When one is only six months old and only the second daughter of an Emperor, what does it matter if one dies of pneumonia?
Such a question, such a thought was no doubt remote from the blank and infant mind of Princess Sachiko Hisa-No-Miya of Japan last week. She died without having reached the age at which humans become articulate to others and probably before she became articulate to herself.
The Imperial Family, "with a realistic grasp of the situation, went into mourning for but three days. The nation was deprived of cinema performances for two days as a mark of minimum respect. Some hundreds of little girls came voluntarily to stand and pray outside the palace at which Death came to a Princess whose name may be translated ''Eternal Happiness."
An epidemic of 500,000 cases of influenza is raging in Japan. So said despatches featured last week by the U. S. press. No, there is no epidemic. Instead, cases of pulmonary diseases are "slightly fewer than normal" in Japan this winter. So read later despatches ignored by most U. S. editors.
Shrewd Hearst Editor Arthur Brisbane hastened to slap the epidemic into his column while it was still hot news, unconfirmed, undenied.