TAIPEH
SIR,—At Taipeh the United States authorities have been guilty of ham-handedness in what would seem to have been a most unsavoury incident.
But many of us would view it as both tragedy and betrayal were this episode exploited to undermine the one germ of a free China that gives hope, not only to millions of Nanyang (South seas) Chinese but also to millions more of their countrymen, Taoist, Buddhist Christian, traditionalist or Liberal, on the mainland of China.
It is certain that to the China of Mao Tse-tung Taiwan means all that Free France meant to French- men under Hitler between 1940 and 1944. If proof is needed there are those numbers of yOung overseas Chinese who have rallied as volunteers to Taiwan.
Chiang Kai-shek is old. He has made many errors. But men around him like George Ych embody all the virtues of the old China as well as the liberalism of the new.
If this last flame of the Chinese spirit (for we cannot reckon seriously on Kar Sun Cheng's exiled and dispersed democrats) is put out for the sake of some rich merchants in Hong Kong, we shall certainly not have gained the whole world by, this sale of our soul. We may have given Mao more means to slaughter law-abiding Malayans, perhaps to more United Nations soldiers in some Korean War to be.
But Communists arc rarely grateful for such benefits.
The merchants for whose sake we net are not and were, not ever loved in China. The analects of Confucius place money-making in the same despised category as the politics of Aristotle. Chinese ex- perience of nineteenth-century opium traders and dealers in Brummagen goods bore out the wisdom of Confucius and the anti-mercantilism that alwayi was profound in traditional China has been skilfully exploited ' by the Communists. More kow-tows to Peking. will justly meet the contempt with which Red China snubbed our first ambassador and still snubs our embassy, now more than ever restricted to some obscure corner of the Forbidden City.
If there is to be another Far East Munich (we had one at Geneva and reaped the harvest in Viet-minh) let us at least perceive what we arc doing.—Yours
Previous page
