Yesterday

If, as it seems likely, the Soviet Union is recognized by the United States within the year, the event may prove of considerable significance in our Asiatic relations, particularly with that fanatically aggressive nation, Japan. For should our trade with Russia expand (and that is the plum held out by the rotund M. Litvinov), a large part of it might very well be handled from Seattle and ports along that coast to Vladivostok, the outpost city of the Union in lower Siberia. This would undoubtedly be very satisfactory but for one important item: Tokio has its gourmandish eyes strongly focused on Vladivostok and the Maritime Provinces, of which it is the keypoint. Back in 1919, shortly after the war, Japan, who had joined the Allies in intervening against the Red government from Archangel, landed about three times its quota of troops and was on the point of annexing Siberia forthwith, and was only stopped by President Wilson, who had the whiphand in the naval bargaining going on among the Allies in Washington. The actions of the last year or so have made it embarassingly obvious that the attempt to slice away this territory may soon be repeated.

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Proof of this has been well enough evidenced in Japanese sentiment, in the statements of the leading militarists, in the concentration of troops to the north of Manchukuo, in the nastiness over the Chinese Eastern Railroad. On the other side of the penny, Russia has hastened the building of the Turk-Sib tracks, strengthened the Vladivostok garrison with men and planes, and intimated pointedly that she would not yield a verst of land to anyone. Under these conditions of impending war (though Manchurian difficulties and the coming of winter may postpone the argument for a while), the introduction of a substantial trade between America and the Soviet Maritime Provinces might contain irritating implications if Japanese invasion caused it to be broken off. The howl which would ascend to the starry skies of our Western states, ably supported by the Yellow Peril agitators of California and elsewhere, might put even a moderately sane Washington government temporarily out of its head. Such things have occurred before. CASTOR.