Nepal To New Guinea

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31197, 22 October 1966, Page 4

Nepal To New Guinea

South Asia. By Angus Maude. The Bodley Head. 176 pp. After eight years as a Con-1 senative member of Parliament, Angus Maude resigned in 1958 to go to Australia as I editor of the “Sydney Morning Herald." He later returned' to England and was re-elected to Parliament in 1963. In this book, which ranges from Nepal to New Guinea, he draws on the experience of 15 years during which he claims to have looked at southern Asia "from three quite distinct angles.” As a politician he has studied the events of post-war strife in Asia. As an editor in Australia he found ’ lhat what was the “Far East”! in Britain became the “Near, North," and a very different picture. Then, as a traveller, he has visited nearly all the countries he deals with, from behind the Pathet Laos lines in Laos to an Indonesian Army unit fighting rebels in the Celebes. He has also talked with a number of | leading personalities, includ-i Ing the late Jawaharlal Nehru; and Indonesia’s General i Nasution. “South Asia” is designed, to provide the general reader, with “more historical back-; ground and rather less com-; ment and opinion ... than is often found in books of this, kind.” Usually it succeeds,; although on South Vietnam’ Mr Maude is something of an /■ apologist foi Ngo Dinh Diem ■T ■ ’

' “dominoes” theory of longterm Communist aggression in South-east Asia. He takes as his starting point the disappearance of the Japanese from southern Asia and the failure of the colonial powers ■to reassert their domination, and he claims that none of the forces which have sought to fill the vacuum can be said to have established themselves satisfactorily. “Both neutralist non-alignment and collective security seem largely to have failed as effective policies." While communism has nowhere succeeded in winning power by peaceful means in southern Asia, the shadow of ■ China looms over the whole area. And where communism has penetrated by force, as in Laos and Vietnam, there has been a decline, rather than an improvement, in the way of life of the people. But Mr Maude also emphasises bow much has been achieved, particularly in India and Malaya. He looks to the ■evolution in these countries, ‘and in Pakistan, Thailand, | Ceylon, and perhaps Indonesia, of “mature political . systems that will be demo- , cratic and viable.” He thinks (that if China is to be contained then the whole area, from Afghanistan to IndoI nesia, may have to find a , formula of neutralisation ,! under joint Western and Russian guarantees, backed up ,by planned economic aid from both sides. A