The box from japan, p.78
The Box from Japan, page 78
“But what, Halse, was the condition of Japan five years ago? Ten years ago? Twelve years ago? And today, in fact? I ask this because, associated with that condition then, as even today—plus an additional factor, a mad Emperor—you and I nearly got perforated last night!”
“Well—I’m sure I don’t know. Unless you mean—crowded with population?”
“That exactly, Halse. That, coupled with Japanese fecundity and refusal to sanction legal birth control. Take the native islands of Japan. They include only 150,000 square miles, Halse, or very much less area than our native state of Texas occupies. And less than one-fifth of Japan is arable land, and largely poor, volcanic soil at that. In 1846 there were but 27,000,000 inhabit—”
“Artemus,” Halsey put in helplessly, “do you mind telling me how the devil you master and retain figures the way you always have done?”
“Not at all. I was assigned, 10 years ago, to cover J. L. Jacobs, the efficiency engineer delegated to straighten out Chicago’s tax muddle. He taught me an ingenious mnemonic system that works perfectly if you don’t take a drink. It’s still so perfect, however, that if you do take a drink, you multiply all your mnemonical recollections by the factor ½X, in which X equals 2. Now as I was saying, in 1846 there were but 27,000,000 inhabitants in Japan; yet in 1926 there were some 60,000,000. By 1937 they had jumped to 69,000,000, gained at the rate of 800,000 souls per year thanks to the way they barred out old Mrs. Margaret Sanger some years back. By 1947, of course, there will be millions more, and Himbosho’s successor will eventually have one huge problem on his hands! Yasuri, though, didn’t intend to leave any problems like that to his successor. He—well—to our story—of 1937. It was quite as obvious then, as a decade before that, that Japan must expand, and, as has been made abundantly evident by the wars in China over Korea, and in Manchuria—first with Russia, then with China, resulting in a technical victory in 1932 as to the trade boycott, but an actual debacle because Japan foolishly tried to play the game with spot cards instead of picture cards, and wound up with her feet tied 11 ways around with treaties—not to mention the perpetual friction on our own Pacific coast—she cannot expand in any direction without a fight. The situation is further complicated by the peculiar living conditions required by the Japanese people. Sturdy and inured to hardships though they are, these little brown men cannot—or at least they will not—settle in any but warm or temperate countries; and they therefore leave practically unoccupied the northernmost portion of their elsewhere over-crowded islands. Most of China, as you yourself know, is already densely populated. The island of Sakhalin, is cold. Korea, now the Japanese province of Chosen, is not proving at all satisfactory for Japanese settlement. Manchuria? Well, the Japs tried hard years and years ago merely to colonize it, but failed miserably, for the little brown men could not plow the ground, fell the trees, or make homes in the wilderness as did the plodding Chinese under the five-toed dragon flag. California is ideal—but is closed by American possession. Formosa is already full.
“Where, then, is Japan to turn? Where did it have, ten years ago, to turn—five years ago—as today—and tomorrow?
“There are, Halse, but three possible alternatives. One is in South and Central America, where climates are warm and racial prejudices weak; but these countries are terribly distant and many of them are already under a quite definite American domination. Here, too, any very considerable penetration, if interpreted as a possible future menace to the United States, would lead to friction. Further to the south of Japan, however, in her own neck of the woods—or, as I ought to say, neck of the Pacific!—lies the smallest of the continents, Australia, warm, fertile, ideally suited to Asiatic settlement—and empty! It’s what we call a low-pressure area, as contrasted to the high-pressure area of Japan herself. Some five and a half million white men occupy nearly three million miles of territory, a large proportion of which is habitable, with a population density of slightly less than two persons to the square mile. In the great Murray River basin a scant three million are in occupation of a fertile territory equal in area to France, Italy and Germany combined—which is exceedingly tempting when surveyed from an island empire whose population in crowded areas rises to the astonishing density of 1,000 souls per square mile.
“Now glance at this little map of Asia, here, Halse, in this pocket memo book of mine. Observe how from Bering Sea to Formosa, a stretch of nearly 3,000 miles, the Mikado’s dominions lie like a barrier along the eastern coast of Asia, controlling, if properly fortified and equipped as submarine bases, the commercial sea lanes leading to the rich markets of China—a future source of incredible wealth for any industrial state that is lucky enough to win the opportunity to exploit them. But though the flag of the rising sun stops at Formosa, the island chain does not. It goes on down the Asiatic coast—the Philippines, Borneo, Celebes, Sumatra, New Guinea, and last of all, in the southern seas, the richest prize of all, Australia and New Zealand. Along this island chain, leading straight south toward Australia and its potential wealth, lies the only logical and promising future avenue of expansion that Japan ever had—or ever will have.
“And it is Australia that Yasuri, for the brief period of some 76 days, strange to relate, was in a position to seize and hold forever. And the one man in the world who was in a position to help him was Jose Luis Rodriguez Almedo, today President of Mexico, and tomorrow more so, by the Grace of God—and the recognition of Great Britain and Uncle Sam!”
CHAPTER LXII
How a Shogo Expert Had a Chessman in His Sleeve!
Halsey surveyed the other puzzledly. Baxter was indeed well primed with cold facts of some sort this morning. At last the younger man spoke.
“Almedo?” he queried. “Almedo? Why Almedo at that time—let’s see—Almedo wasn’t even president of Mexico. He was dictator of Nicaragua, wasn’t he?”
“Exactly,” nodded Baxter. “Dictator of a little country of no more than 20,000 square miles, which, Halse, represents a patch of land only 200 miles long by 100 wide—minus, furthermore, a strip held by British bluejackets. It—but let’s follow out the theories of this madman, Yasuri, this expert Shogo player, this ego-drunken paranoiac who wasn’t a whit mad when it came either to Shogo playing nor to naval, military or aeronautical tactics or strategy. Who—but maybe he was cuckoo at that, with respect to the latter. Lord knows I certainly can’t say! But let us—”
“I’d call him a madman for even thinking of trying to seize Australia,” said Halsey disgruntledly, uncrossing his pajamaed legs and recrossing them in the opposite direction. “What about Singapore—the great British naval base that would protect all the Australias you could pack in the Antipodes?”
“Yeah? Don’t forget it isn’t Singapore that protects Australia. It’s the British fleet, able to go in there and re-coal, as well as re-fill up on fuel oil, repair its injuries, and more or less maneuver itself from there as from a beautifully wired dispatch board.”
“Yes? Well what about the fleet ratios? The Nicaraguan Canal was wide open all the time Panama was closed. And Britain had a fleet in the Pacific, I take it. Not to omit mentioning an Australian Navy consisting of a couple of powerful vessels off Sydney—the Rodney and the Nelson of the former British Navy, more formidable than any of America’s fighting ships. Why, Britain could muster a fleet at the first drop of a hat that would be 10 to 7 against Japan. Furthermore, Artemus, it was inevitable that, should luck go against Britain, America would shortly come in. For, destroy the British fleet and Singapore is done for. And if Singapore is done for, the Philippine Islands are gone!”
“Exactly,” said Baxter sarcastically. “And Borneo at the same time. And then the Asiatic chain is complete. Man, you are a Shogo player!”
Halsey stared. “Well, I don’t understand things yet. If Australia was threatened, and matters went wrong for Britain, we’d have eventually come in. The Australians—well, we flatter ourselves, Artemus, that the Australians are exactly like us—although that probably wouldn’t please them.”
“No, my boy, it decidedly wouldn’t! Also, strange as it may sound, the national motto of Japan has been for 50 years, Suri aoki kura, which translated into Australianese is ‘the bigger they are, the ’arder they fall.’ Go on, look it up yourself, if you don’t believe me.” Baxter paused. “Well, as you say—sure—America would come in—but only after playing hands off for a certain discrete number of days to see how expeditely the British Navy handled the matter. America would figure, and rightly so, that Singapore couldn’t handle the fleets of two nations at one time—especially after a certain little Singapore Attack Plan No. 4 had been launched by Japan—and America has never, at any time, relished playing the war game across 7000 miles of the Pacific, every warship encumbered with a huge train of slow-moving transports, supply ships, oil tankers and God knows what. The task of protecting such a huge convoy against Japanese submarines, cruisers and aircraft, left to the north for exactly that contingency, would be something that would make any American commander-in-chief say ‘Wait!’” Baxter paused. “Stay with me, Halse, and learn a little more Pacific Ocean ‘shogo.’”
“All right. Lead on, MacBaxter!”
“Well,” Baxter continued, “the Japanese fleet in 1937—but what was its fleet strength in that year? You, of course, wouldn’t know. You’d—”
“No, I wouldn’t know—but I can find out in a jiffy,” Halsey said, rising. He stepped to his mantel and took down a scarlet and gold yearbook gotten out annually by the Chicago Morning Tribute. He glanced at its index, then leafed rapidly over its thin India-paper pages. “Here—I personally wouldn’t trust the Chicago Tribute for correct information as far as I could throw a hypertrophied hippopotamus—with a palsied left arm—but the Year Book itself has the O.K. of 1103 experts. Now here we are: the fleet strengths of Nippon ever since the days of 1865 when Commodore Perry sailed into one of their peaceful caves and politely told them where to head in at. In 1937, Artemus, Japan had 10 capital ships—dreadnoughts, I suppose that means, 5 super-aircraft carriers, 32 cruisers, 101 destroyers, and 84 submarines. Also, if you count them as naval equipment, 6 eight-motored metal-clad dirigibles armed each with full equipment of 4 fighting guard planes with trapeze hangars inside, 12 machine guns, and 20 tons of high explosive bombs. Britain, however—all the nations are right together on this same page, Artemus—had 15 capital ships, even after the Rodney and the Nelson were sold to Australia, 6 aircraft carr—”
“And stop right there,” said Baxter coolly. “For outside of coast defense armament, which undoubtedly is one of the strongest forms of defense mechanisms we have, when coupled with dirigibles which can cruise thousands of miles from a coast base and scout from 3000 to 6000 square miles of ocean every daylight hour, you have named, right there in those capital ships, those fearfully armored, fearfully hitting, super-bulldogs of the sea, the strength ratios of the two countries with respect to attack plans. In 1937, that is. And in view of the roughly similar ratio existing in the auxiliary craft in the same year, we may say that the maneuvering ratio was likewise about 15 to 10. But keep in mind, Halse, that that maneuvering ratio remains effective only so long as the dreadnoughts stand. For the auxiliary craft are like the ribs, sinews, muscles and tendons, in a human body, attached to the vertebral column. Impair, destroy, a human vertebral column, and ribs, sinews, and muscles are paralytic, drooping, useless. Oh, I went deeply into this very thing, Halse—I worked a week in 1931 with Captain A. H. Van Keuren of Washington, D. C., one of the highest ranking officers in the construction corps of the U. S. Navy, and acknowledged to be the greatest naval technician in the world. And, believe me, I got several eyefuls as well as several earfuls! The battleship—and I mean the super-ship, the capital ship, the dreadnought—is the backbone of the modern navy today, just as Captain Van Keuren predicted a decade ago it would be, just as it was back in 1937, and just as it ever has been, for many decades. The tremendous striking power of those big dynamic hulks of steel, their ability to take the most terrific punishment imaginable and still stay afloat, and their general—well—toughness are the factors which make them the essential part of the major navies of the world. The modern aerial bomb, Halse, not only has the devil of a time to make a ‘hit’ at a dreadnought, which is no bigger than a paramoecium when seen from a point where an attacking plane may safely cross it, armed as the battleship is with its air defense shooting devilishly accurately from 5 to 7 miles up in the air, or, in the judgment of its commander, covered with an enormous smokescreen impermeable even to the infra-red rays, for even if the aerial bomb could be landed upon it, it would strike an impenetrable armored deck 6 inches thick built to take the most vicious oblique blows from shells failing at greater angles with the horizontal than ever before due to the longer ranges and raised elevations of the modern 16-inch dreadnought muzzles. Submarines, you say? Well, Halse, no capital ship has ever been destroyed by a submarine in the history of the world, and even the sinking of 4 armored cruisers ’way back in 1915, by Germany, the most successful submarine exploit in history, was a feat never repeated by the German U-boat navy.” Baxter paused, either for breath or to allow his facts to sink into his hearer’s brain. “No, Halse, only the battleship of today can ‘stay and take it’; only the battleship can inflict the heaviest blows known to naval warfare, those of the big guns, yet remain afloat because of its double compartments, its double driving shafts, its twin power plants, and its double bottom protecting all machinery. It is the one ship, Halse, which a shell must actually enter, and explode within, before it will sink—and then it will list only, if the blow is from one side only.
“So, arguing that any nation’s naval forces may be likened to a train of hawks, each hawk surrounded by a flock of wasps, each wasp surrounded by a bevy of mosquitoes, and each mosquito surrounded by a cloud of gnats, we can readily see that the hawks alone represent the true attacking and hitting powers—the only things that count when it comes to pitting force against force. So, Japan had in 1937, according to your Tribute Year Book, 10 hawks, while Britain had 15, and America, if you’ll look into it, had 13, many ’way over age, and was, as usual, ’way behind in bees and gnats, mosquitoes, water-bugs and butterflies and sich-like critters.”
Baxter paused:
“But suppose, Halse, I should tell you that Japan in 1937 actually had 22 hawks, against Britain’s 15? 22 capital ships, that is, against Britain’s 15?”
“Then,” Halsey replied helplessly, “the Chicago Tribute is again a damned li—” He glanced dubiously at the year book. “Oh Artemus, you don’t mean what you say, do you?”
“Halse, if you are the commander of a dreadnought, to sink, or to list, or to put in any way out of commission an enemy dreadnought, you must enter its vitals with a shell. For dreadnoughts are so constructed, as I just explained. But to enter those vitals you must be within—very much within—the range actually obtainable by your guns, which piercing-range, as we shall now call it, is easily calculable by a naval expert, and will depend upon the weight of the projectile you fire, its velocity on leaving the muzzle of your gun, and the resistivity to it at the other end of its travel, which resistivity in the case of a dreadnought is provided by 6 inches of chilled metal armor plate above the water line, and as great as 22 inches below the water line. The reason for the increased thickness below the water line is obvious, I think: but incidentally, it approximately takes care also of the maximum size of under-water torpedoes that may possibly be propelled, providing that. the metal torpedo nets protecting a ship are torn by preliminary under-water ‘rippers’ shot by an enemy ship. At any rate, for every ‘hit’ that you, as commander of such a ship, would make, you would be in for a ‘hit’ yourself—of equal disastrousness to your own ship. But—supposing that that upper armor plate on your enemy ship has been, unknown to you, increased in thickness to 13 and 2/10ths inches, and the under-water plate to a thickness of 48 and 4/10ths inches—which weight of armoring was never heard of and couldn’t be effectively held on a ship, nor carried. Then your enemy ship, having the same hitting power as your own—and, both of you being in the same piercing-range—the probability of your being sunk or hopelessly put out of commission is close to certainty, while the probability of sinking him or hopelessly listing him is not only theoretically the inverse of 48.4/22, or 13.2/6, but practically, Halse, zero, or no chance. Why? Because you have calculated your safe piercing-range on a false premise with respect to his armor thickness. In fact, disregarding for just a moment this fatal human error, may we not quite correctly say that since the maneuverability of a navy lies in the number of its capital ships and its auxiliary craft, of which the latter depend at all times on the persistence of its first line battle fleet, that its true power therefore lies in that battle fleet, and is a multiplicant of the latter’s force, resistivity and accuracy—and don’t forget that accuracy has become just about super-human in all navies!—then the enemy navy—in this hypothetical case, my boy, Japan!—has been actually increased by the factor 48.4/22, or 13.2/6, or just 2.2? And—”
