Divine Gale

When the Japanese imitate, they either improve on the original or make it look silly; either undersell U. S. fountain pens in a shop three miles from the factory where the U. S. pens are made, or launch a battleship which turns turtle. Last week a Japanese imitation in the field of diplomacy turned out to be ludicrously no-good goods.

When Japan's best friend, Adolf Hitler, invited Japan to send some personal guests to the Nuernberg Congress, Japanese saw a chance to adopt the Western vogue of sending econo-military missions to friendly nations, picked four really important men to go. In order not to hurt the Little Brother of the Axis, they would travel to Germany via Italy. They set out in July. But it is a long way from Tokyo to Rome, and while the mission was on the high seas, Adolf Hitler proved what seemed a sorry friend. Last week there arrived in Rome four puzzled, embarrassed wandering minstrels of Japan, four doves of peace with no place to coo:

General Count Juichi Terauchi, 60, represented the Japanese Army. Once military attache in Berlin, now a member of the Supreme War Council, he was loved by the Army's ambitious young officers when he commanded the North China forces (August 1937 to December 1938), because when they told him to let them run things, he did it gracefully. He read the classics, sometimes went for an airplane ride, agreed not to play golf but bustled with pretended business. But though amenable, he is aggressive. Once he got a letter from the Towada Branch of the Glossy Head Society, saying that members had seen and admired his excellency's pate, considered it a "perfect model in our category No. 4--general retreat." Said the General: "The society thinks my hair has retreated; I think the smoothy ground has attacked." He was shocked to hear that the Nuernberg Congress had been called off, swallowed hard when he remembered his proud statement to the Japanese press the day of his departure: "A gathering of the representatives of Japan, Germany and Italy--the three strong countries of the world--at a time when there is a social emergency, will not be without significance."

Admiral Baron Mineo (means "born-on-a-mountain-peak," as he was) Osumi, 63, another member of the Supreme War Council, naval attache in Berlin just before World War I, twice Navy minister, veteran of Manchurian and Shanghai warfare, was there for the Navy. He likes to wrestle with his two sons, says he lives in constant admiration of the three monkeys who cover mouth, ears, eyes. He is intensely loyal. Once when a drunken friend fell into a ditch, Admiral Osumi crawled in after him "to divide humiliated feeling with his clique."

Takashi Isaka, 69, president of the Tokyo Gas Co., represented business interests. He was chosen because he had been in Germany three times before. Mr. Isaka, too, gave an interview to the press on his departure from Japan. He said he regretted Japan's anti-Britfsh campaign. His pregnant comment: "It all proves that friends of today may prove enemies of tomorrow."

Ginjiro Fujiwara, Japan's "Paper King" (he virtually controls the production of newsprint), Japan's most positive and noisy industrialist, was also along. A notorious labor-baiter, the Paper King writes sanctimonious essays praising Japan's simple life (i. e., low standard of living), exulting in the fact that even Cabinet Ministers get paid only the equivalent of $200 a month. The Paper King told newspapers that he was out to master the German economy. "I will understand it in one glance of it, being the veteran industrialist served this world for 45 years now," he said.

All the confidence, all the complacency had vanished last week from the four emissaries. They drove aimlessly about the Italian countryside "on a sightseeing trip," wondering what to do with a 6 ft. by 24 ft. tapestry called Ocean Is Turbulent, which it had taken 4,060 Japanese craftsmen three years to make out of 2,450 bunches of gold thread and 85 shades of pure silk thread, and which the emissaries had expected to give Herr Hitler for his living room wall.

Although the mission were too humiliated to know it, they did serve a purpose. Their presence in Rome was the occasion for a realistic suggestion from Tokyo: Japan, Italy, Britain and France ought to repay the bad faith of their erstwhile friends, Germany and Russia, by banding together to end the Hitler-Stalin plot for "Bolshevization of the world." These wooden words were put in the mouth of poor old Puppet-elect Wang Ching-wei, the Chinese ventriloquist for Japanese policy.

Only possible alternative for such a realignment would be absolute domination of the Far East by Japan. And the World War made this alternative the more pleasant and probable prospect to most Japanese. They already had a characteristic phrase for Europe's war--"Divine Gale" to blow all the white men out of China. Last week the Japanese took out their pretty fans to sharpen the wind. Politely, firmly the Government announced that if other powers wished to remove their troops from China, Japan would be honored to "protect" their nationals and interests. Next move might be less polite, more firm --an ultimatum to Britain and France to get out.

A notable exception among the foreign countries being given the bee: the U. S. Tokyo newspapers suddenly began to notice the importance of U. S. markets. A Japanese airline official turned up in the U. S. to make arrangements for a Japanese-owned Guam-Tokyo link with the China Clipper. Another was in Manhattan expansively buying U. S. instead of German automobiles and machinery. Six Japanese goodwill fliers spanned the U. S. The Japanese knew very well that if the Divine Gale hit the U. S. too hard, it might turn around and blow a not-so-divine fleet across the Pacific.

Meanwhile the unlucky Chinese began to feel the gale's force. Having once hated foreign devils for exploiting China, now they look upon them as China's white hope for resistance against Japan. But the European War lessened probability of aid from the white man. In Hong Kong, for instance, which has been the centre of Chinese financial juggling, the British announced that they could no longer allow unrestricted exchange of currencies. China's financial brain, Harvard-educated T. V. Soong, immediately went inland to Chungking, taking with him most of China's financial resources, human and material.

But if the Chinese were unhappy, the four gentlemen of Japan in Italy had run completely out of the good will with which they had been so brimming a few days before. At week's end they announced they were going right home. They had seen enough sights. They had not decided what to do with that tapestry.

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