"Necessary Action"

For a few days last week the British Government persuaded itself that the worst of the Tientsin affair was over, that the Japanese, who had agreed to a conference at Tokyo, were willing to settle it as an isolated problem without discussing the fundamental issues--Britain's rights in her Chinese settlements and her privilege to help whom she pleases in the Sino-Japanese War. The British were heartened when the Japanese eased the blockade of the British Concession at Tientsin; partial milk delivery was resumed, food became more plentiful, and the stripping of British subjects was discontinued.

Suave Major General Masaharu Homma, the man on the spot, even feigned surprise to find the British so annoyed because a few of their citizens had been undressed. He received 40 correspondents at his headquarters, which were lavishly spread with liquor, caviar, plates of ice cream, and other goodies now scarce in the British Concession, and there explained how it all happened. Some Japanese sentries, said the General, are simple peasants who do not understand European standards of modesty. His countrymen, he explained, do not mind disrobing in public or even parboiling in a public bath with members of the opposite sex. To prove his good faith, the General offered to take his own clothes off then & there for the correspondents.

But at week's end General Homma's simple peasants were again stripping Britons who crossed the Settlement boundary as the blockade became tighter than ever. The Japanese, moreover, let it be known that they had no intention of settling the Tientsin problem as an isolated issue and announced that the Tokyo conference would be the occasion for demands for British "cooperation." If the British refuse to reverse their whole policy in China, "the necessary action" will be taken to make "a fundamental solution of the concession issue."

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