The Communist conquest of China has been the occasion for an intense re-evaluation of our responsibilities—and opportunities—in all of Asia. Here, Sidney Hertzberg describes the “facts of life” of which the United States must be aware in that chaotic area, if it is to link East and West in the world struggle for democracy. Mr. Hertzberg has traveled widely in the Far East, most recently in 1948, when he spent five months in Asia as regional representative of the UN Appeal for Children, covering close to fifty thousand miles, in visits to India, Burma, Pakistan, Ceylon, Thailand, China, and the Philippines. He interviewed Mahatma Gandhi three days before his assassination and was present in India to witness the aftermath of Gandhi’s death. 

_____________

We have fallen flat on our faces in China. Our injured pride prompts us to ignore the rest of Asia and sulk or to lash about angrily until we fall again. But by now we recognize that both reactions are childish.

We are beginning to face the fact that unless Asia too becomes part of a democratic world order, America’s vast efforts in Europe may be nullified. This means evolving a long-term policy for Asia that may involve an even greater drain on our physical and intellectual resources than our commitments in Europe. Yet we know very little about Asia. We don’t quite respect Asians as equals. We will be less willing to make sacrifices for them than for Europeans and we will be more impatient for results. All this, considering the fact that Asia is a much more complex problem than Europe, makes a perfect background for disaster.

Presumably the objective of our policy in Asia—as elsewhere—is the strengthening of democratic forces. What democratic forces are there today in Asia, what are they like, what do they think of us, what are their current chances of success?

_____________

Any consideration of Asian democracy is futile without first disposing of the view that, with the victory of the Chinese Communists, it is too late to save Asia from Communism without war against the Soviet Union. Probably many more Americans believe this than are willing to admit it openly or advocate it immediately. There is no way of proving that it is not too late for measures short of war. There is much evidence that it is. Yet it may be taken as axiomatic that the long-term offensive against Communism in Asia—or anywhere else—requires the same broadly applicable strategy, whether the hour is midnight, five minutes before, or five minutes after. It is past midnight in China, yet American policy for China now cannot differ essentially from what it should be for all Asia—or from what it should have been before the clock struck. All we have to offer is support for democratic forces and that is all we ever had to offer. In any case, the alternative policy of war is at best a short-term, not a long-term, policy; at worst, especially considering the existence of atomic weapons, it is no policy at all.

Another preliminary to any discussion of Asia policy is some notion of how high a priority it deserves.

Today for the first time, the weight of Asia in the world can be proportional to the size of its population, the extent of its resources, and the creativeness of its intellectual leadership. It may even become the decisive weight in world affairs and it can fall into the democratic or the totalitarian side of the scale. The kind of impact resurgent Asia can have on the world is already demonstrated by two great events. The first is the Chinese revolution which, for internal and external reasons, foundered and now seeks fulfillment in Communism. The result is a momentous shift in the balance of world forces. The second is the Indian revolution, unique in history, which produced in Gandhi the most influential moral leader of modern times and also, perhaps by virtue of his moral leadership, the most effective political leader of the age. As subject India was the keystone of Pax Britannia, which in its day was a kind of world order, so free India can be the Asian anchorage of a democratic world order.

We must rid ourselves of the notion that Asia is beyond our understanding. For our purposes we need not linger over the spiritual mysteries of the East. Nationalism is winning in Asia because Asians want freedom from alien oppression. Communism is winning in China because the Chinese want an end of chaotic misery. There is nothing in these social phenomena that need baffle the Western mind. Inevitably the future society of revolutionary Asia will be greatly affected by the mores of the Asian peoples. But Asians do not prefer contemplation over rice, and they are quite capable of running steel mills. Their reactions to basic social conditions are essentially the same as ours and we can accept this fact as a guide to formulating a policy without waiting for the philosophers to achieve the concord of the Bible and the Bhagavad-Gita.

The cardinal fact about the people of Asia is their poverty. If Asian poverty did not upset the equilibrium of the world during the imperialist era of rule by oppression, it is now due to emerge as one of the most dynamic social facts of our times. For the Asians, who resented foreign rule above all other evils, are now free to resent poverty as the primary evil. This poverty plus the feeling of exhilaration flowing from triumphant nationalism is an explosive differing from the atom bomb only in that it is harder to control.

_____________

The most obvious and most frightening fact about the democratic forces in Asia

is that they are so few in contrast to Europe.

Democracy in Western Europe is part of the social fabric. Europeans are fighting for it without any need of persuasion from the United States. The democrats of Europe survived two wars in which their suffering was immeasurably greater than ours. Whole nations and populations of Europe are our allies. Democracy in Europe is based on a standard of living which the Soviet Union cannot yet match and it has great ideological and organizational resources to fall back on.

This is not so in Asia. There can be no democratic—or anti-democratic—nations or populations in Asia today. The characteristics of the Asian body politic are still unformed. The most that can be said is that, as a concomitant of Asia’s urge to national self-determination, there is a vague desire for individual self-determination. Asia’s sole experience with democracy in the modern sense is in its nationalist movements, an experience more useful for oppositionist agitation than for responsible nation-building.

But Asia does have great democratic leaders, and, among its educated minority, vigorous democratic organizations. The point to remember is that these leaders are a handful perched on a restless mass to whom the concept of democracy is virtually unknown. They enjoy wide popularity, but it is a popularity based on their effectiveness as nationalists and not as advocates of democracy. The late Subhas Chandra Bose, an Indian nationalist leader who went over to the Axis, is still a hero among Indians who also revere Jawaharlal Nehru, a man who vigorously opposed the fascists when they were abetted by his sometime jailer, Winston Churchill.

The goal in Asia must be to move quickly and peacefully from feudalism to a modern democratic way of life. This task involves increasing productivity fast enough to outstrip the accelerated increase in population, and spreading education fast enough to support the development of a democratic political system. In extent and complexity of coordination, the problem is a hard test of human ingenuity under the most favorable circumstances. But the debris of the imperialist era and the aftermath of nationalism will complicate it further.

Anti-imperialists of the East and West have sometimes left the impression that the victory of nationalism in Asia is a guarantee of democracy and well-being. It is not. It is a precondition of democracy. Asian nationalism is essentially a struggle against foreign domination. While it professes positive democratic ideals that are not to be found in, say, Arab nationalism, these are not basic to the central purpose of nationalism. The prime motivating force, the vital source of strength and cohesion, is anti-imperialism. As imperialism disappears, its cohesive effect disappears. The discordant elements that united under the anti-imperialist banner begin to emerge as independent and conflicting entities.

The social factors that in older nations are often an element of stability become in Asia serious threats to progress and to national integrity. Religion, for example, was the basis for creating Pakistan, and today the peaceful development of India and Pakistan is thwarted by the threat of war over Kashmir. Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam will hinder the development of secular states. Language, usually an effective agent of national unification, is a divisive factor in Asia. So complex are the language differences in India that a movement for re-drawing provinces along linguistic lines has strong support and English will be retained as an official language for at least fifteen years. Asia is overflowing with great cultural traditions, but their only current utility seems to be as supports for xenophobia and anti-industrialism.

Easily aroused ethnic loyalties can become stronger than national patriotism. The Karens who want Karenistan have plunged Burma into a disastrous civil war. The Sikhs who want Sikhistan would be delighted to see India fight Pakistan for it. And the Pathans who want Pathanistan would be glad to get it out of a war between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Nationalism, after it has achieved liberation from all foreign domination, can thus lead to senseless fragmentation.

At the same time, the growing populations of Asia’s under-developed countries create not only domestic problems, but also serious tensions among Asian nations. The Chinese have spilled over into Malaya, Thailand, Indonesia, Viet Nam, and the Philippines. The Indians have pressed down into Ceylon, Burma, and Malaya. These millions of migrants from the two giant nations of Asia have created in the smaller nations bitter resentment, conflict, and fear of domination. Since many of the Chinese and Indian migrants became the merchants and moneylenders of South Asia, they have earned the hatred of the impoverished. Indeed, detestation of the Chinese usurer often extends to all things Chinese and is not to be underestimated as a force against Chinese Communism.

What is left in the way of a broadly unifying force in Asia is the immemorial cohesive power of poverty. And in each country this is in conflict with the immemorial unity of the privileged, fighting to retain their privileges.

Democratic progress in Asia will have to overcome all these potentialities of chaos and, at every faltering step, there will be leaders who, to maintain power or to achieve it, will not hesitate to blame the West, scuttle democracy as an unnecessary handicap, and relapse into despotism.

_____________

If we are to deal successfully with the democratic forces of Asia, we must know what their main motivations are and what attitudes toward us arise out of them.

The special character of Asian democracy is formed by three closely-related impulses: (1) insistence on complete sovereignty, (2) opposition to racial discrimination, (3) economic collectivism.

Asia’s opposition to imperialism implies a simple, concrete, and inflexible aim: full national sovereignty—sovereignty without strings and not as a vague promise but as an unchangeable commitment for a definite date in the early future. The achievement of this aim is the unavoidable prerequisite to normal relations between East and West. Sovereignty in Asia can be both good and bad for democracy; denial of sovereignty can only be bad.

The British Labor government was the first to absorb this truth after the war and to act on it. By so doing, Britain, once the leading imperialist power, gave democracy its chance in Asia. The exodus from India, followed by the withdrawal from Burma and the granting of Dominion status to Ceylon, was the only kind of action that could have averted a catastrophic break between the West and an Asian nationalism that would no longer be denied. Had Britain tried to hold the Indian area by force, all Asia would have become convinced that its only hope against Western imperialism was an alliance with Communism. But the British withdrawals upset the neat Leninist predictions of imperialist conduct and demonstrated to Asian nationalists—much to their amazement—that a civilized accommodation with their former masters was not impossible. In Indonesia, the Dutch reluctantly followed the British example in India; but the French have lost their chance in Indo-China.

There is a school of thought which is anti-imperialist in good faith but impatient with the Asian insistence on sovereignty. After all, the argument runs, nationalism is outmoded; sovereignty must now be discarded, not hoarded; the great need of the moment is world government and world economic planning to meet the needs of all people. These are unexceptionable sentiments to which the democratic statesmen of Asia will readily agree. But in order to shed sovereignty they must first have it. They would probably deposit substantial portions of their sovereignty with international political and economic institutions if other nations were ready to do the same; but they are unwilling to leave any of it with their former rulers.

Another Western approach assures the Asian nationalist that he is quite justified in wanting full independence, but reminds him that he is not ready for it and needs the experience and protection of the old administrators to prepare him for the final break. It is true that political instability is almost a certainty following a grant of independence. It is also true that long-established economic relationships, even on unequal terms, cannot be broken without inviting an economic crisis. But, perhaps unfortunately, Asian nationalists can only regard this approach as an effort to forestall the full independence they see within their grasp. Moreover the superior experience in the political and economic ways of the world which propitiatory imperialists proffer does not impress colonial peoples. To them, the import of this experience lies only in its extraordinary agility in maintaining political and economic advantage for the metropolitan powers.

_____________

It is fashionable to offer Burma, the two-year-old republic now struggling through a complicated civil war, as an example of the dangers involved in granting independence “too quickly.” Burma is certainly experiencing more than the normal expectation of internal turmoil for new nations. But the lesson of Burma is that its troubles, in the end, could only have been worse, not easier, had the British remained. The internal tensions were there. An imperial power has no interest in easing them. It will try to control tensions that are serious enough to inconvenience its rule. But more often it encourages divisions in order to weaken the unity of a nationalist movement. In any case, whatever its intentions, an imperial power is simply unacceptable as a mediator of internal conflicts. It is a pariah. No group in a nation inflamed with nationalism can afford a favor from a foreign ruler. The British in Burma, by their presence, created a degree of temporary internal unity directed against themselves. Internal divisions were bound to reappear whenever they left, and the longer they remained the more explosive these divisions would have become.

The fact is that there is a point of diminishing returns for ruling nations in colonial areas. When it is reached, the soundest course—because it is the best hope of cooperation—is a clean break, as in India and Indonesia. The longer imperialist powers delay this unavoidable act, the less value it will have for themselves and for the cause of democracy. Full independence is not an arguable question with Asians. It is a psychological—almost a physical—necessity. It is the only catharsis that can eliminate the bitterness of the colonial era. No Asian democrat can demand less without committing political suicide.

Moreover, independence must be granted wholeheartedly, not in a spirit of bitter retreat, but in the conviction that the way to mutual survival has finally been found. And it must be supported by concrete plans for cooperation based on the new relationship of equals. This approach is necessary because the United States cannot be concerned simply with the avoidance of mutual throat-cutting between East and West; that is not enough for the victory of democracy.

All these considerations must guide Western policy in the remaining subject areas of Asia. What the West does in Viet Nam and Malaya, for example, will affect the fortunes of democracy not only in those two countries, but also in the rest of Asia, which will long retain its skepticism of Western sincerity in liquidating colonialism.

_____________

Asia’s sensitivity to the slightest sign of . imperialism calls for special attention from American policy-makers. Asia’s nationalists know that their victory over European imperialism is nearing completion. But the United States, which has assumed the role of protector of Western civilization and has given priority to “Western” in the geographical rather than the ideological sense, now appears to the Asian as the intimation of a new imperialism—less ruthless, certainly, but more insinuating. We can still dispel this fear, but we must be aware of our disabilities.

Since the United States was born out of a struggle against foreign domination, and since we have been only a minor—and occasionally remorseful—partner in Asian imperialism, we were sometimes regarded as a potential ally by Asian nationalists. During the last war Asians hoped that the Atlantic Charter, though provincially named, would be applied to them; they had no such expectations from Winston Churchill, but they thought Franklin D. Roosevelt might do it. In the areas American troops helped liberate from the Japanese, there was for a short time a pulse-quickening hope that a liberator from all imperialism had also arrived. But then, with indecent haste, we reinstalled the recreant Dutch and French in their former rule over one hundred million Indonesians and Indo-Chinese. In the end, Asia’s nationalists observed, all white men stick together; white imperialism is indivisible. The harm this public action has done America can be only partly overcome by diplomatic pressure on the Dutch and French to accommodate their rebellious colonials.

The United States should also avoid overestimating the value of its good deed in the Philippines. The inveterate Asian nationalist tends to write off the Filipino nationalist as teacher’s pet. Independence does not seem genuine without much more suffering than the Filipinos had to endure. Some Indians are still examining their sovereignty for flaws because the British suddenly withdrew without waiting for the final conflict,

Nor does American control of Japan help measurably. However humane America’s intentions toward the Japanese and the Pacific Islanders, the continuation of military rule in Japan and the Pacific Islands is to the Asian a threat of American domination. American militarization of Formosa would not have helped us in China, it would have frightened all South Asia, and it probably would have been highly unpopular with the Formosans, whose feelings in the matter remained, of course, uncanvassed. Even anti-Communist Asians are not mollified by our insistence that we are interested only in “containing” Communism. Capitalist imperialism still seems to many of them a more ponderable enemy than Communist imperialism. And they are worried that, in containing Communism, we will also “contain” their nationalist goals.

Americans may feel that they have given little ground for Asian fears of exploitative economic imperialism. But we are dealing with feelings that border on irrationality. Asian nationalists are sensitive to the point of phobia about a renewal of economic domination by foreign capital. Foreign enterprise without foreign domination is unknown to their experience. In the countries that are already independent there is not yet a full realization that they are after all free to regulate foreign investment exactly as they see fit. They do not quite trust and are even ignorant of the protective measures of limitation and control they can enforce while enjoying the benefits of foreign investment.

Of course Asia wants American capital investment. But the more they want it, the less they will like us. The Asian nationalist, to whom the foreigner for so long meant economic exploitation, political impotence, and social inferiority, cannot readily swallow his new sovereign pride and come hat in hand to an all-powerful Western capitalism. There is a tendency to regard the United States as a necessary evil wherever its aid is needed. In Asia, this tendency will become dangerous unless we help readily, without being begged and without attaching onerous conditions.

In sum, Asian democrats will judge us by their own anti-imperialist criteria and not by ours. We may assume that they will watch closely every act, word, and innuendo of ours for signs of imperialism. And we may be sure that what the democrats miss the Communists will find.

_____________

The resentment of Asia’s democrats against racial discrimination is so intense that it can easily become a kind of racial chauvinism directed against Westerners. It is, of course, an aspect of Asia’s opposition to imperialism, but it has also become a self-propelled phenomenon. It has sensitized Asians to discrimination against anybody anywhere. Though we might repeal all our immigration exclusion acts, treat all Asians with punctiliousness and abjure every vestige of economic imperialism, Asian democrats will still bitterly denounce our discrimination against Negroes.

This consciousness of racial discrimination provoked many Indians to believe that we used the atom bomb in Japan and not in Germany because much as we hated the Germans they were, after all, white men.

Furthermore, Asians feel that the rules are stacked against them in the distribution of international relief and that the United Nations itself is too Europe-oriented. There is solid ground for these feelings. Postwar international relief was distributed on the basis of highest priority to narrowly-defined “war-devastated areas” and not in accordance with absolute need. The Charter of the United Nations provides for equitable geographic distribution of the non-permanent seats on the Security Council; yet the gentlemen’s agreement under which these seats are allocated ignores the vast and populous sweep from Iran to the Philippines. India finally won a non-permanent seat on the Council, not as a representative of Asia, but as a British Commonwealth replacement for Canada.

America’s only defense in these circumstances is a vigorous and continuous fight against discrimination at home and abroad. While Asians will not condone discrimination, they are likely to give us credit for a sustained effort to get rid of it.

The new nations of Asia will not reject our economic aid because the United States has color bars. But it is a condition that poisons the atmosphere. It lowers the Asians’ resistance to every kind of propaganda against America and devalues democracy for them.

_____________

Economic collectivism, the third objective of Asian democracy, means at least state planning and the strategic participation of the state in economic enterprise. The state must designate the economic goals and it must find the capital, raw material, machinery, trained manpower, and markets. Only the state can coordinate the whole operation. Only the state can prepare the people to accept the new order. What is involved is more than economic rehabilitation and more than economic revolution; it is economic genesis.

In industry, South Asia starts with an almost clean slate. India has important domestically-owned steel mills and textile factories and an extensive though run-down railway system. The rest of the area is largely a simple economy on which has been superimposed modern machinery for the extraction of natural resources, with the necessary harbors to get raw material out, and airfields to give foreign managers mobility. Except in India, there are no free enterprisers with the capital and ability to develop the great new economic frontier which is Asia. Therefore it must be the state that, with foreign help, will plan and carry out industrial development.

The economy of every country is still basically agrarian. Large landholdings must be redistributed; uneconomic small holdings must be increased in size. Large-scale collective farming is not now contemplated. The immediate needs are relief for the peasants from usurious rent, interest and taxation, and an increase in land yields through improvements in agricultural technique that are simple and inexpensive. This cannot be done without state direction.

No one in Asia seriously disputes the paramount role of the state in economic development. The only open question is whether this will prevent the growth of democracy. The answer is largely in the hands of the socialists, the only political group in Asia dedicated to both democracy and economic collectivism and prepared to attack the economic misery of Asia with the vigor and equalitarianism required to overtake the Communist advance.

One might therefore look for valuable results from a relationship between the socialists of Asia and Europe. But practically, the ideological tie has thus far been disastrous.

The British socialists are a special case because their government left India promptly and has carried out a domestic program that Asian socialists can admire. This they were able to do because they were in full control. But the participation of socialists in the coalition governments of the Netherlands and France has almost destroyed the influence of socialists in the nationalist movements of Indonesia and Viet Nam. While they did press for abandonment of colonialism, the minority socialist parties were unable to prevent Dutch “police actions” in Indonesia and a costly, unavailing French war against the main body of Viet Namese nationalism. The result has been a lumping of European socialists with European imperialists.

Asia’s socialists, under the necessity of differentiating themselves from Europe’s socialists, can either go Communist or intensify their nationalism to a point where the conciliatory attitude toward the West which might normally be expected of them becomes impossible.

It is a misfortune of history that socialism in Europe must face postwar decay, bankruptcy, and the Communist threat—plus the disintegration of empire, all at the same time. But nationalism in Asia’ is an inexorable force that will not be sidetracked into sympathetic contemplation of the unfortunate historical conjuncture in which European socialists and other presumptive opponents of imperialism find themselves. Asian nationalism can triumph without Asian socialists. But Asian democracy will be lost without them.

The socialists of Asia harbor no great expectations from American capitalism and therefore are immune to keen disappointments. They find American pressure on Europe to end colonialism such an unlikely historical oddity that they suspect its motive is the substitution of American imperialism. Nevertheless, Asian socialists, along with conservative nationalists, will welcome American capital investment so long as it is on its good behavior. Americans will not be expected to like state planning; we will be expected to accept it. Any effort to use American capital as a weapon against state economic development will be resented as imperialist interference. The prevention of such a possibility is, for Asian nationalists, one of the strongest reasons for state control of the economy.

_____________

In the light of the foregoing, six broad observations about American policy seem justified.

1. If America really expects to be useful to democracy in Asia, we must reconcile ourselves to a long, hard pull. Certainly our policy must be carefully thought out and coordinated; it must also be applied with infinite patience. The European experience will not be too relevant. In Europe ERP dollars can be sprinkled on a soil long fertilized with democratic traditions and a democratic yield may justifiably be expected. In Asia, the very soil itself has to be created. Democracy cannot grow out of mass ignorance and disease. The basic stuff of any social form—physical survival and mental communication—must first be there. Only then does the possibility of modern democratic development arise. In Europe mistakes can be made without risking conclusive defeat. In Asia a few well-placed blunders can destroy democratic hopes for generations. An active and coherent policy in Asia is long overdue, yet we should not move until we know exactly what we want and are decided to stay with it to the end. There will be no quick victories in Asia—diplomatic, military, or economic.

2. Since the democratic spokesmen for Asia are ahead of their people, America must be completely realistic about the value of diplomatic agreements with them. It is not a question of distrusting them. Indeed, they are likely to be more circumspect about entering into pacts than Westerners, and at least as conscientious in carrying them out. There must, however, be a prudent realization that an Asian statesman’s signature on a document represents at best the commitment of a literate minority and passive acceptance born of ignorance from the rest of the population.

   There is certainly no evidence of broad popular support in Asia for a pro-Western orientation. Nehru’s agreement to keep India in the British Commonwealth aroused little enthusiasm even among his educated followers. For the present, Nehru can make such a commitment with safety. His people are indulgent because he is still the gallant hero of their nationalist victory. And the manner of the British withdrawal from India has taken some of the curse off a continuing British connection to which even practical advantage might not otherwise have reconciled the Indians. Nehru’s visit to the United States was a political triumph for him in India because he promised America nothing. America won esteem from the Indians because we liked Nehru anyway.

3. By the same token the United States must be even more scrupulous about military pacts. At present there is little interest in them among the democratic leaders of Asia. These men want friendly collaboration, not defensive alliances. It is the tyrants and weaklings who will offer their embraces. The strength of their desire for security guarantees will be in direct ratio to their reluctance to carry out domestic social reforms. And their ardor for social reforms is likely to decline as American arms arrive. We can safely assume that any regime seeking active American military support has already lost the support of its people and that our military intervention anywhere in Asia will raise the cry of imperialism.
4. America must learn to recognize the difference between a democratic force and a democratic facade. By giving aid to repressive regimes, we alienate ourselves from the people no matter how vigorous our protestations that we are acting in the name of freedom. The most generous program of economic aid can smooth the way for a Communist denouement if its benefits are not spread among the hungry. Indeed, the Communist success in China bears the stamp of American arms, American cotton, American food, American technical training, and even American education in democratic ideals that could never be translated into Chinese action. What America got for its trouble in China was Chiang Kai-Shek and his friends and relatives; what we lost was the people.

5. Anti-Communism is not enough. Nor is conventional “pro-democratic” propaganda enough. It is true that even comparatively well-informed Asians are extraordinarily ignorant and misinformed about the role in world affairs of both the Soviet Union and the United States during the past ten or fifteen years. It is true that there is still a good deal of pre-war anti-fascist popular front romanticism about the Communists as fighters for peace and freedom, that there is still ignorance about the consequences of the new Russian imperialism to national self-determination, that there is still a strong admiration for the “miracle” of Soviet industrial development which overlooks the human cost. But this condition is only partly explained by the quantity of Communist propaganda, and can be only partly eradicated by more propaganda from us.

   Since anti-imperialism, racial equality, and economic collectivism are the dominant passions in Asian nationalism, the attractions of Communism are great even for democratically-inclined nationalists. The Communist clichés about the West fit their past experience so well that they tend to suspect all new evidence.

   But beyond this are the industrious local Communists who work among, and are, peasants, industrial workers, students, and intellectuals. They are more than “propagandists”; they are organizers of chaos and revolution. Insofar as the party line allows it, they can flourish on immediate grievances. When they operate openly as Communists, they can still fall back on the lingering reputation of the Soviet Union as the motherland of class struggle. The activity of devoted, disciplined, native agitators exploiting the glory of the Bolshevik revolution in a revolutionary atmosphere is something the Department of State will find it hard to emulate. America does not have self-sacrificing local followers in close contact with the masses and our revolutionary tradition is somewhat musty. Assuming, of course, that a democratic policy fitting the revolutionary mood of Asia is evolved, America can reach Asians with it most effectively through their own democratic organizations—labor unions, political movements, women’s and students’ organizations, etc. This can best be done by parallel groups in the United States that establish active relations with such organizations in Asia, not only for the purpose of propaganda but also to show them how voluntary organizations in a democracy can operate for the public welfare. Official propaganda can help, but it has limitations.

6. Finally, we cannot consider the fact of Asia’s poverty as a threat to America’s physical security only. It is also a challenge to our moral pretensions. The Westerner thinks of himself as a universalist committed to protecting the dignity of the least of men. He tries to act on this ethical concept by practical measures ranging from philanthropy to revolution. But, on the whole, he has acted only in the West.

_____________

The Westerner who takes his moral values as well as his order blanks with him to Asia, and sees with his own eyes the bestial conditions under which millions of his fellow men live, must achieve some attitude toward it related to his moral system. If he simply accepts it or ignores it, he is hardly the man to save Asia for democracy.

Since most Americans have not seen Asia, its misery cannot be engraved on their consciences. As individuals we may be excused for helping others on the basis of tribalism. But the aid that we as a nation can give the world should be distributed with some relation to the extent and intensity of the need. As a nation founded on humane, universalist ethical concepts and engaged in an effort to save nothing less than the whole world, how can we justify concentration on Europe? Whatever sophisticated strategic considerations enter into the question of priorities in America’s foreign policy, simple humanitarianism must also be involved. Otherwise we do violence to the moral code that supports our claim to superiority over the totalitarians. And we may also do violence to our cold-blooded strategy since a simple humanitarianism may, in the end, be the only intelligible way in which we can demonstrate the merit of democracy to illiterate people with whom the surest communication is, as Gandhi demonstrated, through the heart.

_____________