Tsingtao Rampage

The Japanese Government, with its practised flair for choosing the safe moment to be offensive, took advantage last week of world-wide preoccupation with Britain's Battle Royal to ram yet another thorn into China's flesh.

On the eastern coast of Shantung peninsula in northeast China is the city of Tsingtao. There last week 36,000 Chinese workers were locked out of nine Japanese-owned textile mills. Immediately 800 fully-armed Japanese marines landed at Tsingtao on the pretext of "safeguarding Japan's interests." rampaged all over the seaport, arrested three prominent Chinese, raided the Chinese Nationalist Party headquarters, and seized documents.

With his patience at breaking point, Chinese Foreign Minister Chang Chun summoned Japanese Ambassador Shigeru

Kawagoe to a tete-a-tete, told him in good round terms that the Japanese Government must withdraw its marines from the Shantung seaport, release its Chinese prisoners, restore the stolen Chinese documents. When opportunist Ambassador Kawagoe suggested that instead he and Foreign Minister Chang should discuss "broad Sino-Japanese problems." General Chang frostily replied: "Continuance of negotiations are useless while Japanese forces remain ashore in Tsingtao and while your Government continues to back the Mongols and Manchukuoans attacking Suiyuan" (TIME. Dec. 7").

On into Tsingtao piled 600 more Japanese marines. When their commander made secret demands which local Chinese officials pluckily rejected as "unreasonable and fantastic," Japanese war boats rushed into port to menace Tsingtao further with their big guns. The Japanese marines moved forward to seize the city's water works, then moved back as 3,000 Chinese troops approached. Sudden freezing weather came and 36,000 locked-out Chinese millworkers shivered, railing at the warm Japanese millowners.

In Tokyo, meanwhile, Foreign Minister Hachiro Arita quietly slipped over Japan's recognition of Italy's conquest of Ethiopia, figuring that last week the British certainly would not notice. In Tokyo an individual carrying dynamite, a razor-edged spear and a fistful of petitions confessed: "For three days I have been try ing to kill the Premier." Simultaneously in Japanese political circles the more or less gagged Parliament was reported so restive at the risks the Cabinet is running with its pro-German and pro-Italian pacts (TIME. Dec. 7) and its seizure of Tsingtao, that Japan's dominant militarists were about ready to thrash "those Parliamentary cowards" by having Parlia ment dissolved.

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