Passage to India

Old Walt Whitman saw his country lying on the road between Europe and Asia. The great explorers, from Columbus on, had been turned back by the American continents; but the Good Grey Poet could see mankind spreading out over the prairies, crossing the Western mountains, reaching the shores of the Pacific and sailing over it to fulfill the dream that had always haunted Europe. He wrote:

Passage to more than India! . . .

Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough? . . .

Have we not darken'd and dazed ourselves with books long enough?

Sail forth! Steer for the deep water only!

Time and again the U. S. had warned itself of the menace if it let its passage to the East be closed--but each time it had decided that the crisis was not critical.

It had worried for years over reports that Japan was secretly building fortifications among its 600-odd mandated islands that lie in unpronounceable profusion in the vast wastes of the Western Pacific. It had been told often enough that a Japanese grab of The Netherlands East Indies would leave the Japanese dominating U. S. trade routes to the Philippines and the Malay Peninsula, thereby threatening its sources of rubber and tin.

But only a few citizens could remember the meaning of the passage to India as Whitman saw it; fewer still could recapture the spirit of John Hay, when he spoke of the U. S. future in the "opening field" of the immense Pacific "on whose wide shores so much of the world's work is to be done."

Washington. Last week the U. S. view of its passage to India was sharply, suddenly clarified. In Washington Sumner Welles gave a clear reply to a vague Japanese claim of peaceful aims. He said, "In the very critical world situation which exists today, the Government of the United States is far more interested in the deeds of other nations than in the statements that some of their spokesmen may make."

Promptly a Japanese spokesman made another peaceful statement. In the elaborate Japanese Embassy, Ambassador Admiral Kichisaburo Nomura leaned back in his chair before more than 50 reporters and talked affably for 45 minutes about Japan's policy, about her indifference to U. S. improvement of the harbor of Guam, about the absence of Japanese desire to seize any territory. But even Admiral Nomura would not deny that Japan might fight to gain her ends. And the new Ambassador confessed that he found the U. S. atmosphere not so favorable as he had hoped when he left Tokyo.

Temperature of that atmosphere was measured this week by the Gallup Poll, which reported that 60% of U. S. voters believed U. S. interests would be menaced if Japan took Singapore and The Netherlands East Indies. A majority--56%--believed that the U. S. should try to keep the Japanese from doing so.

Guam. More than halfway across the Pacific, over 8,000 miles from Washington D. C., 1,400 miles from Tokyo, the island of Guam lies midway in the passage to India. About 50 miles away, visible on a clear day, lies the mysterious, Japanese-controlled island of Rota that Pan American clippers are forbidden to fly over. Guam's 20,000 natives raise vegetables, do little work to keep alive. Its tiny U. S. naval establishment keeps the nine towns clean and healthy, and ponders the strange ways of the U. S. Congress.

Two years ago, a $52,000,000 naval authorization bill introduced in the House contained an item of $5,000,000 for harbor improvements at Guam. For three days Congressmen raged against this item. Their theme: the appropriation might offend Japan, cause war. The debate began on the eve of Washington's Birthday; speaker after speaker summoned the shade of the Father of his Country, keened over the insult to Japan (though amused Japanese politely protested that the U. S. had a perfect right to improve its own property), and the item was stricken from the bill.

Last week, in a bigger naval authorization bill, there was an item of $4,700,000 --principally bombproofing and dredging of the harbor--for Guam.* This time there was no such debate, no such delay. Pennsylvania's Charles Faddis down-with-Japanned; Representatives who had fought improvements for Guam two years ago now paid their respects to the "contemptible, squint-eyed sons of the Rising Sun." The authorization went through by acclamation, with one lone Nay registered against it: the methodical, dutiful Nay of New York's left-wing Vito Marcantonio, who has voted against almost every bill for U. S. defense.

Chungking. Halfway around the world, in embattled Chungking, the new U. S. stand on the East was felt. There, on Washington's Birthday, Chinese and U. S. citizens, celebrating before pictures of Washington and Confucius (both wearing swords), hailed the ties between the two countries. It was a farewell for genial Ambassador Nelson Johnson, now Minister to Australia. On hand was grey, dry, statistical Lauchlin Currie, most anonymous of President Roosevelt's "anonymous" administrative assistants, sent to China last month on a mission like Harry Hopkins' to England. In Washington little-known Lauchlin Currie was known as the man who had never been in an airplane, as inflexibly unenthusiastic, and as the man who dictated his abstruse economic drafts while lying on a sofa preferably with his eyes closed. After making a stupendous first flight--across the U. S., across the Pacific, across China to Chungking--Lauchlin Currie gave his first word of his findings. He talked of U. S. responsibility for aiding China, made a crack about the number of Chinese banquets, but ended with a tribute to Chinese aviators who he said were manning the world's outposts in the struggle for democracy.

The vote on improvements for Guam meant little change in the U. S. defense line-up in the East--but it proved that Japanese could no longer count on a divided U. S. Positively, the U. S. had not accepted old Walt Whitman's vision. But negatively it had served notice that it would not let the passage to India be closed without a fight.

*Of greater naval importance, but of less immediate political moment, were authorizations of $66,050,000 to improve eight naval air bases gained in last summer's destroyer deal; $8,100,000 to improve the generally unused, strategic base at Tutuila, in Samoa, that lies on the direct route from Hawaii to New Zealand.

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