Food Crisis in Puerto Rico Undermines Tugwell Administration
MATCHA, JACK
Food Crisis in Puerto Rico Undermines Tugwell Administration U. S. Reactionaries Aid Ouster Campaign By JACK MATCHA CAN JUAN, Puerto Rieq (Passed by th'^HSL^^t •J- Governor Rexford Guy Tugwell...
...In other words, what we have are distinct types of war which are as different from each other as are their corresponding economic orders...
...Moreover, it must exist not just among the leaders of the Allies...
...The arguments against him, in a nutshell, as his opponents (parties other^han the Populares, El Mundo and the World-Journal) express tnem, are: 1—That Tugwell is bent on achieving an advanced New Deal program despite the fact that people are out of work and need food pressingly: 2—That Tugwell realizes this is his last chance as a public official, and that he must stick it out or throw in the towel...
...and Luis Munoz Marin is going there to speak for the Populares...
...Insofar as war is a form of non-economic coercion, it was in th* very nature of capitalism to limit its application...
...This is grim fact...
...What is the social, economic and political nature of World War II...
...The author of the resolution, Cesar De Paepe, was a follower of Proudhon who agreed with the views expressed by the latter in his "War and Peace" that only the "re-establishment of the economic equilibrium" will put an end to all wars...
...For what is needed is some method of analysis, some seriousness about social theory, and a precision about logical and historical questions which is all too rare...
...To be 'sure, the desire on the part of capitalism to avoid territorial change by resorting to war, held true only for the con-tries of Europe and America...
...There has been far too much complacency about the situation in China...
...The condition of the Polish Jew is merely a glaring example of what is gradually happening—and will happen to a greater degree in the future—to all men and women, regardless of race or creed, in the lands occupied by the Nazis...
...All parties see a bitter fight whether Tugwell goes or stays, and many think he will get the strong support of Ickes and possibly the White House...
...A recent announcement by the State Department indicated that we were at last preparing to abandon our extraterritorial privileges in China...
...And the political side—the incessant "peace propaganda" by the Chinese traitors, Wang Ching-wei's agents and associates in ever-widening areas—is becoming of ever greater importance in the situation...
...Indeed, if we analyse the significance of these partial limitations, we will come to a elosuror understanding of the fundamental nature of "capitalist'' wars...
...THE food crisis has not abated greatly in the last few days and most Puerto Ricans are worried about eating regularly more than whether the New Deal is at stake in the pending Senate inquiries...
...Basically, however, the old formulations of classical Marxism hold true also for oar period...
...And to what extent do the theories of the Marxian, labor and socialist movements throw new light on the big, black headlines of our day...
...They have "frozen" our privileges "for the duration," with the calm expectation that we will ultimately make a "deal" on the basis of our retaining them, IN regard to Hongkong, the situation is similarly clear...
...The feeling predominant down here is that he will probably either resign or be removed from office within two months The Senate hearings are expected to bring on a rash of anti-Tugwell manifestos that will end with Tugwell's downfall • The feeling on the Tugwell situation is not 'all against him The Governor still has support of the Legislature by dint of his long backing of the majprityjparty, the Populares...
...Japanese and Western nations are agreed...
...And it is also dangerous to ignore the fact that our own Allied governments are involved in a political conflict within China itself, and that our failure to renounce our special privileges in China is clear evidence of our determination to hang on to them...
...Classical Marxism sought an explanation for the causes of war not in the peculiarities of a specific economic order— not in what Marx termed the economic base or struc-ture of society—but in the political and social superstructures rising upon it- In its general analysis of the origin of war, Marxism limited itself to establishing in a general way the causal relation between war %id the class struggle which determines, to a certain extent, the economic and political life of a given country...
...What is the relation between the modem capitalist system and war...
...Moreover, the Populares chief, Luis MunoxFMarin, also President of the Senate left here for Washington recently and will take up a stron* defense for Tugwell...
...Were there enough simpletons to believe him, Hitler would now, too, spout revolutionary phrases...
...The joke of the week here is that if anyone else leaves Puerto Rico for Washington, the grave food problem may be solved automatically...
...Hitherto, however, few attempts have been made to define exactly just what is meant by the term "capitalist war," although many Socialists speak of it as something sinister and some even use it as a basis for political action...
...it completely separated economics from politics while establishing the supremacy of the former...
...But who would even dare to compare the past with the present...
...Is it true that the present conflict is what is classically described as a "capitalist-imperialist" war...
...But conditions are still very bad, especially in the island's interior...
...Now that the "Burma Road" is cut, there is crisis...
...One of the jokes making the rounds in San Juan is that to Puerto Ricans right now the first front is rice (eaten by all families almost *daily when they can get it) and that the second front is cornflour...
...This belief is only a half-truth...
...We can still supply "funds...
...To give an adequate answer to these questions, one must first of all establish a number of general theoretical premises...
...But they hare not turned them over to Nanking, nor permitted any Chinese encroachment on our privileges...
...Political Warfare in China—Puppet Gov't Cites U.S...
...Those acquainted with the history of Socialism will have no doubt on this point, for the concept of war as a specific product of capitalism was first introduced into Socialist literature not by Marx but by Proudhon...
...Although no details of the "economic agreement" were given, Puerto Ricans know that food shortages on the French possession are just as bad as in Puerto Rico...
...For the Japanese have not abolished our imperial privileges, even in the cities and territories occupied by them...
...Conservative-reaction fight being clarried on far away up in Washington, while the poor Puerto Ricans stand around waiting for somebody to toss them a bag orf rice...
...In the past, they spoke a great deal about the subjugation of Germany, about the "imperialist" designs of their opponents...
...The basic agreement I am thinking of must be established among the allied peoples themselves...
...War-planes will not re-occupy Japanese-controlled territories...
...Jaime Benitez, the'rector of the University of Puerto Rico, and several other important Puerto Rican public officials are either in or en route to Washington, and the impression here is that with such a task force up in the States, something may be done about the people who are starving in various parts of the island...
...In addition, the Governor and his Coordinator of Information, John Lear, are being sued for libel in two suits by the Farmers' Association of Puerto Rico (charged by Lear with occupying a government building for two months without paying rent...
...Every pleasant ambiguity by our State Department, every postponement of justice to China, every British statement that they intend to recover Hongkong and are emphatically not going to liquidate the British Empire, is grist for the propaganda mills of Wang Ching-wei and his "peace movement," and another blow at General Chiang Kai-shek and his government at Chungking...
...Tugwell has alienated a majority of the continental Americans here by his impolitic method of dealing with former Attorney-General George A. Malcolm...
...And the difference does not lie mainly in the quantity of repressive measures—not in the number of the dead alone...
...Classical Marxism, for instance, never regarded the capitalist economic system as the direct cause of war...
...CLASSICAL capitalism always viewed society dual-istically...
...Only the other day the Farmers' Association threatened to strike en masse unless Tugwell left, and the story was given good play...
...Indeed, the reply you would receive from the Polish Jew you would also get from 'the Polish professor, from the Russian peasant or from the Serbian priest—who are faced daily with the unprecedented total'terrorism of Hitler...
...This expansion is not merely military but political...
...Special Privileges as Imperialism7 in Propaganda Against Chiang By HARRY PAXTON HOWARD "A WAR won without a purpose is a war won without a victory...
...It is as such, far bftetonca, that we de*cr;be a war of the type of 1914-1918...
...And even in this situation, a responsible spokesman of the British government has specifically stated that Britain nitondoTto recover Hongkong...
...The jointly^wned English World-Journal and Spanish El Mundo, Which have a circulation between them of more than 7o,000, are playing up the suits and the Washington hearings...
...But if the Japanese are able in the meantime to consolidate and strengthen their bold upon the main coastal and commercial areas of China, wanes their Chinese "puppets" and associates spread steadily their propaganda for "peace" and their sabred of "whit* imperialism" deeper and deeper into th* interior, we cannot possibly win this war...
...the resident commissioner in the capital, Bolivar Pagan...
...I have no doubt that he would regard the question itself as a mockery...
...There is little doubt that the strategy of the present war is so sharply different from the strategy of the war of 1914-1918—the blitzkrieg from trench warfare—bora use it originated in radically different economic order...
...The term "capitalist" (or "imperialist") war has a definite historic meaning...
...Unlike Proudhon, Marx never idealized pre-capitalist economic development and unlike the former did not attribute the cause of war to the "lack of economic equilibrium" which is the result of a type of economic competition characteristic of the capitalist method of production...
...They have merely SUSPENDED- them "for the duration...
...To get a clear and positive answer to this question, I believe, one need only ask any Jewish worker in Warsaw who lived through the occupation of that city by the Germans in 1914-1918, and who also has the misfortune to exist today Behind the impenetrable walls of the Warsaw ghetto...
...We have not abandoned it—even in the present terrible crisis in that unhappy country...
...They sought to appear as the true opponents of imperialism and even of capitalism...
...Moreover, she had from the very first day of the rise of Hitlerism a definite conception of the coming war as a total one (the various concrete phases of the war may not have been conceived by the Hitlerites at once but only gradually), for the establishment of a "new order...
...Wei's courtesy was touched with irony...
...THE basic elements of the present war, then, are in * principle different from those of wars which we refer to as "capitalist...
...Indeed, the scope and objective of a specific war are determined and limited by the nature of the specific economic order...
...Those, to P* sapsv are efcfldreu of their era, bat ¦Whilst their caSsMnoa or active trill not a single war would take place...
...We have not yet forgotten the numerous gallows erected by the Germans in the cities and villages of the Ukraine...
...The Japanese military have arrested—and sometimes most brutally treated—Americans and others whom they "wanted...
...Not merely to exercise control, but to organise, direct and to dominate totally the productive process in the invaded countries is the goal of Hitlerism...
...Correspondingly, the nature of class relations in modem society (the class struggle) has become more complex...
...General Chiang Kai-shek and other Chinese can maintain a "Free China" government somewhere in the deep interior so long a* we are prepared to finance them and fly some pianos in from time to time...
...Yet it is important that wo realize—if we want to orientate ourselves In the boos plex problems of present-day reality—that it was characteristic of capitalism to strive to place a maximum of limitation upon the evils of war...
...Pluerto Ricans feel that the real issue of the political slugfest is] not the feeding of a starving, impoverished populace whose ealndition has been aggravated by the war...
...To begin with, the class structure of society has changed, has become more complex than it was- in Marx's time...
...Willkie—to the problems of Asiatic peoples struggling to free themselves from foreign domination...
...In the capitalist scheme of things, the role of non-economic coercion as well as the role of the state was limited to a strictly defined minimum...
...Malcolm's charges that the Governor was exceeding his constitutional power were indeed serious, but most Americans here were very annoyed by Washington's sudden removal, by the pink-slip method without a public hearing or aired charges...
...in the final analysis, determined by the development of the forces of production and by productive relations...
...one must indeed be completely blind to reality to paste on tile present war the same "capitalist" label with which the war of 1914-1918 was labeled...
...There were military conflicts before the rise of capitalism just as there were wars under all economic systems known in the history of mankind...
...Wang Ching-wei and bis Fascist and other associates at Nanking center their propagandist offensive against us on the basis ef our "imperialism" in China, and denounce Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and the Chungking government as the "agents of Western imperialism" in China...
...But to the mass of Puerto Ricans, the real trouble lies in Washington, somewhere deep in the entrails of the bureaucratic set-up...
...For the pi assart political warfare between the opposing forces in China centers about these very issues...
...General Schliefen dreamt of a blitzkrieg but could never achieve it, for his entire campaign was conditioned by a capitalist economy, whereas Brauchitsch was able to achieve it because he was backed by a totalitarian state economy...
...It is a total mar carried on by Hitler's Germany as a totalitarian state in the name of a "new order" for the purpose of expanding the totalitarian economy...
...About half a million of the island's nearly 2,000,000 populace * are dependent on relief or are actually unemployed...
...Just as the war aims are different, so are the causes of the present war different from those of the "capitalist" wars...
...Nevertheless, we must realize that before- the outbreak of the present war, we wore witnessing a strong movement of de-colonization—a movement which strove to grant greater independence to the colonial peoples...
...But heavy military equipment is a far more difficult problem...
...What "promptly" meant was indicated by Washington's explanation that it "expects in the near future" to present to the Chinese government "for its consideration" a draft treaty which would accomplish the purpose mentioned...
...Analysis It is very easy to argue about politics...
...But such raids will not win the war...
...Under the circumstances, one must have a completely irresponsible attitude toward theoretical problems to theoretically equate these two totally different wars...
...The whole affair seems strange and far-a«trm.but the fate of the whole people may said to be involved...
...It applied with special force—and was so applied by Mr...
...The Jewish worker of Warsaw, however, is no exception...
...It is some what more difficult to argue about politics intelligently...
...Many of .them blame Tugwell for not setting up stockpiles of rice and beans, the two staples for the natives, and others blame Washington—but few of them blame the second front...
...And we noted with the sadness of long experience that the American government was by no means renouncing any of its privileges in China...
...At the core of this difference, to begin with, one must distinguish a totally different attitude on the part of the occupation authorities towards the*civilian population...
...On thi...
...It is incumbent upon us, then, not to repeat parrotlike the formulae of the past but to analyze the present, so that we may understand our new enemies...
...The Japanese can never hope to conquer it oat-right, since Japan compares with China as Greet Britain compares with the entire continent of Europe—and this comparison holds good both for territory and population...
...What we must win now, during the war, are the principles...
...These are grim figures...
...Educated and sincerely patriotic natives say the real issue is not whether the „New Deal is to stay or gor It is whether Tugwell has been true to his responsibilities in feeding the people and whether the future Wfll see the terrible unemployment and food situation alleviated...
...Marx, however, was opposed to the views of Proudhon and he polemicized against them frequently and sharply...
...By BORIS NICOLAYEVSKY IN many labor (particularly Socialist) circles both in * the United States and Great Britain the belief is still widespread that the present world conflict in which we are engaged is just another "capitalist'' War for the purpose of imperialist conquest...
...It is most dangerous to ignore this fact...
...And inasmuch as a total war is possible only as a function of a total state economy, it is noteworthy that Hitler began to apply his theories first of all to those branches of industry which are directly engaged in war production...
...Our planes can still fly into China, and their fuel can also be flown in...
...It is against this background that the British and American governments' friendly but lnnocauas statements about "preparing" to relinquish our special privileges, while continuing to procrastinate and to postpone any real action, are to be understood...
...These guarantees, to be sure, were insufficient and their interpretation and execution often depended upon the arbitrary wiH of the conqueror...
...For the position of Americans in China, as a privileged group above and outside of Chinese law and Chinese taxation, is the position of an imperial group in its own colony...
...Wendell WilHcie's appeal for an early agreement on the aims of the war, and on the fundamental principles of the peace to follow, was a timely one...
...The Farmers' group contend they rented the quarters from a private agent, who transferred his holdings (without consulting them) to the government, who, in turn, failed to send an agent around...
...Karl Kautsky was undoubtedly right when be stated in his Materialistische Geschichtsauffassung that "military affairs—the arming- and organisation of armies, strategy and military tactics, victory and defeat—are...
...The New Leader invites comment and criticism of Mr...
...But imperialist and short-sighted elements in our governments are not prepared to relinquish any privileges whioh the Japanese are preserving for ui—some of which they have not even suspended...
...changed and emasculated according to the whims and needs of the "great powers...
...Gestures" a** urgently necessary if we are to keep our present Cains** allies on our side in a most serious military situation...
...And it "comforts" them a great deal to know that the State Department can somehow afford ships to feed Martinique while American citizens starve...
...It is not to be returned to the Chftii— any more than the International Settlement at Shanghai...
...The Puerto Rican Chamber of Commerce president, Filijo De Hostos...
...THE question, then, as to whether the present world * consist is a "capitalist" or "imperialist" war should be posed, it seems to me, as follows: Is the present war of the same nature as 'the war of 1914-1918...
...HPHE military side of this crisis was officially made * clear by Sumner Welles, Under-Secretary of State, in his significant statement of October 12: "No Chinese armies are actively engaged in large-scale offensive operations against the Japanese for the reason, principally, that there is lacking to all Chinese armies types and amounts of equipment which are essential to such operations...
...An Essay on Socialist History and the Nazi Social System Is This a Capitalist War...
...These facts have led some superficial observers to the complacent belief that the Chinese not only can but will hold out indefinitely, while our forces year by year move northward from the Solomon Islands and New Guinea through one great territory after another until they reach Japan—three thousand miles away...
...Since the cutting of the Burma Bead, serious fighting in China has more or leas died down...
...We can use Chinese bases in the interior for destructive raids upon Chinese cities under Japanese occupation—including Hongkong and Shanghai...
...Nicolayevsky's remarks...
...Democratic Socialists were opposed to this orm of capitalist-imperialist injustice, and today we realize the tragic consequences of the fact that our views and protests were net taken into consideration...
...Especially when a day or so before, Secretary of State Hull divulged that an economic agreement had been made with French Martinique, which is over 200 miles further out from the mainland...
...They think that so long as ships can run down to Santos, Brazil, for coffee and touch at scores of South American ports, American bottoms can carry absolute necessities to Puerto Rico...
...Food Crisis in Puerto Rico Undermines Tugwell Administration U. S. Reactionaries Aid Ouster Campaign By JACK MATCHA CAN JUAN, Puerto Rieq (Passed by th'^HSL^^t •J- Governor Rexford Guy Tugwell i» the major topic of conversation among Puerto Ricani and continentals alike as the Bvrd and Chavez committees begin shaping their hearings in Washington...
...To be concluded) - - g...
...El Mundo and the World-Journal, the main dailies here, are out to "get" Tugwell because they claim that he has neglected grave responsibilities in wartime, while he kept a weather-eye on his New Deal program...
...It is part and parcel of the colonial system in China...
...That is the one point being overlooked by a number of the continental papers, people here believe...
...IT is quite obvious that even though the economic base ~ is not the direct cause of wars, it determines to a large extent the specific nature of the latter...
...More so under capitalism, in fact, than under any other known economic order...
...They have consistently rejected the demands of their oven Chinese "collaborators" at Nanking for the "rendition" of these and other settlements and concessions to Nanking's "sovereignty"—despite the formal recognition (by Tokyo and by all other Axis Powers and satellites) of the Wang Ching-wei regime as the "National Government" of Chin...
...China is an enormous territory, greater in area than the United States and with far less developed communications...
...Today, on the other hand, the Nazis have in their program the complete organization of the economic life of the occupied territories...
...Translated by Leon Dennen...
...The State Department had celebrated this anniversary of the Chinese Republic by a pleasing statement that it was prepared "promptly" to negotiate with the Chinese government a treaty providing for the immediate relinquishment of American extraterritorial rights in China, and for the settlement of related questions...
...It is economics that determines just what objectives it is possible to introduce at- a given stage in the development of society and limits the possible measures and methods to be applied for the elimination of wars...
...As all wars of a similar type, World War I bad its own specific nature...
...It broke out as a result of a Aoftadt* type of international conflict—the conflict for markets where either commodities or capital war* to bo exported—and its aims, insofar as they ajpHsa to Europe, were limited partly to a rectification of borders (with some regard for the right to national self-determination), it was carried on according So strictly defined "rules of the game," such as certain guarantees to the civilian populations, and so on...
...the acting Commissioner of Labor, Santiago Iglesias...
...But every patriotic Chinese would like to interpret our ambiguous statement as "definite assurance," and to hold our government to it...
...What are the differences between the first and the second World Wars...
...The United States is the leading power in the vast areas of China outside of Japanese-occupied territories...
...The* Japanese are holding it themselves...
...They may be unfa miliar to many Americans...
...It is a move in the right direction...
...For If Japan is abto to absorb into its imperial "New Order," or In lag to an acquiescent and peaceful "neutrality" immense and Vital areas of China, consolidating these into its vast Empire now extending southward to New Guinea, eastward almost to Midway, and westward to Burma, Any wiH ioaninato a vast Empire of more than 700,000,000 subjects—far greater than the British Empire at its height...
...Of course, Hitler and his followers are not at all averse to camouflaging the real causes of the war...
...Already the Coalitionists have sent up delegates to represent them at the projected hearings...
...Although the acts of these individuals or parties or groups occur within the boundaries of a danhito economic order and are limited by a specific economic system, it is they nevertheless who an concretely responsible for each concrete war...
...We are faced today with far more dangerous, far more powerful enemies than capitalism, and tiie present war is of an entirely different type, far more horrible and destructive than the .aid type of capitalist wars...
...Some Americans have not understood how great was the dependence of the Chinese forces on Western Powers from the very beginning of the war with Japan in July, 1937...
...For Hitler's Germany, the aim of the war is not the partial rectification of borders upon this or the other—however arbitrary!—principle of self-determination, not simply a question of territorial annexation...
...We must know what our line of solution will be...
...But those of us who for a generation have worked for freedom and equality for Asiatic peoples read such announcements carefully—for we have heard similar things before...
...Hitler is now carrying on the war in the name of a "new order" in Europe—if not throughout the world—and he seeks to build this "new order," as Hilferding—recently murdered by the Gestapo—once put it, on the basis of a totalitarian state economy...
...I haven't the least intention of painting the occupation of various countries by the Germans in 1914-1918 as ideal...
...the Liberals have done likewise...
...Ickes' statement last week that the food shortages here were due to the tough shipping situation impressed very few Puerto Ricans and continentals alike...
...2—That Tugwell is under fire because he is a liberal .New Dealer...
...These had absolutely no right to self-determination and their territories were cut up...
...Economics, too, determines the nature of the conflicts which may at any time result in war...
...As a glaring example of what I just pointed out— to avoid stepping at this time upon other sensitive toes—I shall mention here only Japan's ostensible desire to "liberate" the colonial countries with her "Pan-Asiatic Congresses," "Great Asiatic Co-Prosperity Sphere," and so on...
...Agreement in principle must be won...
...We must make sure that these people are fighting for essentially the same thing...
...And If the Japanese can achieve these things, they wfll have won th* war far domination of Asia...
...To return to Tugwell...
...We are the main financial backers and supporters—as we have been for the past seven years—of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and his government...
...In this case, one -is concerned primarily not with the quantitative aspect but with the qualitative, with the basic difference between these two wars...
...The assertion that a specific economic order, with almost an objective inevitability, calls forth wars is obviously falser-since all concrete military conflicts are the product of living individuals or partial or group...
...The thing most apparent to people in Puerto Rico is that this »s essentially a New Deal vs...
...Is New Dealer Rex Tugwell on his way out of Son Juan...
...In the light of our experiences during the past decadts, this Marxist formulation has become even more complex...
...But they are true...
...0ST people who have met Tugwell agree that he is charming and honest...
...His support contends that: 1—Tugwell is seeking to make Puerto Rico as self-sufficient as possible by agricultural and planning methods...
...The mass of the people are not against him, but that does not mean too much >in local affairs, simply because Puerto Ricans as a mass are tod apathetic to the whole sitution to care who is governor...
...How do the imperial and colonial systems it into the picture...
...In 1914-1918, the state power remained altogether outside the economic life of the occupied states, and when it interfered it was only as an outsider for the purpose of accomplishing certain temporary measures (requisitions, confiscations, and so on), but not to dominate and direct the productive process...
...And it is we who have maintained most resolutely and insistently our extraterritorial and other special privileges in China—privileges which are definitely those of an imperial power in its own colonies...
...In this new type of war, all component elements—from politics to technique—are coordinated and organically linked with each other, and all of them are in principle altogether different from the corresponding elements of the so-called "capitalist" wars...
...The Japanese, despite the active and effective assistance given them by Chinese "fifth columnists" against the British forces defending this Crown colony,, have not turned over this great port and commercial center to the Chinese (its rightful sovereigns)—even to those Chinese w-ho have cooperated and collaborated with Japan...
...for the larger and more important arms and military supplies, as well as for the funds with which to buy them...
...No one thinks that either Chavez or Byrd really gives a] damn about the Puerto Ricans <or, for that matter, Ickes...
...To understand what is happening in the world it is .vital to understand the fundamental character of World War II...
...Perhaps Mr...
...Altogether different was the picture in th* colonial and semi-colonial countries...
...The TWA, under the Paul Edwards administration, helped as much as it could...
...We first come across this concept in a resolution introduced at the Congress of the First International held in Brussels in 18668...
...But should we become more closely acquainted not with the Nazis' propaganda harangues but with their fundamental theories, we could clearly see that Hitler's Germany had long been preparing for the war which broke out in 1939...
...They suspect that the fow>d question is merely a "cause celebre" which is being used as fuMcrum for a bitter attack on the New Deal through Puerto EiSp...
...Military offensives by regular Chinese forces against Japan have become impossible for the time being...
...These questions and problems are discussed in the following article by Boris Nicolayevsky, former director of the Paris Institute for Social History, and now head of the American Labor Archive in this country...
...This process of de-coIonization, primarily economic in its inception, -was proceeding at an accelerated tempo daring the past few decades and would have inevitably resulted also in political decolonization!* ~~ During the past century all colonies, the bulk of whose population was of European origin (Canada, Australia, South America), acquired complete self-determination...
...Our governments' attitude ii not merely selfish and fatuously "superior" in relation to the Chinese, bat is almost suicidally short-sighted as well...
...The Japanese are steadily consolidating and expanding their power in the occupied territories, and with Chinese Fascist collaboration are extending this power further...
...And with regard to China, there is no "passing the buck" to Winston Churchill and his avowed devotion to maintaining the British Empire...
...These peoples include our own Chinese allies—a people who have suffered far more frightfully than all the other allies combined, not excluding Soviet Russia, during the present war...
...Socialists, democrats and progressives, of course, coadeoaood these arbitrary acts bitterly...
...But they are hoping that in the midst of the battle of rival poMtical forces, the food problem—already grave—will be looked into^fcnd perhaps solved...
...Everyone familiar with the situation in China knew that this was inevitable when the Japanese occupied Burma and cut our "life-line" with our Chinese front...
...The State Department's announcement was, of course, politely hailed by the Chinese Ambassador at Washington as "definite assurance to all freedom-loving peoples of the world that the efforts of the United Nations are directed towards achieving political freedom everywhere and equality of rights among all nations...
...They have actually maintained in being the predominantly British administration of the International Settlement at Shanghai, still governing the subject Chinese of that "colony...
...In addition, speculation is strong that Governor Tugwell will leave San Juan soon in order to confer with Harold Ickes before the hearings and iron out his own defense...
...This was also true of countries like Egypt, China and India which, on the eve of the present conflict, came close to gaining—by means of peaceful evolution—complete independence...
Vol. 25 • December 1942 • No. 50
