Last week The Netherlands East Indies slapped Japan's face, and Japan took it with nothing more than a face-saving tightening of the features.
For months a Japanese commission under the polite but theoretically tough Kenkicho Yoshizawa has tried to get The Netherlands East Indies to promise Japan greatly increased shipments of rubber, tin, oil, other foods of war.
Opposite Commissioner Yoshizawa at the Batavia conference table has been The Netherlands East Indies' genial, broad-faced, bespectacled Economics Minister Hubertus J. van Mook. As the weeks went by Minister van Mook knew very well that...