JAPANESE DIET

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 95, 21 March 1938, Page 13

JAPANESE DIET

MEMBERS THREATENED. LONDON, Feb. 27. Four lumbers of the Japanese Diet have appealed to the Minister for the Interior (Admiral Suetsugu) to prevent the spread of inflammatory posters threatening members of the Diet who are opposing the Mobilisation Bill. Admiral Suetsugu promised to do his best. Apparently, the significance of the Monilisation Bill is only beginning to emerge. Its reference to a committee of the Diet has obviously relieved the Government of an embarrassing situation, inasmuch as it was unable to defend or explain the session’s most important measure. According to the Tokio correspondent of the Times, it was an unedifying exhibition which could be cited as an example of the deterioration of Parliamentary politics under a succession of bureaucratic Governments.

The Tokio correspondent of the Daily Telegraph states that enforcemetnt of the Mobilisation Bill, which would place Japan among the totalitarian nations, has almost created a Cabinet crisis, and that opposition to the Bill will certainly be revived in committee of the Diet to an extent possibly compelling the Government to yield to the wishes of party leaders. Not only the Diet opposes the Bill, but the Press and the public are also hostile to it, he declares, while, in the House of Peers, the Government is charged with following German and Italian examples, regardless of the Constitution -or of Parliament.

The Minister for War (General Sugiyama), said in the Diet that the Mobilisation Act was at present sufficient, but that the National Mobilisation Bill was intended as a safeguard in an emergency when Japan’s fate might be at stake. It could not be predicted, he said, whether it would be invoked in connection with the Chinese conflict.

Admiral Suetsugu declared that it was the intention to control speech anil Press whenever this was necessary. The Bill was then sent to a committee.

The Asahi Shimbun at Tokio foreshadows the creation of a temporary Commodity Adjustment Bureau to deal with the urgent problem of planning the demand and supply of commodities, chiefly with a view to the greater production of munitions and with industrial self-sufficiency.