Info:ndljp/pid/1121610/15

提供: TranscribeJP
移動: 案内検索

from a peace-time to a wartime organization, is utterly incapable of supplying the needs of an army in the field. The United States lacks ships enough for her inter-coastal trade to say nothing of transporting an expedition overseas. The United States no longer possesses a navy that dares venture out of its harbor and even in its docks it is not safe. The United States no longer possesses any base in the Pacific by way of which aircraft can reach the Philippines. All that can reach the Philippines from the Unites States now are the empty words of President Roosevelt over the ether waves.

The logical strategy of the United States, now that she has suffered such severe initial defeat, is to withdraw to the American hemisphere in order to resort to a protracted passive defense. In the days when the United States still dreamed of waging an offensive war, the Philippines were of use to her as an advance base for attack upon Japan. Now that the United States is on the defensive, however, the Philippines have become a military liability rather than an asset to her. The United States will therefore naturally throw the Philippines overboard as so much excess baggage. But before doing so she hopes to squeeze the last drop of profit out of the Philippines. Hence she urges the Filipinos to continue the futile fight, knowing full well that although it will avail the Filipinos nothing it may serve to bother Japan for a while.
In any case it is the Filipino who will have to sacrifice himself to cover his American master's retreat. In the first place, by using the Philippines as a base for the concentration of American military power in East Asia, the United States pulled the Philippines into a war which does not concern the Filipinos. Now since that military power is crumbling away, the United States is willing to sacrifice the Philippines in a vain attempt to delay temporarily the inevitable Japanese advance. In the end of the United States will withdraw, while the abandoned Filipinos will be left with nothing to show for their sacrifice except the memory of impossible promises. Such is the fate of all who are lured by honeyed words to fight for the doomed democracies.

<trjpft> 「What Japan is fighting for」: 前頁 | 次頁 近代デジタルライブラリーの当該頁へ <astyle><gstyle>新旧字混在</gstyle><kstyle>仮名遣い混在</kstyle><tstyle>Wikiのみ</tstyle></astyle> </trjpft>