The machinery for this greater unification and centralization has already been thrown into gear. The recently created Planning Board is mapping out an economic programme to cover the next five years which, it believes, will go far toward aking Japan impregnable from the Cual standpoints of necessary mat-enol supplies and of finance. The House of Peers is to be reformed.
ud many another reform will be advanced in the immediate future. Again, time must elapse before it is known how successful they may or may not be.
The Budget for the next fiscal year will measurably exceed that for ihe present one, end the proportionate share of the Defence Servi will be increased. This will ent sacrifices on the part of the people, and in their present mood they are quite prepared to make such so fices. It can be taken as assured that private finance and business will come more snd more under Government direction, control, domination—one may choose whichever ord best suits' one. In the fields of education and spiritual training (on which Japan places such emphasis) this same process will go on. in almost any phase of national life it will be seen in increasing measure zs the months roll by, whether the Konoye Ministry remains in power or s succeeded by another one not unlike it.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.