Mukden & Markets

When revolution broke in Brazil last October, U. S. Ambassador Edwin Vernon Morgan was on vacation (TIME, Oct. 13 et seq.). When three revolutions in one week gripped Guatemala, U. S. Minister Sheldon Whitehouse was on vacation (TIME, Dec. 29, et seq.). When Alfonso XIII was driven from his throne, U. S. Ambassador Irwin Boyle Laughlin was out of town (TIME, April 20 et seq.). Last week U. S. Ambassador to Japan William Cameron Forbes sailed for a vacation in the U. S. the day Japanese troops captured the Chinese city of Mukden.

Just outside Mukden, somebody blew up a bridge on the Japanese controlled & protected South Manchuria Railway. Japanese blamed it on the Chinese. Chinese swore (and many foreign observers believed them) that Japanese troops blew up the bridge to provoke a crisis. No matter who started it, Japan struck hard and fast. Advancing under a rattling machine gun barrage, Japanese troops swarmed out of the Japanese concession in Mukden and seized the city proper. Under orders from General Jiro Tamon, troops moved up the line and took virtually every city on the South Manchuria Railway along its 693 miles. In 24 hours Japan had virtual control of all South Manchuria and warships had landed troops in China Proper, in Tsingtao on the Shantung Peninsula, the old German treaty port that was captured by Japan in 1914 and held until 1922 when, as a result of the Washington Conference, she returned it to China.

That was what happened last week.

What caused it to happen is a story in three parts.

Markets & Manchuria. Manchuria, Mongolia, in fact all of China is to Japan what Canada is to the U. S., her primary market for manufactured goods. Undeveloped Manchuria is particularly valuable to overpopulated Japan for it lies next to Japanese Korea and is the obvious point for Japanese expansion. Mongolia, the country north and west of Peiping, produces wool, hides, bristles, human hair, sausage casings. For centuries these products have come down on long caravans of shaggy camels into China Proper--to Peiping and the port of Tientsin. But beyond Manchuria and Mongolia lies Russia. For several years the Soviets have been intensively penetrating China from their side. Even before last week's flareup Japan practically controlled South Manchuria up to and beyond Mukden, but the Russian grip on Mongolia was fairly complete. Russia had turned the traffic in hides, bristles, hair back toward Moscow. Business was hard hit in Japan, Tientsin was starving. There were Japanese businessmen who applauded the seizure of Mukden, therefore, not in anger at the Chinese, but in fear of Russia.

Captain Nakamura. A more obvious cause is the age-old feud between China and Japan which roots in the dislike of any peace-loving, impoverished people for pushing, successful, militaristic neighbors. This feud has been fanned by China's realization of her gradual loss of Manchuria. There is a Japan Boycott Society with branches throughout China. For over a year there have been anti-Japanese riots throughout Manchuria. Last month a Captain Shintaro Nakamura of the Japanese Army left Mukden to make survey maps in the Manchurian interior. He was provided with papers giving him full permission signed by Chinese authorities, but permits mean little to soldiers who cannot read. Captain Nakamura was arrested as a spy and executed.

Army v. Shidehara. Japanese militarists roared for revenge. Not so Foreign Minister Baron Kijuro Shidehara and other members of the Wakatsuki Cabinet in Japan. They realize that Japan, a potent member of the League of Nations, must keep in Europe's good graces. But ever since the fall of the Tanaka Government in 1929, last exponent of the mailed fist in China, Japanese militarists have been gunning for pacific Baron Shidehara. The execution of Captain Nakamura was what they have been waiting for. Last week General Jiro Tamon, commandant at Mukden,* and other Japanese officers simply took matters into their own hands and acted without Cabinet authority. Baron Shidehara did his best to sit on the lid. There were emergency Cabinet meetings. Fearing superpatriots, police guards were posted at every Cabinet

Minister's home. Baron Shidehara announced that Japanese troops would be withdrawn from the captured Manchurian cities "at the earliest possible moment."

Chang's Move. In Geneva grandfatherly Spanish Foreign Minister Alejandro Lerroux, presiding over the League of Nations Council, devoted ten minutes to hear statements by the Japanese and Chinese delegates, expressed satisfaction that Japan would appease the situation. Knowing that his troops were no match for the Japanese, smart Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang did the best thing he could have clone to win world support. He ordered his Manchurian troops to offer no resistance to the Japanese, to pile their arms in depots. From a hospital bed in Peiping where he has been undergoing treatment, he issued a statement:

"The world has been afforded the spectacle for some time past of war being manufactured. It now has been launched so far as Japan is concerned, but China has no intention of being an armed party to it." From Paris the Journal des Debats sniffed in scorn:

"President Lerroux's expression of the hope that the incident will soon be settled is just such a sentiment as has always concluded any pacifist meeting. That is all that the Council of the League has been able to do so far in the presence of events of exceptional gravity. What a fine peace organization that is!" Army Out of Hand? Meantime, the Japanese armies continued to hold Mukden. The Japanese Cabinet expressed itself as being very much embarrassed. That, apparently, was just what the militarist faction intended it should be. The Mukden affair seemed to boil down to a struggle in Japanese politics, upon the outcome of which hinged the peace of the Orient.

*To protect the South Manchurian Railway, Japan has always kept a military force in the foreign quarter of Mukden. Last March Russia concentrated a force as big as the whole U. S. Army at the Manchurian frontier city of Manchuli. Japan retaliated by moving up several divisions, making Mukden an army base.

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