MANCHUKUO: Puppet’s Poppies

Until last week no Great Power had troubled to attack the puppet “Regency” of hollow-eyed Henry Pu Yi over what Japan calls the new state of Manchukuo.

Regent Henry has been free to assume that President Roosevelt would recognize Manchukuo sooner or later as no worse than Bolshevikland. Secretary of State Cordell Hull has given no sign that he favored his Republican predecessor’s “Stimson Doctrine” of unyielding nonrecognition of Manchukuo. Abruptly last week President Roosevelt moved to pin on Manchukuo an odium worse than any attaching to Russia. The President sent the State Department’s assistant chief of Far Eastern Affairs, Stuart Fuller, to read a 1,700-word U. S. protest anent Manchukuo to the League of Nations’ Opium Commission in Geneva. Pointedly ignoring the existence of any such state as “Manchukuo” and insisting that its territory is the rightful property of China, Mr. Fuller, while careful not to mention Japan by name, denounced the regime behind puppet Regent Henry Pu Yi for increasing the opium output of Manchukuo by every means and making it a centre for illicit dealing.in every form of homegrown and smuggled opium. Pamphlets dropped from airplanes, charged Mr. Fuller, instruct Manchukuo farmers in the best ways of growing opium. Stamped on the new money of Manchukuo, he sarcastically observed, is “a beautiful poppy in full bloom!”—an opium poppy. Of the Manchukuo Opium Monopoly, financed by a Japanese loan, Mr. Fuller snapped, “There can be no question that the concern was established for the express purpose of extending and exploiting the smoking of opium!” Across the League table, as these charges were hurled, sat Japan’s placid Masayuki Yokoyama, puffing a cigar. Japan has re-signed from the League and the U. S. has never belonged. After Mr. Fuller had wound up by calling the narcotic situation in Manchukuo a “menace to the United States,” Mr. Yokoyama took refuge in the fact that Manchukuo had not even sent an observer to the League. “Only Manchukuo,” said he blandly, “can speak for Manchukuo.”