Army's Threat of General Election Now Boomeran; Dare Not Go to the. People Front & Srectat, Commsroxoner Tokyo, Feb, 1 Dissolution of the House of Representatives and the Constitutionally necessary General Election within 20 days has ceased to be the effective weapon held by the Japanese War Ofice over the heads of the political parties. This leaves the Army almost totally disarmed In what is becoming, an increasingly unequal battle between the militarists and their dreams of a modernized Shogunate against the party men, the liberals the capitalists "and now, beyond question, the great mass of the people of the nation.
When the then War Minister, Count Hisalchi Terauchi, stormed, red of face, out of the Lower Cham= ber in the late afternoon of January 21 afler he and the Army had been unmercifully flayed by Mr. Kuni mats Hamada of the Seiyukai, his first demand was the summoning of an extraordinary Cabinet meeting, and his frst demand when the Cab-Inet assembled was that the Diet be dissolved" and a General Election called. Premier Hirota and most other members of the Government held out against him, knowing full well the trend of pubile opinion and that a General Election would bring Aisgracetul defeat to the Government and the Army. They took the alternative course, over Count Teraucht's violent protest, of wholesale resigna-
The War OMee blocked Gen. Kazunarl Ugaki, moderate Iberal, believer in party government and a retired Army officer, from forming the succeeding Minisiry, and a com= promise was finally struck by the selection of another moderate retired Armiy officer, Gen. Senjuro Hayashi, the next Premier. General Hayashi patched together a curious Cabinet in which the only outstanding figures. are" the Minister of Finance, Mr. Toyotaro Yuki, and the Minister of the Navy, Vice-Admiral Mitsumasa Yonai, and the Diet was allowed to reconvene after having been prorogued for the record time more than three weeks.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.