JAPAN: BRITAIN IS DEAD

The broad roadway between the Imperial Palace and the British Embassy at Tokyo one day last week was choked with a milling, sweating mob, shouting, singing and waving anti-British banners. After giving the loudest and unfunniest anti-foreign demonstration in Tokyo’s history, the leaders, members of the ultranationalist, pro-Axis Black Dragon Society, led the procession to a military shrine. Two hours later the leaders were back to do it all over again for newsreel photographers. When the demonstrators finally dispersed they left a wreath on the Embassy’s gate with the inscription: BRITAIN IS DEAD.

This well-organized display of violence and threats was one more Japanese way of telling Britain that she had better “rectify her conception of East Asia.” It was carefully timed to coincide with the first of Foreign Minister Hachiro Arita’s and British Ambassador Sir Robert Leslie Craigie’s conferences to settle the month-old Tientsin blockade. At the first meeting between the two, Mr. Arita began by asking for an “accord of policy”—I. e., a recognition of Japan’s “new order in East Asia.” However the conference ends, Tokyo newspapers rejoiced over a preliminary Japanese victory—the “official” language of the conference is to be Japanese. When Sir Robert and Minister Arita met, however, they dispensed with interpreters (Sir Robert does not speak Japanese) and conducted the first skirmish in English, which Mr. Arita speaks fluently.