GENERAL TEMPLER
SIR,--Thc device of answering chosen snippets from an article in one journal in the columns of another is new to me. Messrs. Peterson and Bartlett's points, such as they arc, depend for acceptance on your readers not having read my article in the Twentieth Century or Jungle Green. The Malayan Chinese Association took exception to no less than thirty-one passages in the latter, appear- ing on thirty pages, and in consequence the author mid publishers agreed to delete sixteen of the most offensive of these from subsequent editions (Malayan Mirror, Novem- ber 15th, 1953). Knowing this (and relying on your readers not knowing it—just as he must have relied on their not .having access to the Malayan Civil List), Mr. Peterson states that such passages occur on only " three or four" pages out of the 214!
The ' enemy ' of Jungle Green is not (as the book makes clear) the handful of Com- munists in the jungle, but the three million Chinesesof Malaya. If we really are fighting the Chinese of Malaya and not a handful of Communists, the answer is simple--we have lost the war.' Did not this thought occur to Mr. Bartlett' on his recent visit'?
Since not one of my statements could he rebutted, Mr. Bartlett disingenuously invites your readers. to judge me by the code of the sixth-form. He refers to my " presumably confidential " interview with General Templer, suggesting that though my account of what he said may be true I am a cad for saying it —even though my veracity had been impugned by Mr. Peterson. He alsO refers to my ' methods' as if they should earn my being sent to Coventry or at least given a ducking in the school pond. May I make it clear that there is no bond of school, regiment, race, nationality or creed warranting the presump- tion of any ' confidential' relationship between General Templer, and myself. I interviewed hint in my capacity of hOnorary adviser to the MCA---not as a conspirator against the Malayan people or the Chinese race. the only code binding on us both was that of civilised usage.
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