Few diplomats of the humorless Japanese Empire ever know quite how impudently they are being negotiated with by silkily-polite Chinese statesmen, all of whom seem to have a sense of humor as irrepressible as the Chinese countenance is expressionless.
Last week Nanking was roaring at the latest exploit of Chinese Foreign Minister Chang Chun in "kidding" the Imperial Japanese Government. Tokyo had demanded that Japanese troops be permitted to join the anti-Communist forces of Chinese Premier and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek in any Chinese province into which these may be sent (TIME, Nov. 9). To this demand China's Chang replied that, while it would be premature for China to grant such rights to Japan in all Chinese provinces, the Chinese Government would permit Japanese military co-operation in assisting it to exterminate Communism and banditry in the Chinese provinces of Manchuria, Jehol, East Hopei and Northern Chahar. The point of this uproarious Chinese joke could not entirely escape even glum Japanese Ambassador Shigeru Kawagoe upon whom it was sprung with the utmost Chinese decorum—for Mr. Kawagoe well knows that the areas specified are precisely those which Japanese soldiers already dominate and have detached or are trying to detach from China.
Joke v. Blow. Lacking though it is in humor, the Japanese Army knows that any joke can be answered by a sufficiently heavy blow. Last week the Japanese Army proper did not move, but Japanese sent 30,000 of their puppet Manchukuoan troops and Mongolian allies on a thundering raid from Chahar, northwest of Peiping, into Suiyuan. The invaders were equipped with tanks, armored cars and battle planes of Japanese manufacture. Actual news from this remote region was scant but early and Chinese-censored dispatches made world headlines thrilling to thousands of Chinese laundrymen and other expatriate Celestials: CHINESE DEFEAT 30,000 INVADERS!
Next the Nanking Government dispatched formal notes to all States having relations with China. These were told that the immediate withdrawal of all their nationals from the provinces of Suiyuan, Ningsia and Chinghai is "necessitated by bandit suppression operations." This was another owlish Chinese joke, designating as mere "bandits" the Manchukuoan and Mongol soldier puppets of Japan.