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Superior officers had by this time noted Samurai Araki's keenness. He was promoted to the General Staff. During the World War, when Japan seized Germany's foothold on the Chinese mainland (Kiaochow) but was later forced to disgorge it, Staff Officer Araki was Japanese military attaché in Russia, gained invaluable knowledge of modern practices of slaughter by incessant observation trips up and down the Eastern Front.
So Russian-minded was he at the end of the War that he urged Japan's General Staff (of which he later became chief) to attempt to take all Siberia and add it to the Divine Emperor's realm—a tragic, costly and futile four-year expedition.
Returning to Tokyo, Lieut.-General Araki wiped from his dreams of conquest Siberia but not Manchuria. He managed to retrieve his reputation by courage during the earthquake. As Chief of the Military Staff College until he was gazetted War Minister last year, he stood upon the supreme rostrum from which to preach (behind locked doors) the subjugation of all Manchuria.
Purifying Politics. At Tokyo, War Minister Araki flashed off orders to Mukden last week which sent 35 Japanese troop trains thundering down upon Jehol. While far off battles raged—with Japanese victories a foregone conclusion—he could review with warm satisfaction the manner in which since last spring obstacles to "The Way of the Perfect Emperor" have melted away. Obstacle of doubt at home. Obstacle of interfering white folk abroad.
The disgusting "Old Fox," Premier Inu-kai who withdrew Japan's naval forces from Shanghai before they had scored a sufficiently decisive victory, is dead—assassinated by Japanese military cadets (TIME, May 23). A few hours after this killing War Minister Araki emerged from 20 minutes of private audience with his Divine Emperor to comment "So far as I can learn the events of today were designed to purify politics."
How pure have Japanese politics been since then!—from the Fighting Services standpoint. Army and Navy appropriations, zooming higher and higher to astronomical figures, have slipped through the frightened Imperial Diet and House of Peers with lightning celerity, whether Finance Minister Korekiyo Takahashi had the money or had to borrow it. The new Premier has been a General's jewel. He, easy-going Admiral Viscount Makoto Saito (retired), has constantly deferred to the military caste, represented in his Cabinet by Lieut.-General Sadao Araki.
The Lytton Report denounced Japan for seizing Manchuria and branded "Manchukuo" as a mere name coined by Japan to strengthen her pretense that Manchuria spontaneously revolted from China. It was War Minister Araki who brushed aside the Lytton Report as "an interesting travelogue." It became just that in Geneva last week as League statesmen drafted a resolution under which the League Assembly would virtually abandon any attempt to enforce the Lytton findings, thus bowing to "The Way of the Perfect Emperor"—i. e. to Japanese threats of withdrawal from the League.