Matsuoka, Molotov Sign

Six days last week little Japanese Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka padded down the corridors of the Kremlin into the office of Soviet Foreign Commissar Viacheslav Molotov. Hours passed behind the closed doors. Great issues, exciting cables telling of Hitler's Yugoslav victories occupied the voluble Japanese and his bluff Soviet host. On the fifth day Comrade Joseph Stalin joined the pair. And on the sixth day an exceedingly happy Yosuke Matsuoka padded out of the office with the kind of document Japan has been seeking for months--a five-year non-aggression pact between the inveterate enemies, Russia and Japan. In stilted diplomatic language it said in effect: "We will not fight each other, and if anyone attacks either of us, the other will remain neutral." For the next three hours at the Japanese Embassy the grinning Matsuoka received newspapermen and the congratulations of Axis diplomats. Then he rode to the Moscow station to start his return trip to Tokyo. At the station he received by far the greatest honor of his entire diplomatic career. For Joseph Stalin, in a grey overcoat, his khaki trousers shoved into his boots, came down to see him off. It was the first time in history that Stalin and Molotov had gone together to the train for a diplomat.

The world began to wonder. And shortly the world began to realize that, at least so far as Russia was concerned, it could not decide. Obviously the pact protected Russia's rear against Japan, just as it did Japan's against Russia--provided both kept their pledge. But for Russia the pact might mean several different things. It might mean that Stalin was frightened by Germany's blasting southeastern push into country dangerously near the Ukraine, that he wanted to be free to oppose Hitler without risk from Japan. Within six weeks Russia had given four hints of growing anti-Axis sentiment (see p. 40). On the other hand, Russia's signing might mean just the opposite--even further cooperation with the Axis expressed in peaceful friendship with Axis Partner Japan. What, the world asked, would be the pact's effect on the Soviet support of China? Was there, by chance, as some suggested, a secret clause calling for the withdrawal of that support, an action which would seriously endanger, if not ruin, Chiang Kai-shek's cause? None but the signers knew. The strokes of Foreign Commissar Molotov's pen had done little or nothing toward tipping Joseph Stalin's hand.

The world, however, had no difficulty at all in seeing one great pact possibility for Japan. With its Russian rear protected, Japan was now free to launch its long-anticipated attack on the East Indies.

Already the Chinese Central News Agency reported a Japanese force of 70,000 on mountainous Hainan Island off the French Indo-China coast. Civilian Japanese were reported scurrying away from the East Indies by the thousands. Possibly the grim Pacific event which the London-Washington Axis fears and the Rome-Berlin Axis has hopefully worked for would soon take place--possibly the Japanese Navy would put to sea, bound south toward Singapore--possibly the U.S. might soon find itself at war, not with Hitler but with the Son of Heaven.

Nothing Remarkable. In Tokyo last week Premier Prince Fumimaro Konoye gave the contrary impression. In press conference he made the most pacific statements yet heard from the hypochondriac Japanese leader. They seemed to bear out recent reports that the new one-party Konoye Government is by no means of one mind, that it is torn between following its burning Fascist-imperialist advisers, and Japanese financiers who have had more success than usual in calling attention to the sorry economic graph of the Empire under Army domination.

"For the present," said Premier Konoye in a manner mild as April, "I cannot imagine new developments of any remarkable character. There are problems enough, I admit, with the United States and the Soviet Union in particular, but I do not think any ... are such that they cannot be solved or so difficult that they must clog up Japanese activities. . . . One of the true aims of the Tripartite Alliance is to prevent the United States from participating in the European War. If it doesn't understand this point, well. . . . But we must induce the United States to understand it."

"But aren't American-Japanese relations steadily growing worse?" asked a reporter.

"I don't think they are necessarily so bad," said the Premier. "As a matter of practical diplomacy, what has the United States done since Japan concluded the Tripartite Alliance? Nothing very different from what it has always been doing."

"What about the southern problem?"

"What Japan aims at in the South Seas is its economic development. Japan at present has no intention whatever to use armed force against the southern countries."

"Most Dangerous Man." If the Konoye Government still doubts the feasibility of fighting in the South Pacific, one potent but widely unrecognized Government figure has no such doubts. "Most Dangerous Man In Japan," his mind has been made up for years. Statements such as Premier Konoye's last week must have enraged him. He is blunt-faced, harsh-mannered Toshio Shiratori, 53, whose great influence in Japanese affairs is camouflaged under his bland title of Diplomatic Adviser to the Foreign Office. He is perhaps the angriest and certainly one of the most effective enemies of the U.S. in Japan. If he has his way in the future as he has in the past, Japan's course will not be one of peace.

Toshio Shiratori was born to a middle-class village family in testy, independent Chiba Province, famed for annoying the Shoguns in feudal times. At Tokyo Imperial University he was brilliant in languages, admired as a tough "son of nature," became friends with many prominent families. He has since been Japan's Minister to Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Ambassador to Italy (1938-39). But his real career has been as an increasingly contagious Fascist in the Foreign Office.

For years he has cultivated the Army, talked imperialism, condemned liberalism and political parties. He is widely read in world politics and history and takes an angry delight in cracking at the democracies. Just after Japan marched into Manchuria, a U.S. reporter asked Shiratori, then Foreign Office spokesman, when Japan would recognize Manchukuo.

"We're in no hurry," snapped the spokesman, "because we have no canal to dig there." From Italy, he flooded Japan with Fascist propaganda. Today he leads the Foreign Office Fascists (of whom Foreign Minister Matsuoka is locally regarded as a pawn), is credited with driving out the pro-Anglo-American bloc, sponsoring the Japanese end of the Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936. It was he who worked with German Ambassador Eugen Ott in concluding the Tripartite Alliance.

It is said that "Shiratori gets behind Matsuoka and pushes"--and implied that if Shiratori didn't push, Matsuoka would not know where to move. Shiratori lusts for a showdown with the U.S. He speaks little in public, but when he does, it is no such jabberwocky as often comes from Matsuoka. Typical Shiratori statement: "The construction of the East Asia common-prosperity sphere may give rise to war between Nippon and the United States. Such a war will probably be a 100-year conflict. Racial inconsistency of the United States, involved in her organization, in the meantime will assume serious proportions." Virtually everything Toshio Shiratori has worked for in Japan has come to pass. So far as he is concerned, the Japanese Navy's steam is already up.

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