The Time Will Come

Last week Japan's New Structure--the national "reform" designed by Premier Fumimaro Konoye--had most of its girders welded. The framework appeared fairly conservative but the only building stocks at hand to complete the structure seemed to be materials of violence, hatred and daring.

First wing of the skeleton was economic.

Working with Army and extremists, the Cabinet had devised a totalitarian economic plan patterned closely on German and Italian models. At the last minute Japanese industrialists opened up on the Government with an artillery of complaints and objections. All 17 directors of Japan Iron Manufacturing Co.. the largest Japanese enterprise of its kind, resigned and publicly predicted trouble ahead for the steel industry. By the time the broad principles of the New Economic Structure were announced this week, the plan had been watered down. The platform reached the following compromise: "Private industrial enterprise is to be the basis of the proposed new industrial enterprise structure. Management of an enterprise by a Government concern is to be permitted in case of special need."

On the diplomatic wing, last week's moves were also conservative. Following the appointment of one-eyed, genial Admiral Kichisaburo Nomura as Ambassador to the U. S.. the Government elicited from the Army and Navy promises that their extremists would do nothing to embarrass the Admiral in his efforts to win the U. S. back to friendship.

But civilian Japanese extremists began to make an extremely embarrassing noise. Immediate cause was the U. S. loan to China of $100,000,000 (TIME, Dec. 9). An unidentified Japanese, described as "an elderly individual, apparently a religious fanatic." defiled the white gateposts of the U. S. Embassy with two buckets of filth. The Tokyo newspaper Miyako warned: "Cases may arise where Japan is forced to accept the American challenge." On the specific subject of whether Admiral Nomura could smooth U. S.-Japanese relations, militant Koknmin wrote: "Our people should know that relations between the two countries are so hopelessly strained they do not allow for such wishful thinking."

The week's angriest outburst, the most violent opposite to Premier Konoye's conservative steps, came from the Japanese Army's Shanghai paper Sin Shun Pao: "We hate the United States, which forgets humane justice, more than we hate the Chungking Government. The time will come when either we swallow up the United States or the United States swallows us. Awaken, Asiatic peoples! We must speed up military and diplomatic measures and crush Anglo-American efforts to obstruct the New Order."

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