FUTURE OF ASIA

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 51, Issue 3153, 5 August 1942, Page 8

FUTURE OF ASIA

TWO DOMINANT FACTORS VOICE OF CHINA AND INDIA “Asia without Japanese Imperialism leaves America and her Allies as the dominant factors only if they are unchallenged by the great industrial giant of the north, the U.S.S.R. “What can be expected to develop between the U.'S.S.R. and the United States? Are we to anticipate cooperation between these countries in the westernisation of Asia? “Or should we be ready for competition which would reopen the fissures in Chinese politics and complicate the future of India? “These are questions which cannot be lightly dismissed or lightly answered. They are questions, however, which will not arise in the

same form after the war as they do now.

Both India and China will have the deciding voice in their own future; China is already more of a free agent than she has been for a century, and India is much closer to independence. “Those who seek to influence these countries will have to do it in terms of co-operation and on a basis of equality. . . But there can be no peace in Asia . . . without good relations between America and the Soviet Union. The character of those relations depends on what kind of America and what kind of Soviet Union survive the war; the question must therefore be left open.”—Professor George E. Taylor, in “America in the New Pacific.”