Romance and Empire ride the rails of Japan's famed South Manchuria Railway. An economic spear stuck halfway up into Manchuria, the S. M. R. was the chugging juggernaut that carried Japanese troops to their scrappy victories. Soon Hsinking, the point of the S. M. R. spear, became the capital of puppet Emperor Henry Pu Yi (TIME, March 5, 1934). Beyond that point, S. M. R. trains have been unable to go on over a spur of the Chinese Eastern to the great Russianized city of Harbin because prudent Tsar Nicholas II had Russia's...
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