Madame Sun Yat-sen's invitation to Pandit Nehru, though it has
been refused, is likely to strengthen a contemporary belief to which one sees and hears increasingly frequent references. This belief, which, if it ever gets a name, will probably be called " Asianism," is founded on the theory that there exists a sort of subtle, impalpable solidarity between the Asiatic races. Is there anything in this ? My own impressions have always been that most of these races had very little understanding of, or even curiosity about each other. The Japanese, being sea-faring expansionists, had a sort of rough working knowledge of the various peoples whom they took the first oppor- tunity of subjugating. But all their political projects, from the 'Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere " to the Indian National Army, foundered because, apart from a few sympathetic experts, they treated their protégés and puppets in a manner ranging from the tactless to the brutal. The Chinese knew next to nothing about India, and the Indians nothing at all about China. When the Japanese were at the gates of India in 1942 the authorities, fearing air-raids and clutching at " Asianism " as at a straw, produced Idrge posters showing Chinese peasants and soldiers valiantly defying a rain of high explosive. The caption read: " What China has done,
India can do:' Actually, the only thing China had done for some time was to secure the abolition of extraterritoriality, thus decisively undermining the position of British and other foreign interests. But this point was, of course, lost on the majority of the Indian popula- tion, in whom the posters appeared to arouse at best apathy, at worst a vague and transient alarm.
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