Asia After Geneva
ROMULO, CARLOS P.
Despite its 'sweet' words, Moscow's goal is unchanged Asia After Geneva By General Carlos P. Romulo Soft speaking on the part of the Communists has marked the so-called Spirit of Geneva. Such...
...The reaction has been unmistakably responsive to that common danger...
...The harsh words of the Red agitators in the past have served their purpose...
...The danger lies in the difficulty of doubting all such evidence of our eyes, as well as in the democracies' tendency to relax and take it easy...
...In this part of the world, Communist subversion has been eminently successful, and so has the use of force...
...The sweet assurances now given us are plainly intended to deceive us into believing that the fight is over and we can lay down our arms...
...Something has to be done to push the ends of Communism without arousing much opposition...
...Now all this is changing, with the emphasis on sweet reasonableness and the lifting of frontier bars...
...Should it be the signal for free peoples to relax their vigilance...
...Even the familiar nyets in the United Nations seem no longer to convince the Communists themselves...
...There has been no substantive deviation from the path delineated by Lenin and pursued by Stalin...
...First, there was the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty of September 1954, whereby eight nations joined together in condemning subversion of the kind the Communists have used to overthrow established governments...
...Does it mean that international Communism has halted the march to world revolution...
...Leaving aside China, where the Reds won by violence, I would point to Indo-China as the best example of the success of the Communist fifth column, aided of course by the excesses of colonial imperialism...
...Can the gentle words now emanating from Moscow and Peking mean more than the change of tactics obviously made necessary by recent events in Asia...
...For a decade, the Kremlin and its spokesmen abroad have spoken only in harsh accents, and for all that time, too, the Iron Curtain around Russia and her allies has been impenetrable...
...The Communist success underscored Communist treachery to a point where it can no longer be ignored as a common danger to all Asia...
...SEATO and the Bandung Declaration meant only one thing: Communism is not wanted in Asia...
...As to Indo-China, who can deny that the Vietminh are as active there as ever in infiltrating...
...That alert underscored both the treachery and the violence common to the tactics of Moscow in Eastern Europe and of Peking in North Korea...
...Let me turn to the case of Asia to prove my point that soft speaking may now be necessary for Communism to achieve its ends...
...indeed, the struggle is just beginning, and the new tactic is more dangerous because it misleads and contuses...
...it is, alas, the expression of a democratic disposition that poses a grave peril for freedom in our time...
...Such phrases as "Wall Street imperialists," "running dogs of imperialism" and "warmongering ruling circles of the United States" are now conspicuous by their absence in the propaganda tirades of Moscow and Peking...
...Carlos P Romulo...
...They will not be blind to the fact that certain acts by Peking, such as the release of American "spies" from imprisonment and the "deportation" of American civilians from long confinement in Red China, are not conclusive signs of a policy shift from force to peaceful intentions, for they have been specially timed for just such an occasion as the present...
...What does this change import for the free world...
...And, second, there was the Bandung Conference of April 1955, which, among other things, denounced colonialism in all its forms, including Communism...
...In both cases, the still sovereign peoples of Asia and Africa were alerted in unequivocal terms to the menace of Communism...
...The Asians know now where the danger lies...
...It may be for our own good to stiffen our backs now...
...All evidence points to the likelihood of the conquest of all Korea by the Communists in the North...
...In short, while the tactics have changed, the ends have not...
...It is perhaps no accident that "take it easy" is a common phrase between friends at parting...
...At least they can read, and I think they will, the soft speeches that are calculated to render the vocabularies of the West and East indistinguishable from each other for the moment...
...The Asians will be on their guard, however...
...The course of Communist conquest has not stopped??far from it...
...Otherwise, there would be no feverish military buildup in North Korea, no rushing to completion of airfields for jet combat planes, and no enlargement of ground forces...
...permanent UN representative from the Philippines, headed its delegation at Bandung...
...After Korea and Indo-China, subversion and force as the unfailing pattern of international Communism have become all too familiar to be pursued further with impunity...
...Gentle words have replaced the familiar epithets of the cold war...
...Since seeing is believing, it is difficult for the people of the democracies to disbelieve the very clear departure from what is normal in Communist conduct...
Vol. 38 • November 1955 • No. 45
