"Wild East" Destruction

After weary months of pinking each other with diplomatic rapiers in Tokyo, cocky little Japanese Foreign Minister Koko Hirota and gruff, sad-eyed Soviet Ambassador Konstantin Yurenev were so jangle-nerved last week that each was glad to throw the issue at stake to his native Press, which promptly charged the other's Government with a "Gigantic Plot."

Across 1,000 miles of Asia's bandit-infested "Wild East" stretches the Chinese Eastern Railway, spanning Japan's puppet state of Manchukuo from frontier to frontier and serving as a short-cut for the Trans-Siberian Line between Moscow and Vladivostok. Japan has had a wolfish eye on C. E. R. ever since it was built by Imperial Russia, which retained a half interest in the road. This half interest Soviet Ambassador Yurenev offered last year to sell for 250,000,000 gold rubles (then $168,000,000). Japan insisted that the nominal buyer must be Manchukuo, but the 13-month haggle has been held in Tokyo with the Japanese Foreign Office setting the figure Manchukuo offers to pay. The first offer, less than one-fifth of Russia's demand, provoked Moscow to horse laughs, especially as it was made in depreciated, fluctuating Japanese yen. Since then all figures have been secret, with Comrade Yurenev and Mr. Hirota defying each other with a "final offer" every few months. Last week, with tempers erupting on both sides, a break in negotiations came as the dummy third party, Manchukuo's Vice Foreign Minister Chuichi Ohashi, who is a Japanese, packed his bags and left Tokyo for Hsinking, the capital of Puppet Emperor Kang Teh.

Moscow papers clamored all week that Japanese troops in Manchukuo have been deliberately permitting and encouraging bandits to attack the Chinese Eastern in an effort "thus to force the Soviet Union to sell the road for a song." Pravda, official organ of the Russian Communist Party, headlined Blackmailers Won't Stop!

To support their charges Soviet editors produced the latest operating report of Comrade Julius Rudy, manager of C. E. R.. to the joint Soviet-Manchukuo Board of Directors. Fearing that Japanese might intercept his report, Manager Rudy carried it personally onto Soviet soil at Khabarovsk, proclaimed the following list of "Wild East" outrages on his line since Jan. 1:

Ninety-one armed raids on C. E. R. stations and property.

One hundred and two persons injured and 46 murdered.

Twenty-one locomotives and 207 coaches damaged.

Sixteen trains wrecked by deliberately damaged tracks.

Nine bridges partly destroyed.

Twenty-two arsons of railway property.

Forty-two robberies of railway employes.

Total physical losses to C. E. R. 300,000 gold rubles ($260,000).

Japan's rebuttal to Comrade Rudy last week was drastic if not hysterical. Tokyo papers broke out in a rash of charges that Soviet employes of C. E. R. have been burning themselves out of their own railway stations, wrecking their own trains to spite Manchukuo.

Meanwhile Manchukuan troops under Japanese officers swooped out along the lines of C. E. R., arresting 46 station agents and engineers. They were taken to Harbin and jailed on the pretext that a plot had been discovered to assassinate hollow-eyed Emperor Kang Teh. According to the Japanese, bandit raids on C. E. R. have been financed by Soviet agents from the Red Army base at Khabarovsk. Finally last week the Imperial Japanese Army propaganda bureau in Tokyo issued what Russians interpreted as a threat that Japan means eventually to seize C. E. R. without paying Moscow so much as a copper kopek. Restrained, but ominous, this statement read: "The Japanese Army has decided to adopt a stronger attitude than before in the event of future Soviet provocations." Meanwhile Moscow made an even stiffer threat, hurled by Soviet Vice President Kuznetsov of C. E. R. Said he: "The Soviet Government will protect the railway employes. The defenses along the border are now complete and the Soviet will not be forced to sell too cheaply. The world powers understand the danger of Japanese armaments. . . ." As the week closed, nervous Mr. Hirota's friends insisted that despite the break in negotiations he would soon be prepared to haggle again with Ambassador Yurenev.

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