Calm After Calls

In London Chinese Minister Quo Tai-Chi bustled around to see Sir John Simon at the Foreign Office. Shortly after. U. S. Ambassador Bingham conferred with Minister Quo Tai-Chi. In Washington Sir Ronald Lindsay, British Ambassador, popped in on Stanley K. Hornbeck, Chief of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs at the State Department. Japanese Ambassador Hiroshi Saito visited Undersecretary of State William Phillips, while Secretary of State Hull called on President Roosevelt. In Tokyo British Ambassador Sir Francis Lindley dropped in at the Foreign Office and next day handsome, deaf U. S. Ambassador Joseph Clark Grew went ambling around himself. Harvardman, socialite, longtime Ambassador to Turkey with two daughters married into the service, Ambassador Grew is generally considered the ablest of U. S. career diplomats. He remained closeted for a long time with Foreign Minister Koki Hirota last week in an effort to obtain an official text of the statement on Chinese policy with which Japan startled the Western world fortnight ago.

Having smashed windows and thrown its firecracker--an Asiatic Monroe Doctrine--Japan was waiting with its fingers in its ears for the explosion. But the tramping back & forth of diplomats did much to snuff out the fuse.

Japan's out, of course, was that there was no official text of the statement, as made orally by the Japanese Official Spokesman, Eiji Amau. In Tokyo, therefore, two identical notes were delivered to the British and U. S. Embassies from Foreign Minister Koki Hirota. It was explained that these were Japan's only official utterances on the subject of her policy toward China. Japan withdrew nothing of importance, but there were many soothing omissions. Japan had no intention of abrogating the Nine Power Treaty, or of interfering with the "purely commercial'' interests of other powers in China. Ambassador Saito attempted to smooth matters still further by blandly insisting that the original Amau statement was just exuberant ingenuousness. Said he:

"We Japanese and you Americans are so much alike after all that we ought not to have much difficulty with each other. You greatly admire courage, frankness, straight shooting, as you call it. So do we. . . ."

A deep cloud of mystery at once enshrouded the Hirota note. Finally Sir John Simon explained the Japanese situation to the House of Commons but did not make public the note. Vaguely he called it "reasonable and clear" and declared the British Foreign Office was "content to leave this particular question where it is." He talked of Japan's "special rights in China recognized by other powers and not shared by them," phraseology which startled the world and made Japanese statesmen grin delightedly. Sir John's handling of the whole business seemed to show that the Occidental powers cannot look to England to take the lead in resisting Japanese encroachments in China. Nor did critics hesitate to charge him with diplomatic double-dealing in his suppression of the Hirota note. The Japanese Government, however, went Sir John one better in crafty disingenuousness. For as long as possible it kept its own people ignorant not only of the contents of the Hirota note but of its very existence. For all the fanatically nationalistic Japanese public knew, Japan's statesmen have not retreated an inch in the face of the world's protests.

Actually Japanese diplomacy was running true to form. Japan has no desire to outrage the world. The original Amau statement, from which nothing of importance has been retracted, was intended purely for Chinese and Japanese consumption. Like the original invasion of Manchuria, the statement was delivered at a shrewdly chosen time when the rest of the world was far too engrossed in its own problems to do much about it. Having announced, unofficially and in full force. Japan's "moral protectorate" over China, it was then necessary to calm the great powers with soft words. Then to show China once more that Japan meant business another highly "unofficial" but strongly worded message was necessary.

This business of making chests and punching pillows was left to dynamic Yosuke Matsuoka. He is as unofficial a spokesman as the Foreign Office could desire being no longer even a member of the Diet. But China and the world know that he is always close to the government's ear, that he once served as Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs and that it was Chief Delegate Yosuke Matsuoka who marched the Japanese delegation out of the League of Nations 14 months ago (TIME. March 6, 1933). Last week he wrote:

". . . France could seize the extensive territory of Indo-China and extend her 'sphere of influence' up into the Province of Yunnan in China proper, and no criticism comes from Europe or America, but when Japan objects to French extension of possession to two small sparsely populated islands . . . from which our people have long obtained guano, American and European newspapers . . . state that this is further evidence of our aggressive intentions. . . .

"America may acquire the Philippine Islands, Asiatic territory 6,000 miles away from her shores, but when Japan takes control of Korea, a country smaller in territory than the Philippines and only 100 miles away from her island borders, the action is denounced. . . . But in fact we, being Asiatics, are far more capable of dealing with other Asiatics in their best interests than are Americans or Europeans. For example, in bringing order out of chaos in Korea we killed far fewer people than the Americans killed in suppressing the independence movement in the Philippines. . . ."

As Sir John Simon soothingly assured the House of Commons that Japan had virtually withdrawn her claims in regard to China, Secretary Hull made public the "substance" of a statement he had instructed Ambassador Grew to deliver to the Japanese Foreign Office. Politely but forcefully it warned Japan against trying to establish hegemony in the Far East by stubbing other people's toes. The warning: ". . . No nation can, without the assent of other nations concerned, rightfully endeavor to make conclusive its will in a situation where there are involved the rights, the obligations and the legitimate interests of other sovereign states." When on May Day the Japanese Government finally published the Hirota note in Japan, it pointedly ignored Secretary Hull's declaration.

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