Yen to Fight

Japanese politicians, more fearful than ever of a military coup d'etat, tried to save the Empire's parliamentary system last week by yielding abjectly to War Minister Sadao Araki, reshuffling some Cabinet posts at the military clique's behest, appropriating all the money demanded by the fighting services and nastily adjourning the Diet before worse should befall. The Opposition (Minseito) Party, not daring to oppose, wailed a public prediction through the lips of Deputy Gotaro Ogawa that Japan's occupation of Manchuria will soon have cost 300,000,000 yen ($100,000,000 current rate)--a vast sum for Japan.

When he addressed the House of Representatives last week War Minister Araki, according to the discreet translator, "employed language so beautiful and flowery that it cannot be translated into English very well."

Militarist Araki (a devoted husband and father) beautifully threatened Japanese withdrawal from the League of Nations "if its commission [now investigating Manchuria] continues to show ignorance of Far Eastern conditions." Demanding that more Japanese troops be sent to Manchuria, General Araki said (as nearly as his flowerings can be translated) : "The problems confronting the Empire's defense arm are of such magnitude and profound importance as to transcend those of our Siberian expeditions in 1918 [when Japanese and other Allied troops penetrated far into Soviet territory]. From certain viewpoints the present situation is even more serious than the Russo-Japanese War of 1905.

"It is only natural that our officers and men feel the blood surging through their veins as never before. By the co-operation of all the people, we hope to bring this crisis to a desirable consummation.

"The co-operation of the army and navy has been of a magnificence rarely seen in our history. Their activities have been such that we can be proud of them before the world."

Such gorgeous words meant, of course, that Japan's militarists were toying with the project of an onslaught upon Russia (which has been feverishly strengthening the fortifications of Vladivostok). But the situation in Japan itself was critical last week. With business hamstrung by the Chinese boycott of Japanese goods, with business leaders unable to judge precisely which way the militarists would jump, even public service corporations like the Tokyo Subway Railway Co. were in acute uncertainty and fear.

Thus one day 150 subway employes dared to threaten the company with baseball bats. Shouldering these popular sporting weapons (even Crown Prince Chichibu plays baseball) they swaggered boldly into a subway train, shooed ouf the passengers, closed all the doors. Neither they nor the train would move, they announced, until the company gave them shorter hours, more pay.

Ordinarily Tokyo police would have broken up the baseball bat strike at once. Last week the subway company, afraid that trouble, once provoked, might spread, meekly yielded to all the subterranean sportsmen's demands.

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