762.94/80: Telegram
The Ambassador in Italy (Phillips) to the Secretary of State
[Received November 17—2:09 p.m.]
468. My 465, November 16, 4 p.m.4 The newspapers this afternoon feature a report from the British press regarding the conclusion of a German-Japanese anti-Communist agreement. The Government spokesman tonight while pointing out that there is not as yet sufficient information upon which to analyze the scope of the agreement expresses the conviction that it provides for cooperation in defense and “eventual reaction” against Communism and says that the anti-Communist front created at Berlin and broadened at Vienna has thus been extended to the Far East as he himself foreshadowed in his article of October 26 (my telegram 434, October 27, 11 a.m.5). He then endeavors to prove that the “association of Italy, Germany and Japan in a defensive struggle against Russian Communism” was made necessary by Soviet action and for this purpose describes at length the decisions of the Komintern Congress at Moscow in July 1935 and the renewed activity of the Komintern in Europe immediately afterward. Everything he claims proves that the Communists are preparing further coups de main and that the spread of their activities from Europe to the colonies and Asia should serve as warning to the imperial powers. It is therefore natural that Japan should provide for her defense in her “robust imperial advance which unites soldiers, farmers and workers in the great constructive works of civilization”. The agreement today announced between Berlin and Tokyo he concludes is part of that defense “which will be isolated neither in Asia nor in Europe.”
- Vol. iv, p. 378.↩
- Not printed.↩