The highest Japanese officer in China's former capital Nanking, His Highness Lieut. General Prince Yasuhiko Asaka, this week expressed to Third Secretary John M. Allison of the U. S. Embassy his apologies.
Diplomat Allison had already contributed to international concord by spying that he personally accepted previous apologies made by less prominent Japanese authorities, adding, however, that the Government of the United States would, of course, make its own decisions about a matter so important. Soon thereafter Washington received from John Allison a dispassionate account of that important matter:
In Nanking, where outrages by Japanese soldiers had continued for over a month, Third Secretary Allison and Charles Riggs of Nanking University, a U. S. citizen, went out last week with a Chinese woman. Their object was to try to identify Japanese soldiers whom she accused of having raped her thrice. Since Japanese soldiers had taken the woman from the agricultural implement shop of Nanking University, Mr. Riggs had applied to Third Secretary Allison for help.
Mr. Allison, according to his official report, was escorted by Japanese gendarmes. They advised Secretary Allison and Mr. Riggs not to enter a building into which they had agreed to take the Chinese woman so that she might point out the rapists. Then they pushed her roughly through the gate, and as Messrs Allison & Riggs impulsively moved to follow, a Japanese sentry shouted in English "Back! Back!"
'I backed up slowly," cabled Third Secretary Allison in his report, "but before I had time to get out of the gate he slapped me across the face and then turned and did the same to Mr. Riggs."
Mr. Allison, who speaks Japanese, diplomatically confined himself to adding that the sentry "livid with rage . . . shouted at us in a most offensive manner," grabbed Mr. Riggs, tore the collar and some buttons from his shirt.
Since face is a matter of high importance in the Orient, the slapping of a U. S. official caused President Roosevelt to spend two hours conferring with State Department officials. U. S. Ambassador Joseph Clark Grew at Tokyo was then ordered to obtain an expression of regret from Japanese Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Kensuke Horinouchi. This Washington officially accepted as "satisfactory," closed the case. Whether the Chinese woman identified any rapists, what happened to her or them, remained unknown to the State Department.
To Japanese it all seemed negligible compared to the slap Japan received last week when President Roosevelt announced his billion-dollar naval program (see p. 9). Must we assume," asked Tokyo's famed Asahi, "that the United States will no longer contribute toward Peace?"