What Asiatic 'i Nationalism' May
pp. 7-8 · Read in the full issue
Mean to South Pacific Communities
AMONG all the dangerous international and mter-racial situations in the world to-day, there is none more complex and tense, and S ore 9 ha^ g , ed Wlth menace, than the Mahfvi® th ? Dl tch and East Indie. Tbo d ?n- oSlai l S) m . flfflL* 108, The thmg has sl S ni ficance for every man and woman who Pacific 11 the r6gionS ° f the SoUth mi,' „ .
Ihe East Indies provide an almost continuous land bridge between empty Australia and over-populated Asia where live 2,000 millions of people—half the human race.
In the 300 years in which the Dutch have occupied the rich archipelagoes they have established roads, railways cities, vast industries, oilfields and communal orderliness. If the Dutch now should be compelled to leave the East Indies, the Americans should vacate North America and the British should yield New Zealand to the Maoris.
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promptly stamp out the enemy inspired insurrection.
The so-called “Indonesian re publicans” there were encouraged to resist the Dutch by Japanese traitors in Java who were not promptly rounded up; by a British Socialist Government that developed a deep “Brown Brother” complex; by the Communist - led wharf - labourers Union in Australia, which virtually dictated the “foreign policy” of the Australian Socialist Government* and by the pernicious New Planners of the United Nations, who have now more or less hamstrung that once magnificent conception.
While two years were wasted in useless discussions and arguments in the East Indies, there were extra ordinary developments in Southern and Eastern Asia. Instead of follow ing up their defeat of Japan by a ruthless re-establishment of law and order in South and East Asia—and thus regaining the White prestige which had been sadly undermined by Japan’s 1941-42 victories—the Anglo- American Powers dithered and de ferred. United States did her part well enough in Japan; but the stupidities of the British Socialist Government in encouraging a wave of “nationalism” throughout South Asia, and the weakness of Washington in allowing the Chinese situation to develop until the nation fell like a
rotten pear into the greedy hands of Moscow, have set afoot a train of political disasters to which we now can see no end.
Following the psychological condi tion created throughout Asia by the Pacific war, the actions of our so called leaders of Western civilisation m granting independence to Burma!
India and Ceylon, and encouraging nationalist movements in the Indo nesian countries, represent something like lunacv. They may quite easily spell the beginning of the end of all European communities in the South Pacific, from Australia to French Oceania. And if we—the Europeans— go down under an Asiatic flood, there will be no future for the indigenous Pacific Islands races.
TOURING those two wasted years, the Dutch courageous and tenacious as always—slowly built up their strength, until in 1948 they had assembled in the East Indies a force big enough to allow them to act with out dependence upon the Socialist British or the leaderless Americans They had tried, quite honestly, over endless exasperating months, to make a fair compromise with the slippery little politicians of the “Indonesian republic”: but when that proved im possible, late in 1948 they brought their forces into action and chased the screeching “Republicans” into the Javanese jungles.
Whereupon every mischief-making New Planner in UNO, Britain and Australia came into vociferous action.
The British did not do much, how ever. By early 1948, the British
Socialists were beginning to recognise some of their more calamitous errors —to realise that their incredible international and anti - Imperial policies had thrown the whole world open to the tireless emissaries of Moscow —and they were trying to go into reverse. They yet may save the day, so far as Britain’s huge African Empire is concerned; but in Asia and Indonesia they surely are going to reap the whirlwind.
The Dutch, with calculated and implacable purpose, have gone ahead with their plans for the pacification of Java and the reduction of the East Indies to orderliness and good govern ment, on a sound Federal plan. They have not been diverted from that pur pose by the Moscow-inspired howling of the Asiatic States, led by Pakistan and Hindustan. The latter called a conference in Delhi, designed to place pressure upon the Dutch. The Western Powers very wisely stayed away—they saw, not only the undesir ableness of interfering further with Dutch plans, but the sinister purposes and the ugly shadows behind the Delhi Conference.
Every circus must have its clown; and Australia became the clown of the Delhi Conference. While Aus tralian representatives—youngsters of the New Planner type—took a really active nart in the Delhi Conference, under the direction of the pro-Asiatic Dr. Evatt, the minions of another Department, directed by Immigration Minister Calwell, were giving real substance to the White Australia Policy by hunting out of the Common wealth sundry Indonesians who had taken refuge there during the war— and thereby arousing some Indo nesian mobs in Singapore to furious demonstrations against Australia.
Australia’s foreign policy certainly has added to the gaiety of the nations—and, God knows, they need something to-day to make them laugh!
MEANWHILE, the Chinese Govern ment of Chiang Kai Shek has collapsed in utter chaos; and great Communist armies apparently equipped and directed from Moscow —are moving slowlv and irresistibly across the Ancient Empire. In a few months, they will have comnlete possession of China. Then, what?
Will they be Communists first and Chinese afterwards—or Chinese first, giving only lin service to the Com munist set-up? Onlv the decade still to come can give the answer. Upon that answer will depend much of the fate of the South Pacific. A com pletely Communist China most surely means a completelv Communist Asia; and can a Dutch-dominated East Indies, and an Australia manned by a mere million Europeans provide a sufficient barrier for the South Pacific against 2,000 millions of more or less hungry ' and race-conscious Asiatics?
Hindustan and Pakistan, the two States created out of the former British Empire of India, have re mained, reluctantly and suspiciously, within the British Commonwealth;
but that set-up is not likely to en dure. Sooner or later, India will be anti-British—and imposing an em barrassing barrier between the South Pacific and Europe. Already, to show goodwill towards the Ja/vanese “re public,” the Indian States have closed their airfields to the Dutch, and the Dutch planes, maintaining communi cations between Java and Holland, are compelled to fly across the Indian Ocean and pick up the African route to Etirope.
No thoughtful and well-informed resident of the South Pacific can af ford to ignore the significance of these events in Southern Asia and Indonesia. And they surely have more than an academic interest for the residents of Fiji.