HERE IS THE TRUTH ABOUT THE PATRIOTIC MURDER SOCIETIES, THE ARMY GANGSTERS, THE ARMY’S IDEA OF JAPAN’S DESTINY, AND THE STRANGE ROLE OF THE EMPEROR.

In Japan the army possesses a kind of autonomy which immunizes it from control by any other agency. Long ago, Mr. Byas saw that the intoxication of this immunity would lead to war, and so he spent many years ferreting out from the secretive Japanese how the militarists gained their fantastic power.

His book therefore is to Japan what Rauschning’s Revolution of Nihilism was to Germany. Starting from the grass-roots of Japanese politics, it moves steadily toward the amazing disclosure of principles. At bottom, the Japanese Army is closely allied with gangsterism. The so-called patriotic societies which do its dirty work are nothing more than leagues of murderers, blackmailers, and thieves. Byas shows how these terrorists made contact years ago with certain groups of appreciative younger officers, and how consequently almost every civilian leader who curbed the army’s power was assassinated.

Mr. Byas then asks what the basic program and philosophy of such a power group can be; and shows that it is aggression abroad and reaction at home. Japan was to become a war machine. 80% of its product was to go to the army, and the people were to live on the balance. The efficient planning and centralization of Marxism were to be used, but stripped of the hated component of democracy. Japan, like Germany, believes that it is a nation with a destiny, and that war pays. The furious Japanese egomania is centered in the Emperor and the notion of his divine descent. Mr. Byas therefore devotes several chapters to the hocus-pocus that surrounds this personage. He ends with a powerful and clear-headed discussion about the future.