RACIAL BARRIER

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 28 August 1942, Page 1

RACIAL BARRIER

"MUST BE DESTROYED" Can the white man and the coloured man ever come together in any sort of co-operation? asks Pearl Buck in the "New York Times.” That is the crux of the future. In the answer to that question is the answer to where and when this war will end. A truce which does not take into account the question and the answer will be only a temporary breathing space for a recuperation for yet a greater phase of the war. If we deny the question and evade the answer, if we ignore it as a matter of diplomacy, it is simply to behave like the ostrich, because in Asia no one denies it or evades it. In India it is the burning question, whose flames leap higher every hour; in Burma it is a raging fire; in Java, yes, and in the Philippines and China. For while the Filipino lias fought well beside the white man it is only because he has his promise of freedom from him, and if China is still heroically w’ith us against Japan she is. like Russia, fighting for herself and her own life, and she will be the first to demand her own complete freedom, even from those who are now her allies. For the white men to try to escape the blaze in Asia which tins war has set free may be to end in the fire which they are as yet doing little to put out. The main barrier between East and West to-day is that the white man is not willing to give up his superiority, and the coloured man is no longer willing to endure his