Success Story

Japanese sweetness and light glinted in Southwest China this month in the optimistic person of General Kenji Doihara, bribe-brandishing chief of the Japanese Army spy service in Manchukuo (TIME, March 18). Last week the tubby but trig little advance agent for Japanese imperialism was back in Shanghai consuming highballs with correspondents and paying all the checks. Out over China's cables went his success story of delightful encounters with leading Southwest Chinese, such as Mr. Hu ("Hongkong Hu") Han-min, eminent apostle of the late, sainted Dr. Sun Yat-Sen "Father of the Chinese Revolution."

"When I arrived in the Southwest," said General Doihara, "I found a strong disposition on the part of Chinese leaders there to make hostile political capital out of the friendly statements on Chino-Japanese relations made recently by the Chinese Premier Wang Ching-wei and General Chiang Kaishek. In friendly personal conversations I convinced these Chinese leaders that it would be a tragic blunder, harmful alike to the Chinese and Japanese peoples, to make a football for domestic Chinese politics out of the growing rapprochement between our two great nations. Eventually I discovered that the Southwest leaders are as keenly alive as are those of the Chinese Government in Nanking to the necessity for Chino-Japanese cooperation, but they had not publicly expressed their views for reasons of political expediency."

In any other country such statements as General Doihara's would have forced leaders such as Hongkong Hu to confirm or deny that he had correctly unmasked their attitude. In China no amount of unmasking, denial or confirmation ever settles anything, and so far as Chinese were concerned last week, General Doihara's talk was just talk. In San Francisco indignant Chinese friends of Hongkong Hu announced off their own bats, without confirmation from him, that "Hu Han-min's policy has been and unalterably will be 'China for the Chinese, first and last!' ':

In correspondents' minds there lurked one big question and they popped it at General Doihara. Assuming that Japan, if and when convinced that the Nanking Government really means to collaborate with the Japanese Empire, makes Nanking a loan, just how big a cut will the Southwest Chinese demand? Blandly General Doihara purred in reply: "Ah, that phase of the question I did not discuss."

"Anyhow China's urgent need is not money," concluded the Japanese Army's Doihara. sparkling-eyed. "What does China need? Peace! Stability!"

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