Hanover Browsing
OUR hatred and fear of Russia has dominated our policy in China greatly to our detriment in the Far East. We backed the wrong horse too long and if our jingoists such as William Bullitt and Senator Styles Bridges and, for the most part, the 80th Congress had their way we would be backing it still, pouring in billions to support a hopelessly lost and corrupt government. Even now another fifty-six million is to go down the drain.
My own chosen authority for Far Eastern affairs, especially China, is Owen Lattimore and the book I have been long waiting for is out: The Situation in Asia (Atlantic-Little, Brown). I wish Congress were intelligent enough to understand it but many of those who used to be called the "illustrious dunderheads" are still unable to see around their own pork barrels. It should be memorized by them, and why Mr. Lattimore isn't an Assistant Secretary of State in charge of Far Eastern affairs is beyond me. For three years we have poured from two to four billion hard-earned taxpayers' dollars in imitating past Japanese policy in China (and the Japs are snickering up their Kimona sleeves at us right now) and the result is a situation of utter waste and uselessness. Mr. Lattimore absolves Mr. Marshall and blames our fiasco on the fire-breathers in the Both Congress and the tom-tom beating in the jingoistic sections of the press.
Let me quote a few gems from TheSituation in Asia: "The mixture of harsh oppression, incompetence, and scandalous corruption in the Kuomintang, rather than the wiles of Russian Communists or the eloquence of Chinese Communists, has been the chief recruiting agent of the Communist cause in China." (p. 101)
"Kuomintang China withered on the vine not from lack of American economic aid, but from misuse of it, partly through corruption and partly through sheer incompetence." (p. 151)
"The resulting government cannot be a 'Communist government.' It will have to be a coalition government, because in order to administer without chaos Communists must deal with many groups." (p. 152)
"In China devotion to nationalism and national interests is more powerful among more people than devotion to Marxism and Russian interests. Attempts by the Russians to make the Russian interest override the Chinese interest could easily bring into being a Chinese Titoism." (p. 163)
"China's top political and military leadership is not Moscow-trained." (p. 163)
There is a new hope in Asia for Asiatics and we can be on the realistic side of hope, with a rising peasant Communistic (coalition) government, or with the side of death and corruption (and defeat of our best interests) if we continue to back a reactionary government and a stupid policy advocated by some of our people in Washington who should, and probably do, know better.
I hope you will read Mr. Lattimore's book and judge for yourselves.
IN Mr. Marquand's Point of No Return (Little, Brown) the main character is a Dartmouth man brought up in Clyde, Massachusetts (read Newburyport). Perhaps Mr. Marquand should have come to Dartmouth. Gray is not the first Dartmouth man in Marquand's novels.
Charles Gray in the story is just another banker who is trying to make good. His success depends on his becoming a vicepresident (he does). The price he pays is a little steep for the rewards he obtains and Gray is sensitive enough to know this. He finally reaches a point of no return and the future is as bleak and shiny as a bright new station wagon. (Not that I wouldn t love to turn in my ten-year-old Ford and get one!)
Mr. Marquand bears a superficial resemblance to John Galsworthy. He has a marvellous knack in describing surface effects; all that he lacks is passion, depth, and body. Galsworthy sometimes lacked these qualities, too, though in lesser measure. I doubt if Mr. Marquand will ever equal The Forsyte Saga, and yet as a reporter and observer, and as a recorder of every silver ash tray in a $30,000 suburban interior, he is an absolute perfectionist. I have seen such exteriors. I have known such people. And yet.... something vital is lacking. Poor Charlie Gray. What price a new Buick?
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