Word: malay
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Tough Miles. Looking south last week Japan's soldiers and sailors saw an Anglo-Dutch line of defense running for nearly one-seventh of the earth's circumference: down 400 miles of treacherous Malay coastline to the forbidding hinge at Singapore, then 3,000 miles out into the southeast until it reached the barbarous fringes of the Netherlands domain. The Japanese generals and admirals might even decide to by-pass Singapore for the time being, to take a fling directly at the Indies. If it succeeded, Japan would be safe; if it failed, Japan was through. It would...
Even if Premier Luang Pitul does yield, Japan may have a fight on her hands. If Japan occupies Thailand's Isthmus of Kra (on the Malay Peninsula) the Japanese will have bases from which they could easily attack Singapore. And they might, from Thailand, be able to close the Burma Road into China. It remained to be seen how much aggression in these quarters the British would stand for. Last week the 30,600-ton battleship Warspite was reported sighted in the Gulf of Siam...
...fortifications among its 600-odd mandated islands that lie in unpronounceable profusion in the vast wastes of the Western Pacific. It had been told often enough that a Japanese grab of The Netherlands East Indies would leave the Japanese dominating U. S. trade routes to the Philippines and the Malay Peninsula, thereby threatening its sources of rubber...
Threats of war, no matter how forcefully pronounced, should not be part of the diplomacy of a country which does not have the wish to back them up. This country has no desire to send its sailors and pilots to the Malay peninsula. What our policy must be is material aid and as much of it as possible. We must send planes and ships so that the British can maintain their precious line of supply. We must serve as an arsenal for the forces of democracy in the Far East as well as in Europe, but we must draw...
...cries of "Warmonger!", "Cassandra!"; sometimes a supercilious "Good old Winnie!" When in 1934 he warned the country that Hitler was arming fast, that England must double its air force at once, Sir Herbert Samuel cried in the House of Commons: "This is rather the language of a Malay running amuck than of a responsible British statesman...