Hirohito v. Kipling

As the New Year begins we pray

That the East and the West

Will live and prosper together.

Last week these lines were announced as His Imperial Highness Emperor Hirohito's contribution (not eligible for a prize) to the annual Imperial Poetry Contest. Far more frankly propagandistic than Emperor Hirohito's efforts of past years, which always discreetly hid the Japanese Army under lotus leaves, branches of mimosa and the burgeoning cherry, this year's poem was released in an inopportune week --a week singularly illustrative of the famous lines on the same subject by that other imperialist, Rudyard Kipling. Only way the twain were meeting last week was on the opposite sides of angry conference tables, or in overt diplomatic conflict :

>Japan's Foreign Office handed British Ambassador Sir Robert Leslie Craigie a flat note demanding that Britain hand over the 21 Germans taken three weeks ago from the Japanese liner Asama Mam. Britain sat tight on her rights. In Tientsin, U. S. citizens as well as Britons suffered from renewed tightening of the British Concession blockade, Japanese military planes roared angrily back & forth 500 feet above the Concession's buildings.

> In a speech opening the Diet, newly restored Foreign Minister Arita disclaimed any intention of eliminating "legitimate rights and interests" of the U. S. in China. This unctuousness, coming just after U. S.-Japanese trade relations fell treatyless, was punctured by a sentence which was a cactus of innuendo: International conflict, said Mr. Arita, is "largely due to the fact that some nations insist upon trying to maintain an irrational and unjust international status quo relative to race, religion, territory, resources, trade, immigration and other matters by adopting exclusionist policies or by abusing their superior positions."

> In Southern China the Japanese Army recklessly bombed the French-owned Yunnan-Indo-China railroad. French Ambassador to Tokyo Charles Arsene-Henri protested the loss of five French lives; and the U. S. Government made representations against this interference with the last railroad carrying American goods into China. Japan's answer was to bomb the line again. Japanese forces claimed great victories around Nanning. But meantime, for the first time since the war began, a Japanese had courage enough to stand up on his feet and criticize the Army not on minor points of procedure, but on its whole program in China.

Takao Saito, a flamboyant orator, a clever politician and a Yale man, asked three unprecedented questions in the lower House of the Diet: 1) How long will the China Incident last? 2) Exactly what does the phrase "New Order in East Asia" mean? 3) What return had the Japanese people had for all their heavy sacrifices?

The Army seethed. Dietarian Saito had "belittled Japan's holy war and defiled the souls of hundreds of thousands of dead" (official Japanese figures on Japanese dead: 70,000). War Minister General Shunroku Hata appeared before the lower House to answer the Saito attack with a charming speech about "peace in East Asia," "universal brotherhood," "good neighborliness" and a still undefined "New Order."

Takao Saito had timed his attack to a T--so well that to save face he had to resign from his political party. The Army might get him expelled from the Imperial Diet, but they could not expel rice from the national diet; the grain was last week rare, its price high. An acute power shortage was causing a stringent curb on power consumption, slowing all industries except munitions. The Diet had just been asked to approve an all-time record military appropriation of $1,025,800,000. More sacrifices.

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