INSIDE SOUTH ASIA

...254 pp...

...Furnivall, a long-time British servant, is not afraid to go further, and he says: "Much of the so-called Communism in the East might, in fact, be more appropriately termed 'communalism,' and, if called by that name, would be robbed of half its terrors...

...It is summed up, generically, by Lasker in the introduction to his own book: "Too many of the published interpretations of current Asian affairs are written by news gatherers who hop from one trouble spot to another or who interview informants who themselves have but slight roots in the scene...

...All this, of course, simply underlines the difficulty of our real task— which is simultaneously to learn a great deal more about the Asians, in Lasker's terms...

...In his conclusion, Lasker points up the dangers of an unplanned program of mere economic aid to Southeast Asia, even under the aegis of a well-meant Point Four...

...South Asia in the World Today, is a record of lectures given last year at the 25th annual institute of the Norman • Wait Harris Memorial Foundation...

...297 pp...

...There is both dire warning and great hope in Lasker's final sentences: "Wherever there is degradation, despotism, contempt, there glow the embers of unreasoning hatred easily inflamed to violence...

...He goes far beyond "immediate grievances" to document his thesis that "the present unrest . . . cannot be explained by agitation, whether emanating fro*| Tokyo or from Moscow, nor can ft be blamed exclusively on 'imperialism' or too rapid an absorption of Western concepts by an oriental society...

...In an introduction, J. S. Furnivall, one of the few Britishers the Burmese asked to stay and help them after independence, reminds us that the South Asians will perforce design their own pattern of democracy, "looking to function rather than to form" —something else Westerners too often don't grasp...

...Soedjatmoko emphasizes the dangers of "polarizing" the Asians as a result of our conflict with Moscow, and he warns us, quite aptly, that "the political movements of that area are left of center, and certainly left of what is considered the center in American political life...

...In making Asia more productive, we must be sure to give the Asians "a consciousness of citizenship" and a real sense of participation...

...But in 'South Asia it implies the reintegration of a disintegrated society...

...Macmillan...

...To preserve and recreate human dignity everywhere is to preserve peace...

...while necessarily more disparate and incomplete than the Lasker type of study, the volume is commendable for the manner in which it helps throw light on a difficult subject by preserving the serious discussions of knowledgeable persons...

...he admirably proves his point that it is only by knowing much more than we do about the peoples of the region, about their bitter sociological and emotional heritage, that we have any chance of cooperating effectively with them in the future...

...Socialism in the West implies conferring greater power on the state as the organ and image of society," Furnivall writes...

...Lasker is a long-time student of the Orient who has several good books to his credit...

...He warns that "unless other steps are taken simultaneously" beyond a "dredging of channels," we are likely to encounter only fresh suspicion and hostility...

...In his own words, he writes about "the lack of freedom . . . which so many millions of its [Southeast Asia's] inhabitants have suffered through history and to our own times...

...And he speaks a powerful truth when he says, "Among simple peoples, many of them illiterate, memories are long," and, "They brood deeply over wrongs' suffered not only by themselves but by their fathers and fathers' fathers...

...University of Chicago Press...

...If book number two is a sort of "half-way house" to understanding Asia in the truest sense, the third book (Half of One World) written by a correspondent of the New York Times, is a mere starting point...

...HALF OF ONE WORLD, by Foster Hailey...

...The Talbot-edited book...

...SOUTH ASIA IN THE WORLD TODAY, edited by Phillips Talbot...

...There has recently appeared, however, a newer breed of writer-on-Asia, typified by Phillips Talbot...

...Lasker carefully and constantly emphasizes that the traditional human bondage from which springs the motive power for today's revolts was often established and preserved for centuries by native princes and privileged classes, both before and after the onset of Western imperialism...

...We must not, for instance, further impoverish a village by hauling off its able-bodied men to work on a dam a hundred miles away...

...Even if they eventually lose out to Moscow, at' least this time they want to be free to lose their own freedom...

...But Hailey goes only skin-deep, and I should like to return to Lasker...

...Reviewed by Robert Shaplen THESE three books uniquely represent three different methods of approach to the complicated problems of Asia, and it seems to me there is a moral in the readily apparent conclusion that the best of the three is the product of the greatest scholarship which sacrifices nothing to readability...

...It cannot be said too often, as the Indonesian Soedjatmoko says (and Furnivall underlines) in South Asia in the World Today, that "there seems to be too great an inclination on the part of the Western countries to approach Southeast Asia merely in terms of anti-Communist strategy...

...convince them that we mean to do better with our Point Fours" than simply reap new profits for ourselves, and also convince them that such programs will in the long run do them more good than the immediate "gaudy" benefits of Communism—i.e., an acre of land per family...

...He and one of his contributors, Harold Isaacs, are probably the two foremost "scholar-journalists" who since the war have quit their newspapers or magazines to devote their time to a combination of research and—what is a vital task they can perhaps best perform—educating the public...

...Bruno Lasker's Human Bondage in Southeast Asia is a brilliant and much-needed account of what lies deep and far behind the uprisings and revolutions that have dominated that area since the war...

...It is often hard to explain to Americans just why it is that the Vietnamese, for example, are intent on ousting the French first and then prosecuting the fight against Communist totalitarianism...

...Several sections of the book edited by Talbot nicely complement, politically and economically, Lasker's exemplary study...

...This, then, is the almost obvious moral that somehow is still frequently forgotten in the State Department and on Capitol Hill...

...Hard as it is to do all this in the midst of a cold war adding strategic and military complications, we will lose out in Asia unless we combine these factors...

...There is nothing wrong with Foster Hailey's book, except perhaps a passing naivete about Chinese Communism...

...it is an effective primer that can be recommended for the honest anger and dismay the author felt when he saw firsthand the political mistakes we, the French, and the Dutch made in Asia after the war...