JAPAN-CHINA: Secessionist Movements

“Secessionist Movements”

(See front cover)

Japan, having promised the League of Nations to withdraw from Manchuria (China’s northern granary), withdrew a few more soldiers last week, but irate Chinese were not appeased.

General Honjo, commander of the Japanese forces in Manchuria, stroked his silky white mustachios, stated that “military occupation” of Mukden by Japanese troops was at an end. His soldiers were staying on, he explained, merely to protect Japanese lives and property.

Chinese noticed that Japanese soldiers also “protected” the silver reserve of the Manchurian treasury at Mukden. Fifty vaults containing the reserves of the leading provincial banks of Manchuria remained under Japanese seal and guard. Because the Mukden branch of Manhattan’s National City Bank had fat silver deposits in the sealed Chinese banks and wanted to withdraw same last week, Branch Manager Lamont M. Cochran requested of the Japanese authorities that they permit Mukden’s banks to open. He was ignored.

Meanwhile officials of Mukden’s Chinese Provincial Government had fled in headlong fear. (No. 1 Committeeman: Mr. Quan Shinkai, once chief secretary to the late, barbaric War Lord Chang Tso-lin.) They were replaced by an un savory group of Chinese calling themselves the Peoples Preservation Committee who seemed disposed to declare the secession of Manchuria from the rest of China. Other secessionist movements were reported (by the Japanese press) in such leading Manchurian cities as Harbin and Kirin. Finally in Tokyo suave General Jiro Minami, Japanese War Minister credited with secretly ordering the whirl wind Japanese occupation of Manchuria (TIME, Sept. 28), appeared before the Japanese Cabinet last week with a sheaf of telegrams in his small, hard fist. According to General Minami, the Chinese citizens of Harbin had just plumped enthusiastically for secession of Manchuria from China, arraying themselves for this purpose under Chinese General Chang Ching-hui.

Japan Does a Roosevelt? In China proper last week secessionist news from Manchuria was branded as a mess of Japanese lies. Convalescent but still typhoid-feverish, Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang, recently forced out of Mukden by General Honjo, declared from his Peiping hospital pallet, “China will never recognize a secessionist regime set up in Manchuria clearly under Japanese influence!”

In Nanking, Canton. Shanghai, passionately indignant Chinese likened Manchuria to Panama. When President Theodore Roosevelt wanted a strip of Colombian territory which spanned the Isthmus of Panama, they recalled, a secessionist movement conveniently arose. Panama broke away from Colombia. Promptly recognized as a new and sovereign state by President Roosevelt, she promptly permitted the U. S. to build the Panama Canal. Should Manchuria secede from China, what is to prevent Independent Manchuria from later merging with Japan? Full of suspicion, Chinese patriots scanned Japan for a Roosevelt. Is he Baron Kijuro Shidehara, famed Japanese Foreign Minister?

The Baron is short, thickset, determined. Keen eyes peer from behind heavy round spectacles. His broad stubby mustache, his quick big-toothed smile are more than vaguely Rooseveltian. Years ago as a Japanese diplomat Baron Shidehara knew the Rough Rider President, recalls him warmly as “my friend.” Asked recently point blank, “Has anyone ever told you that you look like Roosevelt?” Japan’s Foreign Minister replied with crisp satisfaction, ”Yes, someone told me that in Washington on my first visit.”

Famed as a man of peace because he forced Japanese ratification last year of the London Naval Treaty despite terrific opposition, Baron Shidehara kept the cables to Washington busy last week, finally obtained from Secretary Stimson what amounted to a carte blanche for the Japanese activities in Manchuria—activities which the Chinese Government denounced in their cables to Washington last week as “free acts of war . . . still being committed by Japanese troops.”

As Foreign Minister, Baron Shidehara whitewashed as best he could the indiscreet gloating of Japan’s War Minister at “secession movements” in Manchuria. He despatched to the Chinese Government and to the world press a note in which he said: “The Japanese Government has prohibited all its nationals from assisting independence movements and is confident that no Japanese is taking part in these movements.”

Observers noted that Japan’s Shidehara had thus completely boxed the diplomatic compass, done all an able diplomat could to create an odor of sanctity, yet had left Japan free to take full advantage of whatever situation her militarists are able to develop in Manchuria.

Crescent’s Tip, Petite Masako, Baroness Shidehara is an Iwasaki, daughter of Japan’s No. 2 house of merchant princes (Mitsubishi), the famed Mitsui being No. 1. When she married Diplomat Shidehara he was no baron though he belonged to a Samurai (feudal sword bearer) family. In the past 30 years he has held diplomatic posts almost everywhere, but got his real leg up to greatness as Chief of the Telegraph Section of the Foreign Office, a key post because the holder has access to all Foreign Office codes & secrets, and secrets play a major role in the devious statecraft of Japan.

While Ambassador to the U. S. (1919-22) Samurai Shidehara was made a Baron (1920) by the Son of Heaven who thus equipped him with sufficient social prestige to represent Japan fittingly at the Washington Conference (1921-22). Since then he has been several times Foreign Minister, served as Acting Premier (TIME, Nov. 24) when his old friend and classmate at the Tokyo Imperial University, Premier Yuko Hamaguchi (“The Lion”) was skewered by a would-be assassin’s dagger and lingered on to die last month.

Today Baron & Baroness Shidehara delight chiefly in their smart sons, Michitaro (29), Shigeo (26), and in their unassuming, rock-gardened week-end home at Kamakura on the eastern tip of crescent-shaped Sagami Bay. On the western tip, thrillingly visible to the loyal Shideharas. is the summer home of the sublime Emperor Hirohito, 125th descendant of the Sun Goddess.

Chinese Unite? As they always do when menaced by Japan, China’s weak and wrangling factional governments tried last week to unite. Only last spring the Canton Government was reviling “Nanking’s rococo façade” while the Nanking Government denounced Canton Foreign Minister Eugene Chen as a Bolshevik Red. Both charges were at least half truths, but last week Canton and Nanking found it possible to exchange envoys and draft a secret program for concerted action (TIME, June 29).

Strongest were rumors that Pinko Mr. Chen may emerge as Foreign Minister of the projected coalition. He has been much at Moscow, would give Chinese policy a sharp leftward twist.

Chinatown’s Lee. Unlucky Dr. C. T. Wang who was beaten, stabbed and mauled by patriotic students (TIME, Oct. 5). because as Nanking’s Foreign Minister “his policy toward Japan was not positive enough,” recovered partly from his wounds last week. Thrice stabbed, he worried most about his badly beaten knees. Doctors said that if he walks again he will probably limp. Temporarily Dr. Wang was replaced in Nanking’s Cabinet by a Chinese born in Manhattan’s famed Chinatown, ascetic, erudite Professor Frank W. Lee.

Neither ascetic nor erudite was Professor Lee’s father, sinister “Old Tom” Lee, chief On Leong Tongsman and redoubtable “Mayor of Chinatown.” Old Tom’s wife was white. He shielded her and little Frank whom she reared an upright Baptist. Opium dens, eerie tunnels under Mott Street and stranglings in the dark are no childhood memories of Professor Lee, whose features and color resemble his mother’s.

In 1906, aged 22, he went to teach in China under Y. M. C. A. auspices, became attached to the. late great Dr. Sun and in 1927 turned up in Washington where he persuaded President Calvin Coolidge to recognize Nanking as the Government of all China.

Safety Valves. To keep superpatriotic students out of mischief, Nanking President Chiang Kai-shek organized “student battalions” last week, ostensibly for war with Japan. But numerous students were too canny to join, doubted the President’s will to war. Three thousand students, most of them with little or no money, massed in Nanking, vowed that they would stay there (and perhaps starve) until the Government takes steps to avenge “China’s honor.”

Hearing that another entire trainload of students were about to leave Shanghai, President Chiang wired orders that the train must not leave, whereat the students threatened to wreck the station. After furious wrangling Shanghai railroad officials pretended to yield. Students cheered as their train chuffed out of Shanghai station, raged when it was shunted onto a sidetrack at Chinkiang, 50 miles from Nanking, and left there by an engine which absconded before the students could lynch the fireman and engineer.

Philanthropic U. S. citizens who contribute to Yenching University at Peiping were relieved when President Dr. John Leighton Stuart cabled last week that his Cninese students are ignoring the militarist demonstrations of other Chinese students and continue to study.

Protective Expeditions. Actual battling in China was confined last week to skirmishes in Manchuria between Chinese troops (Japanese called them “bandits”) and Japanese “protective expeditions.”

Chinese, protesting the Japanese military occupation, shot down a Japanese plane. In rebuttal Japanese planes dropped 60 bombs on the Chinese bar racks at Paishan-Chengtse, killed some 200 soldiers.

At 6 p. m. the Japanese Admiralty received a news flash from Shanghai that a Chinese mob had “brutally beaten” two Japanese women on Yangtzepoo Road at 5:30 p. m. Out ripped Admiralty orders. By 6:30 p. m. the Japanese destroyers Hinoki and Momo were streaking for Shanghai, chief Chinese port. At dawn two more Japanese destroyers followed.