The conquest of Manchuria raised for Jaoan new strategic as well as the five northern provinces of China seemed to Japan not merely desirable but absolutely necessayr against the time when Russia would have to be dealt with.And all this was only the prelude to much wider plans of expansion.
If the Manchuria incident had gretly strained the relations of Japan with Great Britain and the United States, the seizure of North China. where British influence and material interests were so ubiquitous and so firmly entrenched. was bound to bring the fundamental clash of interests out into the open. When the "China Incident" broke out near peking on the 7th July, 1937, the japanese authorities lost little time in stating (and organizing popular demonstrations to add point to their statement) that Britain was the No.1 enemy of Japan, having succeeded Russia in that capacity.(16)
1942年に日英交換船で帰国したクレイギーは、アンソニー・イーデン外相あてに報告書'Sir R. Craigie to Mr. Eden. （Final Report by Sir R. Craigie on conclusion of his Mission to Japan）（1943年2月4日付）を提出し、英国政府の極東政策を痛烈に批判したのである。この報告書を読んだチャーチルは激怒し、厳秘を命じて国王を含むイギリス政府内部のごく少数者にしか閲覧の機会を与えずクレイギーの報告書を封殺した。そしてクレイギー自身も1945年に在日大使時代（1937-1941年）の経験を綴った回顧録（『BEHIND THE JAPANESE MASK』）を世に送るが、報告書に一言半句もふれることなく、報告書で示唆した点については屈折した表現でしか述べるところがなかった。(26)
Indeed throughout the year 1941 the general burden of the warnings sent from this post had been that a Japanese attack, if not averted by diplomatic means, would be on a greater scale and take place at an earlier date than many British authorities appeared to anticipate.(28)
When I pointed out to the Foreign Office my misgivings as to the way things were going, urging that it was we, rather than the United States.who might be expected to bear the brunt of a breakdown and that it seemed essential for His Mejesty's Government to be more fully informed of the details of these vital negotiations, I received a sympathetic reply, but was told that His Majesty's Government had, nevertheless, decided that the discussions must be left solely in the hands of the Unaited States Government, in whose conduct of the matter they had full confidence.(30)
This was the situation when the Japanese made their compromise proposal of the 20th November(paragraph 42 of enclosure 1), which, with its offer of the evacuation of Southern Indo-China, aimed at the virtual restoration of the status quo ante. I urged strongly upon His Majesty’s Government that, subject to certain amendments which I had reason to believe could be secured from the Japanese Government, a modus vivendi on these lines should be concluded. In my view the withdrawal of Japanese troops from Southern Indo-China and the limitation of their number in Northern Indo-China to one or two divisions would have meant so complete a dislocation of the Japanese army’s plans for an attack on Malaya, or indeed, for any further southward advance, that it would have been well worth purchasing at the cost of the supply to Japan of oil and other raw materials in quantities insufficient to add materially to Japan’s war potential. Mr. Hull did, indeed, prepare a draft answer to Japan along the above lines which, subject to certain essential modifications of from, could have been made acceptable to the Japanese Government; this constructive counter-proposal was never submitted to the Japanese Government, owing, it would appear, to the opposition of the Chinese Government.(32)
After two and a quarter years of struggle, Great Britain and her Allies appeared to us in Tokyo to be at length slowing gaining the upper hand over Germany; the Russian armies in Libya were pushing beyond Benghazi; from the United States we were already receiving a magnificent contribution in material and that type of active naval assistance which was most vital to us namely, the convoying of ships across the Atlantic and an “undeclared” war on German submarines and surface raiders. So far as could been seen from Tokyo we were on the way to winning the battle of the Atlantic and were passing from the defensive to the offensive on the other fronts. The war had thus reached the stage at which, for the first time, even to the prejudiced eyes of the Japanese, the prospects of German victory began to be doubtful. Admittedly this was a dangerous phase, for the Japanese militarists would know that their last chance of effective intervention must come before German offensive power showed definite signs of collapse.(34)
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