CHINESE COMMUNISM NOT ENTIRELY. RUSSIAN VINTAGE, SAYS MEMBER OF CHRISTIAN AMBULANCE UNIT

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 34, 17 December 1948, Page 5

CHINESE COMMUNISM NOT ENTIRELY. RUSSIAN VINTAGE, SAYS MEMBER OF CHRISTIAN AMBULANCE UNIT

Communism in China does not appear to be altogether the Russian vintage, according to Mr Lindsay Crozier, back in New Zealand after some years with the Friends Ambulance Unit 'in war-torn China. He w orked on both sides of the lines in the civil war, and made his first acquaintance with ambulance work in China hauling medical supplies over the Burma road to mission hospitals during the war with Japan.

Mr Crozier, at present engaged making films of the Presbyterian Mission’s ' work amongst the Maori people, spent a few days in this district this week, and was present at the dinner to celebrate the completion of the revision of the Maori Bible on Tuesday evening. Last year, Mr Crozier covered .about 16,000 miles in China engaged in documentary film work! He got to know all sorts of people, talked with all grades of society, heard a variety of political opinions.. And, chatting with a Beacon representative yesterday, he gave it as his opinion tbat the Communism of China is something indigenous, the inevitable uprising of a ground'down peasantry against the wealthy land-owning classes. Some of the leaders might have been Russian -trained, and some might have drawn their, ideas from a study of Russian social developments, but, generally speaking, what the world knew .of Communism in China lacked the obvious Kremlin Russian Aid Discounted Nor was there any direct proof of Russian aid to the Communist forces, though it was commonly alleged that such aid had been given. He did that when the SinoJapanese war finished the Russians left captured Japanese supplies in Manchuria where the Communist iorces could get them, but. there were no Russian munitions in the field as far as he could find out. Indeed, though he had noticed their morale was better than that o’f their, opponents, the Communist forces were not so well equipped as Chiang Kai-Shek’s forces, and were relying on Japanese equipment, and American weapons .and munitions seized from the Nationalists. Compromise Probable Asked concerning the probable outcome of the conflict, Mr Crozier said he felt a compromise would eventually come, when the extremists of both sides took back seats. He said that while he took no ■sides and. wanted only to see the /bloodshed finished, he felt it was a good thing that the Americans were now supporting the National cause less actively. The fact that a lot of the American munitions supplied to the Nationalists had been captured and used by the Communists, and .that American trained pilots in American warplanes did so much ■of the Nationalist bombing, meant that quite a majority of the casualties were inflicted by American ammunition, and it was not doing foreign prestige in China any good. Anti-Foreign Complex To many Chinamen, there was no difference amongst Americans, Englishmen or citizens of -other Commonwealth countries, so that we were included in an anti;foreign complex that was developing. , Mr Crozier has had an eventful few years in China and, for one who avowedly hates waifare, has -seen possibly a lot more destruction and bloodshed than many an ardent militarist. Following the Burma Road iob, which was no health picnic, his unit moved after the Japanese war to that part of China which had been occupied and started re-opening mission hospitals there, then turn ing their attention to relieving the of the injured and dispossessed in the civil war. They don’t ask anyone’s political opinion. They don’t care What his creed is. If he needs help he gets it..