-point for Japanese world domination.

Their naval policy has the same objective. It is directed to the South, and hastens to push forward, ever more and more. For it intends to set up, first in China and then everywhere else, "the new order." This phrase, according to Prince Konoye adn Mr. Arita, means at the outset, the integral conquest of China and the total exclusion of foreign interests. The United States, England and France have eventually acknowledged this to be the case. Yet when we stated it a year ago, we were not taken seriously; now in the end the position is realized!

The growing internal political restlessness in Japan remains to be emphasized: half the population, both town and country people, abhor the war. Many of the intelligentsia are in prison for being frank and sincere, under the pretext that they are Communists. There is no one in Japan in a position to over-awe the Army, or who dares to tell it that it is squandering and losing all its forces and all those of the Nation, because this incredible waste is being carried on with abundant and pointless cruelty. The Japanese military caste has assumed a responsibility towards the Japanese people beneath which it will wreck itself and risk plunging the whole country in its own ruin.

This rough summary shows the broad lines of the war in China

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