FACING EAST

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22004, 30 January 1937, Page 15

FACING EAST

THE SHADOW OF JAPAN

Gods of To-morrow. By William Teelinsr. Lovat Dickson Ltd. 376 pp. (12/6 net.)

Mr Teeling has traveled widely. On the threshold of a career in politics, he set out to look at the Empire and to see for himself what influences are massing in the Pacific and the Far East that will have a bearing on the future of the British Dominions. He is an intelligent observer who is not to be turned aside in his search for information. The plain account of his travels, apai-t from the discussion of political problems which gives the book a special value, makes good reading. In the Philippines he found himself near the storm centre of a typhoon and was almost engulfed in a night cf black rain and sliding hills. He struggled through flooded towns where corpses had been washed from the graveyard and were floating in the streets. Later he went to the leper colonies and enquired into present-day methods of treating the disease. In Papua he found that Buchmanism had preceded him, and he attended a meeting for confession which drew from him a significant comment. I will only say one thing about these converted natives; they do not seem to me to look really happy. The natives wandering about Samarai with bleached hair, flowers over their ear, and arm-in-arm with other ex-head-hunters, seem to me to look happy, to laugh and to enjoy a carefree life. These Grouper natives seem nervous and frightened, as if this God who is always speaking to them is a little overpowering.

His itinerary was a full one, and almost everywhere it brought him under the advancing shadow of Japan. He looked at the tea country in Ceylon and discussed the problems of Japanese competition with the planters. In Singapore he found that most of the talk was of the war that everybody felt must come in the near future, and that people were building flimsy houses because they expected them to be bombed some day. The Dutch were equally anxious about their tropic possessions, in most of which the Japanese have gained a footing. America is moving out of the Philippines, and the general feeling among the Filipinos is that independence can be nothing more than an uncomfortable breathing space before Japan moves in. The Governor of Papua told him, rather sadly, that he believed his own life’s work would/turn out to have been a preparation for the Japanese. Australia also has her fears, and although he found that New Zealanders are not worrying very much there was enough uneasy talk to confirm his belief that the future of the Pacific must be decided very largely from Tokyo. This sort of thing is alarming; but when he came at last to Japan and was able to trace the undercurrents of fear to their fountain-head, Mr Teeling found that Japan also is afraid and that she has internal problems of her own which may prevent her from expanding down the Pacific as dangerously as most people seem to expect. Perhaps his final conclusions are best summed up in the following sentence: If Europe can keep the peace for the next five years, Japan will probably not risk the dangers of a war in the Far East; but if there is a major war in Europe it is almost certain that Japan will strike somewhere.

On the whole there is much in this book which can be comforting for those who ignore the occasional alarmist utterances —which are not so much the author’s own as echoes of what he has heard from men of position in many countries of Asia and the Pacific. It is true that these are men who should know what they are talking about; but in spite of the notes of authority, it is impossible not to feel something of the helplessness and collective ignorance of the world as it rolls towards the unimaginable futux-e. Nevertheless, Mr Teeling’s book will be a delightful discovery for those who like to search for signs and portents of what is to come.