The Wilmington morning star., 1940-08-04
Editorial Comments
From Other Angles
JAPAN'S PERSONAL TOUCH
N. Y. Herald-Tribune

When this current totalitarian bid for world
domination has been fought to a finish, when
the smoke has cleared and the day of reckon
ing has come, Japan is going to find herself in
a situation in which she will be extremely
sorry for herself. For the sins for which she
will then proceed to do penance will not be
primarily the big, bold sins against interna-
tional good faith which diplomats chalk up,
but which peoples %contrive to forgive each
other in time, but the small, mean, unforgiv-
able ones against human decency which peo-
pies will not let their diplomats forget.
Japan's sins in this latter category during
the last mine years have been no numerous and
varied that no one carries a complete cata-
logue of them in his mind, but every newspa-
per reader the world over will remember some
thing that has seemed too outrageous to 60
unatoned, whether it be a mass offense like
the saturation Of all conquered China with
morphine and heroin, the slapping of women
by s%entries, or the persecution of Individuals
a member of ones family, or even a Chi
nese servant perhaps - for purposes Of in
tirnidation. Among these latter cases, which
run into the thousands and will be remember
ed by their tens of thousands, Japan may be
surprised to find that the case of M. j. Cox,
Reuter- correspondent in Toxic, who was ar
rested last Saturday on an espionage charge
and subsequently died of injuries suffered on
the premises of the gendarmerie headquarters,
will call for an atonement that cannot be made
in yen. This is not only because the perennially
youthful, bland and kindly Jimmy Cox was
an estimable person with a vast number of
friends scattered throughout the world, but
because his death put a period to one con-
spicuous case in which Japan was resorting
to the contemplate device of personal perse-
cution as an instrument of policy.
BY way OF demonstrating, particularly to the
Chinese population, her determination to have
her own way in Shanghai's International Set
Element, Japan recently permitted her puppet,
Wang Ching-wei, to order the deportation of
six American publishers, an order which was
followed by acts of terrorism, to which the
Japanese Consul General said he could put an
end if Shanghai played the game with Wang.
Thus was Americas interest in the status quo
of the International Settlement challenged by
singing out individuals for intimidation. Then
was Mr.. Hallett Abend, of The New York
Times visited in his Hongkew living quarters
by a couple of Japanese %rufians who demand
ed his anti-Japanese manuscripts and tortured
him into surrendering the only manuscript on
the premises, which happened to be an in
complete biography of Gen. Ward, organizer
of the Ever-Victorious Army.
Then abruptly was the scene of action
transferred last Saturday to Japan, when nine
prominent business men and a news agency
correspondent of outstanding good repute, all
British, were arrested in various Japanese
cities by military police on espionage charges,
presumably as an Oriental reminde to Great
Britain that Japan was indifferent to her re-
sentiment, since she had proved herself impo-
tent to resent effectually the pressure brought
upon her to close the Burma Road, and pos
sibly also as evidence to Germany that Japan
was contributing her bit to ''the new world
order" At any rate Jimmy Cox is dead.
allegedly because he threw himself from a
second-story window while subject to exami-
nation by the gendarmerie, and his death con-
verts a nations effort to use personal persecu-
ton as an adjunct to diplomacy from a con-
temptible farce into a national crime against
international propriety. 8