Island into Continent

Last week Japan's Premier Hideki Tojo exhibited his Chinese puppet government to Axis diplomats. In Nanking, Tojo ordered 35 mosquito boats to fire a 21-gun salute. Japanese and puppet Chinese troops paraded on the third anniversary of Traitor Wang Ching-wei's Nanking regime.

To the world, Tojo was signaling the fact that island Japan had become a continental power. The Japanese had begun to withdraw some of their own troops from China, replace them with thousands of Chinese, sometimes under Japanese officers, often under Chinese officers from Manchukuo. The Nanking government is now allowed to handle economic exploitation of Occupied China and the squeeze is as merciless as when it was applied by Japan. Nanking, pleased, declared war on Britain and the U.S. (TIME, Jan. 18). Last week Tokyo relinquished some of its extraterritorial concessions, nominally placed them in Chinese hands.

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