THE WAR THAT CANNOT BE WON
Sut,—May I, as former editor of the Straits Echo and The 'Times correspondent in Malaya, say Julian Critchley, MP, deserves well of your readers with his down-to-earth appraisal of the waste of
million a week in the 'war that cannot be won' in Borneo? I join his plea for the end of the 'irrelevance' that costs 100 lives a week.
Tell Fleet Street a titled man proposes federation and they boost it as if inspired by fresh straw- berries at a Savoy PRO feast for Marlene. Tell them of a ground nuts scheme and the notion is front-page drama for days. Tell them of a costly British missile and it becomes a Sputnik overnight, able to put Gagarin in the John Bloom class, or, if I may cite the more profound Eisenhower, 'a bit of iron in the sky.'
The Abdul Rahman scheme for 'democracy' (of his kind), in' the primitive little corners of Sukarno's Borneo we call British North Borneo and Sarawak, is worthy of a play by the Marx Brothers at their best-400 miles from the anti-Malay and probably anti-British isle of Singapore. This may be remem- bered as the 'impregnable' fortress that did 'not fire a shot in anger and went on a plate as a gener- ous gift with 140,00(1 British troops to the Japanese —twenty-two years ago.
The realities are simple— the Chinese on Singa- pore veer daily from Mao to Chiang, mostly the
former. They do not like Abdul Rahman's plan to make them, now a majority, into an impotent minority in Malaysia—and will fight, and destroy, Malaysia. Why? Because there are 2,500,000 in- dustrious, rich and powerful Chinese in Abdul Rahman's petty little kingdom already. What is done or said by the current Chinese Premier of Singapore is of little importance or relevance in the context of Asian politics.
Asians, and not only Indonesians and Filipinos, who should be wooed by a smaller and less-feared Britain, laugh outright at the 'referendum' recently hurried through in 'Sabah' and Sarawak to justify jumping the gun with the news of the scheme of Malaysia. Britain should follow Mr. Critchley's realism and befriend Indonesia and the Philippines: Singapore of 1942 is a lesson neither London nor Washington should forget for a moment.
GEORGE BILAINKIN Society of Authors, Drayton Gardens, SW10
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