THE BEAR IN THE ASIATIC GARDEN
Gilbert, Rodney
The Bear in the Asiatic Garden THE RISE OF RUSSIA IN ASIA. By David J. Dallin. Yale University Press. 293 pp. $5,00. Reviewed by RODNEY GILBERT THIS 18 HO COLORFUL STORY of high adventure,...
...IN ESSENCE THE AUTHOR is pleading for intelligent conservatism on the British nodel...
...It is interesting to note that in 1026, when Japan mm fully launched uafdh)1* aeries of pnflB ative acts on the northern bordeJtj| Manchuria, Stalin obstinately rafetu* to see any evidence bf Japanest^B tility to the Soviet Union...
...The NAM and real estate lobby seem to have far more influence in American politics than Bernard Baruch or Senators Tobey and Flanders...
...Without criticising the ends of World Federalism, I question the presence of this doctrine in a work supposedly dedicated to realism...
...The author chose as his main character "Mr...
...We suffer along with "John Between," or one of his various translations (Jan, Johann, Jean, etc...
...Rodnay GUbart lirad in China, and hat baan a nawapaparman for mora than 40 yaara...
...If the Italian Socialists in 1921 had been willing to abandon their doctrinaire frills and join the ChristianDemocrats in defense of the center, Mussolini's chances of attaining power would have become microscopically small...
...The radical must learn that there is such a thing as a nonreactionary right, and democratic conservatives and democratic radicals must rally in defense of their common premise—the democratic method...
...The pages are also littered up with challenging sub-heads which leap out of the text at the reader —presumably in an attempt to dent the equanimity of the complacent American bourgeois...
...In control of the Manchurian base and thence of food, suplies and money, Li Li-San had to be prepared for that job by burial alive in Moscow for 15 years, undergoing discipline and indoctrination because, in his rash and foolish youth, he had dared suggest that the Comintern's ukases to the Chinese Communists might not be infallibly wise...
...We have to break England's impudence," was one of his themes...
...He ^rs» convinced that Great Britain and America were about to go to war and that Japan would be on Britain's side, tnk was jiun a little over-enthusiastic aboj§ securing her Asiatic position for that war...
...It is, like most books written under inner compulsion, very difficult to assess...
...Reviewed by RODNEY GILBERT THIS 18 HO COLORFUL STORY of high adventure, beginning in the time of Ivan the Terrible with Yermak and his Cossacks, and following the doings of similar swashbucklers to the Pamirs, the Amur and the Pacific...
...He considers the immediate threat to our heritage to be more from American hysteria than from Soviet imperialism—although he fully recognizes the menace of the latter...
...for, as he points out, the liberal Russians and the masses of the people, who have never favored expansion (to the Tsar's greater glory or in the service of an ideology) have had no influence on Russian policy for a century—except very briefly after the disastrous Russo-Japanese war and after the March, 1917 revolution, • • • BETWEEN THE SINO-JAPANESE war in 1894, which revealed huge China's pathetic weakness, and Russia's own humiliating defeat at Japan's hands in 1905, the only advisers who could* hold the attention of the infatuated Nicholas II were those who were ready to tell him, as Prince Ukhtomsky wrote, that: "Essentially there are not and there cannot be any frontiers for us in Asia...
...The same split helped Hitler to power, with the Catholic Center this time bearing the onus for refusing to join the Social-Democrats...
...This is mostly due to the style in which it is written...
...He does not want to see this happen in the United States...
...and (3) a theolbgical postscript affirming the gospel of World Federalism...
...Petersburg and Moscow...
...But it also calls for cooperation and responsibility on the "left...
...The average American must learn to distinguish between Socialists and Stalinists, between planners and collectivists...
...After Japan's victory over China, in 1904-05, Russia had French and German support in denying Japan possession of the Liaotung peninsula, Port Arthur and Talienwan (Oariea or Dalny), and then at once secured leases on the same territory by bribing Li Hung-chang...
...Dallin unfolds his story...
...Unless the American bourgeoisie can rise above its limitations, Stowe predicts, it will be unable to escape the fate of its European "classmates...
...Above all he must take a long range perspective on world affairs and take an active interest in the formulation and execution of United States policies...
...The recent failure of attempts to revitalize the Republican Party would seem to emphasize the failure of American conservatism...
...Dallin gives a very enlightening account of the way in which the Kremlin won complete long-range control of the Chinese revolution of 1926-27, then as completely lost it...
...To prevent the American middle class from being "Seduced" by reaction, he feels that certain facts irurst be given wide circulation...
...At another time he wrote: "Now you are, properly speaking, the master of Peking...
...The Marshall Plan v/ould seem to indicate that Americans too are on the road to responsible democracy...
...American Middle Man" of "U.S...
...It is with no sympathy that Mr...
...It is going to be difficult enough to achieve the possible...
...I think that Stowe is right when he says that unless the American middle class can remain calm and deliberately choose the long range advantage over the short term profit the future of liberty is precarious...
...With Stowe, I think the American bourgeoisie can rise to this achievement...
...Unfortunately the intelligent conservatives in the United States seem to be few and far between...
...Korea must and will be Russian...
...No project was thought immoral...
...2) an exceptionally poor job of writing...
...The juxtaposition of these three terms on page seven is enough to discourage anyone from going farther...
...The Tsar approved...
...He is a specialist in American and Comparative Government...
...After the acquisition of Port Arthur and Talienwan, the minimum objective of the expansionists in St Petersburg was the alienation of Chinese Turkestan, all of Mongolia and Manchuria, plus Korea, and a few northern Chinese provinces to boot...
...Because most of the material used in this book is Russian, hitherto unavailable in any other language, this is a surprisingly different story...
...All agog about the imaginary Communist control of the Kuominttai revolution in China, and obsessed |i this wholly misguided view of tka) world situation, and thence of JapagJt interests, Stalin wrote to the Soviet envoy in Japan in 1926: "I am not a diplomat and I cannot give you concrete advice...
...Russia should not only have ports but the coast from Vladivostok to Port Arthur...
...The last thirty pages of Target: You are, as far as I am concerned, irrelevant...
...And no court flatterer did more than Kaiser Wilhelm to encourage his silly cousin to keep boldly and ruthlessly advancing his frontiers...
...The foolish and gullible Tsar Nicholas, his reactionary ministers, and their amazingly ill-advised ambitions, so frankly predatory that they "make one gasp, do their scheming and bungling under a bright white light...
...Reviewed by JOHN P. ROCHE LELAND STOWE HAS WRITTEN what he obviously considers an urgent . message to Americans...
...Dallin's style is by no means sensational, but his effects are dramatic, because he relies on such dramatic facts and not on rhetoric to get them...
...Then "John Between" silently departs and the book achieves a semblance of style and coherence...
...Dallin): 'To this end an 'advance troop of 20,000 men* were to masquerade as lumberjacks...
...A Russian had obtained big lumber concessions in Korea and the Tsar was advised to buy them...
...By Leland Stowe...
...However, the existence of the "Third Force" in France has demonstrated that contemporary French democrats have learned this lesson...
...3.00...
...So do the less frankly predatory but no less aggressive-minded extreme Communists under Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, do their planning, expose their ignorance, make the blunders, but push savagely ahead in plain view...
...for about the first hundred pages...
...Using the history of the past thirty years as background, Stowe points out that whenever and wherever the bourgeoisie has become stampeded, it has rushed into the arms of reaction...
...The book's minor factual inaccuracies and looseness of terminology betray the great haste in which it must have been written...
...STALIN AND HIS COMINTERN were as badly informed and blundered as stupidly as the Tsar and his ministers...
...The maximum was Asia...
...A lot of excellent little maps ate also a help...
...Target: You does not make the point...
...At the propitious time these men would strike out into Korea...
...It inds with the Japanese alienation of Manchuria in 1931-32...
...It is a heavily documented story of rather low adventure in diplomacy and conspiracy, directed from high places in St...
...Practically all the available literature on the Far East is based on British, French or American source materials, and most of it is written from the China Coast viewpoint...
...It begins just about a century ago when Muraviev, the Tsar's own appointed viceroy in eastern Siberia, took expansion out of the hands of gentry like Yermak and began establishing precedents for Russian aggrandizement...
...Middle Men, Unlimited," known to his friends as "John Between...
...STOWE'S AMBITION was certainly commendable, but unfortunately a book clearly presenting this idea still has to be written...
...A. A. Knopf...
...At the same time no scheme for implementing perfidy was too fantastic...
...John P. Roche has recently been appelated to the faculty of Haverford College aa an Instructor in Political Science...
...If the definition of a conservative is "someone going backwards into the future," the men in command of the "right" in the United States seem to be marching forward into the past...
...Target: You is an unfortunate combination of (1) a remarkably acute analysis of the need for an enlightened and self-disciplined American bourgeoisie...
...Its characters no longer move in a fog...
...Dallin's final chapter, probably an eleventh hour addendum, is on Li Li-san (now Li Ming-jan in Stalinist publicity), who is very probably the Kremlin's real satrap in Red China...
...If the [Chinese] Soviets [non-existant] are successful at Peking, in order to insure their safety from intervention, we can give up to the Japanese not only Vladivostok but even Irkutsk.'/ Mr...
...The heart of Stowe's message is an appeal to the American middle class to maintain sanity...
...His advisers told him that Russia must have a "completely free hand in Korea", and that (quoting Mr...
...and then blamed everybody but Stalin and Company — but most conspicuously Trotsky — for the terrible setback and loss of face in Asia...
...A Reporter's Plea for Understanding TARGET: YOU...
...Even Count Witte, himself an ardent expansionist who made himself believe that Russia's control of China would be civilizing while that of the "trading powers" would be for exploitation only, wrote that: "Our ' seizure of the Kwangtung [Port Arthur-Talienwan] region was an act of unprecedented perfidy...
Vol. 32 • June 1949 • No. 25
