Petite, witty, 48-year-old Mme. Wei Tao-ming, high-born wife of China's new Ambassador to Washington, has devoted her life to the expression and defense of new ideas. At eight she tore the painful bandages from her feet; at 14 she bolted a parentally arranged marriage with the son of the Governor of Canton; at 17 she joined Sun Yat-sen's revolutionaries, smuggled bombs for the assassination of Manchu officials. After a French education she became China's first woman lawyer and judge.

Last week Mme. Wei tossed a new idea into the ring of Far Eastern planning: a couple of good sound lickings would melt Japanese "nerves of steel," pinprick Japan's bubble empire. The annihilation of Japan would be unnecessary. The power of the military party broken, a Japanese republic could educate the people away from long-established habits of Emperor worship and blind obedience to war lords.

Mme. Wei's ideas clashed sharply with those of onetime Ambassador Joseph Grew, who warned: "We are up against a people whose morale cannot and will not be broken even by successive defeats." Besides differing on this important point with Ambassador Grew, Mme. Wei failed to suggest how a republic was to be set up in Japan.

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