Fortunately at the head of the larger of the two new states erected on this bloody foundation was a man of singular qualities. Nehru had languished for years in jail or other forms of confinement. He now emerged as the leader of a tiny minority of the foes of British rule, largely free alike from two of the worst faults of human nature, Hate and Fear. Gandhi, who had so long led the cause of Indian independence, was murdered by a fanatic shortly after Nehru’s installation as head of the Government. Jinnah presided over the Moslem state, Pakistan. We are on easy terms with the two Republics which have come into being. Their leaders attend the meetings of the Commonwealth, and their power for good or evil in Asia and the world is undeniable. I will not attempt to prejudge the future.
In the year of Indian independence Burma was also severed from the Commonwealth. It had been the main theatre of land operations in the war in the Far East, and we had put forward a major effort to recover it from the Japanese, who had driven us out in 1942. The Nationalist elements, most of whom at some stage in the war to achieve their aims had collaborated with the Japanese invaders against the Allies, were established in the government of the country. Their control was far from full, and to this day the Burmese Government’s writ runs but incompletely through its territories. They too, however, are a firmly established entity with whom our relations are friendly, and where the long and honourable tradition of British authority and its legacies of justice and order have borne fruit.
Both in India and Burma the conflict between Communism and the Free World was of relative unimportance in the immediate post-war years. Certainly Russia rejoiced at every sign of the diminution of our influence in the world and sought by all the means in her power to expedite and bedevil the birth of the new nations. She did great mischief in Indo-China and Malaya. On the whole, however, her interest was more concentrated on China, where amid confusion and slaughter a new pattern was emerging. The régime of Chiang Kai-shek, our friend and ally in the war, was gradually losing its hold. The United States attempted by every means short of armed intervention to halt the advance of Communism. But the Chinese Government carried within it the seeds of its own destruction. In spite of many years of resistance to the Japanese, the corruption and inefficiency of its sprawling system encouraged and supported the advance of the Communist armies. The process was slow, but by the end of 1949 all was over. The “People’s Government,” as it is called, henceforth ruled in Peking, and controlled the whole Chinese mainland. Chiang Kai-shek fled to Formosa, where his independence was secured by the American fleet and Air Force. Thus the world’s most populous state passed into Communist hands and it will no doubt wield an effective force in world affairs. In this period the influence of China was mainly exerted in Korea, and in Indo-China. The wrangles over her admission to the United Nations have demonstrated one of the many weaknesses of that organisation, and China’s traditional friendship with America has been suspended.
In the next year Communist attempts to harass the West, to exploit Nationalist feeling in Asia and to seize upon exposed salients culminated in the peninsula of Korea. Previously their efforts had been less direct. In Indo-China the principal opponent of the French, Ho Chi Minh, had indeed been Moscow-trained, but material support for his guerrillas had not been on a large scale. In Malaya comparatively few terrorists, by murdering planters and loyal Malays and Chinese, had tied down disproportionate forces to restore order. But they, too, in general owed only their training, ideology and moral support to the Communist States.
At Cairo, in 1943, President Roosevelt, Chiang Kai-shek and I had recorded our determination that Korea should be free and independent. At the end of the war the country had been liberated from the Japanese and occupied by American troops to the south and Russian to the north. Two separate Korean states were set up, and relations between them became increasingly strained and embittered. The 38th parallel formed an uneasy frontier, and the two States were very much like Eastern and Western Germany. Efforts by the United Nations to reunite the country had been frustrated by Soviet opposition. Tension and border incidents grew. On the 25th of June, 1950, North Korean forces invaded South Korea and advanced with great rapidity. The United Nations called on the aggressors to withdraw, and asked all member states to help. That the Soviet veto in the Security Council did not on this occasion render impotent the United Nations’ intentions was due to good fortune. The faults of the system remained to be exploited again and again in later years. On this occasion the United Nations merely provided the framework in which the effective action of the United States was cast.
These bare facts encompass a momentous and historic decision by President Truman. Within the briefest interval of the news of the invasion, he had reached the conclusion that only immediate intervention by the armed forces of the United States could meet the situation. They were the nearest to the scene as well as by far the most numerous, but this was not the point. As he has said in his memoirs, “I felt certain that if South Korea was allowed to fall, Communist leaders would be emboldened to override nations closer to our own shores. If this were allowed to go unchallenged it would mean a third world war.” His celerity, wisdom and courage in this crisis make him worthy, in my estimation, to be numbered among the greatest of American Presidents. In Britain the Government endorsed and sustained the Americans, and made offer of naval units. By December British ground forces were also in Korea. In the House of Commons on the 5th of July the Opposition supported Mr. Attlee, then Prime Minister, and I myself as its leader said that I was “fully able to associate myself with … his broad conclusion that the action which had been taken by the United States gives on the whole the best chance of maintaining the peace of the world.” The Left Wing of the Socialist Party, true to their traditions, alone stood out from the courage and wisdom of what was being done.
The course of the war was difficult, bloody and frustrating. American and Allied troops halted the Northern invaders, and the intervention of the Air Forces began to prove effective. General MacArthur acted with vigour and dash, and by the 14th of March, 1951, Seoul, capital of South Korea, was recaptured. Two months later the 38th parallel was crossed. Meanwhile, Chinese “volunteers” began to arrive in massive quantities. Reinforcements poured in from across the Yalu river, where the vast Chinese manpower was formed into indifferently equipped but numerically formidable armies. The American generals found it difficult to tolerate the existence of the “privileged sanctuary” beyond the Manchurian frontier. Here also lay the bases of Soviet-made jet aircraft which intervened repeatedly in the fighting. Pressure grew for permission to attack Chinese territory from the air. President Truman, however, stood firm and in a much publicised series of disagreements with General MacArthur resisted this most dangerous step. “The Reds,” he has said, “were probing for weaknesses in our armour; we had to meet their thrust without getting embroiled in a world-wide war.” I myself followed with some anxiety the same train of thought. On the 30th of November I pointed out to the House of Commons: “It is in Europe that the world cause will be decided. It is there that the mortal danger lies.” I forbore from pressing my views too strongly lest they should be construed as criticism of United States commanders and hamper their efforts or weaken the ties that bound our fates together. British and Commonwealth forces made a small though robust contribution, but America carried almost the whole burden and paid for it with almost a hundred thousand casualties.
I will not dwell on the pendulum of military success and failure in Korea. The outcome can scarcely be thought of as satisfactory. However, South Korea remained independent and free, the aggressor suffered a costly repulse and, most important of all, the United States showed that she was not afraid to use armed force in defence of freedom, even in so remote an outpost.
Elsewhere in the continent of Asia the Western empires crumbled. Our allies the Dutch had been hustled out of the East Indies, which they had made a model of effective administration. The French endured years of frustrating and debilit
ating warfare in Indo-China, where casualties absorbed more officers in each year than the output of their military college at St. Cyr. Communist armies, mightily reinforced from China, gradually won control of the north of the country. In spite of heroic episodes of resistance, the French were compelled to leave this great and populous area. After long and painstaking negotiation something was saved from the wreckage of their hopes. Three states, South Viet-Nam, Laos and Cambodia, came into existence, their independence assured, their future uncertain. North Viet-Nam, like North Korea, maintained a separate Communist Government. Partition was once more the answer in the conflict of Communist and Western interests. All these new countries were rent by factions within and overshadowed by their gigantic neighbour to the north.
The changes in Asia are immeasurable. Perhaps they were inevitable. If a note of regret is to be found in this brief account, let it not be supposed that it is in hostility to the right of Asian peoples to self-determination, or a reflection on their present standing and integrity. But the means by which the present situation was reached give pause. Was so much bloodshed necessary? Without the haste engendered by foreign pressure and the loss of influence inherent in our early defeats in the Far Eastern war, might progress to the same end have been happier, and the end itself more stable?
A great part of the Second World War had run its course to defend the land-bridge where Africa and Asia meet, to maintain our oil supplies and guard the Suez Canal. In the process the Middle Eastern countries, and notably Egypt, had enjoyed the advantage of protection from German and Italian invasion at no cost to themselves. There followed a further increase in the number of independent states that existed in the former domains of the Ottoman Empire. The departure of the French from Syria and the Lebanon was bitter to them but inevitable. No one can claim that we ourselves have derived any advantage there. Throughout this region the world has witnessed a surge of nationalist feeling, the consequences of which have yet to run their course. From Indonesia to Morocco the Moslem peoples are in ferment. Their assertiveness has confronted the Western powers, and especially those with overseas responsibilities, with problems of peculiar difficulty. Amid jubilant cries for self-government and independence, it is easy to forget the many substantial benefits that have been conferred by Western rule. It is also hard to replace the orderliness which the Colonial powers exercised over these large areas by a stable new system of sovereign states.
The most intractable of all the difficulties that faced Britain in these regions was Palestine. Ever since the Balfour Declaration of 1917 I have been a faithful supporter of the Zionist cause. I never felt that the Arab countries had had anything from us but fair play. To Britain, and Britain alone, they owed their very existence as nations. We created them; British money and British advisers set the pace of their advance; British arms protected them. We had, and I hope have, many loyal and courageous friends in the area. The late King Abdullah was a most wise ruler. His assassination removed a chance of a peaceful settlement of the Palestinian tumult. King Ibn Saud was a most staunch ally. In Iraq I followed with admiration the sagacious and brave conduct of Nuri es-Said, who most faithfully served his monarch and led his country on a path of wisdom, unaffected by threats from without or foreign-bought clamour at home. Unfortunately these men were exceptions.
As mandatory power Great Britain was confronted with the tortuous problem of combining Jewish immigration to their national home and safeguarding the rights of the Arab inhabitants. Few of us could blame the Jewish people for their violent views on the subject. A race that has suffered the virtual extermination of its national existence cannot be expected to be entirely reasonable. But the activities of terrorists, who tried to gain their ends by the assassination of British officials and soldiers, were an odious act of ingratitude that left a profound impression. There is no country in the world less fit for a conflict with terrorism than Great Britain. This is not because of weakness or cowardice; it is because of restraint and virtue, and the way of life which we have lived in our successfully defended island. Stung by the murders in Palestine, abused by the Middle Eastern countries, and even by our allies, it was not unnatural that the British Government of the day should finally wash its hands of the problem and in 1948 leave the Jews to find their own salvation. The brief war that ensued dramatically dispelled the confidence of the Arab countries who closed in for an easy kill.
The infective violence of the birth of the State of Israel has sharpened the difficulties of the Middle East ever since. I look with admiration on the work done there in building up a nation, reclaiming the desert and receiving so many unfortunates from Jewish communities all over the world. But the outlook is sombre. The position of the hundreds of thousands of Arabs driven from their homes and existing precariously in the no-man’s-land created round Israel’s frontiers is cruel and dangerous. The frontiers of Israel flicker with murder and armed raids, and the Arab countries profess irreconcilable hostility to the new State. The more far-sighted Arab leaders cannot voice counsels of moderation without being howled down and threatened with assassination. It is a black and threatening scene of unlimited violence and folly. One thing is clear. Both honour and wisdom demand that the State of Israel should be preserved, and that this brave, dynamic and complex race should be allowed to live in peace with its neighbours. They can bring to the area an invaluable contribution of scientific knowledge, industriousness and productivity. They must be given an opportunity of doing so in the interest of the whole Middle East.
Before I complete this brief survey of the things that have struck me since the war, let us have a look at the United Nations. The machinery of international government may easily fail in its purpose. My idea as the end of the war approached was that the greatest minds and the greatest thoughts possessed by men should govern the world. This entailed, if all countries great and small were to be represented, that they must be graded. The spectacle presented by the United Nations is no more than a vain assertion of equality of influence and power which has no relation to the actual facts. The result is that a process of ingenious lobbying has attempted to take possession of the government of the world. I say attempted, because the vote of a country of a million or two inhabitants cannot decide or even sway the actions of powerful states. The United Nations in its present form has to cringe to dictatorships and bully the weak. Small states have no right to speak for the whole of mankind. They must accept, and they would accept, a more intimate but lower rank. The world should be ruled by the leading men of groups of countries formed geographically. The mere process of letting the groups shape themselves and not judging by their power or their numbers would tell its own tale.
I do not intend to suggest that all the efforts and sacrifices of Britain and her Allies recorded in the six volumes of my War Memoirs have come to nothing and led only to a state of affairs more dangerous and gloomy than at the beginning. On the contrary, I hold strongly to the belief that we have not tried in vain. Russia is becoming a great commercial country. Her people experience every day in growing vigour those complications and palliatives of human life that will render the schemes of Karl Marx more out of date and smaller in relation to world problems than they have ever been before. The natural forces are working with greater freedom and greater opportunity to fertilise and vary the thoughts and the power of individual men and women. They are far bigger and more pliant in the vast structure of a mighty empire than could ever have been conceived by Marx in his hovel. And when war is itself fenced about with mutual extermination it seems likely that it will be increasingly postponed. Quarrels between nations, or continents, or combinations of nations there will no doubt continually be. But in the main human society will grow in many forms not comprehended by a party machine. As long therefore as the free world holds together, and especially Britain and the United States, and maintains its strength, Russia will find that Peace and Plenty have more to offer than exterminatory war. The broadening of thought is a process which acquires momentum
by seeking Opportunity-for-All who claim it. And it may well be if wisdom and patience are practised that Opportunity-for-All will conquer the minds and restrain the passions of Mankind.
The Second World War Page 125
