SIAM’S DESIGNS

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 December 1940, Page 4

SIAM’S DESIGNS

SHARE IN INDO-CHINA. The Japanese have got their foothold now in France’s Indo-China. This article shows some of the political possibilities which lie behind this move, with special reference to Siam’s ambitions in Asia (writes A. H. Broderick, in the London “Daily Telegraph”). “You see,” said the smiling, suave Siamese officer, speaking in excellent English, “they understand when I talk to them in Siamese; they are the same people as ourselves.” “They” were the sturdy Thos of the mountaincountry near the Tongking-Chinese frontier. The speaker was a member of the Siamese military mission which toured French Indo-Qhina in the early part of last year. As the general commanding the French forces said to me after the Thailanders had left, “We showed them all there was to see,” and then he added cryptically, “even more than there was to see.” One wonders if the subtle Siamese were as gullible as in their politeness they seemed. They certainly admired the admirable network of good roads with which the French have crisscrossed Indo-China, especially as Siam is an almost roadless country; but the Thailanders could hardly have spent several weeks in French territory without having formed a very shrewd idea of the disaffection of the native Annamese population and of the naval and military weakness of the French in their Far Eastern dominion. Soon after the Siamese military mission had returned home the name of their country was officially changed to “Thailand,” and the change was no mere academic one. “Indo-China” is a word that suggests a mingling of India and China, but as a matter of fact the French Indo-Chinese Union was a political entity with no geographical, cultural or historical basis. The French possessions fell into two sharply contrasted parts. From the bend of the Mekong river (where it curves round to border the eastern bulge of Siamese territory) down to its delta, the great stream divides roughly what is “Indian” by culture from what is “Chinese” by civilisation. Northwards the line of cultural division follows the crest of the mountains so as to leave within the “Iridian” zone all the Laos country. The transition from the one zone to the other is most marked when you go* westwards from Cochin-China (that is “Little China”) into Cambodia. Within a few miles you are in a new world. You have crossed the dividing line between the Far East and the Middle East.

CHINA INTO INDIA. You leave the little Chinese-looking huts with „ their good-luck streamers of red papei’ inscribed with Chinese characters, the little Mongoloid blackclad men and women under limpet hats who totter unsmilingly along the road weighed down with heavy burdens slung from bamboo shoulderpoles, the joss-houses, the spiritscreens, the far-reaching paddy-fields and sugar-cane plantations and the dusty, dry, aromatic smell of China. Suddenly you look around you on the wide, mostly uncultivated plains dotted with bottle-boled sugar-palms. The countryside no longer heaves with hundreds of thousands of busy figures. You are among a few leisurely, strolling, smiling' people, taller, more bronzed, more muscular, more like ourselves.

The Cambodians seem to have but little to do. They sit, with a sash tied about their waists, and watch their impish children play. Buddhist monks with shaven heads move slowly by, clad in canary-coloured robes. The houses are brilliantly tiled and are carved with/the figures of the magic world of Indian mythology. The wayside signs are written in an alphabetic writing remotely akin to our own. The country reeks of wood-smoke and the hot, spicy odours of India. You have left the Far East. The Siamese by the end of the 18th century had become the dominant people from the mountains of Annam to the Burmese frontier. The old European maps, in fact, show all that' is now Siam and French Indo-China divided between the “Empire of Annam” and the “Empire of Siam.” After the occupation of Indo-China by the French and the establishment of our suzerainty over Burma, the continued existence of Siam as an independent State was due to AngloFrench rivalry in the ’nineties of the last century. At the beginning of this century the French forced the Siamese to cede to their protectorate of Cambodia the two provinces of Battambang and Siem-Reap, in the latter of which is situated Angkor. By the changing of the name of Siam to Thailand, the Bangkok Government tacitly staked its claim to the control of all the lands inhabited by speakers of the Thai languages. At the time, the claim seemed ambitious, but the swift march of events looks like making at least part of the Siamese dream' into a reality. ,

DEMAND TO FRANCE. , Almost simultaneously with the Japanese demands on the French—demands for the passage of troops, and the “leasing” of air and naval bases that entirely change the status of Indo-China and open that country to Japanese penetration and influence—the Siamese also presented their claims. The Bangkok Government wants a frontier rectification in the Savannakhet region, the cession of the huge and potentially valuable Laos country, and the retrocession of the Battambang and Siem-Reap provinces. Nothing is as yet said about Cambodia, formerly a tributary State of the Siamese.

There is little doubt that these demands were made with the approval of the Japanese, and they were probably made at the instigation of the Tokio Government as part of their schemes for a “New Order in Asia.” This year the Siamese Miliary Mission, under the command of the Vice-Min-ister for National Defence, has gone to Japan on a “good will” errand and arrived in Tokio on September 20. A short time ago the Thailand Government signed nori-aggression treaties with their neighbours, Great Britain and France. The Siamese have no sort of claim to any British controlled territory, although some of the wilder men in Bangkok have hinted that the Siamese Shan States and the Burmese Shan States should be one. With regard to the French, however, whose prestige has sunk to its nadir, the Thailanders threaten that if their demands are not met, the non-aggres-sion treaty will not be ratified. | Even in present circumstances they

would hardly have dared to use such language were they not sure of the support of powerful friends. The powerful friends do not, of course, do anything for nothing. Siam is strategically and economically a country of the highest importance. Although it is wedged in between French and British territory in the north and bounded by the frontier of British Malaya in the extreme south, the Siamese section of the Malay peninsula has outlets on both seas —the China Sea to the east and the Gulf of Bengal to the west. Although all- the rumours about the cutting of the Kra canal to connect the two seas can be, for the moment, disregarded, some progress has been made with the construction of a highway across the peninsula from Chumphun on the east to Kraburi on the west, with an extension to. the tin centre, Renong. A beginning has already been achieved towards the equipment of two small naval bases which might be suitable for submarines, and at least one of these, Singora, on the Gulf of Siam, north of the British Malaya frontier, has been demanded on lease by the Japanese. We shall no doubt hear more of this after the “good will”' mission has returned from Tokio. The Japanese in control of the naval bases at Haiphong in Tongking, Tourane and Camranh in Annam and installed in the Malay peninsula would be masters of the coasts of the China Sea and the not too distant neighbours of Singapore. Economically, Siam is underdeveloped. More than four-fifths of the 15,000,000 inhabitants are rice growers, and the-Japanese, pressed by the urgent problem of finding a substitute foi' American cotton, mean to make the Thailanders switch over to cotton cultivation at least in part. French Indo-China alone can meet the Japanese needs for imported rice. Thailand’s rubber production can be immensely increased. There are almost inexhaustible supplies of hard woods. The northern hills are probably rich in minerals, and Siam lies right athwart the tin belt of eastern Asia.

Japan’s plan for the moment seems to be economic predominance until the Chinese situation has been in some way cleared up. The long-distance plans of the Japanese undoubtedly comprise political control. Tokio would like to see back again 'the ideal state of things portrayed on the old maps: “Empire of Annam,” under a puppet emperor like another Manchukuo, and “Empire of Siam” — as much an economic, and, consequently, a political, dependency as the Japanese hope to make North Chinq. It seems to be seen how the little peoples of the south-east will like the ruthless methods of Nippon. As a shrewd Annamese once said to me,. “We fear the Japanese because, since they are like ourselves, Orientals, we shall never be able to hide from them what we think, what we desire, and what we hope to do.” J