"No Retreat"

Quite as anxious as Britain's Ramsay MacDonald for friendly relations with the U. S. is Japan's courtly Prime Minister, 66-year-old Baron Giichi Tanaka. Breaking the traditional oriental silence, last week, the grizzled Prime Minister, in his stocking feet, courteously received Correspondent Barnet Nover of the Buffalo News. A Japanese of the old school, Baron Tanaka never wears shoes except on formal state occasions. Rheumatic, he must be supported by a stalwart valet while being shod.

"If there is one thing dominant in our foreign policy," said the sock-footed Prime Minister, "it is the maintenance of friendly and cordial relations with the United States. Situated as we are on opposite sides of the Pacific, we are linked by economic ties which grow more important year by year and are of mutual benefit to both nations.

"Deprived of our trade with the United States our situation might easily become desperate."

Correspondent Nover turned the subject to Japan's China policy and asked if the withdrawal of Japanese troops from Shantung did not represent a "retreat" in Japan's foreign policy. Baron Tanaka frowned, twiddled his toes, replied: "There has been no retreat, because there never was any necessity for retreating. Our policy, now as ever, has been based on a desire to live at peace with the people of China. . . . Certain people however invented a theory regarding the government's policy at the time it came into power, and now to fit the theory to the facts, talk of a 'retreat.'

"We sent troops into Shantung because the lives and property of Japanese nationals there were in danger. The emergency is over now and we have the solemn assurance of the present government that our nationals will be given adequate protection." Hotly did Baron Tanaka deny that, as most Chinese Nationalists and foreign correspondents believe, Japan is unfriendly to the Chinese Nationalist Government : "A strong China with a government capable of enforcing its will over the entire area would be a blessing for Japan. . . . For a strong China, freed of the turmoil and the chaos which has plagued it for so many years, would enable Japan to further its trade, would increase our prosperity and would rid our nationals in China of the constant fear under which they have lived for so long. "Japan's position in the Far East is that of a guardian of the peace."