Last Card

Big, hearty Admiral Kichisaburo Nomura called on the Emperor last week, then made ready for his new mission as Ambassador to the U. S., where during World War I he was the popular, card-playing naval attache of a friendly second-rate power. Things have changed since then. Every influential Japanese newspaper last week regarded Ambassador Nomura's mission as hopeless. Said Tokyo's Miyako: "The United States is disturbing our gigantic task of constructing a new East Asia." Said Hochi: "Sending an Ambassador to Washington is like ordering a man on horseback to charge a wall." Said the Army's mouthpiece, Kokumin: "The appointment is our last card."

There were some influential people in Japan, including Admiral Ryozo Nakamura, retired, who advocated an immediate declaration of war against the U. S. Such sabre-rattling showed that the Japanese, who had been frightened into silence and comparative inaction by U. S. hostility to the alliance with Germany and Italy, now were plucking up their courage to proceed with their gigantic task. On several fronts Japan went diligently to work.

In Nanking, capital of Puppet Wang Ching-wei's National Government, Lieut. General Nobuyuki Abe, who is occupied China's real ruler, at long last went through the formality of recognizing Wang's regime. The day before, a bomb had gone off under a train in Soochow station, but the Chinese who planted the bomb got the wrong train and killed 100 of their countrymen. A few hours later General Abe's train went through safely to Nanking, where student agitators demonstrated against the Japanese and 3,000 policemen chose that time to strike for more wages and rice.

In the Nanking Administration Building, where Chiang Kai-shek and his colleagues used to hold state meetings, Puppet Wang sat alone at a long table. In walked General Abe, followed by 22 junior officers. Wang stood up. The General sat down. Wang sat down. The General indicated a document lying on the table. Wang signed it. General Abe signed it. Japan was at "peace" with China.

Generalissimo Chiang was now, according to the Japanese, "a regional outlaw." The Generalissimo thought Wang was the outlaw and put a price of $100,000 (Chinese) on his head. The Japanese had launched an offensive in Hupeh Province, carefully timed to coincide with their diplomatic offensive, and on the heels of the news of Nanking's recognition came reports that 5,000 Chinese had been slaughtered in what was called the "climax of clean-up operations.'' But the real significance of the treaty was found in a Tokyo admission that peace overtures to Chiang had proved fruitless, and in a clause of the treaty which authorized the Japanese to keep troops in China until two years after "complete peace is restored everywhere in China." There has not been complete peace in China for centuries. The U. S. reply to Wang's recognition was a whopping $100,000,000 credit to Chiang Kaishek.

In French Indo-China Japan was reported to have served up a fresh set of demands, including control of Saigon, further bases in the Gulf of Tongkin and along the South China Sea coast, Indo-China's entire exportable surplus of rubber, tin, rice, lead, zinc and tungsten. These would give Japan a new source of supplies with which to resist a blockade, would put her in a position to harass the British at Singapore and the U. S. at Manila.

With Japan's tacit acquiescence Thailand began whittling at French Indo-China from another direction. On the lame charge that French bombing planes had tried to raid Siamese towns, Thailand warned all French residents to leave the Cambodian border area, started a series of air raids against Cambodia, occupied three border districts. Nationalist organizations, clamoring for the return of Thailand's lost province, hailed "the beginning of war."

In The Netherlands East Indies the Japanese suddenly discovered a fresh wave of "anti-Japanese sentiment." This caused the Tokyo Government to deliver a strong note of protest to Netherlands Minister General J. C. Pabst. Since the Japanese have failed to get all the oil they want from the East Indies, this protest looked like the beginning of a new economic holdup. The Japanese have always considered it fair to shoot a recalcitrant holdup victim.

To Tokyo the mysterious Heinrich Georg Stahmer ("Hitler's Masked Envoy") was reported on his way. It was Herr Stahmer who arranged the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Alliance (TIME, Oct. 7). A Berlin-Tokyo-Moscow Alliance, safeguarding Japan's back door, would be all that is needed to start Japan on the march in the south. A hint of what his country might be up to was given by none other than Ambassador Nomura. Said he:

"In many ways, the fate of the world hangs on American actions just now. If the U. S. becomes involved in conflict either in Europe or the Pacific, civilization will go up in flames." Relations between Japan and the U. S., he explained, "apparently depend largely on Japan's continental and South Seas policies," but "if the United States refuses to sell us oil and other supplies, we must get them elsewhere."

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