The only nation on the American continent which recognizes Japan's four-year-old puppet state of Manchukuo is tiny, coffee-producing El Salvador. Last week, in belated appreciation of El Salvador's gesture, made in March 1934 owl-eyed, thick-lipped Manchukuoan Emperor Kang Teh was graciously pleased to decorate El Salvador's Strong Man, swart, curly-haired President General Maximiliano Hernández Martínez. Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Araujo and the Salvadorean Consul General in Tokyo, León Siguenza.
Little does it matter to spurned Manchukuo that many a chancellery believes that El Salvador first recognized the puppet state by mistake. The story goes that on the day that Henry Pu Yi became Emperor Kang Teh, his Minister of Foreign Relations sent an announcement to all foreign offices. Since the League of Nations, to which El Salvador then belonged, had passed a resolution binding all League members to nonrecognition, the foreign offices of these nations ignored the announcement. But in El Salvador a sleepy under secretary in the Foreign Ministry, assuming that diplomatic courtesy demanded a reply, answered with the usual "fervent congratulations on the happy occasion." To friendless, lonely Emperor Kang Teh, then recognized only by Japan,* this answer was enough to constitute recognition.
Few months later, as League members fumed at him, shrewd Salvadorean President Martínez formally acknowledged the new state in the hope that the vast territory might prove a potent coffee market for El Salvador's only important crop. It has not.
* Since recognized by Italy and Germany.