Dissolution

When the Diet reassembled, last week, to complete its winter sessions, Prime Minister Baron Guchi Tanaka found that the long shaky coalition support of his cabinet was disintegrating and straightway took dramatic action.

Ascending the Tribune he delivered a masterful defense of his policies, and then, before the Opposition could reply, produced an Imperial rescript dissolving the Diet. By this stratagem Premier Tanaka secured the widest possible publicity for a speech which amounted to the electoral platform of his party, and at the same time checkmated the Opposition's desire to air its contrary platform in the Diet.

Japanese were widely content at the dissolution, since, in any case, the four-year term of the present irresolute Diet would have expired in May. It will now be possible to put into effect at once the new universal manhood suffrage law (TIME, Jan. 9), which will increase the electorate voting for the new Diet from 3,000,000 to 9,600,000.