Huge Haggle

The Oriental haggle between Russia and Japan over the Chinese Eastern Railway reached the price stage last week. With Russian and Japanese troops massed near the border, the shadow-boxing stage seemed to have ended. The Japanese offered 80,000,000 yen (about $19,000,000). Russia fixed its asking price at 300,000,000 gold rubles (about $153,000,000). Japan was anxious to prolong the haggle as long as possible, believing that the longer Japan waits the cheaper the railway will become. It proposed a three-party commission to meet in Tokyo. On it Russia will have one vote. Japan will have two, its own and that of a Manchukuo representative. It was, said the Japanese Foreign Office, their business to see to it that Manchukuo did not become embroiled with Russia, thereby involving her ally Japan. Said Russia's Foreign Commissar Maxim Litvinov, "It is common knowledge that Japan and Manchukuo are the same thing." The Japanese Foreign Office chortled that Litvinov's remark was "just like the Russians."

Whether Russia had anything to sell was last week a question. The railroad runs through Manchuria, now practically a province of Japan. By the original Russo-Chinese agreement on which the road was built, China had the right to buy it after 1936 and got it free in 1980. This

Tsarist agreement the Soviet Government twice restated cutting the transfer date to 1960. Last week China simply refused to believe that Russia had offered to sell the railroad Chinese had spoken for. Furthermore, because the road was built with French money, France had a claim. Last week Japan had a solution for the tangle. It primed the puppet Manchukuo Government to try to horn in as the heir of China's rights in the railroad. The Manchukuoan board chairman of the Chinese Eastern, Li Shao-ken, loudly claimed the road for Manchukuo. He added that, though Soviet rights in the road went back no further than the 1917 Revolution, Russia has some rights. Then Li Shao-ken stepped back, his piece spoken, to let the two real principals continue their huge haggle.

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