W.E.A. LECTURES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26437, 16 April 1947, Page 6

W.E.A. LECTURES

SERIES IN THE PACIFIC PROBLEM OF NATIONALISM Mention of the resurgent nationalism evident throughout the Western Pacific area generally was made by Mrs Peter Milne, 8.A., in the inaugural lecture of the W.EA.. 1947 programme last evening. Mrs Milne was prefacing her series of talks on the Far East and the Pacific with a general survey of the area.

Racial undercurrents and antagonisms were no new thing in the Western Pacific, Mrs Milne said, but they had been accentuated by the spread of Western education and ideas between the two wars, by the occurrences of the war itself, and by the influence of Communism on the native masses. White supremacy had had its basis on force, and the initial successes of the Japanese had done much to harm the old prestige of the Western nations' in the Orient. Japanese propaganda had hammered at the “Asia for the Asiatics" theme, but they were not able to put into effect any of their wide promises of independence for the various Oriental nations. Nevertheless, they had left a legacy of distrust. The speaker considered that most of the nationalist groups of the Western Pacific did not realise that independence would not mean an end to their problems. On the contrary, it would only mean that their present problems were transformed into others, equally vital and pressing. To meet the altered conditions, colonial policies were undergoing fundamental changes. The nationalistic claims of various countries were covered briefly by the speaker. Korea was torn between two masters; Formosa had gone back to its old status as a valued Chinese possession, but the Chinese Government was not popular with the natives of the island; the Philippines had regained a nominal independence, but there was fierce antagonism to the United States, together with internal rivalries; Indonesia appeared to have reached some solution to its difficulties; Indo-China was still a battleground. Even in the little-heard-of minor island groups of the Pacific, the natives had been left unsettled by the wake of war, and a tremendous rehabilitation task lay ahead of the countries holding mandates over these groups. The series of lectures will be continued fortnightly, when the problems of the individual countries will be discussed, the first of the surveys being on the subject of Korea.