Almighty Matsuoka

God may be on the side of the heaviest battalions, but both sides always claim Him. Last week smooth, pudgy, pipe-smoking Foreign Minister Yosuke Matsuoka of Japan, who has never lacked for grandiloquence, issued a gloomy New Year's message which set a new high for God-claiming, seemed to assign the deity a position at the side of, and somewhat inferior to, Yosuke Matsuoka himself.

"It may sound unlucky," stated Minister Matsuoka, "but in my innermost heart I fear the coming year will prove a most tragic and unfortunate one for all mankind. I pray that God and all God-fearing people will cooperate with me in saving 1941 from being the first year of the decline and fall of modern civilization."

Patriotic Japanese might have wondered just where Foreign Minister Matsuoka left the Emperor of Japan, the "Son of Heaven."

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