JAPAN-CHINA: Provocatively Dangerous

Provocatively Dangerous

Despite wars and rumors of wars in China, despite pestilence, flood and famine, the great sprawling city of Peiping has been comparatively prosperous and peaceable the past four years. That it remained peaceable last week was not the fault of the Japanese Legation guard. Acting under somebody’s orders, they paraded not only through the legation quarter but up & down the native city with fixed bayonets on their long rifles, tin hats on their little round heads, and machine guns in evidence. Oddest feature of the demonstration was that it was begun at midnight and continued until 5 a. m.

Later in the morning the dean of the Peiping diplomatic corps, elderly Senor Justo Garrido y Cisneros, Minister of Spain, called at the Japanese Legation. He carried a lively protest from another still more important legation objecting to the continuance of “provocatively dangerous” military activity. The whole thing looked suspiciously like an attempt to provoke an Incident, as had been successfully done in Shanghai.

“Our Kingly Way.” Defiant too was General Nobuyoshi Muto last week as he left Tokyo to take up his duties as Supreme-Military Commander in Manchuria and Ambassador on Special Mission to the puppet state of Manchoukuo. He baldly shouted his militarist creed:

“Should anybody attempt to obstruct solution of the Manchurian question, we should be obliged to combat such interferers relentlessly no matter who they may be. … Our kingly way is to guide the policy of Manchoukuo in a spirit identical with the glorious regime of benevolence and justice peculiar to our imperial destiny to control the moral and spiritual advance of the world.”

In Manchuria, Japanese troops celebrated the coming of their new commander by invading Jehol Province (TIME, Aug. 1). Led by bombing planes, flanked by armored trains and tanks, a Japanese force under General Suzuki swept over the Jehol border from Chinchow and captured Nanling. General Tung Fu-ting, defending general, telegraphed wildly from Nanling to Nanking for reinforcements. Chiang Kai-shek did not answer. Japanese troops resting in Nanling sent a three-day ultimatum to the city of Chaoyang, 30 miles away, their objective as a base for the conquest of the whole province. As in the original invasion of Manchuria, capture of a Japanese officer, a Capt. Gonshiro Ishimoto, was the pretext for aggression.

Boycott. In Shanghai, Japanese Consul General Kuramatsu Murai made a few provocatively dangerous threats of his own in a formal protest to Chinese Mayor Wu Teh-chen against the resurgence of anti-Japanese boycott societies such as the Purified Heart & Hot Blood Corps for the Extermination of Traitors.

“If the municipality does not take action,” he announced, “it is possible that a serious situation might arise in Shanghai again.”

Chinese boycotters continued to make hay, feeling sure that Japan will drop no more bombs in Shanghai at least until after the League of Nations’ long-delayed report on Shanghai and Manchuria is published in September.

In Shanghai, terrorist societies kept the mail boxes of Chinese judges filled with anonymous letters threatening the most painful forms of mayhem to any who should impose sentence on a boycotter. Department stores were picketed, Japanese shops were bombed. In Nanking the Legislative Council repudiated the Sino-Japanese treaty of May 5. Anti-Japanese boycotters announced frankly that they would inspect all shipments of goods at the rail terminals and confiscate all Japanese goods.

Munitions. In Tokyo the only real industrial activity centered in munitions plants. A new war chemical factory opened in the suburbs. Orders were placed for 500 military automobiles. Airplane factories worked overtime to turn out fighting planes which are being paid for in part by the yen of Japanese schoolchildren. Imports of oil, glycerine, iron ore. U. S. machine tools increased markedly.

Aged Threat. Only one pacific voice was raised in Nippon last week, that of ancient Count Koken Tanaka, former Minister of the Imperial Household who suddenly emerged from retirement and announced that unless the present Government did not immediately adopt measures to allay unemployment and save poor Japanese citizens from starvation, he would cut open his 90-year-old belly in protest to the Emperor’s Ear, Elder Statesman Prince Kimmochi Saonji.

“I have resorted to this measure,” said Count Tanaka, “to bring back the spirit of Yamato and the filial piety of our government officials and to make them realize the seriousness of conditions. … I must make them realize that they are serving the Emperor. Those who are serving the Emperor should not let one single person in this country suffer from starvation. They should refrain from such luxury as going to summer resorts to avoid a little heat.”

Imperial Gesture. Four days after this protest the Son of Heaven himself donated 4,800,000 yen (currently $1,200,000) from his privy purse to relieve distress among Japanese farmers, fishermen and tradesmen on the eve of the opening of a special session of the Diet.

Special Session. Correspondents expect that it will be a very special session of the Diet indeed. Reports persisted that to offset the coming publication of the League report on Manchuria, which it is generally expected will hold Japan guilty of aggression in Manchuria, Foreign Minister Count Yasuya Uchida will echo an idea which Japanese say was tossed off by the late great Theodore Roosevelt in 1905 in one of his imperialistic moments: a Japanese expanded Monroe Doctrine, by which Japan will announce herself the guardian and protector of new Asiatic nations during their adolescence.