Something to Talk About

In formal morning dress, the Diet of Japan will gather this week for an Extraordinary Session--perhaps the most momentous since the Extraordinary Diet that met in the month before Pearl Harbor. A heavy brocade curtain will rise before a balcony in the dignified House of Peers. There, in lonely, myopic state, will perch the Emperor Hirohito. The honorable members, and the uniformed guards who see that representatives do not fall asleep, will bow their heads docilely as the Son of Heaven, flanked by Princes of the Blood, declares their meeting open.

This session had been called, the Tokyo radio explained, to approve Premier Hideki Tojo's plans for "total national mobilization" and "drastic increase in fighting strength." In a totalitarian nation organized to the last rice grain and the newest village baby, what could that mean?

Eyes Outward? The Chinese saw the Extraordinary Diet as another prelude to bold military adventure, as bold perhaps as in 1941. In Chungking there was talk that Japan would invade Siberia within 90 days. A like prediction had come from Chinese sources in 1942 at this season, when the tough Siberian mountain and steppeland is warm and dry, most suitable for campaigning. But now there were new reasons. Russia was drawing closer to her U.S. and British allies. Germany appeared to be preparing for a supreme effort against Russia in the west. If Russia was ever to be eliminated as a major power and threat to Japan, now was the time.

But there were reasons, just as potent, why Russia and Japan should maintain a watchful neutrality. Each has half a million to a million troops posted on the long Siberian-Manchukuoan frontier. The Soviet Far Eastern Army is well equipped, led by rugged General Joseph Rodionovich ("Hercules") Apanasenko. A Red Air Force and a Red submarine fleet are ready.

Eyes Inward? The Extraordinary Diet might have been called because of a sagging home front. Though the national mobilization law of 1938 seemed to grant the Government all necessary power over the domestic economy, a lot of water has since flowed past Nippon's shores.

> The Mikado's factories have fallen far behind in the battle of production. They lack precision tools, raw materials, labor--and Jap labor is not getting enough food.

> The raw materials and the foodstuffs could be brought in from conquered lands, but there is not sufficient shipping to move them. The Jap, say the Chinese, is like a man who has very much rice but no rice bowl to eat with.

The home front--as well as the battlefronts--clearly worried Jap propagandists last week. The radio exhorted: "The battlefield spirit must be preserved within the home front. . . . There are many complaints. . . . But who suffers even more? It is Europe. . . . They are eating rats or crows. We are not, yet. . . . Our lot is not so hard." A mass rally in Tokyo struck another theme: "The enemy, America and Britain, is coming forward. . . . The war situation has become strained. . . . The 100,000,000 people of Japan must consolidate the feeling of hatred toward the enemy."

One thing was certain: whatever the Jap was up to, he, like his Nazi bedfellow, had learned that victories did not always mean victory.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.