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Memorandum by the Chief of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs (Hornbeck)
I perceive no basis whatever for an expectation and no foundation for even a hope that considerations of finance (cost of fighting and inability or unwillingness on the part of the people of Japan to pay the bills) will substantially influence such decision as the Japanese may make “to fight or not to fight” in connection with the present phase of their movement of expansion.
[Page 372]The Japanese decision will be made by the armed forces; not by the diplomats, the bankers and the business men; least of all by the best informed and most conservative members of the so-called “moderate” (conservative) small minority. Japan is expanding and the Japanese people are almost a unit in the belief that their expansion is a natural, a rightful, even a righteous, a practicable, a possible, and an inevitable phenomenon.
It must be remembered that Japan has not at any time in recorded history been defeated in a war with a foreign country; that in all of her major military efforts against foreign armed forces during recent decades Japan has been victorious; that the Japanese have today every reason to believe that the only foreign armed forces with whom they will have to deal are those of China; that they know that the Chinese are hopelessly vulnerable because they possess no Navy; that Japan can set for herself such limitations as she may choose to make for the extent of the military operations, it being possible always for the Japanese, in the event of unexpectedly strong resistance on the part of the Chinese, to fall back on shortened lines or even to withdraw entirely from newly occupied territory.
It must be remembered that, whereas, in the World War, many other powers made great expenditures of men and money, with consequent impairment of their man power and their financial positions, Japan did no such thing; on the contrary, Japan lost almost no men and added considerable increments to her national wealth during the War. Such expenditures as other powers were able to make then without collapse, Japan is able to make now. True, Japan is, as compared with several of the occidental powers, a poor country; but, Japan is, as compared with China, a nationally affluent country; the Japanese will, in my opinion, neither be deterred from fighting China by financial considerations nor, if the two countries fight, find herself hamstrung and compelled to forego her objectives in consequence of financial exhaustion.
In making the above statements, I am not undertaking to prophesy, for many other factors may enter into the making of Japan’s decision. I merely wish to express emphatically the opinion which is mine that the financial factor alone will play little part in the matter.