Trapped?

Foreign Minister Koki Hirota, addressing the Imperial Diet at Tokyo last week, declared: "Whenever and wherever Chiang Kai-shek [Chinese Generalissimo and Man of 1937] falls into the hands of our forces he will be beheaded!"

Ordinarily Mr. Hirota works overtime upholding such fine distinctions as the diplomatic nicety that Japan and China today are still officially at peace. That even the Foreign Office chief should last week threaten the head of a "friendly nation" with death showed how desperately exasperated many Japanese are becoming by China's continued resistance, increasingly exhausting to the Empire.

Japanese forces in China were not only still advancing in the "Hindenburg Line" sector last week, but had so nearly encircled Chinese forces in southwest Shansi numbering about 100,000, that dispatches called them "trapped," said another major butchery impended.

Japanese G. H. Q. at Shanghai admitted Chinese guerilla forces had retaken several towns just north of Nanking. This week in Tokyo a deputy asked Premier Prince Konoye if Japan is reasonably sure to have won the war before 1940, when she is to be host to the Olympics. "I am unable to say definitely," hedged the Premier. "We must plan for the worst. The immediate problem is to deliver a final blow to China and end the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek."

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