Foreign News: Japan’s Dream

One day in 1900, a black-turbaned, black-hearted Chinese Moslem named Tung Fu-hsiang, assisting in the barbaric anti-foreign Boxer attacks at Peking, eased himself with hideous satisfaction into a brand-new chair. It was upholstered with the still fresh skin of Baron Klemens von Ketteler, the murdered German Minister.

This week Peking celebrated the fortieth anniversary of that gruesome outbreak. With intent no less barbaric because it was more subtle, the Japanese marked the occasion by going full-out for the skins of all the foreigners in China except themselves. Instead of using long-swords and rifles, the Japanese advanced on foreign citizens and interests with high-explosive accusations, brickbats of propaganda, bolts of protocol. The campaign was far less spectacular but far more important than the local Boxer Uprising. By last week the three burning unknowns in the truly World War were Russia, Japan, the U. S. Japan’s diplomatic offensive touched off an intricate interplay which threatened to put the U. S. in a position where it must fight a naval war or resort to appeasement in the Pacific.

The Japanese advanced on many fronts. Short, stout, bald, jolly Vice Foreign Minister Masayuki Tani, whom the Japanese like to call a “French-type diplomat,” and short, popeyed, acid Foreign Office Spokesman Yakichiro Suma, whose diplomacy smacks more of the German, had much to say after each advance.

The Japanese signed a new pact concerning that Russo-Japanese running sore, the Manchukuo-Outer Mongolian border; Suma spoke of “concessions and compromises”—eminently worthwhile since the agreement left Japan free for southern adventures. The Tokyo Nichi Nichi reported 2,000 British troops had landed in The Netherlands Indies; Suma viewed this with “extreme gravity.” British Ambassador Sir Robert Leslie Craigie and Tani signed an agreement on the longstanding Tientsin silver dispute; Tani did not publicly comment on the obvious inference that Japan has helpless Britain where she wants her. A treaty of friendship was signed with Thailand (Siam); Suma said it was not a non-aggression treaty, a type Japan considered unsuitable “in the light of recent examples.” Japanese feelers for U. S. appeasement began to get support at least in the U. S. press; Suma dryly remarked: “Good things can never come too late.” Toward the Chinese, for whose benefit the philanthropic Japanese allegedly designed their New Order, Tokyo was somewhat less subtle. Chungking suffered its worst bombing of the year: 154 planes, 800 bombs, 1,500 casualties. Japanese forces claimed Ichang. This was an important victory, since Ichang is one-third of the way up the Yangtze toward Chungking from Hankow. The Kunming-Hanoi’ railroad line was severely bombed, leading New York Times’s reliable F. Tillman Durdin to predict a Japanese attack on French Indo-China. Next day France fell, and the future status of Indo-China became vague.

The wind was blowing from a new quarter. Italy had entered the war. France had surrendered. The British cause, and with it the prospects of the U. S. in the far Pacific, looked dark as betel nut—so black, in fact, that the threat of the U. S. Pacific Fleet, which sooner or later might have to be metamorphosed into an Atlantic Fleet, was losing its force. This week Minister of Foreign Affairs Hachiro Arita announced that by request of Germany and Italy, Japan had assumed the “protection” of German interests in Singapore and Italian interests in Shanghai, Hong Kong, South Africa, Colombo. The dream of decades—a Far East dominated by Japan—was on the verge of climbing from the Japanese subconscious into the realm of action.

The only force which could turn that dream into a nightmare has always been the U. S. The big question taking shape last week appeared to be: could the U. S. summon enough diplomatic adroitness to make friends with Japan without: 1) selling China up the Yangtze and the Allies down the Pacific; 2) being double-crossed herself as other appeasers have been? Or, failing that, could the U. S. risk a war with Japan ?