BRITISH TROOPS IN INDO-CHINA

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVIII, Issue 23321, 3 October 1945, Page 5

BRITISH TROOPS IN INDO-CHINA

No Direct Concern Pertinent Questions By Telegraph—N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright <7.10 p.m.) LONDON, Oct. 2. Tne “Daily Mail.” in a leading article on the Far East situation jsays: “What are British troops doing in French Indo-China? Are we so overburdened with manpower that we can undertake such commitments? Not only are we incurring casualties, but we are tying up considerable bodies of men in quarrels whicli are not our concern. “Demobilisation is finally decided by national policy, and that policy seems to have decided that our men are more profitably engaged in Saigon and Batavia than they oould be in London or Manchester. “It cannot be argued that it is Britain’s duty to interfere between the French and the Annamese in Indo-China or between the Dutch and the Indonesians in Java. If these are United Nations affairs, why are we not getting more help from the Americans, whose manpower reserves are so much greater than ours? The British seem inevitably to be involved whether the shooting is in Greece, Syria, Palestine, Annam or Java. They get nothing for their trouble except the execrations of everyone else. The Annamese nationalists held demonstrations throughout the country this week protesting against the British attitude in Saigon, says the Hanoi correspondent of the Associated Press. Meanwhile there have been several bitter clashes inland between guerrillas and parachuted French troops. The French have not always been successful.