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ANNEX II.

B.

DISTRIBUTION

From UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Decypher. The Marquess of Lothian (Washington).

2.04 a.m.

Do

No.2147.

R. 10.35 a.m.

30th September, 1940.

1st October, 1940. 1st October, 1940.

MOST IMMEDIATE.

My immediately preceding telegram.

So far as public opinion is concerned the American Press without exception regards the Japan-Axis Pact as being aimed at the United States. Its widest re-action is the demand that national defence should be speeded up at once, The main points which emerge from editorial writing are that the policy of help to Britain must be continued; that the world line-up is clarified, except in regard to Russia, and that the possibility of a definite partial defensive alliance between the United States and Great Britain has become nearer. Most writers agree that one cause of the Pact is the failure of Hitler's policy against Great Britain, Some Republican and Isolationist papers criticize Roosevelt as being responsible for placing the United States in a position of having to face a possible simultaneous war on both fronts. But while there is little demand for belligerent action in the Far East which would be to play the German game, there is practically no suggestion that the United States should withdraw from its present policy in order to placate the Axis. There is wide-spread feeling that the Pact makes the entry of the United States into the war ultimately inevitable, though the occasion of such entry must depend upon events. Public opinion clearly expects the re-opening of the Burma Road and would regard failure to do so as yielding to threats

*

Hornbeck's view is that to all intents and purposes the United States is already at war, though public opinion has not yet realised this. When I asked him what the American re-action would be to a Japanese attack on Hong Kong if we re-opened the Burma Road, he said that its main effect would be to awaken American public opinion to realities and, if the garrison resisted to speedy move for entering the war. He said that any Japanese attack on Dutch East Indies if it were resisted would have exactly the same effect. The only thing which would check this consolidation of American public opinion would be weakness over the Burma Road now.

My own view is that unless the Axis and Japanese leaders have made up their minds that their one chance now that the attack on Britain has failed is to precipitate a world war at once before American rearmament becomes effective, the Japanese will not now precipitate a crisis in the Far East. The despatch of

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