The present 14th Session of the General Assembly has again gone over the so-called question of China's representation just as it did in the past few years. In spite of the annual pet motion of India's indefatigable Nehru, the verdict of the General Assembly once again upheld the legitimacy of the position of the Republic of China.
However, from the vulgar outbursts of Khrushchev, we cannot help thinking that the democracies are still far from having solidarity and that it is a stain on the clean record of the United Nations to provide a free platform for Khrushchev in the present session of the General Assembly. It is a pity that the platform has been very cunningly used by the Soviet premier for slanderous attacks on our country. He has made good use of the occasion to deliberately propose some lofty ideas on which he is surer than anyone else no possible agreement can be reached. Whatever the free world may think of his speech in the General Assembly, the fact that he has used it as a platform to throw dusts in the eyes of the American people is a great gain to Soviet Russia. He has at least succeeded in giving the impression that he has made some proposals which the West even dare not try—proposals such as the abandonment of the world's "land armies, navies and air forces" and "a declaration in general and complete disarmament."
It is most regrettable indeed that Khrushchev has used this free platform to trumpet his support to the Chinese Communist regime as a compensation and encouragement to his accomplice who is just now being engaged in burying the "corpse" of a free country in Southeast Asia and perhaps even waiting to bury another-likely to be one of his friends this time-who has long been the object of" Communist friendly murder.
Certainly in the eyes of Khrushchev, any free country in the world which they have failed to occupy should be treated or described as a corpse. As such he views the Republic of China. But Khrushchev has forgotten that his own country had been so viewed by the late Adolf Hitler and has only very narrowly escaped from being buried by him.
Khrushchev has the peculiarity of viewing a living, and very much living man or country, as a corpse, but he views a real corpse such as Stalin's with awe and fear. He needed to shed tears and to act a good deal in a speech accusing a corpse before the Communist congress in order to disgrace it. But even so he has failed to bury the corpse and spirit of Stalin. Since he could not even bury a corpse in the Kremlin, we are sure that the living millions of the Chinese people will not cease frightening him.
We have not for a moment doubted the attempt of Khrushchev to connive with the Chinese Communists to murder our nation. But it may be still too early to predict the burial of a nation that is not yet dead though having been fatally stabbed by the murderers.
IKE'S EUROPEAN TOUR
President Dwight D. Eisenhower's recent swing through the three major capitals of Western Europe was not only a successful demonstration of Free World unity before Khrushchev's scheduled visit to the United States this month, but also served to reaffirm the American policy of not sitting down with the Soviet leader to a summit conference unless and until there are some basis of agreement and prospects of success.
In his unprecedented personal talks with British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, seen by millions of television viewers in the United Kingdom and other European countries, the American President declared: "I will not be a party to a meeting that is going to depress or discourage people. Therefore, we must have some promise of fruitful results and with that single exception there is nothing that can't ask me to do."
Everywhere he went, in Bonn, London and Paris, President Eisenhower succeeded in combining tact with earnestness, and in fortifying his sincere desire for peace with a stubborn adherences to principle. He made it clear that the United States would budge an inch in defending the freedom and welfare of the people of Berlin. He refused to agree to attend a summit meeting that would be turned by the Communists into a propaganda mill. He won General Charles de Gaulle's support of the American position without giving way to French demands in regard to Algeria, NATO or control of nuclear weapons. And he told Antonio Segni, Italian prime minister, the American government does not contemplate either recognition of the Peiping regime or support for its admission to the United Nations.
As the third American president to have travelled so extensively abroad, after Wood row Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, President Eisenhower has shown to his own people and those of the Free World a masterful grasp of the art of personal diplomacy, mixed with a touch of homegrown logic that is somehow more assuring than either the schoolteacher idealism of Wilson or the sophisticated internationalism of Roosevelt. In a way, he has scored a personal triumph among his friends and allies. If anyone harbored any doubt before this tour that the American President can hold his own against an adversary such as Nikita S. Khrushchev, that doubt has now been removed. When a man can handle Adenauer, Macmillan and De Gaulle with ease and grace, there is no reason why he cannot tackle Khrushchev alone.
The world is waiting to find out whether Khrushchev's current visit to the United States would be another cold war victory for the Communist bloc. President Eisenhower's European tour has confirmed the belief of many of his countrymen that the United States has nothing to lose in such an exchange of visits. Whether Soviet Russia has anything to gain, not from the United States directly but from the more gullible and less sophisticated peoples of the uncommitted countries, we shall find out in a matter of days.
NEHRU AND THE COMMUNISTS
There are reasons for the recent acts of aggression by the Chinese Communists in Laos and on the Indo-Tibetan and Tibetan-Bhutan borders. The Chinese Communist military incursions are purported to impress the free world, in anticipation of the forthcoming Eisenhower-Khrushchev talks, that it must not ignore Communist China. Otherwise, her military might could easily upset the status quo in the Far East. Tension is what the Chinese Communists want to create, partly for the sake of strengthening Khrushchev's bargaining power and partly to ensure that Khrushchev does not back down from what the Chinese Communists have asked for. By a display of military might, either the Chinese Communists hope to obtain the best bargain possible or to sabotage an agreement between the Democracies and the Communists that is not to the Chinese Communists' liking.
The Peiping regime has not been happy with Jawaharlal Nehru for some time owing to the latter's attitude· over their suppression of the Tibetan revolution. India's ostensible non-interference has not concealed the fact that Darjeeling, which is an important Indian border town, has become the center of activities of anti-Communist Tibetans. Probably for this reason, the Communists have taken the view that unless the Tibetan borders were pushed forward to include all the strategic points, it would not be easy for the Chinese Communists to bring the Tibetans down to their knees. Moreover, the Communist military action serves to warn the increasingly skeptical Nehru of how helpless he is in the face of Peiping's onslaught.
At this dejected hour, one can very well imagine Nehru's obsessed state of mind of a man who has staked the reputation and pride of his country on the friendliness of the Communists. But what the free world is interested to know is not whether Nehru will change his attitude toward the Communists after so much abusiveness and insolence have been heaped on him by the Communists, but how long the Indian people will remain silent under Nehru's befriend-the-Communists policy.
Nehru has been pursuing a policy which ignores completely the moral principle in diplomacy. His policy is so shamelessly "realistic" that it has swallowed India's national pride for the sake of currying favor with the Chinese Communists.
The Indian people may applaud the Indian Prime Minister's policy if India should be in a helpless position such as Mr. Neville Chamberlain had been when he went to Munich in 1938. But it is not so with the Indo-Communist relations in the past decade. India has had every trump card in her hands in dealing with the Chinese Communists, but Nehru has used none of them for the benefit of his country. On the contrary, he has placed all of them at the disposal of the Chinese Communists. He thought that by doing so he can have the goodwill of the Chinese Communists, something which, to his mind, is essential for his neutralist policy. He has dreamt himself as the man who could hold the fulcrum of the balance of power between the Democracies and the Communists. However, as all recent events have indicated, even Nehru himself no longer has any doubt as to the folly of his policy. The pity is that he has already reached the point of no return.
It is indeed a pity to see Nehru so poorly rewarded for his policy of appeasing the Chinese Communists. But the free world need waste neither concern nor pity for the sorrowful state into which he has brought India and himself as a result of his wrong judgment. While we refrain from scorning the plight of Mr. Nehru, we should watch whether the Indian people would still let him gamble away the little respect and esteem which the free world may still have for their country.
AFTER THE DISASTROUS FLOOD
While the recent flood in central and southern Taiwan had been disastrous, it also dramatically illustrated the ability and readiness of the government and people in free China to cope with any and all eventualities, be it war or natural calamity.
There was no panic among the population. Crippled communications did not cripple the will of the government to act swiftly and take everything into its hands. Emergency relief reached the victims in time and in sufficient quantities. Teams of voluntary medical workers sped to the area to treat the injured and prevent the spread of diseases. Within days the principal communication lines were restored. The Tatu River Bridge, shown in the inside cover of this issue, with concrete buttresses at both ends washed away by the water, was completely rebuilt in exactly one month instead of seven to eight weeks as originally estimated. This bridge, a stronger structure than it ever was, now stands as a silent testimonial to the determination of the free Chinese not to be beaten by any enemy, including the unruly forces of nature.
Now that the period of emergency relief and repair is over, the job of rehabilitation and reconstruction looms ahead, as formidable as anything that has been tackled by the nation to date. Losses due to the flood were placed at NT$3.7 billion, roughly one tenth of the annual national gross income. The presidential decree issued on September 1, invoking for the first time in Chinese constitutional history the broad powers given the President in times of national crisis, be-spoke the grim determination of the government to raise every cent it can from the country's own resources. Though taking a sizeable bite into everyone's pocketbook, it rather own the respect and admiration of the man on the street because a decision was made when one was needed. The stress on austerity, to cut down all unnecessary expenses and to save domestic consumption in order to export more, also met with the approval of the people.
The overriding spirit is one of self-help and self-respect. While United States aid has been requested to enable the nation to get on its feet soon, it was done only after every available source of income had been exhausted. The only thing that remained untapped was the printing press, which in the words of Economic Affairs Minister Yang Chi-tseng would be the surest way to invite inflation and economic chaos. It was a good thing the government decided against resorting to that easy escape.
A Chinese sage said centuries ago that "many difficulties make a country strong." If the flood and the subsequent earthquake and typhoon in the past month were meant to test the courage and perseverance of the free Chinese, they have certainly passed the test with flying colors.