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Disraeli would have had to applaud the agility with which Count Uchida has made use of China's convenient "fissiparous tendencies" to divide and rule. He would have applauded the creation of Manchoukuo, an officially independent state whose advantages to Japan as a colony outweigh the responsibilities. But international ethics have advanced since the death of the pomaded Earl. The right of self-determination for any people, even one with fissiparous tendencies, is one that the average citizen of most countries believes in heartily. Even Count Uchida put forward as chief excuse for the invasion of Manchuria the idea that what they were really doing was helping a suppressed people, the Manchurians, revolt against Chinese authority.
As if in answer to this, the day General Nobuyoshi Muto arrived in Mukden last week to take over his duties as Japanese Commander-in-Chief and special ambassador to Manchoukuo, Chinese guerrillas staged a desperate anti-Japanese raid. Machine guns and tanks banged away all night. The raiders succeeded in setting fire to the great Mukden arsenal three times and destroyed several planes at the airport. With the dawn they vanished. Japanese bombers zoomed off in pursuit.
Farmers. Real occasion for the special Diet session at which the momentous Uchida speech was made, was to draft a relief program for Japanese farmers who cannot sell their produce, who must pay twice the taxes of city merchants and whose suicide rate has doubled since 1931. At present Japanese prices, a Japanese housewife can buy 41 Ib. of ripe, juicy tomatoes for 10ยข.
*By fission: reproduction by spontaneous division of a cell into two parts, each of which grows into a complete organism. Many bacteria are fissiparous.