Word: seales
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Museum's far eastern collection, scholarly amateur Orientalist Matier stopped short before a piece of heavily carved jade, five inches square. Looking at its two imperial dragons, its authentic yellow tassels and its archaic characters, he was suddenly certain that he had found the long lost Imperial Seal of China's Hsien Feng...
...dissolute Emperor, who often complained of its excessive weight (10 Ibs.), used the Imperial Seal to authenticate all official documents. Like the engraving on currency, its elaborate background carving was designed to prevent counterfeit...
When the old Emperor died in 1862, so the story goes, his favorite concubine Yehonala sent a eunuch to the imperial death-chamber to steal the seal. Her rivals had won the dying Emperor's signature to papers granting them regency over the infant heir, but without the seal's imprint the documents were invalid. The ambitious Yehonala, better known as the Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi, seized the Manchu throne for herself. For 47 years she made and broke emperors at her will.* It was China's last glittering, decadent blaze of imperial glory...
...Premier and his ministers now held only shadow authority. And the Emperor seemed to be completely in the hands of the war lords. For the war lords hold the three key posts at court: Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal (Marquis Kido, military puppet); Grand Chamberlain to the Emperor (Admiral Hisanori Fujita); and Imperial Household Minister (former Finance Minister Ishiwata, long a military stooge). They decide who is to have access to the Emperor, what he shall do, what documents he shall approve by affixing his seal...
Lord Beaverbrook, Britain's Tory newspaper tycoon and Lord Privy Seal in Churchill's Cabinet, drew rude sounds from his ex-crony, ex-employe Michael Foot. Said ex-Beaver Boy Foot, who now wears the workingman's collar of London's Laborite Daily Herald: ''Lord Beaverbrook . . . believes in the empire. He's sincere on the subject to the point of incoherence. The only trouble is that the empire doesn't believe in Lord Beaverbrook. . . . He's the old maid of politics...