ing carried on, directed primarily against the United States, as the power which stands in the way of Japan's further development, and which condemns it to colonial enslavement. In Japan the threatened war in the Pacific is discussed openly and unconcealed; speeches are made about it, whole books are written, plans are worked out for supplying Japan with raw materials in case of a blockade, etc. To be sure, this war factions sometimes veiled over by modern trade and financial relations which appear in the "peaceful guise" of an economic collaboration.
It is well-known e. g. that Japan is greatly interested in the American market for its export of silk and tea. Aside from this, Japan, as a result of its serious losses during the 1923 earthquake, was in need of American credit. The United States exploited this circumstance and penetrated more and more into Japan. Yet even if we discount a good part of the exaggeration inherent in this militarist agitation, the tremendous importance of the Pacific problem nevertheless remains an undeniable fact.
The Comintern, however, has devoted too little attention to this problem in the past: we were too much a European International. We were inclined to look all problems of world politics and of the international labor movement through the prism of European relations. Parties directly involved in the Pacific problem, such as the American and British, are also devoting but inadequate attention to it. Only after the outbreak of the Chinese national revolution did the question of conflicts in the Far East arouse our interest, and we looked attentively into the crystallizing grouping of forces on the Pacific. Yet the Chinese Revolution we have also thus far considered from the viewpoint of its perspectives of internal development; and we lay too little weight upon its significance as a factor which revolutionizes Pacific relationships as a whole.
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