Traffic in Indo-China

The efficiency of Georges Mandel, before the fall of France Minister of Colonies under Daladier (and later of Interior), was often characterized as "deadly." Last week, ironically, this deadliness seemed to be catching up with both his person and his work. He was the first on the list of civil trials (see p. 27). And one of France's colonies on which he lavished his efforts was apparently doomed.

When Georges Mandel became Minister of Colonies in April 1938, France was growing defense-conscious. To French Indo-China was allotted 440,000,000 francs for anti-aircraft guns, coastal batteries, improved harbors, other defenses. In order to make the colony self-sufficient in wartime. Minister Mandel pushed public works, expanded light industries, built up production of coal, tin, rubber, iron, rice.

These commodities happen to be the very ones which Japan needs most. When France fell, the Japanese swooped on Indo-China like buzzards on to fresh death. Pretending that they wanted only to defeat China, they asked for and obtained closure of the military-supply route into China. One of the clauses of the closure agreement was that Japanese officials would be permitted to examine Indo-Chinese traffic into free China to see that military stoppage was complete.

Under this clause, Japan had last week virtually completed the occupation of Indo-China--without a single test of the Mandel defenses. "Traffic Examiners" swarmed into the country in mufti, in Army khaki and Navy blue, piloting airplanes and driving little brown automobiles. They proceeded to chart airports, survey highways, estimate the troop traffic which the Haiphong-Kunming railway might carry if Indo-China should by any chance allow troops to cross her territory. Merchants arrived lugging the Oriental equivalents of carpetbags. Three destroyers lay off the port of Haiphong. A large fleet, including no less than 18 troop transports, sped South Seawards from Formosa, destination unknown but possibly to help supervise traffic through Indo-China. Japanese closed the French-leased South China port of Kwangchowan, 150 miles from Indo-China.

Having thus violated the letter and massacred the spirit of the transportation agreement, the Japanese began last week to cry that Indo-China was not doing its part, that military goods were still trickling into China. Japan's chief penetrator, Major General Issaku Nishihara, flew home to Tokyo to report to his superiors, and his impetuous second-in-command, an angry colonel named Kenryo Sato, was reported to have made new demands: 1 ) Japan should be allowed to move troops into China by the Indo-Chinese railway; 2) Japanese naval planes and vessels should get port facilities at Haiphong; 3) all work on the French defenses should cease at once. If only the first demand were granted, Japan would probably be able to force a Japanese peace on China.

In Tokyo, U. S. Ambassador Joseph Clark Grew called on Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka to ask whether these reports were true. Mr. Matsuoka denied them, and the violently chauvinistic pa per Kokumin growled: "Another instance of stupid meddling by the United States." Three days later Admiral Kichisaburo Nomura, onetime Foreign Minister, returned from a tour of inquiry "after the health of Japanese residents" of the Philippines, British North Borneo, The Netherlands Indies. The admiral has only one eye, but that eye saw plenty which the Japanese may some day find useful.

Whether that fateful day will come soon, whether French Indo-China, The Netherlands Indies or various British dependencies will get the Japanese sting first, seemed to depend mostly on Adolf Hitler -- whether he could conquer Great Britain, and whether he could effectively interfere with the Japanese picking up the remnants of the French, Dutch and British Empires in the East.

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