HAVE BEEN FOLLOWING with some astonishment Mr. Malcolm Muggeridge's accounts
of China in the Sunday Pictorial. What is saddening about them is the sort of thing which Mr. Muggeridge thinks proves the regime to be admirable. I am all for giving credit where credit is due, but to be told of the energy and enthusiasm (in public) which has replaced the lethargy that previously prevailed reminds me only too strongly of what people used to write about the vigorous new regime in Germany in 1933. Mr. Muggeridge also regards the cleaning-up of Shanghai's vice spots as a sure sign of the regime's general decency. Perhaps. But I seem to remember the Nazis did the same to the degenerate dives of Berlin. There, indeed, the villains were said to be cos- mopolitan Jews, headed by the psychologist Magnus Hirschfeld, 'der grasste Schwein.' In Shanghai, we are assured, the alien villains were the decadent Europeans.
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