Among Melanesian stone implements there is a group of axes, . of rather limited distribution, that differ fundamentally from all the other Melanesian axes. They are relatively flat; some have a rectangular outline; others are pointed at the upper end and have a rounded, in some cases broad, cutting edge. At about the upper third or the middle, a shallow groove runs around these axes. This leads to the protrusion of slight swellings of the sides or of actual trunnions, some of them being 2 cm long, 2 cm broad and 1 cm high. These axes have been recorded in Bougainville, Buka, Nissan, Carteret, the Shortland Islands, northern Choiseul, Vella Lavella, and Guadalcanal, as well as on the French Islands, Cape Willaumez, and the South Cape of New Britain (see illustration).

In a political tradition conditioned to stress personal aspects of government administration rather than rule of law, the scope and the nature of executive power assume great significance. Government under men rather than government under law presumes intentional absence of clearly defined areas of administrative discretion and equally intentional haziness surrounding controllability of administrative officials by the citizenry.

From a purely objective point of view, the study of the political novel in any period of history is useful because of the inherent value of that particular type of novel – portrayal of the political ideology of its time and presentation of its authors' political opinions. This is especially true with reference to the political novel in Japan's Meiji era. The Restoration had shifted the balance of power; Western influence was strong; Japan was emerging from her self-imposed seclusion. In the first flush of her breakaway from previous restraints – and before new ones could be devised and stringently enforced – Japan's political thought as expressed in the literary vehicle specifically designed for it presents perhaps a truer index of the feelings of the literate classes than does the governmental mechanism which was evolved at that time, inasmuch as one of the avowed purposes of a novel is to appeal to its audience, a point not included in Japanese governmental tradition. This being the general trend in the Far East, the most important medium – even the only medium – through which the articulate could register their objections and their own thoughts has been literature. Certainly one of the most important causes for the Western belief that the Oriental is phlegmatic and mysterious is that so little study has been made of his writings, the only possible channel for his outpourings.

A. The peninsula before the conquests by Funan. The first known contact of the Khmer Empire or any of its antecedents with what is now called the Malay Peninsula1 occurred when Fan Shih-man of Funan conquered a considerable portion of that peninsula early in the third century; although it is believed, from the terms in which the account of his voyage are expressed, that Hun-t'ien, or Hun-shen (Kaundinya), who conquered the native queen, Liu-yeh (Willow Leaf), and founded the kingdom of Funan about the middle of the first century, came from an Indian settlement on the eastern side of that peninsula.

On May 18, 1948, the Archivist of the United States accessioned from the Foreign Documents Branch of the Central Intelligence Agency a collection of over 30,000 volumes of official records which had been seized in Japan by the United States government. Known as the “World War II collection of seized enemy records: Japan,” these volumes now form part of record group 242 and occupy some 3,450 cubic feet of space in the War Records Division of the National Archives. Being in good condition and unrestricted, they form basic sources for any study of modern Japanese military history. They are one of the largest bodies of primary Japanese materials on any subject available in the United States and can be expected to shed light also on various phases of Japan's modern social, economic, political, and diplomatic development.