MALAYA INTERPRETED

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30793, 3 July 1965, Page 4

MALAYA INTERPRETED

The Memoirs of a Malayan Official. By Victor Purcell. Cassell. 373 pp. With illustrations and index.

This admirable book gives the reader a much better understanding of the current strained relations between Kuala Lumpur and Singapore —between the indigenous Malays and the “foreign” Chinese—and of the unenviable situation in which Malaysia finds herself while she is being externally aggravated by Indonesian confrontation, and externally and internally disturbed by racial and political influences, in particular the ominous influence of Communist China. Mr Purcell takes the reader back to the early days of British rule in Malaya and shows, as it were, the sowing of yeast that is now in ferment. And, as an astute critic and observer, he pursues the story to his retirement from the Malayan Civil Service in 1946. That was after the Japanese had been and gone, leaving the returning British to face a chaotic situation brought about by Japanese-fomented antagonism between Malayans and Chinese, the destruction of orderly governmental processes that had taken so long to create, and the disruptive intrusion of communistic para-military organisations, which, having valiantly resisted the Japanese, turned their resentment on to the British. The steps taken to restore order in these highlyexplosive circumstances must be left to the reader to discover for himself. But this reviewer can assure him that it will be well worth the study; for Mr Purcell, who

died last January shortly before this book was published, was obviously a man of great discernment and wide interests whose search for knowledge through practical experience, discussion and reading reached to the fundamentals. Thus, whether he is justifying a policy or criticising it—and he is highly critical on occasions—he inspires the feeling that he is detached as well as authoritative.

With a number of other books on Far Eastern affairs to his credit, Mr Purcell had the scholar’s gift of lucid writing, for the right word in the right place, and the allusion, classical or contemporary, aptly suited to the moment.

Before he joined the Malayan Civil Service as a cadet Mr Purcell served in the First World War as a subaltern with the Green Howards, was twice wounded, and was captured by the Germans: afterwards he went to Trinity College, Cambridge. Those years of his life, which was never a dull one, are the subject of graphic dramatic and humorous writing in the first part of the -book—before it plunges into the amazing assortment of duties and adventures falling to the normal lot of a Malayan civil servant.

The distinctive charm of “The Memoirs of a Malayan Official” is the way in which information—-historical, economic and political—is interlarded with racy comments on personalities, high, low and distinctively odd, some of whom were still fuming at the liberties Somerset Maugham was said to have taken with

stories he heard while accepting Malayan hospitality. (Mr Purcell, by the way, ■while admitting some social and other imperfections, defends the Malayan Civil Service and its accomplishments.) We meet many famous figures and see their insides as well as their outsides. There are numerous extraordinary anecdotes about extraordinary people and things. We go to China and discuss its history, art and culture. We do the same thing in Malaya with its multitude of races, and we see how communism was originally introduced through the influence of Chinese teachers and text books (printed in China) in Chinese schools. We visit the United States during the Second World War and find the anti-British feeling which Mr Purcell, then directorgeneral of information was sent to combat.

We end by regretting that Mr Purcell, who was latterly consultant to the United Nations Organisation on Asia and the Far East, and lecturer in Far Eastern History at Cambridge, died while engaged in writing more books of memoirs and a threevolume history <rf the Chinese Revolution.

Indian - Pakistan antagonisms are refleeted in the reports from London on a meeting between President Ayub and Mr Shastri during the coffee break at Marlborough House, during the Commonwealth Prime Minister's Conference. India’s Press reports mention that Ayub walked 30 yards across the lawns to greet Shastri. Pakistan's say that Shastri went across to Ayub.