VOLCANIC ISLE

With Japan having taken the important step towards girding up her loins for warfare on a larger scale, in her move into French Indo-China, Wilfred Fleisher's analysis of the position of the ""volcanic e"" comes as a timely presentation of a country he knows intimately. He inherited his father's paper, the Japan Advertiser, and when that was forced out of existence, he became Washington correspondent for the Herald Tribune (1940). This is an inquiry into Japan's ambitions, with inside spotlighting of the underground revolution, the ""Showa Restoration"", the assassination of statesman the modelling on Nazi blueprints, the infiltration of Fascist ideas. He discusses the war with China, the relations with Axis Powers, with Russia, with Great Britain, with America. He considers that Japan, after four years of war with China, was vulnerable and the U. S. had her chance, the book had gone to press before he had a chance to say (as of available galleys) to what extent she had repaired that vulnerability by the current move. Her personal experiences, his etching in the background, his evaluations all add another panel to large scale interpretation, without contributing anything startlingly new. Good Journalese and very readable.