Foreign News: Lofty Idea

In December 1938, Premier Prince Fumimaro Konoye proclaimed Japan’s plan to create a peaceful New Order in East Asia. In October 1941, the war-minded Army drove the weak-bodied, peace-minded Prince into retirement. Last week he was resurrected to head the Government’s new Japan-China Society. Brutality had failed to win cooperation in the occupied areas; now persuasion and propaganda were to be given another chance. The Society’s aim, according to the Tokyo radio: “To drive home to the hearts of one billion Asiatics the lofty ideas of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.”