Far Eastern Forecasts
It is just about a year since guerrilla warfare started on a serious scale in Malaya, and it is now clear that, while the original Com- munist rising may have gone off at half-cock, the rebellion is very far from being at an end. Whether it is finally crushed or not depends more on events outside Malaya than on the success of internal repression. In his broadcast speech last Sunday Mr. Malcolm MacDonald, the Commissioner-General for South-East Asia, was able to point to at least one encouraging outside development, namely India's decision to remain within the Commonwealth. But in the remaining members of what, in a moment of courteous hyperbole, he referred to as "the Far Eastern democracies," there is less evident cause for comfort. It may be that help from Britain and elsewhere will come in time to put Burma on her feet again ; it may be that the French in Indo-China and the Dutch in Indonesia have this time worked out a formula which will enable them to patch up their quarrels with the Nationalists. These possibilities add up to com- paratively little against the certainty that within the next year the pressure from Communist China is going to be felt with increasing strength in all the States along her southern borders ; it is a pressure which may take the form of the infiltration of trained men, arms or cash, but which will be quite formidable enough without any of these, simply through the prestige which will have accrued to Com- munism in Asia through its victory in China. It is natural that this impending threat should encourage active consideration of plans for collective defence in the Far East, but so far there is little sign that any of these have been much developed. Mr. Chifley spoke on Sunday of the machinery for joint consultation in the Pacific that exists between Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain, and of plans for bringing in the United States and other interested Powers at some later stage. The idea of a Pacific Pact, to supplement the Atlantic Pact, has been mooted for some time, but it is at present held up by strategic difficulties even greater than had to be overcome in the West. And Mr. Dean Acheson has definitely turned it down.
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