Asia. November 1940

In the flush spring of 1937 and again in the autumn of 1939 the steel industry grumbled about the lack of scrap suplies and blamed the shortage on the Japanese for having cleaned out the nation's scrapyards. [...] It seems obvious that this pronouncement was timed to coincide with the multiplication of German efforts against Great Britain in the same way that the conquest of the Netherlands brought the fleet to Hawaii and that the dowfall of France was followed by a "mystery move" on the part of that fleet and the impostion upon Japan in particular of the airplane gasolin% embargo. [...] Thus the status of Indo-China afects American strategy in the Atlantic through its influence upon the safety of the British navy and in the Pacific because of the serious consquences of "coast-creeping" upon vital Ameican supplies upon the security of the Philipines and Guam—and upon South America. [...] The end of November brings the end of the burning summer weather and the first rains which fill the wells and create watepools in the desert. [...] But what is of even more vital concern to every one living in the islands natives as well as Europeans though the former probably little appreciate the gravity of the situation is the question of what effect the war will have on the political position of the islands.