Japanese diplomats try hard to act by Occidental standards of hard-headed opportunism, always end the Oriental way: face first, facts afterwards. Last week Japan chose to let the end of her trade treaty with the U. S. a really serious incident pass with hardly an official sigh but spilled a hot lava of diplomatic hate on Great Britain over a comparatively microscopic incident the stopping of the liner Asama Maru by a British cruiser while 21 German reservists were taken off (TIME, Jan. 29).
The Japanese Foreign Office, in stiffer language than the U. S. State Department...