Their narrow-minded and domineering attitude toward the Chinese made cooperation with them almost impossible, and the excesses they permitted their troops, as in the mad orgy of rape and murder which followed the capture of Nanking, made even the politically apathetic Chinese peasants determined and irreconcilable foes of Japan.
The outbreak of war in Europe in 1939 must at first have looked like a fortunate event to the Japanese. In 1936, Japan had joined with Germany in an anti-communist pact, to which Italy also subscribed the following year. Now Japan’s European allies seemed on the point of crushing her potential European enemies. The eyes of the world were diverted from close scrutiny of the Far East, and the collapse of France in 1940 permitted Japan to start upon a gradual military and economic penetration of French Indo-China in the heart of the European colonial domains of Southeast Asia.
The war in Europe, however, aroused the American public to a consciousness of the true significance of Japanese aggression in China. It came to be realized that the militaristic regimes of Germany and Japan, if victorious, would constitute a perpetual menace to the peace and freedom of America, and of the world. While gradually swinging to the aid of Britain against Germany, the United States also began to take a more positive stand against Japanese aggression. The old policy of verbal protests and non-recognition of Japanese conquests was slowly supplemented by economic sanctions, which hurt Japan far more than a thousand verbal protests. Valuable shipments of scrap iron were