"My Ministry: should be regarded as a hard-working parent paying the debts of a prodigal son and also striving hard to meet medical expenses. for his sick wife" said My, Hamaguchi, the Premier, to the Minister of Railways, "who culled on him yesterday to see whether a further appropriation for railway building could be ob-(amed, "In such circumstances, there should be no waste and no luxuries and whoever asks such a father to give out money for any. thing but absolute necessities unfilial and false,"
The Premier never loses any opportunity of insisting that the country is passing through a period of financial difficulties and that it is up to the present Government. to do its best to straighten out the monetary tangles in which Japan is enmeshed. "It is very unfor~ tunate that we have to bear the Durden of the prodigal sons represented by former Ministries, but some one had to take this ime portant task in hand and we will dio ow best to leave a better balance sheet, when we have finished than we had when we took over office," he said. "I expect the Opposition to help us, otherwise the national crisis through" which Japan is passing cannot be sur 'A Japanese Sultan The only Japanese sultan in the world reached his homeland yesterday from his tiny kingdom, Ranson Island, about 60 miles west of Singapore. His name is Yeshimitsu Tatene, known in Singapore and that region as Sultan Tatene. Mow he came into his inheritance' reads like a fairy tale, In 1915, he was the head of the Singapore branch office of a Kobe steamship firm and while there he became acquainted with a German forestry expert who was connected with the Chinese Government. and arranged to join him in exporting railway ties from Ranson Island. When they were ready for business, the German suddenly died, but Tatene decided to carry on alone, and, as a first step, petitioned the Dutch East Indies Government to sell the island to his firm. The petition was granted and he started to develop the island. Tt then that the natives there called him "sultan," and the name stuck.
The biggest business he made, he told pressmen, was after the 1923 rthquake by shipping lumber to japan. His profits he put into the land, and the resultant prosperity has caused the natives to like him very much. He said that he concentrating on rubber and ¢o-counts. He also proposes to, found a Japanese colony on this island, which he says can easily support 150,000 persons, instead of the present paltry 800 or so. Sovercignty of the island, however, remains with Holland,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.