Day came to the city of Tokyo, dotted with charming parks and temples and an imperial palace, but otherwise a flat sprawling slum of matchbox shacks and shabby Western buildings. Catching up with the white man in two generations had impoverished the Japanese; four years of the "China Incident" had drained them dry. Obedient to their leaders, they were bending to their tasks, eating prison fare, building war machines by borrowed blueprints with borrowed metals under borrowed technical advisers, desperately trading silk, cameras, and toys for oil to make the machines go. Ninety million of them toiled on four quake-ridden rocky islands full of slumbering volcanoes, an area no larger than California- Their chief natural resource was willpower.
The rest of the world knew little more about them than what could be learned from Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado.
They were puzzling people. Their Foreign Minister, a little moustached man named Matsuoka, American-educated and much travelled in F-urope, gave the impression of being a lunatic, with his voluble, self-contradictory chatter, and his wild giggling, grinning, and hissing, so different from the expected deportment of the Oriental.
White diplomats guessed that his strange ways must be part of the Japanese character. C)nly later did it Turn out that the Japanese also thought he was demented. Why the militarist cabinet entrusted him with mortally serious matters at this time remains a historical mystery, like the willingness of the Germans to follow Hitler, who in his writings and speeches always appeared to people of other countries an obvious maniac. It is not clear just how crazy Stalin was at this time, though most historians agree he later went stark mad. In any case, the deranged Matsuoka was in charge of japan's relations with the world, when the deranged Hitler attacked the deranged Stalin.
Japanese historians recount that Matsuoka obtained an urgent audience with the emperor and begged him to invade Siberia right away.
But the army and navy leaders were cool to the idea. In 1939, the army had had a nasty unpublicized tangle with Stalin's Siberian army, taking losses in the tens of thousands. They wanted to go south, where the Vichy French were impotent, the Dutch were cut off from home, and the beleaguered English could spare little force. Warren Henry's amateur analysis on the Enterprise's hangar deck had not been wrong on these main alternatives.
But Matsuoka insisted that by signing the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy, japan had pledged to help them if they were attacked; and the German invasion clearly had taken place to fend off a Russian attack. Morality therefore required japan to invade Siberia at once. As for the nonaggression pact with Russia-which he had himself negotiated -Russia never kept pacts anyway. To attack right now was vital, before Russia collapsed, in order for the onslaught to appear honorable, and n just picking up pieces. Matsuoka called this position "moral diplomacy."
One high-placed official is supposed to have commented quite seriously at this time that the foreign minister was insane; to which an elder statesman replied that insanity in Matsuoka would be an improvement. So much one can sift from the Japanese record.
The official secret decision was to 'let the persimmon ripen on the tree"-that is, not to attack the Soviet Union until its defeat looked like more of a sure thing. For the China war went on and on, an endless bog, and the Japanese leaders were not eager to take on heavy new land operations. The thrust south looked like the easier option, if they had to figbtPlanning for this was to proceed. Matsuoka was dismayed, and he soon fell from office.
At the time of sunrise in Tokyo, the sun had already been traversing Siberia for over three hours, starting at Bering Strait.
Before bringing a second sunrise to the battlefront, it had eight more hours to travel, for the Soviet Union stretches halfway around the globe. Amid the invasion rumors of May and June, a bitter story had swept through Europe, crossing the frontiers between German-held and free territory. A Berlin actress, the story went, resting after lovemaking with a Wehrmacht general, persuaded him to tell her about the coming invasion of Russia. He obligingly took down an atlas of the world and began, but she soon interru ted him: p 'Liebchen, but what is that great big green space there all across the map
'y that, Liebchem, as I told you, is the Soviet
Union."
"Ach so. And where did you say Germany was?"
The general showed her the narrow black blob in mid-Europe.
'Liebchen," the actress said pensively, "has the Fuhrer seen this map?"
It was a good joke. But the nerve center of the Soviet Union was not in Vladivostok, at the far eastern end of the green space. The sunrise of lune 23, passing west of the Russian capital, shone out within the hour on German columns, twenty-five miles advanced toward Minsk and Moscow in one day, through the massed forces of the Red Army and its heaviest border defenses.
ULE lightning cracked down the black sky, forking behind the PWashington Monument in jagged streams. July on the Potomac was going out, as usual, in choking heat and wild thunderstorms. "There goes my walk home," Victor Henry said. Through the open window, a tongue of cool air licked into the stifling, humid office, scattering heavy raindrops On the wall charts. It began to pour in the street, a thick hissing shower 'Maybe it'll break the heat wave," Julius said. Julius was a chief yeoman who had worked with him in the Bureau of Ordnance, a fat placid man of fifty with a remarkable head for statistics.
"No such luck. The steam will be denser, that's all." Pug looked at his watch. "Hey, it's after six. Ring my house, will you? Tell the cook dinner at seven."
"Aye aye, sir."
Tightening his tie and slipping into a seersucker jacket, Pug scooped up papers from the desk. "I want to study these figures some more. They're kind of incredible, Julius."
With a shrug and wave of both hands, Julius said, "They're as good as the premises you gave me to work from."
"Jebosephat, if it comes to that many landing craft for the two oceans, how can we build anything else for the next three years?"
Julius gave him the slightly superior smile of an underling who, on a narrow topic, knows more than the boss. "We produce million tons of steel a year, sir. But making all those hair dryers and refrigerators and forty different models of cars too-that's the problem."
Pug dove through the rain to a taxicab that drew up at the Navy Building. A very tall man got out, pulling a soft hat low on his head.
"All yours-why, hello there."
"Well, hi!" Pug pulled out his wallet and gave the taxi driver a bill saying, "Wait, please.-How long have you been in Washington, Kirby?"
"About a month."
"Come home with me for a drink. Better yet, join me for dinner."
"Thanks, but I don't think I can." "I'm alone," said Victor Henry.
Kirby hesitated. "Where's your wife?"
"Spending my money in New York. She saw off our daughter-in-laA, and grandson on a plane to Hawaii. Now she's shopping for furniture and stuff. We bought a house."
"Oh? Did she get the one on Foxhall Road?"
"That's the one. How'd you know about it?"
"Well-I ran into Rhoda when she was house-hunting. You were out at sea, I guess. We had lunch and she showed me the place. I was all for it." "Got much to do?" Pug insisted. "I'll wait for you."
"As a matter of fact," Kirby said abruptly, "I only have to pick up some papers. Let me dash in here for a minute. I'll be glad to have that drink with you."
Soon they sat together in the cab, moving slowly in the clogged rushbour traffic of Constitution Avenue, in torrents of rain. "What are you doing in this dismal town?" Pug said.
"Oh, this and that."
"U know what?" grinned Pug, stressing U for uranium.
Kirby glanced at the bald round head and red ears of the driver.
"Driver, turn on your radio," Pug said. "Let's catch the news."
But the driver could only get jazz, buzzing with static.
"I don't know what you hope to hear," Kirby said. "Except that the Germans are another fifty miles nearer Moscow."
"Our
deparunent's getting edgy about the japs."
"I can't figure out the President's order," Kirby said. "Neither can the papers, it seems. Okay, he froze their credits. Does it or doesn't it cut off their oil?" "Sure it does. They can't pay."
"Doesn't that force them to go to war?"
"Maybe. The President had to do something about this Vichy deal that puts jap airfields and armies in Indo-China. Saigon's a mighty handy jump-off point for Malaya and Java-and Australia, for that matter."
Kirby deliberately packed his pipe. "How is Rhoda?"
"Snappish about various foul-ups in the new house. Otherwise fine."
Through puffs of blue smoke, the scientist said, "What do we actually want of the japs now?"
"To cease their aggression. Back up out of Indo-China. Get off the Chinese mainland. Call off that Manchukuo farce, and free Manchuria."
"In other words," said Kirby, "give up all hope of beconidng a major power, and accept a military defeat which nobody's inflicted on them."
"We can lick them at sea."
"Do we have an army to drive them out of Asia?"
"No."
"Then don't we have our gall, ordering them out?"
Pug looked at Kirby under thick eyebrows, his head down on his chest. The city was giving him a headache, and he was very tired.
"Look, militarist fanatics have taken charge there, Kirby. You know that.
Slant-eyed samurais with industrial armaments. If they ever break loose and min southeast Asia, you'll have a yellow Germany in the Pacific, with unlimited manpower, and most of the oil and rubber in the world. We have to maneuver while we can, and fight if we must. The President's freezing order is a maneuver. Maybe he'll work out some deal with them."
'Appeasement," Kirby said.
"Exactly, appeasement. We've been appeasing them right along with the oil shipments. So far they haven't attacked south and they haven't hit Russia in the back. I think the President's just feeling his way, day by day and week by week."
'y doesn't he declare war on Germany?" Kirby said. "Why this interminable pussyfooting about convoys? Once Russia collapses, the last chance to stop Hitler will be gone."
'I can tell you why Roosevelt doesn't declare war on Germany, mister," spoke up theta)d driver in a rough, good-humored Southern voice, not looking around.
"Oh? Why?" said Kirby.
"Because he'd be impeached if he tried, that's why, mister. He knows goddamned well that the American people aren't going to war to save the Jews." He glanced over his shoulder. Blue eyes twinkled in a friendly fat face, smiling jovially. "I have no prejudices. I'm not prejudiced against the Jews. But I'm not prejudiced for them, either.
Not enough to send American boys to die for them. That's not unreasonable, is it?" 'Maybe you'd better look where you're driving," said Pug.
The cabbie subsided.
'It's a nice spot," Kirby said. They were on the back porch and Pug was pouring martinis. The house stood on a little knoll, topping a smooth lawn and a ravine of wild woods. A fresh breeze smelling of wet leaves and earth cooled the porch.
"Rhoda likes it."
They drank in silence.
"How about that cabbie?" said Kirby.
"Well, he said it straight out. It's been said on the Senate floor often, in double-talk."
Kirby emptied his glass, and Pug at once refilled it.
"Thanks, Pug. I'm having unusual feelings these days. I'm starting to suspect that the human race, as we know it, may not make it through the industrial revolution." "I've had a bad day myself," Pug said, as the scientist lit his pipe.
"No," Kirby said, slowly waving out the thick wooden match, "let me try to put this into words. It's occurred to me that our human values, our ideas of right and wrong, good and bad, evolved in simpler times, before there were machines. Possibly the Germans and the Japanese are really adapting better to the new environment. Their successes suggest that. Also the way their opponents keep stumbling and crumbling. We may be having a Darwinian change in society.
Authoritarian rule may be best suited to urban machine life-armed bosses indifferent to mercy or probity, keeping order by terror, and ready to lie and kill as routine policy.
After all, most of the machines aren't a hundred years old. The airplane isn't forty years old. And democracy's still a fragile experiment." Kirby paused to drain his glass. "You called the Japanese industrial samuraisThat rang the bell. They've starved themselves, stripped their country, to build or buy machines, and they've jumped out of nowhere to center stage of history. The Nazi or samurai idea may just make more sense in a changed world, Pug. Is this merely martini talk, and is there any left in that jug?"
"There's plenty," said Pug, pouring, and more where it came from.
I'm feeling better by the minute. It's nice on this porch."
"It's Marvelous," said Palmer Kirby.
"Why don't you stay for dinner?" Pug said. "What else do you have to do?"
"I don't like to impose on you."
"I'm having chops, potatoes, and a salad. It's just putting on a couple more chops. Let me tell the cook."
"All right, Pug. Thanks. I've done a lot of eating alone lately."
"Be back in a minute," said Victor Henry, taking the jug. He brought it back full and tinkling.
"I put off dinner," he said. "Give us a chance to relax."
'Suits me," said Kirby, "though from the mood I'm in and the size of that jug, you may have to lead me to the dining room."
"It's not far," Pug said, "and the furniture has few sharp edges."
Kirby laughed. "You know, about the first thing your very sweet wife Rhoda said to me was that I drank too much. At the dinner she gave me in Berlin. You remember, when you had to fly back to see the President. I was in a bad mood, and I did swill a lot of wine fast.
She brought me up short."
"That was rude, The amount a man drinks is his own business," said Pug. "Not to mention that on occasion my proud beauty has sort of a hollow leg herself."
"Say, you mix a hell of a good martini, Pug."
"Kirby, what you were saying before, you know, is only this wave-of the-future stuff that the Lindbergbs have been peddling."
"Well, lindy's the type of the new man, isn't be? Flying an ocean by himself in a single-motor plane! He pointed the way to much that's happened since." "He's not a liar and murderer."
"Only the bosses need be, Henry. The rest, including the scientific and mechanical geniuses like lindy, and the wheelhorses like me, merely have to obey. That's obviously what's been happening in Germany."
"I'll tell you, Kirby," Pug said, swirling his glass and feeling very profound, "there's nothing new about such leaders.
Napoleon was one. He had his propaganda line, too, that weakened the foe before he fired a shot. Why, he was bringing liberty, equality, fraternity to all Europeans.
So, he laid the continent waste and made it run with blood for a dozen years or so, until they got wise to him and caught him and marooned him on a rock."
"You think that'll happen to Hitler?"
"I hope so."
"There's a difference. Napoleon had no machines. If he had had airplanes, telephones, tanks, trucks, machine guns-the whole industrial apparatus-don't you think he might have clamped a lasting tyranny on Europe?"
'I'm not sure. I happen to have a low opinion of Napoleon.
Napoleon sold Jefferson nearly a million square miles of prime land, you know -our whole Middle West, from Louisiana to the rockies and the Canadian border-for fifteen million dollars. Fifteen million!
It figured aut to four cents an acre for real estate like Iowa and Nebraska. And Minnesota, with all that iron ore. Colorado with its gold and silver. Oklahoma with its oil. I don't see how anybody, even a Frenchman, can figure Napoleon as a genius. He was a bloodthirsty ass. If he'd sent just one of his smaller armies over here to protect that territory-just a couple of divisions to hold the Louisiana territory, instead of wandering around Europe sl
aughtering and looting-and a few thousand Frenchmen to colonize the land, there's little doubt that France would be the world's greatest power today.
Instead of what she is, a raped old bag." "I can't say that has occurred to me before," Kirby said, smiling at the phrase. "It's probably fallacious."
'What's happening with uranium?" Victor Henry said.
Kirby's smile turned wary. "Is that why you're plying me with martinis?"
"If martinis can loosen you up about uranium, Kirby, let it happen first with an officer in War Plans, and thereafter don't drink martinis."
Herman Wouk - The Winds Of War Page 88
