CONTRAST AMONG REFORMERS
Pflaum, Irving
Contrast Amona Reformers By IRVING PFLAUM MY next-column neighbor (Carleton Kent) had a piece about GenrMaeArthur and the British. Mr. Kent's point was that MaeArthur, a conservative Republican...
...They burned every building in the village except a few stone ones and the local jail...
...These men were killed, probably after being tortured and mutilated, near or in the village of Bekasi...
...A British announcement then said it was hoped that the burning of Bekasi would have a salutary effect on Indonesian terrorists...
...There were 22 survivors of the crash, British and British-Indian men and officers in the uniform of the British Empire...
...This dispatch relates an "incident" that took place in the Dutch East Indies recently...
...MaeArthur seems to be one of the most successful, liberal reformers of all times, says Carleton, while the British Socialists seem rather to be concentrating on preserving empire, for all the world like the Tories...
...I have a dispatch before me now, one that arrived after Kent's column was in print, that adds fuel to the fire he rightly built under the British Socialists...
...ASIMILAR announcement had been made before...
...And it hasn't...
...The British Army sent men, tanks and planes to Bekasi...
...Five hundred other villagers were held under guard while their homes were burned...
...While British soldiers poured gasoline on the native buildings and planted incendiary bombs, RAF planes machine-gunned and shelled Indonesian trucks fleeing from the village...
...It also hoped that the destruction of a village would have a salutary effect on "terrorists...
...Kent's point was that MaeArthur, a conservative Republican and one-time fair-haired boy of our most reactionary newspapers, is doing a far better job in the postwar world than are the Socialist ministers of Britain...
...25, planes of the British Air Force crashed near the village of Bekasi, 12 miles east of Batavia, in Java...
...British tanks and artillery stood by while the village went up in flames and smoke...
...These were destroyed also...
...TT seems that on Nov...
...The smoke rising from Bekasi could be seen from Batavia...
...The name of that village was Lidice, and the announcement was made by a German commander...
...Carleton is right, righter than he realized when he wrote his piece...
...The British radio called it an act of barbarism and said the burning of Lidice was an outrage the world never would forget...
Vol. 9 • December 1945 • No. 51
