Bespectacled Emperor Hirohito, the earnest young Son of Heaven, had enough resignations to read last week to give His Majesty eyestrain — 500 in all. His personal military aide-de-camp, famed General Shigeru Honjo, who commanded the Japanese Kwantung Army which swarmed up to seize Manchuria in 1931, resigned last week. So did six lieutenant generals, five major generals, five corps commanders, bevies of War Ministry bureau chiefs and slews of Japanese officers of all the higher ranks.* Thus the Army continued its "expiation" for the Army assassinations of Japanese liberal statesmen (TIME, March 16). But for every one of the 500 resignations — far too many for His Majesty to accept — the Army expected to receive and managed to secure last week more & more abject yielding to its Radical-Militarism.
The puppet Empire of Manchukuo, with the Japanese. Army jerking the strings, last week hurled fast-moving military detachments into Inner Mongolia and seized its capital, Pailingmiao. Apparently this was done with the bribe-bought co-operation of one of the last Celestials to wear the ancient Chinese pigtail, famed Prince Te. His Highness is the blandest foe of Soviet Russian influence, in Inner and Outer Mongolia. In effect the seizure of Pailingmiao, jabbed the Japanese spearhead 200 miles nearer to an ultimate clash with the Red Army of Joseph Stalin for the mastery of Eastern Asia.
Baba. In Tokyo the new Finance Minister, successor to assassinated Greatest-Japanese-Finance-Minister Korekiyo Takahashi, is that departed statesman's wily stooge, Mr. Eiichi Baba. As governor of the Government-controlled agricultural bankers' bank the Nippon Kwangyo Ginko since 1927, ingratiating Eiichi Baba has made the most of opportunities to become friends with the Radical-Militarists. The Army is almost entirely of peasant stock and absolutely resolved that exploited and oppressed Japanese rustics shall now get their innings. In Tokyo last week it was considered more than likely that wily Stooge Baba had sold the Army some such idea as that he knows all the tricks of assassinated Finance Minister Takahashi, who for generations was the Empire's amazingly successful floater of Japanese bond issues both at home and abroad.
New Experiments-Nervously Japanese businessmen awaited the new Finance Minister's first pronouncement. They were even more nervous after scanning what Mr. Baba had to say. Speaking obviously as the Army's Stooge, he announced "increased taxes, new experiments, the raising of Japanese defenses to a satisfactory state, restitution of the farming and fishing industries and expansion of the Nation's strength."
New Premier Koki Hirota had meanwhile announced after the first meeting of his Cabinet that it stands for ''positive and independent readjustment of the international situation to tide over the emergency situation." At this a War Office spokesman hailed "the Spirit of Hirota," and a Foreign Office statesman explained, ''It means that we are an independent country — not a protectorate!"