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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 13, 1959)
Today & Tomorrow By Walter lippmann - INDIA AND CHINA When we arrived in India about the middle of last month, the conflict with China i had bec'ome the main pre occupation of the govern ment, the par liament, and the press. It pushed into thje back ground of Lippmann t n e supreme question of India's capacity to pull itself out of its fearful poverty. It raised a new and unexpected question. This is whether India must mobilize for war, and in doing so must put off indefinitely the indis pensible work of solving the problem of how to feed its people. For the Indian econ omy is so desperately in defi cit that if it had to shoulder the burden of a big mobiliza tion and an arms program, the burden would be crushing and the consequences might well be catastrophic. I use the word catastrophic advisedly. The Indian stand ard of life is already almost insupportably low, and if it becomes not better but worse, no one can be sure that the central government can main tain the unity of India against its great variety of languages and races and of local nation alisms and against the deep historical tendencies towards separation. What threatens In dia if the internal develop ment fails is not a general lapse into Communism. It is a breakup into separate states, some of which would no doubt be Communist, others which would be right-ring Hindu, and no one can know what else. The problems of India, then, is to defend itself against Chinese aggression on its bor ders while concentrating its main attention and energy on its internal problem. 1 rllS means that India will have to defend her inter ests on the frontier by diplo macy. She can man some of the frontier posts and shoot back at Chinese raiders. But the pressure of Chinese expan sion will continue. For the problem of Chinese expansion is not primarily an Indian problem. Indeed, it is only in cidentally an Indian problem and, although no responsible j official in any country can or should say so, everyone who has studied the situation in central Asia knows that this is true. ' In the years to come the main issue- of global politics will be the containment of China. The Soviet Union, which has much the longest and much the most vulnerable and much. the most controver sial frontier with China has the principal interest in con taining China. Almost certain ly Gen. de Gaulle was right, though he was very tactless, when he said the other day that the Soviet Union's prob lems in Asia are one of the reasons for her seeking an ac commodation with the West, One can, however, only hope and pray that Senators and Presidential candidates and other addicts to speech making like Secretary Bru- ESTEY Since 1869 French Provincial in the New Lighi Walnut 881 A beautiful little spinet piano in your home would make" this Christmas a very spe cial one! Come in today and look over our selection of . new and used spinets. Very easy terms. ' Open Sun. and Eves. ERSKINE'S P5ANO STORE 1304 Kings Hwy. Vs Si. cker and some of our more fluent generals, will leave this subject alone. Otherwise, they will put Mr. K. on the spot where he must reaffirm loud ly his alliance with Peking against Western anti-Commu nists. It is a risk even for journalists to talk about this delicate matter. But they at least can be ignored or dis avowed. njiHE proposition on the In- A d i a n-Chinese frontier is such that a permanent settle ment between Chou En-lai and Nehru is most unlikely. For one thing, the Chinese, and that includes the Nation alists Chinese in Formosa quite as much as the Commu nist Chinese on the mainland, do not recognize the legality or the Tightness of the McMa- hon Line as a frontier. They assert that this line, which the Indian government claims is the legal one, was imposed on Tibet by the British who dom inated Tibet when China was helpless and in the throes of a revolution. The old frontier was bound to come into question when China was strong enough, as she is now, to reconquer Ti bet. And it is true, I believe, that most of the disputed terri tory is inhabited by Tibetans or is geographically related to Tibet. What India is confront ed with essentially is the de termination of China to com plete and to consolidate its conquest of Tibet, which is strategically the keystone of Central Asia. In this conflict with China the terrain is on the whole un favorable to India. The dis puted places are much more easily accessible to the Chi nese who are on the Tibetan plain than to the Indians who must come across some of the highest mountain passes in the world to supply their out posts. striking illustration of this is what happened on the northwestern frontier in that part of the territory , of Kashmir which' India now oc cupies. This territory is known as Ladakh and the dis puted part of Ladakh is an en tirely uninhabited mountain ous region, called Aksai Chin, which juts out into the place where Chinese Tibet adjoins Chinese Sinkiang. Here there has occurred a . most curious thing. The Chinese have built a road across Indian territory to connect Tibet with Sinki ang, and nobody knew they had done it until after it was completed. It is evident that this road is of no interest to India, ex cept as a point of honor. But what is mjre significant, the road has no strategic or poli Bemey's MM i III IIP Sill IISnSnllllWISSSM i III! IP i II II SIMI I II I III MBS MARX ELECTRIC TRAINS All aboard! Don't miss Penney's train buy. Goes from locomotive to caboose. Made by one of the country's most famous manufacturers of . electric trains. 8V4 ' feet of track. Transformer-operated engine pulls . tender, 2 cars and caboose. One of the most terrific electric freight train buys you've ever flagged down. Hurry to Penney's tomorrow and buy yours early. PENNEY'S TOYLAND STREET FLOOR! tical relevance to India, and Is in fact designed to connect two great Chinese territories which are vital to the control of central Asia. There is no conceivable way in which the Indian army could recapture that road. For there is no way that the Indian army could get there. The disputed territory is about as inaccessible from India as is the South Pole. THE government's policy is to argue its case with Chi na, to propose reasonable com promises, and to fight back where it can if there are other incursions. There are Indians who criticize Nehru arid would like a stronger policy, I have talked with some of the leaders of the opposition, seeking to find out what they mean by a stronger policy. Some would merely use stronger words. But there are a few who want to turn to the United States and ask .for arms and military assistance Unless he Chinese aggrega tion becomes much more flag rant than it is, I do not think that the Indian government will ask us to intervene, and I gather that we believe that nothing of the sort should be asked of us. The basic and de cisive reason for this policy of American absentention is that American intervention would inexorably compel the Soviet Union to align itself with Red China. That would be a disaster. There is very little that we can do to re cover territory in the- in accessible mountains of the Himalayas, and to fight a great war with. China over the Indian frontier would ruin the real hope for the future; which is that the Soviet Union will work itself into a policy of containing China. The true line of policy for India, as for the rest of us, is to conduct a holding operation as long as that is possible, and in the meantime to promote indirectly and with delicacy a policy of . containment. China with its huge ' and rapidly growing population may, as it augments its industrial capa city, become the most formid able power on earth. It may well require the combined power of the Soviet Union and of the West, to keep it within acceptable limits. v v BEFORE leaving this mo mentous subject, which I have come nowhere near ex hausting, I must put in a few words about how the Chinese action has shown up the illu sions of Prime Minister Neh ru. No doubt he has had his illusions. .They were based on failure to realize that a strong China would assert ruthlessly the historical im perial ambitions of the Chi nese nation. These ambitions are shared equally by Mao Tse-tung and by Chiang Kai Shek. Mr. Nehru thought, mis takenly, that if he befriended the Chinese revolution, he could live in peace with it. But . the Russians also had 5 their illusions about China and so did we. The Russian il lusion has been based on the dogma that "Socialist" coun tries cannot be rivals and enemies, and that in a Social ist world all would be har mony. The Russians have learned in Manchuria, they are learning in Mongolia, they will be learning on the fron tiers of Sinkiang, that they were, mistaken. And what about our own il lusion? It has been that if we boycotted and ostracized the Chinese revolution, it would somehow collapse and wither away. But after all our boy cotts and our ostracism, what we see now is a China which, however miserable the lot of its own people, is strong enough to dominate central Asia and begin to lay claim to everything that was ever within the orbit of the Chinese emperors. We have been not a whit more realistic ' than Nehru. For when he thought he might get on With the Chi nese revolution, we have imagined that we could weak en it by making faces at it. So, there is no ground for saying we told you so. And there is every reason for feel ing humility and for clearing our minds as- we face the overriding problem of the fu ture, which is the containment of China. (c) 1959 New- York Herald Tribune Inc. Benefit Checks May Be Sent to Banks Benefit checks from the Veterans administration may be sent directly to the benefi ciary's bank for deposit to his account, provided the bank has been given the required power of attorney, S. T. Bran nock, contact representative, VA Domiciliary, Camp White, said Friday. . A special U.. S. treasury form is available for the pur pose of assigning the power of attorney to the beneficiary's bank. This arrangement is con venient for veterans who travel and those who have fre quent changes of address which make it difficult for them to receive their checks with regularity, Brannock pointed out. ' A complete explanation or the arrangement and the nec essary forms may be obtained by contacting the office at the VA Domiciliary, Camp White, or any VA office. Contrary to former legal requirements that a check could not be forwarded to a beneficiary who moved, checks in payment of mone tary benefits may now be forwarded, provided tne aa- dressee has left a forwarding address with the post office, Brannock said. MAIL TRIBUNE. Medford, r. Sunday, Dec. 13, 1959 SHOP AND SAVE Tomorrow 'tfjfel Niqht Till V ! $ o. i i m i r ii u rrnTv tt tttitt t vn IlliglP PnegflL mfittpQ8" . IB-.-.WWmFJJ, -r.. "-''.-ill II ' -v' ' rfcfftei 4fe 4 m. m Bulky Knit Boy Pullover Sweaters! . . . Penny styled for casual good looks! Check the contrast tipping on collar. Hand washable. 4 colors ' 10 to 16. rs2n rrigRvsi rriKvi pf&v n nw V "' 1 jp 1 RAINCOATS 99 Waterproof rarncoat and hel met at 1 special Jow price! Sturdy rubber coated cotton rayon with lots of style! Yellow. 4 to 16. Mr. fl WESTERN JEANS 1.88 Low waisted jeans .... true western style for active little cowboys. Rugged 13-ounce vat-dyed denims. 4 to 16. mni A a mm A mm mm 98 SWEAT SHIRTS 1.98 With hood! 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