AMERICA-ARSENAL OF IMPERIALISM?
Howard, Harry Paxton
America-Arsenal Of Imperialism? By HARRY PAXTON HOWARD BRITISH fighter planes are bombing the densely populated city of Surabaya in the Dutch East Indies. British destroyers are sending in their...
...In some cases, it may he impossible to prevent forceful imposition of such a government...
...It is war—an undeclared war against a people fighting for their homeland...
...It will be because of discussions at "higher" levels, appeasing our great and loyal Muscovite allies and letting them impose their government...
...Another practice is the use of acid to burn away the tell-tale fingertip lines of men who have been finger-printed but prefer to be unrecognized...
...So they have taken "action"—with an order that the American markings should be removed from American material being used for the massacre of Indonesians...
...The Indonesian leader Thamrin made us a statesmanlike proposal for an Indonesian Commonwealth—on the same general basis as the Philippines Commonwealth...
...14, Secretary Byrnes did let out something —inadvertently—when he told his press conference that "a reply *had been received from V. M. Molotov, Soviet Foreign Commissar, to our representations with reference to the control council agreement and that there was still no agreement...
...We are keeping the Japanese in Indo-China—to fight the people of Indo-China on behalf of the French...
...Moscow not only has obtained a share in control of Japan, but is asking for a "unanimity rule" which would enable it to veto absolutely any move made by Gen...
...America has responded with new loans, week after week, to the Dutch Empire which is to be re-established with the aid of American and British bayonets...
...Not only with regard to Red Empire, but with regard to British and Dutch and French Empire...
...Byrnes replied that two or three suggestions were under consideration, the nature of which he was not in a position to disclose...
...We are aiding and supplying the French in a war of aggression against the Annamites and Tonkinese and Laotians and other people of this great peninsula...
...And one of the demands made thenceforth on Japan—delivered in ultimative form on Nov...
...There must be an end to this greasy dealing behind locked doors with the destinies of peoples...
...It should be remembered that President Roosevelt's pretext for the launching of economic,war against Japan was Japanese "aggression" in Indo-China...
...We should know what it is...
...The vessels known as "Liberty" ships, made in America, are shipping in more supplies for Imperial aggression...
...It is somewhat complicated, as the Chinese—by understanding—moved into northern Indo-China, presumably to prepare the way for the French...
...The American Government could do this by diplomacy...
...In 1940, when the German invasion of the Netherlands threw the whole position of Indonesia into uncertainty, the combination of Indonesian parties known as the "Gapi" made a quiet appeal to the United States for an agreement...
...We might have given some meaning, at least, to the phrase "arsenal of democracy...
...The Soviet Union, and its friends in the State Department, have made a deal against MacArthur which should have the light of day...
...They have never received anything but silence, rebuffs, or double-talk—or munitions to mow them-down...
...It is time to make a stand...
...We are now helping, supplying, and financing imperial aggressors against their victims...
...The invaders are using American tanks, American equipment...
...But the Chinese are not in fact enthusiastic about turning over this territory—long a part of the Chinese Empire, from whom the French took it two generations ago—to the French...
...13, when a New York Times correspondent at Washington, W. H. Lawrence, got "informed quarters" there to talk: "It can be stated as a basic tenet in our approach to the Java question that we as a Government do not question the sovereignty of the Netherlands Government over the East Indies any more than we challenge the sovereignty of the French over Indo-China, or the British over Malaya...
...Outstanding British Labor men are bitterly hostile to the aggressive war in Java...
...There the French are trying with American munitions and British and Japanese aid to impose their unwanted rule over the peoples of Assam and Laos and other areas...
...Secretly, it has been appeasing Stalin there as elsewhere...
...The war goes on, but now it is "undeclared...
...And elsewhere we are participating in a sordid and cynical game of Imperial division of Asiatic peoples among aggressors, the imposing of governments by force by foreign powers...
...The British Labor Government, in serious economic straits, is most anxious to cooperate with the American Government...
...We must hold out the hand of friendship to every people in Asia that seeks to be free...
...The freezing of Japanese funds, and the virtual economic embargo to Japan, was correctly referred to as "economic warfare" even by Walter Lippmann...
...The British paved the way—as they are doing in Indonesia...
...But on Nov...
...Harold Laski, chairman of the Labor Party's executive committee, declared on Nov...
...We are seeing today the American "reply" to the Indonesian Republic's appeal to Washington last month...
...THIS is already being started in Japan...
...American gunmen have long known the practice of filing registration numbers from guns which might identify them...
...That is the grim fact of the matter...
...Which means, simply and clearly, that the Administration is already "recognizing" an Empire-in-exile, now being imposed by the force of a foreign power upon the 75,000,000 people of the East Indies...
...The American Government, indeed, happens to be one of the "foreign powers" cooperating in the imposition by force of an alien government upon the Indonesian people...
...The State Department did not announce this...
...But our Government was not interested...
...And why did it make demands upon Japan—for the complete withdrawal of Japanese troops—which today it does not wish to be fulfilled...
...Some say he was murdered...
...The implications here were too clear to be missed, and Mr...
...We are not only "recognizing" it—in advance—but are actively aiding it...
...What are we doing there now...
...Six years ago there was the "phony war"—declared but not yet being fought...
...FOR some reason, however, the gentlemen in Washington are not too anxious to advertise their role...
...We should take the stand not only in regard to Japan, but with regard to other areas of the world...
...There are Lend-Lease guns, "Liberty" ships, American warships and War-planes and munitions and loans and military advisers...
...IT is not merely that the American Government is "cooperating...
...There are precedents for this...
...There should be no misunderstanding, no mendacious "passing the buck" about this...
...And some regarded that as the American "reply" conveyed through our Dutch "friends...
...It was discovered by American newsmen in Japan, who early this month learned why certain news items cabled from America to Japan had been censored there, and had not appeared in the Japanese press...
...Such is the role of the American Government, American Lend-Lease, American shipping, American financing, American "diplomacy" in southeastern Asia today...
...It is the new war—-the war that is called peace t I have previously written of China, where 53,000 U. S. Marines are on active service, and American airplanes and officers and munitions are actively aiding Chiang Kai-shek to impose his regime on people who do not want him...
...MacArthur towards freedom and democracy in Japan...
...it preferred the Dutch Queen and the Dutch financial interests—so closely interlocked with American and British financial interests—to the Indonesian people...
...It is unprovoked aggression, aiming to establish an alien rule over a people whose only wish is to be free...
...IN Indo-China also there is war...
...14), is secretly "negotiating" for an agreement...
...Outwardly, the State Department made the pretense of rejecting flatly the Soviet demands for a share in the control of "Japan...
...Which means that secret discussions are still going on...
...One "official statement" has competed with another in double-talk and mendacity...
...Our own Republic was born in a declaration of independence such as the people of Indonesia made this year...
...There, in his first over-all review of foreign policy for the "postwar" world, the President declared in , ringing words: "We shall refuse to recognize any government imposed upon any nation by the force of any foreign power...
...The population of Indonesia was as large as that of Japan Proper, and a strong army could be raised...
...We are today the arsenal of Empire...
...Indonesian republicans have always looked with hope toward the American Republic...
...Douglas MacArthur, whose statesmanship and good sense have been one of the really hopeful signs in the situation, has now been obliged by "higher orders" to submit various matters to the Soviet mission in Japan for agreement...
...Could the removal of our finger-prints have any relation to President Truman's speech on Navy Day, Oct...
...On inquiry, they finally found that the Soviet mission had objected— and that Soviet representatives in Japan were actually able to censor American dispatches to Japan...
...If that were the feeling of American Government leaders, the war to restore tyranny in southeastern Asia would be brought to a sudden end...
...America has responded with stony silence to the friendly approaches of the Indonesian Republic...
...In these great northern and northeastern areas of China it is not merely a question of our imposing a government...
...Most Americans did not know that the United States was directly involved until one of our officers was killed there...
...British Indian troops, seasoned and well equipped, are fighting their way against ill-armed defenders, killing 30 or 40 men to every loss of their own...
...For in July 1941, when the Japanese reached an understanding with the French (Vichy) Government by which the Japanese position and Japanese forces were strengthened there, the American Government actually declared economic war against Japan...
...It is true today...
...It was true in 1941...
...We must not be merely an arsenal of Empire and aggression...
...But that was long ago, and the gentlemen of the White House and the State Department have probably forgotten it...
...For many weeks, the brightest spot in the Far East seemed to be the developments in Japan...
...And the State Department, instead of throwing such demands into the waste-basket and telling Moscow to get out of Manchuria (which it promised to evacuate Nov...
...In Manchuria, the Soviet forces are imposing their government...
...He explained that Moscow was insisting upon the unanimity rule...
...26, 1941—was that they should withdraw all their forces from French Indo-China...
...We are actively cooperating in brutal and ruthless aggression against a people whose only wish is to be free...
...It was a pattern which we might well have followed elsewhere—in China, for instance...
...Indo-China was much more important to the American Government, in 1941, than the "Dutch" East Indies appeared to be...
...And we are one of the powers...
...We appeared there to be following a policy of clearing the way for a democratic Japan to develop...
...NEVER in history has there been more sordid lying, more cynical abuse of noble slogans, than during the past few years, in the course of getting ua into this war and now in the course of getting us through another one...
...Now there is the "phony peace" —declared but not yet being practiced...
...Over a million square miles of the Far East there is more war today than there was a year ago...
...British destroyers are sending in their deadly shells...
...In the darkest secrecy, national leaders have conspired and are now conspiring and plotting, bargaining, and bartering, as to who shall have what, who shall conquer whom, who shall butcher whom—while the people perish...
...But the United States will not recognize any such government...
...We could expect no possible assistance from any totalitarian regime in such a task, and we did not want or ask for it...
...Why, then, did the Administration declare economic war upon Japan on July.25, 1941...
...But they are not honorable ones...
...But he was subsequently arrested, and died in prison...
...On Nov...
...The islands, and their rubber and oil and sugar, could be defended against aggression from any side...
...We were "protecting Indo-China from aggression...
...Byrnes was at once faced with questions: "Asked whether we would agree to majority rule in the proposed control council for Japan, Mr...
...The handful of Dutch could never hold the islands themselves, and they never dared to arm the 75,000,000 natives...
...Perhaps we shall abandon this...
...Talks have been going on, in the deepest secrecy, on "higher" levels, and it has recently been stated by high authorities that American forces are soon to be withdrawn from North China...
...BUT this one oasis of decency in the Far East is being "shared" with Far Eastern Powers whose record in relation to democracy in Asia needs no mention here...
...Its attitude is absolutely decisive in the situation...
...MacArthur as Supreme Allied Commander in Tokyo...
...14: "It is a matter of regret and bitter shame that British and Indian troops should be sent to restore tyranny in the Pacific areas...
...It is not yet known precisely how the Dutch Government learned of Tham-rin's offer...
...And if Washington is abandoning any of its position in North China—which is not yet certain—it will not be to make way for a free and self-governing China...
...The Chinese, in fact, have made an agreement —it is reported—with an independence party in their area, and the French conquest of that area may be beset with considerable difficulty...
...So there are "precedents...
...We were adhering to our previous stand that, in case of disagreement, the final word can be given by Gen...
Vol. 9 • November 1945 • No. 47
