(5 of 5)
The Admiral is a naval man and so not very literary. But once in a while he reads a book in the evening. His favorite is the military strategy of Sun Tzu, the Chinese Clausewitz. Sun Tzu's first precept is one that Kichisaburo Nomura especially relishes. Ironically, it is also often on the lips of China's Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. Also—and this is why Admiral Nomura's hopeful mission seems doomed to failure—it is the unspoken precept of the U.S. State Department. The Admiral's translation: "
Hundred battles and hundred victories, not so good. To win without fight, that is the good."
*In his now famous speech to the America-Japan Society in Tokyo in October 1939, Ambassador Grew told the Japanese bluntly that the U.S. people understand all too well what the New Order in East Asia means. But he said then, and was trying to prove last week: "We believe that real security and stability in the Far East could be attained without running counter to any American rights whatsoever."