Co-existence and Prisoners
After having eaten his Chinese chicken with bamboo shoots, after having seen a Chinese prison where a Chinese prisoner had, just been shot for persisting in his heresies, after having gone down a Chinese coal mine dressed as a Chinese coal miner, Mr. Morgan Phillips held a Press conference in Canton. lie said that sympathy and understanding should be shown by the rest of the world for the Chinese attempt to build a modern nation. As a sentiment, this is impeccable. There is nothing wrong with holding it provided it is remembered that national aspirations are meaningless except in so far as they relate to the lives of human beings, and that in the matter of human life the Communists persistently show a total callousness. It is a fine thing to present gladioli to Dr. Summerskill or to display a porcelain camel to Mr. Bevan; but it does not touch the heart of the matter any more than did the Malayan guerilla who left a penicillin lozenge in the mouth of the dying man he had just shot. And now it seems that the Viet-minh Communists are preparing to imitate the revolting tragedy that the Chinese played out in North Korea. Under the terms of the Geneva armistice, the' exchange of prisoners in Viet Nam should be completed within thirty days of the cease-fire coming into force. In the case of Northern Viet Nam this period ended on August 26 but at this date the Viet-minh authorities were still deliberately retarding the exchange of all prisoners of war and were known to be holding several hundred French nationals at the exchange centre on the grounds that the French were returning only civilian prisoners. This may yet prove to be only a temporary check. But tem porary or permanent, let it be a warning to Mr. Morgan Phillips to judge the Communists by how they treat human beings before he judges them by the slogans of their ideology
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