WEST AND EAST

New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 824, 13 May 1955, Page 12

WEST AND EAST

AMBASSADOR’S REPORT, by — Chester Bowles; Victor Gollancz Litd., Enfglish price J FpOUR quotations will show what kind of a man Chester Bowles is and the kind of book he has written. The first is.a comment on the great range of philosophy and history in the Indian heritage: "Recently I noted that when. students in a large American city were asked to learn the hundred most important dates in the history of the world, only one was an Asian event, and that was 1853 when Commodore Perry ‘opened’ Japan!" The second quotation is an explanation for Bowles of the reason why "capitalism" is "considered a_ horrid word in much of Asia": "‘There are only three ways to make money,’ an Indian manufacturer explained to me. ‘You lower the quality of the product, you raise the price or you reduce wages,’ " : The third is a comment on the white man Hillary being knighted and the brown man Tensing being given only a civilian medal: "And in the very response to the joint achievement, the ancient differences of East and West seemed vast. ‘Damn good’ was the way the Westerner from New Zealand described his feeling on top of the world’s highest peak. ‘I thought of God and the greatness of His work,’ said Tensing." The fourth quotation is from a postscript: "I also read about the ‘book burning’ that was supposed to have taken place in some of our information libraries abroad, and I wondered how. many Indians remembered my openingday speeches at several of those reading rooms in which I discussed with such assurance the sacred freedom of the mind," Mr. Bowles was quite the best available and eligible citizen President Truman could have appointed as United

States Ambassador to India. He is a friendly, simple, humble, charitable, honest, attractive, magnanimous supporter of the Democratic Party, who has goodwill to all men, a home on the Connecticut River, and a deep concern about Lenin’s reported remark that The road to Paris lies through Peking and Calcutta." His book is a readable travel diary with the message that "the West should recognise the existence of an Asian point of view," and that efforts to "buy their governments can only damage the

Western cause."

W.B.

S.