IN MANCHUKUO

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 59, 7 September 1937, Page 20

IN MANCHUKUO

THE ARMY "REFORMS"

JAPANESE EXPERIMENTS

I The "reform" of the Government of Manchukuo by whtch that new State enters "the second phase of its development" marks, in essence the further working-out of an experiment in the totalitarian form of government by a powerful branch of the Japanese army, an experiment which a substantial section of the army wishes to repeat in Japan itself, says the Japan correspondent of the "Manchester Guardian." The "reforms" recently introduced at Hsinking, with the accompanying shifts in high Government personnel there, merely serve to simplify the channels through which real power as opposed to nominal power is concentrated in the heads of the JCwantung army, Japan's military force permanently stationed in that country. Ever since the creation of this State this real power has lain with the Japanese military actually in the country. Because Tokio proclaimed that Manchukuo was an independent nation, brought into life by the spontaneous demand of the thirty-odd million Chinese resident in Manchuria, it has been necessary to preserve carefully the formal frontal appearance that the Chinese were governing themselves under their Emperor Kang Teh. In consequence Chinese were made Ministers of State in the Cabinet, but each Chinese Minister had a Japanese Vict-Minister at his elbow who was the real power behind him. In addition, there was created a General Affairs Board, and neither Cabinet nor any other organ of State could act except with its approval. POLICY-FOKMING BODY. This board had been, and is, the policy-forming body of Manchukuo, but behind the board there is a still more powerful organisation which the board acknowledges as its master—the Kwantung'army. The "reforms" abolish the Cabinet in effect and render the Privy Council harmless. The Premier is to be the sole Minister of State, and all other Ministers are reduced to departmental heads, charged with purely administrative and no executive duties. The Privy Council can no longer submit its opinions direct to the Throne, but must pass them through the medium of the Premier. An auditing board is created which is not under tha Premier's supervision but which, nevertheless, must submit its reports through his office also. All this, of course, is close to the structure of the totalitarian State as it exists in Germany and Italy with the Premier as the dictator. But the Premier of Manchukuo is far indeed from occupying a position corresponding to that of Herr Hitler or Signor j Mussolini. No'matter what the formal powers of his office may be, he is subject utterly to' the dictates of the General Affairs Board and that board s superior, the General Staff of the Kwantung army. In an economic way corresponding progress is being made towards a military totalitarian State. What are termed "national industries" are passing into the-hands of the Government at the dictates of the Kwantung army, being financed largely by the Japanese-owned South Manchuria Railway and farmed out to private enterprise subject to all sorts of Government restrictions. INDEPENDENT ARMY. In the face of actual facts, assertions about Manchukuo's "independence" are meaningless. There is an "independence" in Manchukuo, however and that is the independence of the Japanese Kwantung army. It and its General Staff are, when they desire quite as independent of Tokxo as of Nanking, a fact which time and again causes anxiety to the Japanese Government and War Office Most of the officers and men of the Kwantung army are sincere but none too intelligent idealists, and they are determined to make of Manchukuo the ideal State as they conceive it. Not since Napoleon's day has an army been given so magnificent a plaything, so marvellous an experimental station, as the Kwantung army possesses in the jwnnire of Manchukuo. Led by its General Staff, this army is steadily going forward with its experiment in totalitarian government and State Socialism under military control. There can be no doubt that, whether or not the experiment proves successful, they and their colleagues in the Empire at home will seek to introduce the same system into Japan itself. The danger is that the army will not patiently wait for success or failure but will strive to make Japan over anew at almost any moment.