JAPANESE CRISIS.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XLV, Issue 12010, 12 March 1920, Page 8

JAPANESE CRISIS.

United Press Association— By Electrie Telegraph—Copyright. Received March 12, noon Tokyo, March 7 The crisis is the longest sustained popular agitation in Japan’s constitutional history. There are widely organised demonstrations, many attacks on official residences, and ferocious peiaonai attacks. The Premier pronounces that the agitations’ aro not representative or national opinion. Government is stubbornly resisting the elaborate efforts of innumerable societies, composed of students, middle classes, and professic al agitators. The strike of Government steel workers involves a heavy national loss and 80,000 men are idle. There is much sabotage and social unrest. , The dissolution ofjthe Diet terminated with dramatic suddenness rnany "mouths of intense agitation. Baron Hara, amid an uproarious debate, challenged the validity of the demand for universal suffrage, and urged submission of tbe question to the people’s judgment. Then he flourished the Imperial Rescript ordering the dissolution, which produced the effect of a bombshell. It was a typically Haresqne example of the adroit avoidance of a impasse. Police control of the extraordinary scene of excitement outside the Diet proved that Government were, well prepared for eventualities.