RED TRIUMPH IN ASIA MEANS THIRD WORLD WAR' - KNICKERBOCKER'S LAST BROADCAST
Knickerbocker, H. R.
'Red Triumph in Asia Means Third World War' — Knickerbocker's Last Broadcast By M. R. KNICKERBOCKER FROM SINGAPORE. WORLD WAR THREE LOOKS INEVITABLE unless the United States throws its whole...
...and in Thailand (Siam) the frightened government compelled to tolerate a monster Soviet Embassy from which issue Molotov's directives, * * * FOREMOST AMONG the questions here is what will happen when the Chinese Communist armies reach the borders of Tonkin, the northernmost province of Indo-China...
...They are envied, hated and they are indispens'able...
...Stalin trusts Ho Chi Minh, of course, but he has Giap there to watch him...
...He is assisted by a young Indo-Chinese, named Giap, pronounced Jap, thirtytwo years old, and fresh from the Kremlin's school for Oriental Politbureau chieftains...
...Once the armies of Mao Tse-tung are in contact with the armies of Ho Chi Minh, the communist forces of China and of IndoChina will be effectively linked, and few observers have any hope that the French could hold out much longer...
...If American and British recognition of the Chinese Communist government drives these ten million rich and influential Chinese of Southeast Asia into collaborating with the Communists, it will go far to nullify what efforts have so far been made to stop communism m Asia...
...MORE FORCE IS WINNING in British Malaya...
...in Indo-China the Communist troops of Ho Chi Minh defying the French...
...There is no comfort for the West in speculating on whether China is going to be subordinate to Moscow, or equal with Moscow, or antagonistic to Moscow, as Communist China will in no case be anything but hostile to the West...
...There is not enough of it...
...France would* fight...
...British success is certified by the fact that the rubber plantations and tin mines continue to run and produce...
...This broadcast was the last of a eerie* entitled...
...But the (United States has not even appointed any such official for information purposes, much less to act...
...They make their own arms, in part, in jungle blacksmith shops, turning out rifles and hand enades...
...Si was written In Singapore...
...To appoint such a United States High Commissioner for Asia would be the least we could do...
...The French last April installed the young Emperor of Annam, Bao Dai, to head the independent state of Viet Nam, comprising Tonkin, Annam and Cochin China...
...in Malaya a handful of communist jungle fighters losing but only losing to the best troops in the British Army...
...Out of Thailand's sixteen million, two and a half million are Chinese...
...Stalin has apealed whenever he could to the principle that anything that ever belonged to Russia in the past belongs to Russia now...
...in Burma the contending bands of communists ravaging the country...
...And this points up the fact that already the Chinese Communists are assuming the leading position among the Soviet shocktroops of world revolution...
...If we don't atop Communism la Asia, the time will coma, m our lifetime, when Moscow will be aUa to estimate its forces as strong enough to risk war with the West They will not win that war, even then...
...At these crossroads of the Far East the sense of impending doom bears heavily on an observer who has watched the shadow of Moscow creep across the globe...
...But they also responded with the promise of eventual political independence for Malaya: Malaya for the Malayans...
...THERE ARE TEN MILLION Chinese in Southeast Asia, and nearly every* where they lead in business...
...Every anxiety over the mounting successes of communism in Asia is heightened here in the watchtower of Singapore...
...He is doing a good job...
...From their Tonkin strongholds they movefreely back and forth over the border of China where the warlords of the provinces of Yunnan and Kwangsi await the coming of the Chinese Communists under Mao Tse-tung...
...Communism is moving so fast that within a few years Moscow may feel itself strong enough to challenge the power of the United "^States...
...We have checked Russia in Europe but the manpower and resources of Asia would weight the balance against us...
...Knickerbocker and 18 etna* correspondents crashed near Bombay...
...While Stalin appoints Moletov, his strongest lieutenant, to direct the campaign for Asia, the most the Western World has done to coordinate its forces has been for Britain to appoint Malcolm MacDonald High Commissioner for Southeast Asia...
...Communism here is nakedly a foreign movement...
...If, howevet the United States and Great Britaii recognize the Chinese Communist gov eminent, these ten million Chinese in Southeast Asia will feel that resistance to communism is not only useless but dangerous...
...British victory would have been impossible without the fortitude and courage of the British plantation and mine managers who strapped on their pistols and stayed at their perilous jobs...
...Here in Singapore the issue is especially acute because Singapore's one million inhabitants are nearly all Chinese...
...To these were added fifty thousand combat constabulary, exclusively Malay volunteers...
...IF MAO TSE-TUNG, when he gets to the Indo-Chinese border wants to go on, Molotov will want to tell him what to do...
...This measure, involving the photographing for the first time of five million inhabitants, millions of whom in jungle villages had never seen a cameYa before, was unprecedented in the East...
...The French have not succeeded...
...from Winston Churchill's old regiment, the Fourth Hussars...
...But these efforts have been timoreus, half-h Bar ted and for the most part in vain...
...A terse picture of the greatest battlofront of the not-so-cold war, this broadcast— and especially lis prophetic if disturbing conclusion — is a fitting farewell address to his countrymen by one of our finest reporters...
...On that principle he laid claim to much of the territory he has conquered in Europe, as the Baltic states, part of Poland, and Rumania...
...It was helped, too, by the issuance of identification cards to the entire population...
...They are spending today $150,000 a day for the crushing of communism in Malaya...
...If we stop communism in Asia we may look forward to a time when the inevitable superiority ef preduettsn m the free Western World ever jeutnw tton in the coileotiviet world of Mm Soviet Empire will cause the threat ef war to recede...
...And though, among Indonesia's population of seventy million, another two million Chinese seem a tiny minority, they dominate trade—the richest men in Batavia are not Dutchmen, but Chinese...
...This made a total of seventy thousand troops...
...Its rubber and tin furnish about half of all the dollars Britain gets from the entire Commonwealth...
...On the contrary it is a lesson in the fact that only more force wins...
...The results were spectacular...
...India...
...the Chinese Empire...
...It's a race now in Indo-China to see which tide can kill the most before the Chinese Communist armies get there...
...Indo-China is not an example of the failure of anti-communist force to defeat communist force...
...The French control the cities of IndoChina...
...The French hope was that Bao„Dai would attract the non-communist natives who had supported the Communist leader Ho Chi Minh, under the banner of nationalism, for a free IndoChina...
...THIS IS THE LAST BROADCAST of H. R. Knickerbocker, Puttaeer Prise foreign cow—pendent...
...But this security in Singapore, and what little security there is elsewhere in Southeast Asia, is about to be jeopardized by the governments of the United States and Great Britain...
...The grizzled Ho Chi Minh, has 80,000 regular, well-armed troops plus an incalculable number, possibly several hundred thousand, guerrillas...
...The Chinese Communist government will send diplomatic and consular missions throughout Southeast Asia...
...The Chinese Communist armies would be strong enough, in all probability, to be able to go right on into Indo-China...
...Because they arc businessmen they fcur communism, but because they are Chinese they are bound to whatever government rules China...
...China could then do what Russia has done...
...Not only has communism as an organized force disappeared in Singapore, but common crime has decreased to such an extent that Singapore is the most orderly city in the Orient today...
...Ninety per cent of the jungle fighters are Chinese...
...But ant all of us will survive...
...recorded la Batavia, Java, and alrod a low days after the plana carrying Mr...
...The French have 118,000 colonial troops and Foreign Legionnaires, plus 92,000 native Indo-Chinese troops, making a total of well over 200,000 in the field egainst Ho Chi Minh...
...When the communists in Malaya broke out in a planned campaign to destroy the rubber plantations and tin mines, and terrorize and driveout the British and seize power for Moscow, last year, the British responded with effective force and money...
...It will take a Truman Dectarme In Asia, and a Marftrthtir Plan fee eee*1 nomic aid to Asia, and a Pacific Pact like the Atlantic Pact and en ever* aU semesneais pkm,ft» aid gee faoe peoples ef Asia te era and iilisd The stake of the United States in Asia is simple enough., R Is survival...
...But Communist China may not be prepared to go so far at this moment, and may not need to...
...Malaya is vital to the economy of Great Britain...
...and from the Gurkhas which with battalions of British Army Malays totalled 20,000 troops...
...appeal to the United .Nations...
...From here one can look out and see in China the Communist armies of Mao Tse-tung sweeping toward Southeast Asia...
...Can Communlaim Conquar Aala...
...Against this foreign communist threat, the British sent to Malaya some of their most celebrated soldiers - from the Grenadier and Coldstream Guards...
...The French have not the forces both to hold the cities and to deliver the striking offensives which could destroy Ho Chi Minh...
...Molotov, Soviet High Commissar for Asia, has good reason to report to the Great Khan: Asia is going communist...
...Today they are torn between loyalties...
...Thus, the British by force have established order, not perfect, but enough to secure the lives and property of their citizens...
...Ho Chi Minh is a veteran Moscow Communist...
...make it a formal war...
...They are doing the job in Asia that Russia did in Europe...
...And this is one of the few places in Southeast Asia where life and property is at all secure...
...Many hav< taken down pictures of Chiang Kai Shek but almost none have put up pic tures of Mao Tse-tung...
...These two governments show signs of seriously considering the recognition of the Chinese Communist government...
...Ho Chi Minh controls the countryside, and most of the coast...
...But such is the nature of the jungle that it took these seventy thousand picked men to combat the Chinese Communist guerrillas, who were estimated at their height at ten thousand, but have been whittled down by death, capture and desertions to a force of two or three thousand now...
...In the same way China could claim Indo-China, Malaya, Siam and Burma, for all these states at one time or another in the last several thousand years have belonged to, or been claimed by...
...chiefly in Tonkin, where they are strongest...
...Since the communists in Malaya are nearly all Chinese, and the Malayans hate the Chinese, this has made the Malays loyal supporters of the British against the communists...
...WORLD WAR THREE LOOKS INEVITABLE unless the United States throws its whole weight against the advance of communism in Asia...
...If they" do recognize Communist China it will have disastrous effects on the effort to* stop communism anywhere else m Asia...
...Then what becomes of the straggle against communism...
...Force has not succeeded against communist force in Jndo-China for one reason only...
...The one million inhabitants of the Crown Colony of Singapore were likewise issued identity cards, the first time anything like that had ever been tried in a great city of the Far East...
...We can still stop communism in Asia, but to do it will require a greater effort on the part of the United States man we have exerted to stop communism in Europe...
...Bao Dai, thirty-five years old, is a responsible type of playboy, more at home in France than in Indo-China...
...whereas nothing runs or produces in the troubled areas of Indo-China, Burma and Indonesia...
Vol. 32 • August 1949 • No. 32
