Erosion of a Culture

On the sad Sunday of Sept. 3, 1939, when Britain entered another state of war against Germany, Dr. Quo Taichi, Chinese Ambassador to London, took a late afternoon stroll in his garden. He looked up into the dull grey skies. "Soon," said he, "the air is going to be black with pigeons coming home to roost." Last week in Chungking, Dr. Quo, now chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Supreme National Defense Council, looked again into the future. Not all the pigeons of past errors had yet come home. But there had been enough to convince Dr. Quo of one thing: without sincere cooperation among all nations, particularly China, the U.S., Britain and Russia, it will be impossible to attain world peace.

The scope of cooperation in the postwar world, Dr. Quo said, must be both political and economic, with all nations entitled to security and economic wellbeing. He spoke just before the looth anniversary, on Aug. 29, of the Treaty of Nanking signed after the "Opium War." Within the next two years Britain and the U.S. obtained extraterritorial rights, concessions and special treaties giving the white man what the Chinese called "a series of immunities which as a rule are accorded only to diplomatic representatives."

First Principles. Both Winston Churchill and Cordell Hull, before Japan entered World War II, promised post-war reconsideration of the Western world's claims on China. But the U.S. and Britain, intent on fighting the Axis, have neglected the psychological front among a billion Asiatics. China is fighting as a free nation, but India, demanding freedom, is being kept from it by wartime realities and political confusion (see col. 3). Chinese Scholar Lin Yutang last week gave one appraisal of the situation: "If it appears to the Asiatics and the South Americans and the people of the countries subjected by the Axis that we are fighting for empire and not for liberty ... if faith in the integrity of our cause is shaken, the effect is already a catastrophe of the first magnitude. . . . This World War calls for leadership that rests on first principles, and not a leadership that is merely clever in the handling of political expediencies."

In his Epitaph on a System, reprinted last week in the U.S., Economist Harold Laski said: "Victory now depends upon the support of the world's masses. . . ." Dourly Laski wrote: "We are watching the erosion of a whole culture. A way of life is dying, and the character of its successor has not yet been determined."

First Hope. What character the world of the future will assume depends on whether the Axis or the Allies win World War II. But if the Allies win, the patterns of the post-war world will be forged in the winning. Last week, many battles from victory, the Allies needed all the support they could get. In India, which mothers one-fifth of the world's population, they were getting no support. The deadlock affected not only Britain, but China, the U.S. and Russia. It was a joint problem, needing joint action. Ray of hope : After a conference with Cordell Hull, Socialist Norman Thomas said he learned that the U.S. Government, unofficially, had offered to serve as a mediator "desirous of helping both sides reach an agreement on the issues so that India might make her full contribution to the United Nations."

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