TURNING TO EAST

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26792, 8 June 1948, Page 5

TURNING TO EAST

SPREAD OF COMMUNISM MR MALCOLM MACDONALD’S WARNING SINGAPORE, June 6. The directors of international Communism were now turning eastward after being checked in Europe, Mr Malcolm Macdonald, High Commissioner for the United Kingdom in South-east Asia, said to-night in broadcasting over Radio Malaya. Their political agitators, he said, were behind the fresh outbreak of lawlessness and violence sweeping Malaya. Their desperate attempts to impose the rule of the gun and knife in plantations, mines and factories would be stopped and the movement struck down. The Communists, after capitalising the nationalist movements in India and Burma, were now seeking to destroy-their newly-established Governments by trying to create economic and political distress so that the peoples would in desperation turn to Communism. The Communists in Malaya denounced British Imperialism, thus seeking to exploit the nationalist movement in this country. Malayans had nothing to fear from the British but they did from Russian Imperialismideological, economic, and strategic—warned Mr Macdonald. Britain would continue to advance Malaya steadily through democratic institutions to selfgovernment.