"True Intentions"

Hirohito, myopic Emperor, last week convened with awful solemnity the first Imperial Council held in Japan since 1914. The Conference met, not for the purpose of deciding anything or advising His Imperial Majesty, merely to have the Son of Heaven give his august sanction to new policies previously agreed upon. For let the Emperor, descendant of the Sun Goddess and himself godly in Japanese eyes, speak in Imperial Conference, and impious is any Japanese, high or low, who dissents.

At the Palace in Tokyo, in a hall adorned with priceless golden screens and Japan's famed wall painting The Thousand Sparrows, the Imperial Council met. His Majesty bolt upright, his generals and admirals in full regalia, his civilian Cabinet in frock coats "Bismarck style," all sat before tables draped with costly old brocade. So much and no more was the authentic news of that fateful meeting that any foreign correspondent in Tokyo was able to obtain. The proceedings were veiled in almost religious secrecy. The event which immediately followed it could not however be concealed:

Imperial Headquarters announced that His Japanese Majesty's Government had withdrawn its recognition of the Chinese Government. This meant that the Japanese Ambassador would quit China, and since the severance of diplomatic connections is often (although not invariably) the prelude to a declaration of war, it suggested that the purpose of the Imperial Council meeting was to sanction a War, open and declared.

If such was the Conference's purpose President Roosevelt will soon be invited to apply the U. S. Neutrality Act. More important from the Japanese standpoint, it would permit Japan to carry her unofficial blockade of the Chinese Coast to the point of searching neutral ships for contraband.

Whether or not this was the Big Secret of the Imperial Conference, Imperial Headquarters proceeded to proclaim Japan's "immutable policy" to "eradicate Chinese Nationalism" so that the Chinese will no longer hate Japan's imperialistic aims in Asia. To this it added. "Japan's responsibility for peace in East Asia is even heavier than before. . . . The true intention of Japan . . ." is to continue "the policy adopted by the Japanese Government of respecting the territorial integrity and sovereignty of China as well as the rights and interests of other powers in China."

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