THE CABINET: Marco Polo's Return

An able, chunky, cheerful public servant who had not been home for ten years and had traveled half way around the world to get there arrived in Washington last week. He was Ambassador Nelson Trusler Johnson, 51, who has represented the U. S. in China for 30 years, with interludes at the State Department in Washington. As he gave Secretary Hull his realistic opinions on the trend of the war in China (see p. 15), this modern Marco Polo's return was marked by small but cumulative developments in the U. S. attitude to China's enemy:

¶President Roosevelt performed a thinly disguised diplomatic fist-shake at Japan by encouraging Congress to authorize the fortification of Guam (see p.11).

¶The Securities & Exchange Commission announced that it had cracked down in Hawaii on the sale of a 1,000,000-yen issue of Japanese Emergency Bonds which Doshi Kai, a Japanese patriotic society, had failed to register under the Securities Act.

¶United Aircraft Corp. of Hartford, sole U. S. firm to disregard Secretary Hull's request of last June that U. S. planemakers cease doing business with nations who bomb civilians, announced that it had filled its contract for 600 propeller blade forgings intended for Japan, would henceforth comply with Mr. Hull's policy.

Unofficial, but suggesting the direction of U. S. policy was an action of Mr. Hull's predecessor as Secretary of State, nowadays his good friend and croquet host in Washington: Colonel Henry Lewis Stimson. Colonel Stimson became honorary chairman of a group (honorary vice-chairmen: Dr. A. Lawrence Lowell, Rev. Dr. Robert E. Speer, William Allen White) whose aim is to halt all U. S. war-goods sales to Aggressor Japan. Excerpt from their manifesto:

''America is indignant at the aggressive war in China with its cruelties to helpless civilians, but Americans—through lack of knowledge or indifference—go on ignoring the fact we are supplying the Japanese aggressors with the sinews of war: scrap iron, oil, steel, trucks—all more necessary to her than manufactured munitions.

''With one hand we supply the essential materials to the Japanese military machine. . . . With our other hand we spend billions for armaments which will protect us against the mounting threat of aggressor nations. It does not make sense."

Ex-Secretary Stimson also wrote a letter to Secretary Hull urging that President Roosevelt lift the embargo on arms for losing Loyalist Spain (see p. 75).