thereby be driven from the Pacific. Still more likely appears British neutrality during the first phase of the Pacific conflict, especially at the beginning of the campaign. England will prefer not to mix in the struggle from the first day in order to get herself into a position similar to that occupied by America in the European war from 1914 to 1918. The difficulties of the British government also speak in favor of this attitude. England is the country primarily threatened with a social-revolution. The ruling classes of England would therefore have to give this serious consideration before embarking upon a war adventure.
The struggle for the dividing up of the Japanese spoils, and the struggle between England and the United States for spheres of influence in Asia and the dominions, will be the second center of the armed conflicts. Will the capitalist world venture to plunge into this new blood bath? Will it not shrink back from the mood of the toiling masses, in whom still lives the remembrance of the devastation of the great imperialist war? There can be no doubt that fear of revolutionary upheavals holds the present capitalist governments within bounds. Yet the Pacific conflict, especially in its first phase, is dangerous for the Communist precisely because it takes place on a front so far distant from Europe. Its participants will be two countries which suffered least during the imperialist war of 1914–1918. The 50,000 American soldiers who fell on the French front are but a very small number in comparison with the sacrifices made by the European peoples. America and Japan were affected but lighly by the war, they saw only its victorious side.
And this danger the Comintern must foresee. We are a world party which does not close its eyes to its own weaknesses and its own mistakes. The British strike already showed our weak spots. If the European proletariat did not react sufficiently to such an event as the British General Strike, or to the miners' strug-
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