THE ORIENT: Truce was a Truce

What the gentleman from Ulster said to the gentleman from Kerry—"Sure and you have said many things new and true, but the things which were new were not true and the things which were true were not new"—applies to the strangely confused words which have recently come from Tokyo. The core of the confusion was Japan's relations with Russia. Official statements and private guesses alike were a series of obfuscations, contradictions, flat denials, inconsistencies. Generals belied statesmen, statesmen seemed not to know what generals were doing.

But last week came reports which were shockingly new, inescapably true. For seven days on end the Japanese were consistent. First, they rearranged their continental high command. Supreme command of forces in China was given to one of the Army's best strategists, Toshizo Nishio. Recently resigned War Minister Seishiro Itagaki was made Lieut. General Nishio's Chief of Staff. Command of the Kwantung Army, the able if imaginative force which since May 11 had been making the barren plains of Manchukuo a bramble of practically uncountable wrecked Russian planes, was given to one of the Army's best diplomats, Lieut. General Yoshijiro Umezu, already Japanese Ambassador to Manchukuo. It looked (but no one dared say so, since Japanese are as unpredictable as shooting stars) as if Japan wanted to talk gently with Russia and deal roughly with China.

Sure enough, next day, Commander-Ambassador Umezu sang a pretty overture: the "present deplorable situation" on the Manchukuo-Mongolia border, he said, was merely the result of the Russians not wanting to negotiate a definite boundary line, which Japan had always wanted to do.

And in China the Japanese pressed ahead. Copying the British fashion, they bombed with leaflets. But as usual the copy was inexact: not following British restraint, the Japanese simultaneously bombed with bombs, horribly, killing 400 and wounding 400 in Lu-chow, a city without medical supplies. In Shanghai the Japanese military moved towards a showdown with foreigners. U. S., British, French and Italian defense-force commanders were called together and told that international defense of the International Settlement ought to give way to Japanese defense—of what would then no longer be an International Settlement. But lest this be construed as a tug at Uncle Sam's goatee, Japan meanwhile continued to polish an apple for its teacher in western ways. Japanese Ambassador Kensuke Horinouchi called on Secretary of State Cordell Hull in Washington as the first step in "adjusting relations."

All this indicated that the course was clearly charted. Avoid Scylla, the Russian Army, and Charybdis, the U. S. Fleet, and sail straight through to victory in China. Big news of the week was getting past Scylla.