commends that this item be approved without any amendment and also submit the foregoing wishes. "We submit the foregoing report on the results of our investigations• Nov. 20th, 1936. #. * . * "EXPLANATION OF THE PRIME MINISTER (HIROTA) AS TO THE CONCLUSION OF JAPANESE-GERMAN PACT AT THE INVESTIGATION COMMITTEE OF PRIVY COUNCIL "As you know the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, as the result of strengthening of her national defense and the promotion of her international position in recent years, she has built up huge armaments in the Far East to put heavy armed pressure upon East Asia. On the other hand, it is quite evident that she is acting to put East Asia into disturbance, mobilizing the Communist Internationale. Since these matters are direct menace to our national defense and also they display a very difficult obstacle to the execution of Japan1s East Asia policy? and since the^ former government has insisted on China's cooperation with Japan in eliminating the threat of external Red influence from Outer Mongolia and others, as one of the three principles of Sino-Japanese negotiations, the present government has made it the pivotal point of its foreign policy to frustrate the Soviet Union's schemes of aggrandizement, especially to dissolve the threat to the national defense of Japan by her huge armaments and to check the advance of Comintern Bolshevization in East Asia. "Also in Europe, Germany has in recent years been placed in a position so similar to Japan's that she must check the