"No optimistic view of the future is warranted," said Foreign Minister Koki Hirota in Tokyo last week in a warning to the Japanese people to "prepare for possible extreme personal financial sacrifices."
Returning to Japan from his naval command in Chinese waters, Vice Admiral Kiyoshi Hasegawa, whom the confident Japanese expected to announce new victories, tersely remarked: "The war is only half over!"
As a final indication of how serious a turn—for Japan—the ten-months-old undeclared Chinese-Japanese War has taken, Premier Prince Fumimaro Konoye partly invoked the much debated, bitterly opposed National Mobilization Act,...
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