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Weeks had elapsed since the Generalissimo was reported to be actually sending units of China's crack troops ("Chiang's Own") northward to throw the Japanese out of the Peiping area. Japanese airmen, still looking for these Chinese forces last week, flew 85 miles down the railway up which the Chinese were supposed to be coming and impudently bombed the important city of Paoting. In a further provoking challenge to Dictator Chiang, Japanese obtained the resignation of his subordinate commanding in North China, General Sung Cheh-yuan, and set up in his stead General Chang Tsu-chung. As mayor of Tientsin, he was approved by the Japanese and so far as Tokyo knows he is "loyal." Thus last week a Chinese tool of Japan was set up in Peiping as the executive of a piece of China as large as Texas. After touring about Peiping, optimistic Japanese Colonel Takeo Imai, the Japanese Resident, crowed: "Everything is brightness itself! Not a single Chinese soldier remains in Peiping." Japan's Domei news agency added that "a stream of would-be-constructive Chinese statesmen is pouring into the offices of the Japanese Army's Special Service Mission" —i.e., offering themselves as prospective cabinet ministers should North China presently be organized by the Japanese into "another kuo."
Cooperation, Not Territory. In Tokyo, although the Imperial Government maintained their attitude of surprise that there has been any fighting in North China, the popular press prematurely told Japanese citizens how wonderful it is that an extension of Japanese influence which might have taken one to three months had been accomplished in as many weeks.
The official Japanese Foreign Office press spokesmen said flatly that Chinese were expected to organize spontaneously North China along much the lines of Manchukuo and that Japan of course could not and would not interfere in this "domestic Chinese affair."
This blunt admission, distressingly crude, had its elegant Japanese counterpart in a speech to the Diet last week by Premier Prince Konoye. "I think there are many persons in the Chinese Government who understand Japan, including General Chiang Kai-shek," purred the Premier. "I think it should be the basic keynote of Japan's China policy to make the Chinese race and the Chinese Government return to their original nature as an Oriental people." After explaining that Communism is un-Oriental. while tactfully omitting to mention that the Chinese Communists have now tentatively joined forces with the Chinese Government. Japan's Premier blandly added: "For China to dance to such a [Communist] tune and bring on trouble in the Orient is tantamount to weakening the Orient by its own hands. I earnestly hope that the Chinese race will awaken as quickly as possible to realization of its nature as an Oriental race and that it will cooperate with the Japanese, who come of the same Oriental stock. . . . Japan wants not territory but cooperation. ... If we had such designs, the entire territory of North China would have been seized by the invincible Imperial Army long ago."
In this Japanese pronouncement connoisseurs observed the authentic Adolf Hitler touch, chalked it up to the German-Japanese Treaty signed last year for co-operation against Communism.