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54 Pol. Sci. Q. 1 (1939)

handle is hein.journals/pclscceqry54 and id is 1 raw text is: Volume LIV] POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY THE UNITED STATES IN THE FAR EAST IT may be superfluous now to analyze historically and theo- retically the question of America's rble in the Pacific. The answer may be given by governmental action, in a sense is being given, and in a sense was first adumbrated dec- ades ago and has been brought progressively nearer definite formulation with the years. The significance of acts, decisions and tendencies since the closing months of 1938 should not be underestimated. The abrupt injunction laid against Japan's declaration of a tripartite Japan-China-Manchukuo bloc under Japanese direction, the loan of $25,000,000 to China, the ex- tension of further credits on China's gold deposit in this coun- try, the proposed fortification of Guam, the implied invitation to public pressure for an embargo on the sale of war supplies' to Japan-these are portents. They may signify more than abstract reasoning or deduction from historical sources. Whether historical and theoretical analysis is superfluous or not, it abounds. In the mounting polemical literature on American foreign policy in the Far East one school of thought predominates. America is not genuinely concerned in the Pacific; it has no vital interests there; it need take no active commitments there; and in so far as there is any danger of war with Japan, it is a willed, almost wilful, danger, a product of the heedlessness, miscalculations and erroneous judgments of individuals. In support are summoned all the minute cullings from historical documents, especially documents in diplomatic history; and here lies the strength of the case and here, too, its weakness. For it may be said that diplomatic documents are the formalized explanations of national acts, formalized AMarck ,939 [Number r