The Japanese Foreign Office organ, I see, is making appeal
to "the strongly developing isolationist forces" in the United States. It is behind the times. The isolationist tide is ebbing, not flowing. The latest sign of that is a leading article in the immensely popular Saturday Evening Post (of March 29th), With its three-million circulation, 'which is sent me from Boston with the comment "swan-song of isolation by one of its strongest supporters." The Post, without approving the Ameri- ran Government's policy, which it has consistently opposed, accepts it as a fact, and acquiesces.
"From now on," it writes, "there is for us no foreign War. Any war anywhere in the world is our war, provided only there is an aggressor to be destroyed, a democracy to be saved, or an area of freedom to be defended."
That, it may be observed, is pure League of Nations doctrine. Anyhow, asks the Post a little later, what is a foreign war?
"In that instant when you say, or even think, 'This is our war too,' it is no longer a foreign war, no matter what u said it was yesterday. We have said it. Standing the middle of the world, we are saying, 'Here is the arsenal of all democracy,' meaning by a democracy any nation that will employ our weapons against Hitler. That makes The battle of Britain our battle too, the battle. of Greece our battle, and the battle of the Mediterranean our baffle; and everywhere in the world it is the London- • Washington Axis against the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis."
There is a' good deal of a portent in this.
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