Fox v. Archer

Elderly Japanese read the papers through their spectacles last week and realized that there are more ways of fighting a war than the winning of battles. Manchuria troops moved out of Mukden almost without opposition and occupied the village of Lanchihpu. Military conquest of the three Manchurian provinces— Heilungkiang, Kirin, Fengtien—was almost complete. Behind a shield of Chinese puppet officials, Japanese authorities were rapidly turning the entire district into a Japanese colony.

Japanese directors have taken control of all important banks in Mukden.

Chinese cotton mills are operating under Japanese administration; so are the Fuchouwan coal mine (largest Chinese mine in South Manchuria), the Chinese Light & Power Co. and dozens of other important industries.

All Manchurian railways except the Soviet-controlled Chinese Eastern are either openly Japanese-operated or under Japanese control—BUT

The Government of that saki-drinking toxophilite Reijiro Wakatsuki fell Tokyo last week. Japan went off the gold standard; the Tokyo stock exchange closed.

The Japanese are a secretive people. Only last week were correspondents able to form a clear picture of what has been occurring in Manchuria and Japan. There exists in the Japanese army an ultranationalistic politico-religious society of younger officers, so secretive that foreign correspondents do not even know its name. Avidly have these officers yearned for the conquest of Manchuria. It is they who assembled the 300 Incidents, a list of Manchurian insults to Japan widely publicized in the Japanese press. Last summer a delegation of these younger officers called with their list on Premier Wakat-suki, Foreign Minister Baron Kijuro Shi-dehara, Finance Minister Junnosuke Inoue and begged for a war.

Patiently the statesmen explained that this was no time for a war with China. Japan's business and finances were in parlous state. Japan's second-biggest indus-try is clothing China and providing her with manufactured articles. Chinese troops cannot fight a modern army, but China has one terrible weapon, the boycott. An effective boycott of Japanese goods would be catastrophe. This reasoning impressed elderly Japanese generals, but not the younger officers. They waited for a 301st Incident. They got it with the execution of Captain Shintaro Nakamura by Manchurian troops (TIME, Sept. 28). Start officers kicked over the traces and took matters into their own hands.

Only one Japanese newspaper, the Tokyo Asahi, attempted to present the opposition viewpoint. The War Department held up its despatches until every other paper had scooped its Manchurian news. Circulation dropped by the tens of thousands. The Asahi capitulated.

Meanwhile just what Ministers Wakat-suki and Inoue had feared was occurring in China. The anti-Japan boycott was working as no boycott had ever worked before. Exports to China have shriveled. Last month they totaled only $5,212,500, compared to $16,243,000 year ago.