Evening star., 1937-11-03

Our ordinarily imperturbable State
Department seldom has twittered with
so much excitement, bordering on in
dignation, as it generated last Monday,
while unofficial reports were trickling
in about British Foreign Secretary
Edens speech on the Far Eastern crisis
Early accounts that he had fixed re-
sponsibility for convening of the Brus-
sells Conference on this country almost
threatened to wreck the London WASH
ington entente cordiale. Secretary Hull's
staff recovered it's equilibrium as soon
as 1t developed that Eden only meant
to indicate that, after conference was
decided upon. the United States was
agreeable to the idea of holding it in
Belgium. Downing Street, which doesn't
often get off on the wrong diplomatic
foot, undoubtedly stumbled when the
foreign secretary limited at our bearing
the brunt of coercive action against
Japan, or even taking the initiative in
that direction. London must know the
deep-seated suspicion hereabouts that
Britain seeks to use" the United States
in the Sino-Japanese business. The
whole tone of the House of Commons
speech was such as to justify this theory.
1t is bound to stiffen American re-
sistance to any policy even remotely
involving Uncle Sans catspawing for
John Bull.
President Roosevelt returns to WASH
ington. ostensibly preoccupied in mat
tiers he's about to submit to Congress.
However deeply special session questions
engross him, F. D. r. is no less con-
cerned with the problems raised by the
slump In the securities market and the
business recession. No doubt any longer
exists that the administration has been
rocked to its foundations by these de-
velopments, and realizes the necessity
of tackling them with every power at
the Governments command, before
things drift from bad to worse. Political,
as we'll as economic, considerations enter
into executive anxiety. The New Deal
high command, with stormy congress
sional debate ahead on a variety of
counts, does not yearn to have the
situation aggravated by business crisis
suggestive OF another depression. AS
members of House and Senate drift into
town there are indications of subtle but
substantial administration pressure to
reassure business that all's we'll on the
Potomac. White House, Treasury Fed
eral Reserve Board, r. F. G. and the tax
committees of Congress are expected to
cooperate constructively to that end
during the days and weeks Just ahead.
X X
Even at this hour an American woman
who rates as a popular idol in Japan,
Mrs. Frances Hawks Cameron Burnett
of Washington, cherishes invincibly af-
fectionate memories of Nippon, dating
from her long residence there while her
husband was on official duty at Toxic.
She is famed throughout the island
empire as a poetess in the Japanese
language. Recalling that today, Novem-
ber 3, is the birthday anniversary of the
great Emperor eiji-1852-1912-Mrs
Burnett thinks the hour appropriate to
suggest an "interlude of truce" These
are her sentiments: "Above the roar of
battle, the clash of words, the din of
conflicting aims and claims. let us run
up, for a brief hour, white flag of
truce, while we dispel the smoke of
cannon with the searchlight of truth
concerning this nameless war on the
eastern front" Speaking las an Ameri-
can member of an old Colonial family,
who has spent the best years of a life
among the Japanese and has intimate
knowledge of their character-their
faults, as well as their virtues-and as a
descendant and ramesske of that first
historian of the narrative of Japan"
Mrs. Burnett would still declare In the