Prettiest Moment

Last week Japanese Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka ended his flying visit to Japan's Axis partners and started home from Berlin via Moscow. It had been an untimely junket. No sooner had the trip been announced than the U.S. Congress passed the Lend-Lease Bill. No sooner had Minister Matsuoka arrived in Berlin than Yugoslavia rose against politicians who had sold out to Adolf Hitler. Before he had arrived in Rome, the British, without losing a life, gave the Italian Navy its worst beating of the war. As he started for home he heard of ominous events in Manila. There Air Chief Marshal Sir Robert Brooke-Popham, Britain's Far Eastern Commander in Chief, had conferred with Admiral Thomas C. Hart, Commander of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, and General Douglas MacArthur, U.S. military adviser to the Philippines--doubtless on the subject of Anglo-American defense against any move Japan may decide to make.

Even the little omens of Minister Matsuoka's trip were discouraging. In Rome, Il Duce presented him with a glossy new motor launch. Minister Matsuoka planned a sunny maiden voyage down the rolling Tiber. But that day it rained.

The only times the top-hatted, morning-coated little Foreign Minister seemed to brighten were when he talked to men of peace. In Moscow Peaceful Joe Stalin dropped in on Yosuke Matsuoka's interview with Foreign Commissar Viacheslav Molotov, and Matsuoka glowed. In Rome the Protestant Japanese and the Pope had a long, 65-minute talk. Afterward the Pope told a group of Japanese seminarists that the interview had been "a fine one." Minister Matsuoka called it "the prettiest moment of my life."

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