Concession on Concession

The morning of July 15 was a scorcher in Tokyo. Foreign Minister Hachiro Arita's homey wife rose early to prepare her husband a jug of iced barley-tea. American-born Lady Craigie, wife of the British Ambassador, slipped into a light blue frock which was a perfect match for her husband's blue official limousine, and drove with him to Foreign Minister Arita's official residence. There, among flocks of photographers, suave little Hachiro Arita shook Sir Robert's hand, took him upstairs, sat him down on the opposite side of a desk no bigger than a card table.

Said the perspiring Ambassador, before opening discussions on the Tientsin issue: "Mr. Arita, would you mind if I take off my coat?"

By last week Hachiro Arita had made things so extra hot for Sir Robert that a French cartoonist, in a picture of the lonely parleys, showed Britain's Ambassador not only coatless, but pantless, shirtless, shoeless--stark naked. Sir Robert: "And if I give you my disgusting banknotes?" Mr. Arita: "Then I shall return your honorable pants."

Sir Robert had indeed got himself in an embarrassing position. Having virtually granted Japan belligerent rights in China in return for the privilege of discussing the Tientsin issue in Tokyo, he last week gave way on the point which originally caused the Japanese Army to blockade Tientsin's foreign Concessions. Last April 9, Cheng Shi-kang, manager of the Japanese-controlled Tientsin customs, was shot while watching others shot in the film Gunga Din. Mr. Cheng was neither the first nor the last Japanese hireling to be assassinated, but he was no ordinary puppet. Most of the decrepit Chinese who have sold out to the enemy command little affection and no respect, have no influence even with the Japanese who use them. But Puppet Cheng was shrewd, forceful, humorous; Chinese loved him, foreigners respected him, and his employers listened to his advice. Losing such a trump infuriated the Japanese. Much more so did the British refusal, on the ground of insufficient evidence, to hand over four men suspected of the murder. British Ambassador to China Sir Archibald Clark Kerr considered the case more important than the comfort of British nationals in Tientsin, and so the Japanese declared the blockade.

Last week Sir Robert, whose mustache, horn-rimmed glasses and narrow eyes make him look faintly Japanese, was presented with enough "evidence" to agree to give the four men up. The nature of the new evidence was not divulged, but so feeble was previous evidence that it was thought Sir Robert had handed over the possibly guilty men to certain death simply to be in a better bargaining position for a much thornier problem: North China currency.

Last week the Japanese once again pointed out to Sir Robert that the 48,000,000 Chinese dollars (worth approximately $4,300,000 last week) still held by Chinese and foreign banks inside the Concession, originally belonged to the North China Government at Peking. In 1935, when the Central Government at Nanking reformed its finances on the advice of Britain's Economic Adviser Sir Frederick Leith-Ross, it requested that the independent North China Government give up the money. Peking refused, kept the money in Tientsin. The money was therefore never Chinese but North Chinese, argued the Japanese, and ought to be handed over to the Japanese-controlled Provisional Government.

The Japanese further argued Chinese currency should be declared valueless. But this--since it would be granting de facto recognition of Japan's ascendancy in North China--Sir Robert at first refused to do on the insistence of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Last week he reconsidered, then declared a recess while "awaiting further instruction" from London.

The Japanese Army was furious with its Government for removing Tientsin negotiations to Tokyo, and has been trying to sabotage the parleys all along. The Army hopes for a holdout, and a breakdown of the Tokyo negotiations. "Such a development," said pudgy, suave Major General Masaharu Homma, Commander of the Tientsin Garrison, who learned to hate the British as an Oxford student, "can only be welcomed. Then we shall be freed of the Government's promise to respect British interests in Asia. The Tientsin Concession can then finally be closed."

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