Foreign Minister Koki Hirota, addressing the Imperial Diet at Tokyo last week, declared: "Whenever and wherever Chiang Kai-shek [Chinese Generalissimo and Man of 1937] falls into the hands of our forces he will be beheaded!"
Ordinarily Mr. Hirota works overtime upholding such fine distinctions as the diplomatic nicety that Japan and China today are still officially at peace. That even the Foreign Office chief should last week threaten the head of a "friendly nation" with death showed how desperately exasperated many Japanese are becoming by China's continued resistance, increasingly exhausting to the...
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