JAPAN-CHINA: Secessionist Movements

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"Secessionist Movements"

(See front cover)

Japan, having promised the League of Nations to withdraw from Manchuria (China's northern granary), withdrew a few more soldiers last week, but irate Chinese were not appeased.

General Honjo, commander of the Japanese forces in Manchuria, stroked his silky white mustachios, stated that "military occupation" of Mukden by Japanese troops was at an end. His soldiers were staying on, he explained, merely to protect Japanese lives and property.

Chinese noticed that Japanese soldiers also "protected" the silver reserve of the Manchurian treasury at Mukden. Fifty vaults containing the reserves of the leading provincial banks of Manchuria remained under Japanese seal and guard. Because the Mukden branch of Manhattan's National City Bank had fat silver deposits in the sealed Chinese banks and wanted to withdraw same last week, Branch Manager Lamont M. Cochran requested of the Japanese authorities that they permit Mukden's banks to open. He was ignored.

Meanwhile officials of Mukden's Chinese Provincial Government had fled in headlong fear. (No. 1 Committeeman: Mr. Quan Shinkai, once chief secretary to the late, barbaric War Lord Chang Tso-lin.) They were replaced by an un savory group of Chinese calling themselves the Peoples Preservation Committee who seemed disposed to declare the secession of Manchuria from the rest of China. Other secessionist movements were reported (by the Japanese press) in such leading Manchurian cities as Harbin and Kirin. Finally in Tokyo suave General Jiro Minami, Japanese War Minister credited with secretly ordering the whirl wind Japanese occupation of Manchuria (TIME, Sept. 28), appeared before the Japanese Cabinet last week with a sheaf of telegrams in his small, hard fist. According to General Minami, the Chinese citizens of Harbin had just plumped enthusiastically for secession of Manchuria from China, arraying themselves for this purpose under Chinese General Chang Ching-hui.

Japan Does a Roosevelt? In China proper last week secessionist news from Manchuria was branded as a mess of Japanese lies. Convalescent but still typhoid-feverish, Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang, recently forced out of Mukden by General Honjo, declared from his Peiping hospital pallet, "China will never recognize a secessionist regime set up in Manchuria clearly under Japanese influence!"

In Nanking, Canton. Shanghai, passionately indignant Chinese likened Manchuria to Panama. When President Theodore Roosevelt wanted a strip of Colombian territory which spanned the Isthmus of Panama, they recalled, a secessionist movement conveniently arose. Panama broke away from Colombia. Promptly recognized as a new and sovereign state by President Roosevelt, she promptly permitted the U. S. to build the Panama Canal. Should Manchuria secede from China, what is to prevent Independent Manchuria from later merging with Japan? Full of suspicion, Chinese patriots scanned Japan for a Roosevelt. Is he Baron Kijuro Shidehara, famed Japanese Foreign Minister?