14	the assassin's shadow lies across japan
he is accredited might just as well pack up and go home, because his
bias is bound to make itself felt sooner or later and render impossible
the creation of a basis of mutual confidence upon which alone he can
accomplish constructive work. On the other hand, there is always the
danger of becoming too much imbued with the local atmosphere.
However, I know the minds of the President, the Secretary, and the
Department pretty well, and that should help to keep a straight course.
To begin with, I have a great deal of sympathy with Japan's legitimate
aspirations in Manchuria, but no sympathy at all with the illegitimate
way in which Japan has been carrying them out.
One can have little sympathy with the Twenty-one Demands,
formulated when the world was busy with the Great War, or with the
typically Prussian methods pursued in Manchuria and Shanghai since
September 18, 1931, in the face of the Kellogg Pact, the Nine-Power
Treaty, and the Covenant of the League of Nations. The purely Sino-
Japanese problem has so many complicated features—the interpreta-
tion of treaties, what treaties were valid, and who broke the valid
treaties first—that one can regard that phase of the situation only as a
technically insoluble puzzle* But fortunately our position is clear as
crystal :' we hold no brief for either side in the Sino-Japanese dispute ;
we hold a brief for the inviolability of the international peace treaties
and the Open Door, and on that issue we have carefully registered
our opinion and position before the world and will continue to do so
when necessary. So much by way of preface to what may come.
At the very start the pot begins to boil. A correspondent of the
Herald-Examiner met us at the station in Chicago with the Sunday-
evening paper of May 15 bearing flaring headlines : japanese premier
slain ; serious revolt ; palace in peril. This is the fourth import-
ant assassination. The military are simply taking the bit in their teeth
and running away with it, evidently with a Fascist regime in view.
But inspiteof the press reports, I can't believe the Emperor is threatened,
considering the supposedly universal veneration for the throne. There
must be something wrong there. If this latest demonstration of
terrorism—the murder of Premier Inukai and the exploding of bombs
in various public buildings—is the work of a group of fanatics, I wonder
whether such extremes may not possibly have a steadying effect on
the military themselves* We shall see in due course.
At the principal stops al^ng the way—Chicago, Omaha, and San
Francisco—photographers and correspondents met us and solicited
interviews, but naturally I have refused to say a word about Japan
or Japanese problems or the problems of my mission ; a few words
about Turkey have generally sufficed to send them away in a fiiendly
mood, which is much better than refusing to talk at all. We were
highly amused by one paper in Honolulu which said :
Ambassador Grew is a man of polish, combining an alert American
aggressiveness with the cautious reserve of the European. He is
tall, possesses an engaging smile, and be speak* with a drawl that