Posted on 09/10/2008 5:13:43 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Their appointment is held to be extremely significant because both are well-known liberals who strove earnestly during their terms in office to substitute a pacific policy for the militaristic policy in relations with China.
Mr. Arita is regarded as an expert on the Far East. Mr. Sato is an expert on European affairs. The former was Foreign Minister from April 1936, until February, 1937, in the Cabinet of Koki Hirota. The latter was Foreign Minister for four months in 1937 in the Cabinet of General Senjuro Hayashi.
When Mr. Sato became Foreign Minister in the Spring of 1937 after thirty years service in Europe considerable opposition was voiced on the grounds that he was too westernized and hence out of touch with his own country. With the fall of the Hayashi Cabinet Mr. Sato disappeared from public view.
While Foreign Minister Mr. Sato strove not only to remove friction between Japan and other nations. He first set about conciliating the Soviet Union, next Great Britain. The latter attempt was particularly successful, several vexatious questions, including that of Japanese police mistreatment of British sailors in Formosa, having been amicably settled.
While Foreign Minister Mr. Sato advocated abandonment of the militarist policy and a return to an attempt to win China’s genuine friendship and cooperation by non-military methods, no reason ever was given for Mr. Sato’s changed mind and policy subsequently.
Mr. Arita became Foreign Minister after serving as Japanese Ambassador to China where his views were moderate.
The two advisers to the Foreign Office will be charged with conducting the technical administration of the ministry, of which General Kazushigo Ugaki, the Foreign Minister, is largely ignorant because his whole career has been in the army and the Governorship of Korea. The views and policies of the aides are expected to influence Japan’s whole foreign policy.
They undoubtedly will advocate the restoration of friendly relations with all Western nations and a more conciliatory policy with China. Their appointment is held to have been impossible if the army had not agreed to such a turn of events.
The establishment shortly of a Central China agency for directing all phases of Japan’s policy toward China was elaborately discussed by Cabinet leaders today, according to the Domei news agency, which asserts General Ugaki is weakening in his stand against removing from the Foreign Office its prerogative of directing diplomacy with China.
General Seishiro Itagaki, War Minister, and Admiral Nobumasa Yonai, who have been fighting for a Central China agency, would lop off the Eastern Asia bureau and the China Cultural Enterprise Department from the Foreign Office, transferring them to the new agency. If the War and Navy Ministers win it will mean a weakening of the Foreign Office as far as Chinese policy is concerned. Having won out on the appointment of Foreign Office advisers, it is possible General Ugaki will yield on this point, believing an earlier victory and the consequent set-up will in turn curtail operations of the proposed agency.
Japanese newspapers expect a compromise nest week but the ultimate victor, as far as practical results are concerned, is not known.
The newspaper Miyako predicts extensive shifts in the diplomatic personnel as follows:
Hirosi Saito to be stationed in Shanghai as unofficial Ambassador.
Vice-Minister Kensuke Horinouchi to succeed Mr. Saito as Ambassador to Washington.
Renzo Sawada to be appointed diplomatic adviser to the new Peiping regime.
Tatsuo Kawai, Foreign Office spokesman, to become advisor to the Peiping regime.
Nobumi Ito to be Foreign Office spokesman.
These appointments are speculative but bear the earmarks of probability.
Artillery, tank and infantry arms were used by the Rebels, as on preceding days, but this time they attempted an encircling movement, which, according to tonight’s communiqué here, was repulsed. Cavalry squadrons attempting to open a breach in the government lines were reported driven back in disorder.
The Rebels captured Hill 356 in that sector, but it was said to have been retaken in “a brilliant counter-attack.”
The fighting today extended northward to the sector known as Partita de Panjuanas, where, it was declared, Italian artillery and Spanish Requettes succeeded in capturing Hill 462, from which the Rebels were later driven. In this counter-attack, it is asserted, the government forces took prisoners and war material.
A Rebel Dornier [German-made] and two Messerschmidt [German-made] planes were reported brought down in an aerial combat in which one Loyalist plane was lost. Ten Savola planes [Italian-made] bombed Valencia’s port today, damaging the British ship Stratford.
Reports from the Ebro front indicate that the German and Italian commands have taken the campaign into their own hands with a completeness unknown in any operation since the war began.
Persons returning from the front relate that the Rebels have poured a great wealth of foreign material into the conflict. The heaviest bombers from Italy and Germany, it is asserted, continuously punish the Loyalist line as big guns bombard them on land. Rebel infantry advances are protected by solid lines of tanks.
The Rebel operations in the Ebro region are said to be on a greater scale than any so far, and the Insurgents seem to consider the outcome of highest importance, although that view is not shared here.
The Loyalist command cannot match the Rebels’ material, but the government army’s morale is held to be at its highest point of the war. The present resistance, observers declare, indicates a discipline immeasurably superior to that of last March and April, when the Rebels broke through into Catalonia.
The Ebro fighting, near Gandesa, is wedged into a narrow front a little more than a mile long. The Loyalists’ tactics have been to hold ground until an advance of Rebel infantry, preceded by tanks, begins. The Loyalists then let go with everything they have. Official Loyalist reports of heavy Insurgent losses agree with other advices from the front.
At the end of the sixth day of intensive fighting two imposing mountainous bastions blocking the Nationalists’ progress – the Sierra de Pandos and the Sierra de Los Caballos, seized by the Republicans [Loyalists] six weeks ago – have been entirely recaptured, according to the Nationalists, and from the tops of these ranges General Franco’s troops now look down on the Ebro River.
The Nationalists are said to dominate the roads leading to Mora de Ebro, Tortosa and Flix. The extreme right flank of the three Nationalist columns participating in the activity in that zone actually entered the village of Pinell three days ago, it is reported, but this gain has not been officially announced.
On the road north from Gandesa to Mora and in the immediate vicinity of Pobla de Masaluca the left wing of the Nationalist army is declared to be in readiness to mop up the country toward Fatarelle, Asco, and Flix, thus completing the work of General Barron’s Thirteenth Division, which recently reported wiping out the Republican bridgeheads between Fayon and Mequinenza.
The bad weather failed to prevent General Franco’s aviation and heavy artillery from participating in the attacks yesterday and today. The resistance that the Nationalists are encountering is explained by a copy of a Republican regimental order found yesterday in a captured trench. It insisted that positions on the right bank of the Ebro must be held at all costs. But Nationalist aircraft and large field batteries, it is declared, obliged the Republican troops to pay dearly in casualties for their resistance in the Sierra de Los Caballos.
Nationalist staff officers assert that reports from Barcelona that the Nationalists are attacking on the Ebro front with 150,000 men, “including eight Italian divisions,” are absurd. The officers declare that not half that figure is being used, although fresh reserves have been sent there since the beginning of these operations, “which cannot properly be described even as a big-scale offensive.” In any case, this writer saw no Italians on a visit to field hospital near the front.
Arab terrorists make nightly attacks on police stations in the principal towns, cut telephones and telegraph lines and uproot steel poles along the main highways despite government curfew orders on all highways.
Over ten miles of telephone and telegraph lines were cut and the poles uprooted on the Jerusalem-Jaffa road by Arab rebels and seven barricades of high rocks were put at different places along the same road during the last two nights. This job must have taken several hundred rebels six or seven hours and it is being asked where the police or military forces were who are supposed to be patrolling this highway, which is under curfew.
It may sound strange to readers in the United States, but it is a fact that in some cases police barracks and central police stations are bolted for fear of rebel attacks. It is generally admitted that Arab policemen do not offer any resistance when police stations are attacked by rebels for the purpose of stealing rifles and ammunition.
Two theories are advanced for the passive attitude of Arab police officers. One is that all of the Arabs in the police force fully sympathize with the Arab terrorists and the other is that they fear the terrorists. The result is the same in either case.
In none of the six serious Arab uprisings since 1920, all of which the writer witnessed, has he observed such fear of the terrorists on the part of the Arab population or the government machinery so ineffective as has been the case since 1936. A striking example took place at Jaffa Wednesday.
Early in the morning rebels broke into the police barracks and took fourteen rifles, five revolvers and 1,000 rounds of ammunition. They got in by hoisting a boy through the transom over the entrance door. The boy unbolted the door and the rebels marched in.
Later in the day a “communiqué” was posted in the streets of Jaffa signed by the rebel commander ordering all Arabs to stay indoors between 9 o’clock at night and 6 o’clock in the morning because the rebels would invade Jaffa during the night.
The government tried to outwit the rebels by imposing a curfew beginning at 1 P. M. until further notice. In the meantime the British District Commissioner took all important documents from his office, and with all the other official there he left the government offices in charge of a single Arab guard.
This submission by the authorities has strengthened the belief of Arab residents that the terrorists are the real rulers.
Promptly at 9 P. M. the rebels came into town and began firing at Police Headquarters from a near-by orange grove.
The police fired at the rebels from the roof of the headquarters, but they did not make any effort to apprehend the terrorists.
The Arab police and general population are so afraid of the terrorists that they do not dare touch rebel posters or notices posted throughout the town, but they do no hesitate to pull down any government notices.
In other news, this may be the final update on Asia, Spain and Palestine until after the Czechoslovakia business is settled.
Yeah, things are about to get very busy in Central Europe. The battle of Wuhan doesnt wrap up until mid October anyway. The Sato appointment is almost laughable since by this point the power brokers in (and of) the Kwantung Army are really running the show.
Let me know when the Rams play.
Good collection of the news, from 1938.
I don’t think the Lions could beat the baseball Pirates in football.
You gotta wonder if Dutch Clark was paid to fake his injury so his team wouldn’t cover the spread. Hmmmmm.
Maybe we can get Arlen Specter to look into it.
China related. Except for the football, Spanish civil war, and Palestine parts.
They open against Green Bay on Sunday. (That's tomorrow.)
Go Cleveland!! I bet they get more wins this season than they will get in 2008 in St.Louis.
“College elevens,” a phrase that never caught on.
Yale, if I'm not mistaken. Maybe a FReeper appeared before him at the Supreme Court sometime?
Ol' Byron "Whizzer" White went on to become one hell of a USSC Justice
That is cool. Give that man a Heismann! Or is that Whizzer as a pro?
Here is the opener.
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