Frolic With Danger

Occidentals are confused when Japan enlarges her territory because at such times the Japanese Army & Navy always quarrel furiously with the Premier and civilian Cabinet members. Only after the hubbub has subsided does it once more appear that all Japanese are patriots and that the Empire has been enlarged by procedure so obscure that no Occidental knows exactly which Japanese to blame.

In North China last week another of these Japanese Puzzles was in the making. Army chiefs moved Japanese forces in overwhelming numbers down to the Great Wall. The Army's master-spy and agent provocateur, Major General Kenji Doihara, had everything set for five Chinese provinces to secede as a unit from the Nanking Government and set themselves up as "autonomous" under the muzzles of Japanese guns. Abruptly this scheme was spoiled by the Japanese Ambassador to China, grinning Mr. Akira Ariyoshi, who had a three-hour conversation with brisk little Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek, after which the Chinese satraps of the five provinces figuratively thumbed their noses at General Doihara. When, with boiling anger, the General sputtered in Peiping at a local Chinese commander, hurling threats which would ordinarily have made him grovel, Chinese General Hsiao Chengying said with quiet, studied Oriental insolence that the five provinces had just received the strongest telegraphic orders from Nanking: "So if you want autonomy declared, General Doihara, you must force Nanking to instruct us differently."

Since General Doihara and his Japanese Army crowd had openly threatened to hurl in their troops at any such "Chinese provocation" and since they did not hurl them last week, Chinese enjoyed briefly a feeling of exhilaration. Then Ambassador Ariyoshi bustled around, hinting to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek that the discomfited Japanese Army clique is so powerful that Japan's civilian Cabinet members have to be careful. After much haggling the Ambassador emerged to whisper to Japanese correspondents that Generalissimo Chiang, while opposing secession of the five provinces in the strongest terms, had promised a "compromise."

Japan's army clique came back by saying, in effect, that Generalissimo Chiang's bond is as bad as his word and rattled its accoutrement along the Great Wall. At that civilian Japanese leaders said Japan's troops had been instructed by the "highest authority" (the Son of Heaven) not to move into China without an Imperial Order--something august and rarely given. In Tokyo suppressed excitement grew so thick that Japanese would not have been surprised had civilian Foreign Minister Koki Hirota or War Minister General Yoshiyuki Kawashima been assassinated last week. Japan's man-on-horseback, Emperor Hirohito, and China's Generalissimo Chiang seemed momentarily to face each other in a nose-to-nose stalemate.

One Mr. Yin Ju-keng, a Chinese creature of General Doihara, closed the week's Oriental frolic on dangerous ground by proclaiming "autonomous" not the five enormous North China provinces but 25 medium-sized North China districts with a combined population of 5,000,000. He called his new "Government" the Autonomous Federation for Joint Defense Against Communism.

At this development Japanese Army leaders said their troops would cross the Great Wall at "the first sign of disorder." Simultaneously Yin announced as the capital of his regime Tungchow, only twelve miles east of Peiping and a leading Chinese educational centre not far from Yenching University whose calm, clear-headed President John Leighton Stuart is now in Manhattan. Highly excited, Yenching's Chinese, American & European faculty leaders this week joined fiery Chinese Philosopher Hu Shih in a manifesto demanding that the Nanking Government "use the energies of the entire nation to maintain the territorial and administrative integrity of China." Gravely Dr. Stuart opined that, in case Japan makes North China a second Manchukuo, the courageous thing for Yenching to do may be to remove in a pioneering trek to China's Wild West, 1,000 miles from where the Japanese invaders are at present. Leaders of the Nanking regime have admitted off the record that ultimately their whole Government may have to make a Chinese Wild West trek.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.