EASTERN ASIA: Feeling of Constriction

EASTERN ASIA

Where Outer Mongolia pokes an inquisitive finger into Manchukuo there was enough border bloodshed last week to provoke either Russia or Japan to war if one or the other had really been looking for a man-sized fight. The mutual assist ance agreement between U. S. S. R. and its puppet Mongolian People’s Republic, though effective for the past 15 years, was formally ratified only a fortnight ago. With Russian guns, Russian tanks, trucks, airplanes and officers and a signed treaty, the greasy, pugnacious Mongols gave as good as they took.

The first serious encounter occurred in the region of Lake Bor, where a fortified Mongol frontier post was attacked twice within three days. There for the first time breechblocks clanged shut and field guns blasted back on their carriages. Despite the initial use of artillery in this border warfare, casualties were slight.

At almost the same time another lively skirmish was going on at the Siberian-Manchukuo frontier not far from Vladivostok between armed Japanese “surveyors” and Soviet border guards.

These were followed by the most serious battle of the lot, in which, according to the Russian version, truckloads of Japanese advanced 28 miles into Mongol territory in an effort to seize the town of Tamsik-Bulak, were chased back to their own side of the line by a superior Mongol force. According to Japan, the battle occurred when a squadron of twelve Mongol airplanes bombed a Japanese detachment on their own territory, making a counterattack necessary. Neither side published casualty lists, but both agreed that losses had been heavy, that tanks, armored cars, airplanes and machine guns had been used.

There was no question that Japan took a drubbing in what would have precipitated a real war overnight if it had occurred, say, on the Franco-German frontier (see p. 24). Most Japanese militarists kept very mum because they were beginning to realize that in the Mongol Army they had caught a tartar. His name appeared in no stories of the fighting, but every Japanese General knew that back of the Mongol warriors stood the smartest soldier in the Red Army, slight, bristle-lipped Marshal Vasily Constantinovich Blucher, commander of all Red troops in the Far East, waggled a warning finger at Japanese brashness.

The warning was put much more directly by the Bulgarian-born Soviet Vice Commissar Boris Spiridonovich Stomoniakov in charge of the Far Eastern Section of the Foreign Office. To Japanese Ambassador Tamekichi Ota in Moscow he snapped:

“Energetic measures are necessary to put an immediate end to the attacks by Japanese troops against Mongolia. The situation does not permit pacifically waiting for development of events.

“Serious responsibility will fall on the Japanese Government in case the actions of its dependent organization [i.e., Manchukuo] lead to the extension of conflicts in Mongolian territory.”

Tokyo decided it would be wise to eat a little humble pie. Until last week Premier Koki Hirota was his own Foreign Minister, and in that capacity fortnight ago he summoned newshawks to insist: “In 1935 I told Parliament that there would be no war while I was Foreign Minister. Let me tell you gentlemen that that still holds good while I am Premier as well.”

More butter was smeared on by General Jiro Minami, until recently ambassador-boss and commander-in-chief of the Kwantung Army in Manchukuo. Said he last week: “The improvement of policing, development of commerce and maintenance of cordial relations with neighbor States are the Kwantung Army’s cardinal policies.”

Japan had a new Foreign Minister last week in the person of grinning, toothy Hachiro Arita. A career diplomat with a long record of service in Brussels, Vienna, Washington and Peiping, he was always considered a liberal, anxious to see the army curbed until he was sent to China in February. Amiable Ambassador Arita arrived at Nanking on a gunboat with decks cleared for action, has been hand-in-glove with the militarists ever since. Returning from paying his respects to his Emperor last week, the new Foreign Minister announced with a wave of his gleaming silk hat:

“Our most urgent tasks today are to rescue the Far East from the dangers of Communism and to relieve the feeling of constriction the Japanese are suffering in their economic life.”

Still hanging fire last week was the proposal, accepted in principle by both Japan and Russia, to appoint a commission to fix the contiguous boundaries of those two countries and thereby end all excuse for frontier skirmishing.