Editorial
EDITORIAL Three New Prongs Those who thought the Geneva agreements and/or the talk of a Southeast Asian alliance would slow down the advance of Communism in the Far East must be sorel war is...
...3. With Anglo-American division over Communist and Nationalist China deeper than ever, Peking has launched a vigorous propaganda drive for the "liberation" of Formosa...
...As this Formosa-"liberation" drive gets more heated, the tendency will increase in the West to buy Peking off with some "compromise," such as permitting both Communist and Nationalist representatives in the UN Assembly while giving Peking the Security Council seat (and veto...
...If an actual invasion of Formosa would seem imprudent for Peking, why the propaganda campaign...
...Though Mossadegh was overthrown last summer, London came perilously close to seeing Communist domination of the strategic oil fields...
...In France, the ever-bold Premier Mendes-France has moved toward rapid solution of the Tunisian problem...
...There may be more smoke than fire here...
...The solution he proposes, Tunisian autonomy, has been obvious for a long time, but few recent French Premiers have had the courage to challenge the powerful entrenched interests of colonialism...
...Now, with the Egyptian regime of Premier Abdel Gamal Nasser ready to negotiate, London seized its opportunity...
...in either case, the United States might be irrevocably drawn into all-out war on Chinese Communism...
...Let us hope that the coming weeks will begin to bring more inspired responses to this challenge from Washington and London than we have witnessed in recent months...
...indeed, Richard Deverall in our issue of June 14 described it as a corrupt and semi-fascist regime...
...Two sad facts aid Peking in this campaign: First, Pridi, as a result of his leadership of the anti-Japanese resistance, is as genuinely popular in Thailand as Ho Chi Minh was in Indo-China...
...Once Bitten It is rare, but always cheering, when governments profit from past mistakes...
...While it is true that a Communist invasion of Formosa might further estrange America and Britain, the opposite might also occur...
...Britain, by reaching agreement with Egypt over Suez, shows that it has gained something by the experience of Iran...
...In the age of the intercontinental bomber, this sensible agreement costs Britain little strategically...
...Even the discussion of such "compromise" arrangements would tend to aggravate further the tensions within the non-Communist world...
...The Communists are working hard and early to obtain control of all Vietnam...
...The new agreement recognizes Egyptian sovereignty over Suez, provides for continuity in its maintenance, and insures Western use of the base in the event of war...
...Now appearing as the leader of this movement is Nai Pridi Phanamyong, Thai Premier as recently as 1947, who had been in exile for several years...
...Since Geneva, we have seen three dramatic evidences of new pressure: 1. In Saigon and other areas of South Vietnam, local Communists staged impressive demonstrations for Ho Chi Minh...
...General Chu Teh, the Chinese Voro-shilov, seems to be leading the campaign, but evidently all organs of the totalitarian regime have been mobilized to whip up "liberation" sentiment...
...Undoubtedly, these were intended as a show of strength, designed to intimidate on-the-fence Vietnamese and thus hamper the efforts of South Vietnam's new Premier, Ngo Dinh Diem...
...Pridi now has come forth in Peking to denounce the present Thai regime of Pibul Songgram as a corrupt instrument of "American imperialism...
...All in all, Chinese Communism continues to be active and inventive, posing new problems for the non-Communist world even as older ones seem resolved...
...Pridi's appearance in Peking means that the political struggle for Thailand has begun...
...We can only suggest that it is intended to panic the Western powers into further concessions, especially in regard to the Chinese UN seat...
...Africa and the entire free world will be forever in his debt...
...We hope that, by the time this is published, he will have presented comparable proposals for Morocco...
...It will be recalled that British intransigence with relatively mild Iranian regimes over the oil issue helped bring the rise of the equally intransigent Mossadegh...
...EDITORIAL Three New Prongs Those who thought the Geneva agreements and/or the talk of a Southeast Asian alliance would slow down the advance of Communism in the Far East must be sorel war is over, rucial phase of collectivization of agriculture, Peking shows no intention of relaxing its pressure on the non-Communist ares of Asia...
...at the same time, it deprives xenophobes in Egypt of their prime target...
...In recent weeks, Britain and France have each given evidence that they have learned something from their recent woes...
...2. With Communist forces now safely established within striking distance of Thailand, Peking vastly increased the influence of the "Free Thai" movement it created several months ago...
...France...
...Second, the Pibul Songgram Government as it now stands offers little hope for a militant democracy...
...such an attack might pull the two nations closer together...
...Mendes-France read well the lesson of Indo-China, where steps to promote democratic self-government were always too few, too late, and inevitably the result of Communist pressure...
...One African nationalist, commenting on Indo-China recently, said: "It seems that the only way to obtain concessions from France is to turn Communist.' Mendes-France has now refuted this bitter prognosis, at least so far as Tunisia is concerned...
...If he has...
Vol. 37 • August 1954 • No. 32
