MATSUOKA ON ROOSEVELT AND NOMURA 303

has become a member of a team, and our attitude towards Japan
must be our attitude towards the team as a whole.

Meanwhile, something is getting rottener in the state of Denmark.
The " new structure " is not sitting well, and a growing dissatisfaction
is brewing. Even the War Minister himself announced the other
day that the new structure need not be interpreted as taking all the
joy out of life ; he apparently sees the way things are going. There
is much bickering and divided counsels, and much talk that Konoye,
who is hardly more than a figure-head, cannot last. The pendulum
in Japan is always swinging ; the moderates say that it will soon
swing back towards normal, but I fear not. I fear that it must swing
still farther towards the extreme, and that if Konoye falls, either
through resignation or through a coup d'etat, he is likely to be
succeeded by a military dictatorship, even by a sort of revival of the
shogunate.

As for American-Japanese relations, we now await the election
and what may happen after the election. The Japanese are waiting
too. For once, we have them guessing. They are wondering whether
they still occupy the driver's seat, and are beginning to doubt it.

ADMIRAL NOMURA APPOINTED JAPANESE
AMBASSADOR TO WASHINGTON

November 7, 1940

At the Soviet reception to-day to celebrate their national holiday,
Matsuoka told me that he was going to have another try at Admiral
Nomura to-night to persuade him to go to Washington as Ambassador,
and he thought he would be successful

November 8, 1940

Matsuoka telephoned me that he had been successful with Admiral
Nomura last night and that the Emperor had approved the appoint-
ment as Ambassador to Washington. I cabled Washington that
Nomura, as a man of high personal character who through long
association had my esteem and respect, and as a former Foreign
Minister was believed to be fundamentally friendly to the United
States, should be personally acceptable to the American Government.
Incidentally, Matsuoka has on more than one occasion said to
me that of course he himself was the ideal man to go to Washington
but that he couldn't be spared from Tokyo. So Nomura is clearly
second-string !

MATSUOKA ON ROOSEVELT AND NOMURA

November 10, 1940

A considerable part of my two-hour talk to-day with the Minister
for Foreign Affairs was taken up with my presentation of a number
of miscellaneous cases.