INTERNATIONAL: Bigger Than Benito’s

Bigger Than Benito’s

Italy and Ethiopia had not yet declared war last week and neither had China and Japan. Thus far much of Italy’s conquest has been “war without battles,” Ethiopians simply laying down their arms and submitting to Benito Mussolini’s forces. Last week Japan loosed a war without battles to conquer North China, a region of vastly greater wealth and significance than Ethiopia. Population of Ethiopia: 7,500,000. Population of North China: 95,000,000. Area of Ethiopia: 350,000 sq. mi. Area of North China: 394,000 sq. mi. In London famed Editor James L. Garvin of the Observer pontificated: ”The sublime irony is China as a member of the League. Appealing in vain under the Covenant to every sacred principle of mutual obligation that is invoked against Italy. . . . On every abstract principle of virtue and obligation proclaimed by the Sanctionists we should be at war with Japan. . . . According to the present practical interpretation of the Covenant there is one law for the stronger and another for the weaker. The stronger may steal the horse with impunity while the weaker may not look over the hedge.” With Italy looking over the hedge, Japan set to work stealing the horse last week by pouring trainload after trainload of Japanese troops down from Manchukuo through the Great Wall and into strategic cities and towns in the Peiping-Tientsin area. Population of Addis Ababa: 70,000. Population of Peiping: 1,300,000. Chinese villages too small to be dignified by the arrival of Japanese in force were cowed by minute detachments of the determined little sons of Nippon. In groups of from a dozen to a score they arrived by motor truck, hopped out with fixed bayonets and bullied the North Chinese, a people of brawn and stature, who are on the average at least a head taller than most Japanese.

Sham Minus Shame. The absolutely vital junction of North China’s principal railways, Fengtai, 12 miles south of Peiping, was occupied without incident by Japanese troops last week in what their officers thought it discreet to call a “sham battle.” Other Japanese “war games” and “maneuvers”‘ of the week were to seize the North China postal system and several telephone exchanges. On the chance that Chinese might try to rush railway rolling stock out of the North, Japanese troops enforced an order that for every piece of rolling stock permitted to cross the Yellow River southbound a similar piece must first have arrived northbound from Central China.

At Tientsin the local Chinese air field, under partial lease to Pan American Airways, was seized by Japanese who began equipping it as a military base. Soon two Japanese war planes swooped in. Shortly afterward the regular liner from Shanghai arrived and was promptly surrounded by Japanese soldiers with fixed bayonets while their officers sputtered angrily at U. S. Pilot Mitchell who understands no Japanese. Shoving him in the chest, the Japanese officers forced their way into the plane, threatened to arrest its passengers “for taking photographs of our Imperial planes.”

Fortunately a Japanese-speaking U. S. correspondent was aboard, urged the Japanese not to bring down Occidental illwill upon their beloved Japan, persuaded them to withdraw slowly and reluctantly.

As Japanese occupation spread unopposed, like a ripple slowly widening out toward Peiping and Tientsin, consternation reigned in Nanking, capital of the Chinese Government of Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek and Premier Wang Ching-wei who was recently winged by a would-be Chinese assassin (TIME, Nov. 11). Mr. Wang, hospitalized at Shanghai, had recovered sufficiently to set out for Nanking. On the way a plot to assassinate him was discovered. He abruptly resigned last week as Premier, hoping that Chinese patriots who have called him “pro-Japanese” will now let him alone.

Stove-Gas. In North China the pretext of a “spontaneous Chinese movement for autonomy” was set up fortnight ago when 25 counties were proclaimed an Autonomous Government by one Mr. Yin Ju-keng, a Chinese with a prominent Japanese brother-in-law. Orders to arrest Mr. Yin were telegraphed by Generalissimo Chiang last week to General Shang Chen, Governor of Hopei Province. Unable to arrest Mr. Yin, General Shang announced that he blamed himself entirely for everything and in deepest shame would resign “because of illness contracted from stove-gas in my residence.” Not to be put off with stove-gas, Generalissimo Chiang meanwhile wired from Nanking asking goat-bearded General Sung Cheh-yuan, who is supposed to be the real ruler of Hopei and Chahar Provinces, to maintain some kind of Nanking authority in North China by accepting the title of “Pacification Commissioner.” This honor General Sung, who looks and knows how to act the part of a traditional hoary Chinese War Lord with delicacy and finesse, declined.

By this time Sung was becoming suspected by Chinese of intending to fall in with Japanese designs and himself head the Autonomous Government. Waited upon by a high-powered delegation of Chinese scholars, for whom every old-fashioned Chinese has the greatest respect, Oldster Sung calmed their fears for the moment by declaring, “I have no ambition to become a second Yin. I will not head an Autonomy Government.” This drew down upon General Sung a galaxy of excited Japanese officers who seemed to think they could rouse in him an ambition to be their Empire’s puppet by bloodcurdling threats. Moose-in-a-China-Shop. Meanwhile the Japanese Government bitterly complained that the Chinese Government was receiving aid and comfort from moose-tall Sir Frederick Leith-Ross. Chief Economic Adviser to the British Government who has now been in China for some three months. Sharp-tongued Mr. Eiji Amau, famed Japanese Foreign Office spokesman, insinuated that North China would be caving in even more abjectly if the Nanking Government did not think China was soon going to get a thumping British loan. Denouncing last month’s order by Chinese Finance Minister Dr. H. H. Kung taking China off the silver standard and making it treason for Chinese not to send all silver they possess to the Nanking Government, Mr. Amau made no secret that he thinks Sir Frederick prompted Dr. Kung to execute this tricky move with a view to draining all silver out of North China before it can be conquered. Sir Frederick last week was content to be the moose in the China shop. Crossing a long leg, the Chief Economic Adviser to the British Government called in Chinese reporters and snapped, “I have not yet met a single Chinese who supports the ‘autonomy movement’ or believes there is any desire for it among the Chinese people. From an economic viewpoint it would be prejudicial to the rest of China and would not put the people of North China in a better position.”

Two-Faced. This statement badly scared the British Foreign Office. Japanese correspondents in London were hastily told that, while the Bank of England, the City and even the Exchequer may be behind Sir Frederick Leith-Ross, he is “tenacious,” “impulsive,” “obstinate” and “a source of embarrassment and concern” to the British Foreign Office. Writing all this down in Whitehall last week Japanese correspondents cabled home that His Majesty’s Government seemed to be on their own statement two-faced.

With aplomb, spokesmen for His Majesty’s Government on the one hand explained that the British Treasury believes “in all sincerity” that China must be restored to financial stability as soon as possible in order to restore the purchasing power of the Far East. On the other hand the British Foreign Office holds “with equal sincerity” that any attempt to restore China’s finances is not only doomed until Japan and China have reached a solution of their difficulties but would seriously imperil the Peace of the World.

Japanese, without wholeheartedly accepting this explanation, recalled the amazing divergence of views often said to exist in their own Cabinet. In Japan the Ministers of War and Navy believe “in all sincerity” that China should be conquered as rapidly as possible by main force. But Japan’s Foreign Office “with equal sincerity” wants to wangle around among Chinese leaders until a setup is contrived in which North China becomes a state wholly subservient to Japan but not reduced to such submission with enough excess brutality and bloodshed to arouse Europe, the U. S. or the League of Nations.

At week’s end Britain’s Tokyo Embassy gently reminded the Japanese Government of the existence of the Nine-Power Treaty (under which Britain, France, Japan, the U. S., Belgium, Portugal, The Netherlands & Italy are jointly and solemnly pledged to respect the territorial integrity of China), politely inquired as to Japan’s intentions in China. To this Japan replied that she was “watching with interest the wholly spontaneous North China autonomy movement.”