would not cut off aid to China as they preferred to keep the Japanese engaged in the war. On 3 November 1938, the Japanese Prime Minister, Prince Fumimaro Konoe, called a press conference in Tokyo where he proclaimed the "New Order in Asia" as he made a statement to the effect that Japan was now the hegemonic power in Asia and that China was in the Japanese sphere of influence. The American, British and French governments all issued statements rejecting the Japanese claim to the "New Order in Asia", which encouraged Koo. Koo was especially encouraged by the American statement, which he felt reflected "a hardening of the American attitude vis-á-vis Japan". Koo noted that the French were still permitting military supplies to be sent to China through French Indochina, and his thesis that helping China was a way of helping France by keeping the Japanese engaged was winning him friends in Paris. On 15 March 1939, Germany occupied the Czech part of Czecho-Slovakia, creating the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia. In response, a new Anglo-French policy of creating a "peace front" to deter Germany from further aggression was inaugurated. During the Danzig crisis, Koo supported the policy of the "peace front", believing that it would benefit China by preventing a war in Europe that would benefit Japan by distracting Anglo-French attention away from Asia. Koo tried to associate China with the "peace front", arguing that supporting China would benefit both Britain and France by keeping the Japanese engaged in China, which in turn would limit the possibility of the Japanese attacking the British and French colonies in Asia. Koo described Japan as a nation bent "on the conquest of China, subjection of Asia and finally domination of the world". Somewhat paradoxically, Koo found himself defending the "unequal treaties" that he was normally opposed as he argued to French leaders that the Japanese conquest of China would "make it impossible to safeguard legitimate western rights and interests, and that respect for China's sovereignty and maintenance of the open door". In June 1939, Koo discovered a senior Chinese diplomat, Huang Zheng, had been selling visas to Jewish refugees from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. Koo recorded the incident: "Apparently an agreement was signed between a travel agency and the visa office of the consulate-general to secure Chinese government passports for Jews who had fled by the hundreds, if not the thousands, from the Fascist-