Foreign News: Open and Shut

Japanese Premier Prince Fumimaro Konoye last week cried accusingly at French Ambassador Charles Arsène-Henry: “The most important route left for transportation of arms to [Chinese Generalissimo] Chiang is through French Indo-China and China is now reported active there.”

Shoulders were promptly shrugged in Paris at the French Foreign Office. Its official spokesman said off the record that no such traffic exists. That it does exist no serious correspondent or commentator on the Far East has questioned for many months.

Japan is not in the habit of doing much rattling before she strikes. Thus French Navy and Colonial officials were gravely alarmed when the official spokesman of the Japanese Foreign Office said on the record: “Japan might be compelled in self-defense to take such measures as she deems necessary.

Tokyo censors passed cables in which foreign correspondents guessed this meant the Japanese Navy will proceed to take Chinese Hainan Island adjacent to French Indo-China. Hainan lies uncomfortably close to the French naval base at Saigon and commands the route between British Hong Kong and British Singapore. Hainan in Japanese hands would be the sort of pistol Hitler pointed when he mobilized 1,500,000 Germans to solve the Sudeten problem without war.

Foul & Foul? Premier Daladier had not replied this week to Premier Konoye’s hint that Indo-China must adopt a “Closed Door” policy on munitions. But the Japanese Government were revealed to have received, on October 6, a note from Washington presented by Ambassador Joseph Clark Grew, repeating previous U. S. demands that Japan return to an “Open Door” trade policy for China.

The U. S. note hinted that definite measures may be taken by the Roosevelt Administration if “unwarranted interference” by Japanese in China tending to close the historic Open Door is not stopped. U. S. public opinion must be tested before the President can act, and significantly in Shanghai last week the U. S. and British Chambers of Commerce held a joint conclave, then dispatched U. S. Chamber President W. H. Plant on the Empress of Russia which will reach Vancouver November 14. President Plant, who is Far East Manager for U. S. Steel Products Co., announced that he is bringing “startling details of the carefully planned Japanese threat to the American commercial stake in China.”