vided Japan succeeds in assuring British neutrality in this war. b) It must be considered that if this war on the Pacific breaks out before the unification of China, Japan will make a predatory attempt to occupy China in order to make herself master of the vital arteries required for its defense and for its industry. c) Of most practical importance for the present foreign policy of the Kuomintang is the circumstance that Japan is interested in preserving friendly relations with China precisely with an eye on future wars in the Pacific.
It may be predicted that if the Canton government succeeds by means of the Northern expedition not only in extending but also consolidating its basis, Japan will go over to a certain "defensive policy' and prefer to keep Northern China in its hands with the aid of Chang-Tso-lin rather than plunge into a dangerous adventure and thereby mobilize still broader masses of the Chinese people against itself. That such a perspective is by no means impossible is shown by the latest note of the Japanese government to Canton containing the four well-known questions as to whether the Canton government has the intention of extending the revolution into other countries, of establishing a Communist order in China, etc. Such questions would only give evidence of a more or less astounding naivite of Japanese diplomacy if they did not simultaneously serve the purposes of cloaking Japan's change from its former policy in China. Already since the Hongkong strike the Japanese have really dissociated themselves from the brutal British policy of conquest in China, thereby leaving the British alone to receive the blows of the national revolutionary movement. Japan's policy of an actual recognition of the Canton government is based upon the hope, on the basis of race relationship, to find sympathy with the Right Wing of the Kuomintang for a new alliance. Further more the Japanese cannot disregard the fact that an
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