Japan Wavers

I

OF the three daring ‘have-not’ nations that want to change the map of the world, Japan is the first to feel both resistance from abroad and difficulties at home so strongly as to show distinct signs of indecision and wavering in her foreign policy. While Germany and Italy are still marching with certainty toward their respective goals, Japan seems to have been checked, at least for the time being, and has become uncertain of her steps.

The very fact that Japan’s diplomacy recently allowed the country to be openly aligned with the two other ‘have-not’ nations, by the conclusion of the Anti-Comintern Pact with Germany and of the agreement concerning Manchukuo and Ethiopia with Italy, may be taken as proof of how much the country’s foreign policy, alarmed by its failures that threatened to bring about complete isolation and unable to stand up against the Army’s interference, has lost its bearings. To Germany and Italy these pacts may be neither a great opportunity nor a great risk. But to Japan they mean, as one of the Tokyo newspapers put it, ‘the creation of red-hot enemies in order to win lukewarm friends.’

For it must remain doubtful even to the Japanese military themselves whether these actions will ever result in any substantial assistance from Germany and the new Roman Empire. So far there do not seem to be any concrete promises in that regard, even though attempts may still be made to secure them. But in the meantime these pacts served to increase foreign suspicion of Japan; to antagonize still further the Soviet Union, China, and to a certain extent even the United States and Britain, all of them countries which Japan came to choose, and finally to fear, as her potential enemies; and thus to create conditions which Tokyo’s diplomats, in their half-hearted and restricted way, had long tried to forestall.

Japan’s wavering attitude became even more pronounced during the first half of March, 1937, when the cabinet of General Senjuro Hayashi finally succeeded in getting a Foreign Minister in the person of Mr. Naotake Sato, who had just returned from his ambassadorial post in Baris. Faced with a rather embarrassing situation at home and abroad, the new Minister thought fit, in his first speech in the Diet, to strike a note that had not been heard since Japan occupied Manchuria in 1931. He confessed that Japan did not have to fear the outbreak of war unless it was of her own making, denying that any of the country’s potential enemies was also a potential aggressor. He put at least half of the blame for Japan’s diplomatic failures on the shoulders of preceding Japanese governments. He favored a treatment of equality for China and recommended a waiting attitude in case the Nanking Government refused to comply with what he called the ‘minimum demands’ of Japan. He described ‘sincerity’ on the part of both Japan and the Soviet Union as the condition for the desired improvement in the relations between them, while he defended the GermanJapanese pact in a rather lukewarm manner. He finally stated that the causes of British and American anxiety regarding Japan should be examined and allayed.

Yet Mr. Sato realized that he could not promise changes in all these directions but could only talk about views and hopes, and accordingly he framed his speech in abstract terms without giving any concrete plans. But even this abstract statement was sufficient to arouse protest in the Army. There were excited conferences behind closed doors. And a few days later Mr. Sato had to explain away much of what he had said before. He had to urge once more the necessity of plentiful armaments as the indispensable background of successful diplomacy. He had to qualify his statement that war could be avoided if only Japan desired to do so, by saying that Japan ‘should not bear everything, whatever the provocation.’ And he had to warn the Nanking Government that if China should ‘trample international justice underfoot and damage the prestige of Japan’ his country would have to take quite another attitude than that of waiting patiently. Inspired press comments followed and suggested the existence of that very disharmony about foreign policy which the Minister of War had just denied in the Diet. The inconsistency of Mr. Sato’s statement with the adoption, at the same time, of an almost unbearable record budget for armaments was discussed rather cynically. ‘According to Mr. Sato’s interpretation, the huge military appropriations would cause a crisis in the Orient and consequently would not contribute to the maintenance of peace and order in this region.’ There was a consensus of opinion among those who know the political situation in their country that there is little hope for the successful establishment of those ‘fundamental principles of foreign policy ’ for which clamor has become ever louder in recent years; even though there remains hope that, for some time, at least, Japan’s foreign policy may be more moderate.

The new Foreign Minister, however, in one of his contradictory statements, expressed his desire for continuity in the country’s diplomacy, and the Premier, when he held concurrently the foreign portfolio, had hinted clearly enough at the ‘ unchangeable character of Japanese foreign policy,’ as usual referring to the country’s fundamental aims abroad, which may in fairness be defined as follows: perfection of some kind of merger with China, under Japanese leadership; expulsion of Western powers, especially the neighboring Soviet Union, from positions in the Far East that would enable them to interfere with such a development; and the acquisition from Western owners of such raw-material resources and export markets in the Pacific and elsewhere as Japan feels she needs to back her ‘soaring career.’ But on the basis of such long-standing, ambitious aims — which are just so many promises to the Japanese nation that pays such a tremendous armament bill — the present hesitating tactics of Japanese foreign policy appear disappointing to the advocates of armed force as well as to those of efficient diplomatic negotiation.

Moreover, the tide of political circumstance has begun to turn against Japan. That imaginary ‘national emergency of 1935-1936,’ so long heralded by the Japanese military as a justification for their huge armament demands, and so willfully promoted by the practice of making enemies wherever there was a chance, finally seems to have become a reality. Not that Japan is in any danger of being attacked; but her impatient rise is now being checked, her bluff may be called, her usual political initiative lost to her opponents. A painful diplomatic retreat may soon become the alternative to hazardous military action. It is not easy to be anything but hesitant in the face of such a choice, especially when domestic conditions make the one risk appear as great as the other.

Japan’s diplomatic policy toward China has definitely reached a deadlock. It was based entirely on the Japanese theory that a Chinese state in the proper sense of the word never existed and never could exist. ‘The Chinese people possess neither the inclination for, nor the conditions indispensably necessary to the formation of, a unitary and united state,’ — so the Japanese told the Lytton Commission in 1932, in a semiofficial booklet that was entirely devoted to the proof of this theory, — ‘and the rise of a socalled “central government” is only a passing phenomenon and a matter of pure form.’ It was from this allegation that Japan deduced her own moral responsibility for leading China to unification in her own way — to a unification without the achievement of which Far Eastern peace, and therefore Japanese progress, could never be permanent. It was on this belief that Japan based all her hopes for a kind of Sino-Japanese merger that would definitely establish her leadership over China. Time has proved this speculation to have been mistaken.

To-day even Japan herself testifies that China, during the last five years, has achieved the impossible; that almost all of China’s vast territory has been unified under the Central Government; that further internal consolidation is under way; that there has been a general and continuous growth in Chinese strength — militarily, spiritually, economically. Japan cannot claim to have assisted that process in a positive way. But, even while she gave the impression of trying to hinder Chiang Kai-shek’s work of unification, growing fear of Japan provided the very driving force that for once made China pull herself together.

Japan denied financial assistance to China when it became necessary to stabilize the Chinese currency in preparation for a general financial and economic reform. Yet, to Japan’s displeasure, China was successful in her own consequent action and derived much moral encouragement as well as high credit abroad from her courageous action. Japan never used her influence on the semi-independent cliques of Southwest China to urge them to give in to the National Government. She rather regarded expectantly the last struggle between those factions and the Central authorities, and was openly dismayed at the surprising final victory of the latter. Japan kept on demanding coöperation and better understanding from China, but while she made fairly clear all her own immediate conditions and demands, she never deemed it necessary to define what she would do for China in exchange. She kept on asking for the suppression of antiJapanese feeling, but she missed every chance to cause Chinese feeling to veer round and become friendly or at least neutral toward Japan. She used the assassination of a number of Japanese nationals by Chinese patriots as a pretext for severe diplomatic pressure ‘to settle all the issues outstanding between the two countries,’ and suffered complete failure in several months of feverish negotiations. She proceeded with her attempts to separate the Northern provinces from the Central Government, and to stir up mercenary Mongolians in the province of Suiyuan, in order to give Inner Mongolia ‘independence,’ and was amazed at the fact that Chiang Kai-shek, in preparation of Chinese self-defense, devoted more and more energy to armaments, and got more and more assistance in this work from foreign countries. His troops finally succeeded in routing the Mongolian insurgents, backed though the latter were by Manchukuo and the Japanese Kwantung Army.

‘Japan’s hopes and aspirations threaten to be defeated by China’s unification,’ the Japanese press began to say, and when it appeared that the strengthened Central Government would turn its full attention to the Northern provinces whose loyalty survived all Japanese attempts at separation, the Tokyo papers began to threaten: ‘We fear that China’s unification will be its own misfortune.’ But no action was taken, as official circles in Tokyo were undecided what to do.

At the same time, in the fall of last year, certain circles in Japan saw the necessity for a change of tactics vis-à-vis China. The two big parliamentary parties submitted statements to the Premier in which the unheard-of principle of ‘live and let live’ was recommended as the central idea of future Japanese dealings with China. Far from upholding the time-honored dogma of Japan’s being the only stabilizing factor in the Far East, the parties bluntly asserted that Japan and China between them should share the duty of maintaining peace and order in this part of the world. There was no echo from the Japanese Government, but a distinct grumbling emanated from military quarters.

With the stage already set for some kind of decision, and Japan beginning to ‘lose face’ by the delay of it, Chiang Kai-shek was suddenly captured in Siam by the revolting army of the ‘Young Marshal,’ Chang Hsueh-liang. Robbed of her powerful leader, China seemed to revert to chaos. During the two weeks that passed before Chiang Kai-shek was definitely known to be alive and finally set free, and even during the further weeks that it took the Central Government to occupy Siam and quell the rebellion, Japan might have taken decisive action had she still felt as strong as at the time of the ‘Manchurian Incident.’ She did not. But China’s record of calmness and discipline during those exciting weeks, and the success of the Central Government in settling the dangerous uprising peacefully, once more became a proof of China’s ever-growing consolidation. Chinese self-confidence grew and made itself felt in a still stronger attitude toward Japan. ‘It cannot be denied,’ a Japanese newspaper wrote in February, ‘that China’s attitude toward Japan has changed still more. A year ago the Chinese authorities were saying that the Manchukuo question should not be touched for the time being, and they seemed ready to regard Manchukuo as a fait accompli. The same leaders in China are now advocating that the Manchukuo issue be taken up with Japan.’

Meanwhile, Japan’s penetration in North China has almost come to a standstill. It looks as though only force, applied on a large scale, could revive Japan’s chances there as well as in Inner Mongolia. And even then China may resist by force. Will Japan attempt another military adventure if her diplomacy should fail once more to bring her nearer to her aims, or will she finally give in to China?

II

One’s thoughts go back five years, and one sees how little Japan has forgotten the blunder of Shanghai, how little she has yet digested Manchuria. Even now hardly a day passes without a battle being waged in Manchukuo between the forces of Japan and those of undying Chinese resistance — the ‘ bandits.’ Even if one judges only according to official Japanese announcements, the Sino-Japanese fight in Manchukuo appears to be far from finished, and the Chinese fighting spirit, after five years of battle against heavy odds, appears far from weak. A pamphlet published by the Staff Office of the Kwantung Army last summer gives the number of Chinese fighters left in Manchukuo as thirty thousand, and adds some interesting particulars about them: ‘They are scattered all over the country, causing constant destruction of life and property. . . . Manchurian natives have no strong antipathy against the bandits; some even have the psychology of bandits themselves. . . . These number hundreds of times as many as the professional bandits and have long been their recruiting bed. The difficulty is increasing for punitive operations because the native populace sits on the fence and the bandits become more reckless and fierce by dint of their radical thought.‘

In the face of such conditions in Manchukuo, after five years of feverish military and economic activities that were backed by all the strength at her command, is it surprising that Japan hesitates about further military commitments in China? And are such territories really valuable enough as a strategic rear in case of war against the Soviet Union so that it would seem necessary to repeat in North China what had been done in Manchuria?

Japanese diplomacy did not prove any more farsighted with regard to the Soviet Union than with China. The second Soviet Five-Year Plan, it is true, was widely propagated in Japan as a justification for greater and greater armaments on her part, and the year of its fulfillment, 1937, was often referred to as that of an impending Russo-Japanese crisis. In spite of this, however, Japan now seems to be surprised at what this Plan has done for the Soviet Union in general, and for the upbuilding of its Far Eastern territories in particular. Hope that the morale of the Soviet population would break down under the stress of war is not as confident as it used to be.

Japan feels to-day that she not only missed the opportunity for a successful war against the Soviet Union in 1932 and 1933, but also failed to improve diplomatic relations in the meantime. When the two main political parties asked the Japanese Government in the summer of 1936 to reëxamine and to decide its foreign policy, the Tokyo Nichi Nicki, a thoroughly nationalistic paper, wrote: ‘We feel that Tokyo’s attitude when it flatly refused Moscow’s proposal for a non-aggression pact, without giving any definite reason, only went to show how unwise Tokyo was.’ To this confession — which, until recently, nobody would have dared to make in public — the paper added the suggestion that, after all, the Soviet Union’s embarrassing war preparations in the Far East are due to Japan’s own armaments and to her diplomatic mistakes: ‘Failure in diplomacy will send the friend into the enemy’s camp. Is there no indication of our having caused Soviet Russia to look East instead of West, the direction in which she formerly was gazing?’

Ambassador Ohta, who retired from his post in Moscow last summer, even went a step further when he stated in public that, while there was no doubt that the Soviet Union is getting on rather well in all its domestic activities, he was firmly convinced that it did not harbor any aggressive designs against Japan. The military did not like his statement, which ended with a plea for the conclusion of a non-aggression pact with Soviet Russia. But the press eagerly took up these new ideas, and so did the political parties and business circles. Yet when the new Prime Minister, General Senjuro Hayashi, was interpellated in the House of Peers on his attitude, February 16 last, he answered dryly: ‘The Government has no intention at this moment of concluding a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union.’

Even the formation of Soviet-Manchukuo-Japanese border commissions, to deal with occasional incidents as well as with the solution of moot points regarding the actual course of certain stretches of the frontier, is still being hindered by Japanese indecision. Soviet pig-iron deliveries to Japan were stopped on account of the Tokyo-Berlin pact, which also prevented, at the last moment, ratification of a fundamental settlement of the long-standing problem of Japanese fisheries in Soviet waters. And Japan to-day complains that her shipping is being hindered in Soviet ports, to which the Moscow Government retorts that it is merely retaliating for the treatment given Soviet boats in Japanese harbors.

Japan is beginning to see that time is working against her in the Soviet Union, still more so than in China, and that a diplomatic détente is the only way to prevent an ever more dangerous acceleration of the armaments race. But Japan still dodges a decision.

Ambiguity of will governs Japanese policy toward the Western powers, too. Japan’s desire to ‘be alone with China’ and to prevent that country from playing off Western friends against her; her aspiration to become the predominant naval power in the Pacific; and her ardent wish to acquire raw material resources and export markets from the ‘haves’ — all those fundamental items of Japan’s unchangeable political programme make her leaders regard the United States, Great Britain, and the Western world in general with the eyes of an antagonist.

On the other hand, however, there is the growing urge to befriend those countries in view of the possibility of war with the Soviet Union. It was probably more than accidental that officials of the Japanese Ministry of Finance recenlly held a meeting in commemoration of that department’s financial achievements during the first Russo-Japanese War, some thirty years ago. American and British financial assistance had been such a decisive factor at that time that it seems as though this aspect of the war must deserve especial attention when Japanese thought is so busy with the possibilities of another one. The Treasury officials know better than anyone else in Japan the economic shortcomings of their country, and they are likely to have warned their diplomatic and military colleagues that, in spite of the great economic progress during the last three decades, Japan even now would have to rely heavily upon the benevolent neutrality if not the more positive assistance of Western countries in case of war against the Soviet Union.

Even if Japan would forget all about her ‘fundamental’ demands against the Anglo-Saxon powers, she would have nothing to offer them in return for any present or future favors. She cannot or will not give any worth-while guarantees as to her further actions in China, where both the United States and Britain hold such important vested interests, and she cannot and will not give any undertaking for a reduction of her export competition in other markets. That is why the Japanese authorities — diplomatic, military, and financial — try again and again to arrive at some kind of large-scale understanding, especially with Britain: and why, again and again, such conversations turn out to be a mere recitation of Japanese desires, providing a complete blank on the other side of the proposed deal.

It is not surprising, therefore, that Japanese policy toward the United States and Great Britain has been neither clear-cut nor active recently. In Tokyo, only routine business with Washington and London is being handled, while Japan’s ‘fundamental’ demands against the Anglo-Saxon powers seem to be shelved for the time being — even though the Japanese will miss no chance to remind Washington and London that they exist. Meanwhile China remains the scene of a silent battle between Japan and the Western world, and whatever mistakes Japanese civilian and military diplomacy has made with regard to China have served still more to drive Britain and the United States into the wide-open arms of Nanking.

The huge armament projects of Britain and the United States, which rather dwarf the breath-taking efforts of Japan, do not fail to make a deep impression in Tokyo; so much so that the new Navy Minister, Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai, recently described the political situation of Japan at the beginning of the ‘treatyless’ period as ‘extremely grave.’ This is one of the reasons why the Navy is rumored to be decidedly on the side of that vast majority of opinion in Japan which heartily dislikes the Japanese pact with Germany.

III

Rising difficulties abroad are not the only encumbrance of Japan’s foreign policy. Domestic factors weigh even more heavily upon it. Different from Germany and Italy, Japan is far from being governed by a dictatorship. If foreign observers frequently get the impression that she is, they merely judge from the point of view of an ordinary Japanese citizen who would compare his own political status with that of Americans or Englishmen on the one hand, and that of Germans, Italians, or Russians on the other.

In domestic policy, Japan would seem generally to show all the handicaps and none of the advantages of democratic contest; so that, in the face of the great problems piling up around the country, the cry for the establishment of firm ‘national policies’ can always be heard from this quarter or that. In spite of her great trials and achievements, Japan has rarely had great personal leaders. Everything seems to work against the rise of outstanding personalities. Certainly she does not seem to have anybody to-day who might be even a potential ‘leader’ beneath the Imperial Throne, and able either to defy or to consolidate and use the existing undercurrents of a vague fascistic character.

This state of domestic affairs, so deeply rooted in the surviving remnants of Japanese feudalism, may be regarded as a useful safety valve which often prevents rash decisions. But it certainly is a hindrance to the execution of a clear-cut, single-track foreign policy such as the other ‘have-nots’ are imposing on the world at the moment. In this, also, lies the reason why it is still more difficult to forecast by logical argumentation the actual course of Japanese foreign policy than to predict the decisions of any individual dictatorial mind.

The Japanese economy, which always took its main cue from the desires of the Army and Navy, has more and more been forced into a war economy. It would not be easy for it to be switched back into purely commercial channels unless such action was accompanied by an entirely new deal in foreign as well as domestic policy that would replace the desire for expansion abroad by exclusive concentration on internal reform. Committed to a huge output of armaments to-day, and to ever-growing industrial construction which is to provide for an even larger armament capacity in the future, Japanese economy, therefore, seems to have become a mechanism which automatically works in favor of eventual military action.

Here, too, Japan’s growing hesitation is founded on substantial contrasts. The strain caused by the rapid extension of war preparations during the last five years has already grown appallingly. Opinions differ as to the length of time that Japan will be able to stand such an increasing strain; but its limits appear not to be very distant. Inflation may be the consequence of greatly unbalanced budgets, half of which go to the Army and Navy, with a further fifth needed for the service of an everincreasing national debt. Reserves of gold and foreign exchange have remained distressingly small in spite of the country’s tremendous export efforts, which did not even suffice to cover the cost of the increasing imports for direct and indirect armament requirements. For the terms of foreign trade have grown less favorable from year to year. To give some practical examples: during 1936 Japan had to equalize the import of every 100 pounds of foreign raw cotton by the export of 235 square yards of Japanese cotton cloth, as against the 142 yards which covered that bill five years ago, while, in order to pay for a given quantity of imported rubber, Japan had to export in 1936 three and a half times as many rubber tires or almost two and a half times as many rubber shoes and boots as five years before. Similar conditions prevail in every single section of the country’s foreign trade.

Agricultural distress and the growing difficulties of the urban lower middle classes cannot be relieved because of the concentration of national forces upon armaments. Even national health suffers from Japan’s ‘soaring career,’ and the Minister of War complained about it some time ago, stating that at present every fifth conscript has to be rejected because of tuberculosis, while only every fiftieth suffered from this complaint at the beginning of the century, and that altogether forty out of every hundred young men are unfit for various reasons, as against twenty-five a mere ten years ago. The minimum of the stature required for recruits had to be decreased from five feet one inch to four feet ten and one-half inches in order to provide sufficient men for the expected extension of the Army.

Official Japan remains committed to the doubtful thesis that has dominated all her policies from the very beginning of her modernization — that her internal problems can only be solved in connection with her progress in foreign fields, or even after the complete fulfillment of the ambitions of her foreign policy. Yet to the foreign observer it seems that a major economic and social crisis can be averted only by concentration of the nation’s energies upon internal reconstruction. An increasing number of Japanese people feel the same way, — as the recent Diet session has shown beyond all doubt, — and even among those who would like to deny such dangers apprehension is steadily growing.

IV

It seems that the peculiar psychology of official Japan rather adds to the difficulties of her foreign policy. The foreign resident of Tokyo, at least, will have the impression that Japanese diplomacy labors under certain psychological handicaps which cannot easily be removed because they are so deeply rooted and so little realized by many Japanese themselves. Possibly the best way to discuss this delicate matter is by suggesting a few of the probable reasons for the Japanese peculiarities in question.

History no doubt plays its rôle. Japan was isolated from the outside world some three centuries ago, the only foreign intercourse being dealings of haughty and suspicious Japanese feudal lords with Chinese and Dutch traders who, for the sake of modest business, would submit to any humiliation and ridicule. The tradition of diplomacy in the modern sense does not date back any further in Japan than to the days, some eighty years ago, when American men-of-war ‘opened’ the country to the outside world. The circumstances of this fresh contact, unfortunately, were such that the traditional suspicion and haughtiness with regard to the ‘Western barbarians’ were considered vindicated and were therefore encouraged rather than alleviated.

At that time diplomatic skill in the narrower sense of adroit management of difficult negotiations was exceedingly well developed in Japan, where it permeated all the private and official relations between members of a highly ceremonious and formalist society which lived in the most complicated feudalist state the world has ever known. Decorum and evasiveness as face-saving devices were just as much a matter of course as were the haughtiness, the suspicion, and often the petty trickery hidden behind that ‘face.’ It was only natural that these ‘diplomatic’ traditions, fitting though they were for intercourse between feudal people who understood perfectly their every move, would later merge with whatever traditions there were concerning the attitude toward a few isolated foreigners when the necessity for diplomacy on a greater scale arose.

But traditions do not survive unless they are fostered. Japan always tried hard to retain whatever feudal remnants could be kept alive even in a quickly modernizing society. Examples of this tendency, which prevented the rise of modern liberalism in Japan, could easily be cited in every field, indicating fundamental hindrances to real Japanese progress. The tendency is strongest in the field of education. Its slogan is ‘Moral education in a traditional way ranges above intellectual education in the modern way’; its main subject matter is the feudal past; and its aim is the moulding of standardized citizens who will uphold the ideal of an unchanged social structure at home and of glorious expansion abroad.

A narrow outlook on life, suspicion of everything that is alien to traditional Japan, and the cramped attitude of the individual who is discouraged from developing his individuality and his critical faculties — all these are features of Japanese education, so perfected, so intensified by the influences of custom and family, of literature and the press, of the radio and the cinema, that even a long diplomatic training cannot always fully overcome them. The strait jackets of a peculiarly ceremonious, vague, and complicated language and of an involved character script further add to the formation of personalities that must find it difficult indeed to understand any other people.

The higher the education of a Japanese is, — unless it reaches a stage where full intellectual freedom is attained in spite of all the hindrances put up by early training, — the more likely is he to have a kind of mixed inferiority-superiority complex with regard to the world outside Japan. The Japanese masses, in blissful ignorance of Japan’s so-called ‘debt of gratitude’ to China and to the Western world for what it adopted and so cleverly adapted from both of them, will not be bothered by the fact of such inheritance even if they learn about it. (The school readers maintain silence on that point.) But in many a higher-educated Japanese such knowledge tends to collide with the belief so firmly implanted in him that Japan is, and always was, far superior to any other country in the world. Mostly he will not try to reason out the puzzle, but will repress it among his emotions, whence it often reacts in the most surprising manner.

The ordinary Japanese, with all his lovable traits, does not feel embarrassed by the foreigner and his world. He is frankly interested and slightly amused, but by no means suspicious, envious, or antagonistic, and he keeps up his natural dignity without any difficulty. So does the Japanese who has outgrown his mental prejudices. But those in between always seem to move between the two extremes of good-will propaganda and xenophobia, and often tend to a strange kind of selfdeception and self-righteousness. The terms in which these people are accustomed to think of dealings with foreign countries are those of ‘sincerity ’ (which characterizes the attitude of Japan) and ‘insincerity’ (of which a foreign country will be accused as soon as negotiations prove somewhat difficult); of ‘mutual understanding’ and ‘promotion of the happiness of mankind’ (which always is the aim of Japan), and ‘unfortunate misunderstanding of Japan’s lofty ideals as well as her special position’ (which so often seems to be the fate of her partners in negotiation).

Official Japan, it seems, has not as great a capacity for making friends among foreign nations as have its ordinary people. It is more versed in establishing faits accomplis than in creating a political atmosphere that will work in the country’s favor. But it must be acknowledged that Japan’s best diplomats have hardly ever been allowed a wide enough scope of action by the Army and Navy to show their true worth.

Will Japan’s professional diplomats finally obtain their fair chance, now that the anticlimax to the country’s recent ‘soaring career’ has approached? Will they be allowed and will they prove able to establish real peace, instead of one short-lived truce after another, both with China and with the Soviet Union? Will Japan become the first of the ‘have-nots’ to return in chastened mood to the fold of those nations that work for the maintenance of world peace?

Or will the military services and their sympathizers once more take charge and act, shattering the hopes that are being aroused by the moderate yet weakly founded Hayashi Cabinet? Will there be new trouble, as soon as the snow has disappeared from the barren steppes of Chinese Inner Mongolia, in the province of Suiyuan, where the Japanese Army is so eager to drive in a further wedge between China and the Soviet Union? Will the soldiers try to gain in North China that position of permanent Japanese control which the diplomats have failed to secure for them? Will Japan some time hence, in spite of all dangers, enter upon that war with the Soviet Union which her military still believe is inevitable?

So much seems to be certain: even the leaders of Japan themselves could not yet answer these questions. They are still undecided as to the way that may lead them out of the tight corner in which they find themselves at present, and their inclinations to-day are more in favor of peace than of war.