FORCE NOT STRONG ENOUGH

Evening Star, Issue 25893, 10 September 1946, Page 7

FORCE NOT STRONG ENOUGH

BRITISH INDONESIAN VENTURE U.S. MUST SHARE BLAME IN SITUATION NEW YORK, September 8. The ‘ New York Times ’ editorially says the announcement that the last British troops in the Netherlands East Indies will be withdrawn by November 30 ” means the liquidation of one of Britain’s most unhappy post-war ventures. It will always be a question whether the presence of the small British force, which was never large enough really to maintain order except in a few major ports, was not more harmful than beneficial. “ The United States must share the responsibility for the situation in the Netherlands East Indies. We acquiesced in placing the Indies, under Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten instead of General Mae Arthur at a time when it,.was. ■ obvious that l we; were in a much better position than the British to send in forces large enough to guarantee the orderly disarming and repatriation of the Japanese. This basically was the only reason , for sending troops there. “If General MacArthur had been able to send in immediately after the war troops earmarked for that job the Japanese would not have had the opt portunity to turn over their arms to Indonesian irregulars, which made, and are still making, a guerrilla battleground of most of Java. “ Certainly the solution of the Indies’ political future would have been no more difficult under American protection than under British, and. might have been much simplified. Our troops at least would not have gone in with the handicap of representing a colonial Power as the British did. The immediate presence of a strong force would have restored the white man’s prestige.” DUTCH NEGOTIATIONS. The former Netherlands Prime Minister, Professor VV. Schermerhoru, is heading a commission which is to go to Indonesia on September 14 for what Dutch political circles .are convinced will prove a very important period in the negotiations with Indonesian nationalists, says the Amsterdam correspondent of ‘ The Times.’ - Other members of the commission are Mr de Boer, who is rejiorted to be of strong Labour sympathies, and Dr Max Van Poll, who is president of the special parliamentary commission which went to Indonesia last year against the advice of the Government. Fourteen hundred troops, who will replace the withdrawing British troops in Java, sailed from Amsterdam today. Heavy police precautions weye taken, and there were no demonstrations.