JAPAN: All Honorable Men

For Brutus is an honorable man, So are they all, all honorable men!

The six Japanese Bruti who slew Premier Ki Inukai for his "excessive pacifism" (TIME, May 23, 1932) stood in the dock before the Naval Court Martial at Yokosuka naval base last week while their Japanese attorney, in his final defense plea, quoted adroitly from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.

The irony of Mark Antony's reference to Caesar's assassins as "honorable men" was lost—as the defense attorney hoped and expected it would be—on a bench full of Japanese naval judges weak in English...

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