JAPAN: 1940 Olympics

While Germany prepares to hold the 1936 Olympic Games, the world’s two other great troublemaking nations, Italy and Japan, have been quarreling bitterly for the honor of the 1940 Olympics. For Japan, whose sprint swimmers made an astounding sweep of the 1932 Olympics, the quarrel has become a bitter national issue, a crucial matter of forcing the Western World to admit once and for all that it no longer considers the Japanese an inferior race.

Mouthpiece of Japan’s claims is the great Japanese Liberal, Count Michimasa Soyejima, insurance man and onetime Imperial Chamberlain, who claims that Benito Mussolini told him last February that Italy would withdraw in Japan’s favor. A month later, at the Oslo, Norway meeting of the International Olympic Committee, the Italian delegates denied this, reasserted Italy’s claim. Last week, with a war and the possibility of a League of Nations boycott on his hands, Benito Mussolini heard with dismay that nonLeague Member Japan might cooperate in a League boycott. Japanese goods looked far better last week than Olympic Games five years off. Last week Count Soyejima announced that he had received a personal letter from Mussolini, promising to withdraw Italy’s claims finally in Japan’s favor.