Another Flying Train

In 1931 Japan's Kwantung army, looking for an excuse to invade Manchuria, accused Chinese soldiers of blowing up a section of the Japanese-operated South Manchurian railroad near Liu Ho Kou. Japanese forces occupied the entire Mukden area forthwith. Not a bit embarrassed were the Samurais when it transpired that a train had traversed the damaged section of track half an hour after it was blown up. The Japanese offered various explanations and were even reported to have served up for internal consumption the following: the Japanese engineer, seeing the damage, appealed to the God-Emperor with such success that the train rose right up off the tracks, flew across the debris and came down safely on the other side.

There was nothing unbelievable about this story to the Japanese, who recognize facts as relative and variable shadows of certain innate truths incomprehensible to all Westerners. When an unpleasant fact does embarrass the Japanese, they either ignore it or else commit harakiri.

The Japanese ability of self deception has not been dulled. Last week Domei flooded Argentine editors with accounts of the first anniversary of Japanese occupation of the Philippines. The Filipino quisling, Jorge B. Vargas, chief of the Civil Administration of the islands, steered another Japanese train over a verbal crater. Said he: "One year has passed like a dream. . . . Manila is not what it was. Not only does it display its crown of metropolis; it also is the market place and vitalizer of the Philippines, reuniting constituent qualities of its idiosyncracy. It is this spiritual idiosyncracy which constitutes the basis for Filipinos' return to their traditions as Orientals after four centuries of slavery."

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