Facing the National Armies, and encircling the guerrillas, lie the Imperial Japanese forces. Frank agents of Imperial policy, they--unlike the Hitler-Mussolini contingents in Spain--make no pretense of subordination to their Chinese allies. Publicly and legally instruments of the Japanese state, their function is to destroy the Chinese government, to control and bend Chinese society to the Imperial purposes, and to protect Chinese who come forth as allies. The Japanese Empire is accordingly itself militarily extended to China; occasional, half-hearted attempts to deny the ensuing international complications have been sternly rejected by other great powers. The United States is not alone in insisting on full Japanese responsibility for everything that happens within the zone of Japanese control. The position of the Japanese army as a governing engine, unacknowledged colonial machinery of a vast unassimilable colony, is not one relished by the Japanese people or by their leaders. Even in the case of Manchoukuo, the Japanese played a half-deception on themselves by pretending that they were extending the area of their influence, not the extent of their responsibilities. In part this distaste for overt control is based on the ease, cheapness and irresponsibility of indirect rule, employed in varying degrees by the British in Malaysia, the French in Indo-China, and the Soviets in Outer Mongolia. The Japanese like to think that they are aiding China, and incidentally themselves, to a New Order in East Asia--autarkic, stable, racially independent of the Whites, militarily secure. They do not like to contemplate the slaughter of innocent people for sheer conquest, or to consider the hopeless immensity of trying to overwhelm China. This complicates their position.[1] [Footnote 1: An excellent bibliography, providing further references to the Japanese side of the war, is found in Borton, Hugh, _et al._, _A Selected List of Books and Articles on Japan_, Washington, D. C., 1940. An outstanding short discussion is Colegrove, K. W., _Militarism in Japan_, Boston (World Peace Foundation), 1936.] For if the status of the Japanese army in China is clear, its purposes are not. The war aims of the Japanese are confused. Japan's goal is defined by overtones of the inexpressible--in economic motivation, once valid, no longer meaningful; in rationalizations so long reiterated that they become genuine; in the toss and push of world affairs, tempting Japan's leaders to this opportunism or that; in sheer sentiments of Japanolatry, Emperor-worship, racialism, archaic resentment against China, fellow-feeling for the Chinese orientals, and plain fear. A few Japanese know exactly what they want. The policy as a whole, the policy of the Imperial state, encompasses ill-assorted economic, political, strategic, racial and purely ideological objectives.