T H E T A B L E T January 7th, 19i>0.

THE TABLET A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER AND REVIEW

VOL. 195, No. 5720

FOUNDED IN 1840

PRO ECCLESIA DEI, PRO REGE ET PATRIA

LONDON, JANUARY 7th, 1950

SIXPENCE

PUBLISHED AS A NEWSPAPER

BEHIND THE HUSTINGS The Permanent Economic Realities for Britain THE COMMUNIST REVOLUTION IN CHINA A Correspondent Lately Returned Writes o f the Ideology o f Mao Tze-tung

AFTER THE FRENCH “ PURGES” An Unworthy Chapter in the National History. By Frank Macmillan GREEKS IN MOURNING THE IRISH GUARDS AT WAR

The Abducted Children

By Vincent Cavanagh

A CALENDAR OF THE HOLY YEAR A List o f the Principal Events, for the Guidance o f Pilgrims

People’s Republic o f China.” I f the verbiage is involved, the meaning is perfectly plain.

FORMOSA AND COLOMBO T HE long struggle, begun in 1927, between Chiang Kaishek and Mao Tze-tung has come to an end. Mao Tze-tung is in Peking, “Chairman of Council of the Central People’s Government of the People’s Republic of China” ; Chiang Kai-shek is a fugitive in Formosa, an island which, technically, is not even Chinese territory, but for its ultimate disposal still awaits the conclusion of a Peace Treaty with Japan. The revolution which, started by Sun Yat-sen in 1911, for thirty-eight years ravaged the country, has ended in a clear victory for one of the two contending parties produced by it, a victory o f Communists over Nationalists. As in Russia Lenin succeeded Kerensky, so in China Mao Tze-tung has succeeded Sun Yat-sen.

The new “People’s Republic o f China” was proclaimed on October 18th, 1949, in Peking’s “Red Square,” Peking itself being once more made the country’s capital, becoming again “Northern Capital” {Peking), after having been merely Peping (“Northern Peace”) during the period that Nanking (“ Southern Capital”) was the National Capital. Similarly, “ the thirty-eighth year of the Republic,” as the official Nationalist reckoning had called it, became plain 1949. Grand festivities were decreed for three days (October 1st to 3rd), to celebrate the event, whilst what had hitherto been the National Day of China, the “Double Tenth” (October 10th), commemorating the outbreak o f the Revolution in 1911, was studiously treated with contemptuous neglect a week later. A chapter had closed and an altogether new leaf was being turned over. What are Mao Tze-tung and his associates writing on it ?

The first article o f the Organization Statute o f the “Central People’s Government of the People’s Republic of China” defines the latter as a “State o f the people’s democratic dictatorship, led by the working class, based on the alliance o f workers and peasants, and rallying all democratic classes and vaiious nationalities within the country.” The Keyword is “People’s”—a word which, like all words in the Communist jargon, is given a special, one might say “Pickwickian,” sense. Mr. Chou En-lai, present Premier of the People’s Republic, on September 26th gave an authoritative interpretation of it. “ People” {zheri), he said, is not the same thing as “citizens” (min). A People means the working class, the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie, the national bourgeoisie, and certain patriotic democratic elements who have come to awareness and crossed over from the reactionary class. Citizens are the bureaucratic capitalist class, whose property has been confiscated, and the landlord class, whose land has been distributed. People have rights, citizens have only duties. “And he concluded : “This is people’s democratic dictatorship—beneficial to the unity and production work o f our

The island o f Formosa, where the forces o f Chiang Kai-shek remain, has become a symbol of something of gigantic moment : the attitude of the Western world to Communism in Asia, and the divergence of British and American ideas on the next steps. How resolutely are the Japanese, the treacherous and violent enemies of yesterday, to be supported against the ever-expanding Communist power ? The Americans, who were always much more conscious of the Japanese war than the British, have remained much more interested in Japan since, and it is General MacArthur, the ruler o f Japan, who is the strongest opponent o f a policy of supineness and passivity. General Marshall, when he was Ambassador in China, made terrible misjudgments, very parallel to those which President Roosevelt made in Europe—errors of diagnosis springing from the innate and traditional bias of the American mind in the presence of other societies, a bias against the rich, an anxiety to support whoever is believed to be the under-dog ; for the Americans are conditioned against anything they think o f as feudalism, privilege of birth, as contrasted with personal achievements. The American Temptation

This American predisposition was one of the greatest unexpected windfalls that has come the way o f the Communists, and to them it was quite unexpected ; seeing everything in economic terms, they thought of the Americans merely as capitalists, as people wallowing guiltily but happily every day of their lives in the one great sin that men can commit, the exploitation of man by man. It disturbed their neat theories o f how men ought to act, that the Americans proved so ready to abandon their opposite numbers and any established orders, that they could be so easily won by professions of democracy. But the Communists soon concluded that they were in the presence of a greedy cunning which they could outwit ; that the Americans in the last century concealed behind the Monroe Doctrine a profitable resolution that Central and South America should consist of weak Republics, nominally independent, providing a political façade for American economic control ; and that in this century the American enthusiasm to see Indians or Indonesians set free was really inspired by the idea o f removing rival capitalist groups from positions of special privilege and advantage, so that the dollar by its greater weight and magnetic pull would take possession.

I f these considerations have not been absent from certain American calculations, they are much the smaller part o f the