Pacific Pacific?

The Emperor of Japan is not a man. He is 39 years old, has six human children, weighs about 135 pounds, eats, sleeps and fans himself; but he is not a man. Hirohito, Son of the Sun Goddess, is a lot of things. He is fierce samurai battles, snowcapped volcanoes, the flowering mimosa, fat carp in mountain pools. He is exaggerated politeness, intense ambition, orchidaceous sensitivity. He is the rising sun. He is also a big navy, and a crying need for cheap rice and living space. He embraces Japan. He is Japan.

Last week Japanese reverently celebrated the 2,600th anniversary of the assumption of divine rule by Hirohito's ancestor Jimmu, first of Japan's unbroken (but, thanks to some perfectly divine concubines, occasionally knotted) string of 124 emperors. To Occidentals, the celebration looked like so much hocuspocus. This scoffing attitude was symptomatic of the blind misunderstanding of Japan's ways which last week threatened--in the opinion of some sober commentators, more immediately than Europe's troubles--to get the U. S. into war.

U. S. citizens have misunderstood every step in the downward path of U. S.-Japanese relations. They thought the Nine-Power Treaty of 1922 was designed to maintain the integrity of China; whereas to the Japanese it was merely "a gangsters' agreement to divide China's spoils." They thought Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931; whereas Japan merely "established Manchukuo" in defense of her own rights. They certainly failed to realize the real reason for the China Incident which began in 1937: Japan's solicitude for a fellow race being plundered by alien powers. But the worst mistake the U. S. made was to think that by penalizing Japan (by abrogating her trade treaty--TIME, Feb. 5 et seq.) she could change Japan's silky beliefs and stubborn course.

Japanese statesmen arose in the Tokyo Diet last week to insist that nothing would change that course. If the U. S. implemented the treatyless situation with an embargo, Japan would not sit there and take it. She would abrogate the Nine-Power Treaty (already a dead letter); or stop being the U. S.'s third best customer; or throw U. S. citizens out of China; or fight.

In Washington there were three schools of thought on the Far Eastern situation: 1) Messrs. Pittman, Schwellenbach, Izac, Coffee, Fish, et al.--proponents of an embargo against Japan; 2) a growing group, underwritten by Secretary Morgenthau and the Export-Import Bank, which favored the roundabout maneuver of giving China a $20,000,000 credit (China had asked for $75,000,000); and 3) a sudden cloud of alarmists, frightened mainly by Columnist Walter Lippmann, who thought the risk of war was growing by the minute, but that the U. S. should hopefully do nothing.

Last week the U. S. State Department apparently favored doing nothing about Japan. But it looked as if this might be the surest way of all to bring on war. Having threatened action, a sudden backing down would give the Japanese the impression that the U. S. dares not fight in two oceans. That impression, plus a few more U. S. insults and misunderstandings -a few more arrogant U. S. cheeks slapping Japanese sentries' palms, a few more compounds impudently getting in the way of Japanese bombs-might mean that Japanese battleships as well as beetles would plague the U. S.

This eventuality was grimly anticipated by the New York Daily News last week. Said a News editorial: the U. S. must fight Japan some day; it should fight her off its own shores; it should therefore not wait for the inevitable provocations that will make the U. S. attack Japan, but should clamp down on Japan in every way--embargo first--and let her fleet attack the U. S. fleet near its bases.

The one thing which most certainly would insure U. S.-Japanese peace is also the one thing which Japan most wants: liquidation of the war in China. Last week Pope Pius sent Emperor Hirohito a telegram on the Empire's 2,600th anniversary in which he said: "We ask God that you may cease hostilities and that through Divine aid the Japanese people and their sovereigns may attain greater glory and happy years." But the telegram had no effect. Once again an Occidental had dropped a brick, for in Japan, Hirohito is God--God No. 124 in direct succession.

*Senator Vandenberg, who last July cleared the way for an embargo by initiating abrogation of the 1911 Trade Treaty, has since backed down, in the interests of isolation (TIME, Feb. 12).

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