OUR WORLD
Sir,-Having read Louis Fischer's This is Our World I share some of the reactions Mr Burdon reveals in his review. The book makes, however, rewarding reading. If 1 remember rightly Mr Fischer develops the: theme. that Pacific affairs will be profoundly influenced by the outcome of the present experiments in China and India. Following Lenin, Mao made the Chinese peasants basic to his revolution, and the technique of military-cum-secret-police power, plus ideological mass hypnosis is being followed there as it has been in Russia. This means that the peasants, deluded into thinking they are working for themselves, wil) carry out the plans and instructions of the
intellectual professional revolutionary "brass" at the top. And this means that probably greater, more direct and rapid progress will be made than in India. In India, under democracy, Mr Nehru and his team must win over by persuasion an illiterate peasantry bogged down in age-oid customs and superstitions. The "brass" there depends on the votes of the peasants for power. Under such conditions, progress is likely to be slow, somewhat confused and erratic, and it might compare unfavourably with China. The important point is the final influence on other Asian nations. Britain is sagaciously liberating peoples from her "imperialistic" domination, But it is possible that the new leaders of these people might do better in the near future if they were in relations of non-imperial tutelage to the British. It is a very hard world for untried rulers and political novices to live in, and it cannot be quite so neatly parcelled up and disposed of as some of Mr Fischer’s essays tend to make ne think.
J. MALTON
MURRAY
‘Oamaru).
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 946, 27 September 1957, Page 11
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279OUR WORLD New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 946, 27 September 1957, Page 11
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