Between Tears and Laughter by Lin Yutang

Author:Lin Yutang
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Read Books
Published: 2013-11-19T05:00:00+00:00

13

THE FUTURE OF ASIA

UNFORTUNATELY, God will not temper the wind. Poor lamb, you’d better grow your wool fast.

I see nothing but starvation and chaos and bloodshed in Asia. I know our policy in Asia will grow into a disaster, with mounting confusion before the war is over. In the war councils of today, there is a blind spot, and that spot is Asia. The same absent-mindedness that characterized the situation suggested in General Arnold’s speech at Madison Square Garden on March 6, 1943, will continue to characterize the Allied policy in Asia. As we refuse to think about postwar problems now, so we refuse to think about Asia until the war is won. General Arnold said, “Six weeks ago at Casablanca . . . I headed for the Far East. Before departure, President Roosevelt expressed himself briefly, ‘China’s ports are closed, the Japanese hold the Burma Road. How can we increase the air tonnage carried in? How can we build a larger combat force?’ ” I thought that President Roosevelt had known that China’s ports were closed a year before Casablanca. Thoughtfulness of this type really resembles forgetfulness. I thought this must have occurred to anyone who ever spent a minute’s thought on the strategy of fighting Japan from China. How could the most obvious fact on the map of the Orient be forgotten, and why up to now is there no plan, and no wish for a plan, for China’s partnership even in the war against Japan?

Meanwhile, General Arnold in the same speech made it amply clear that increase of air transport will be difficult, for supplying the China-India front means taking planes out of the other fronts. There will be more planes sent to China as a gesture to pacify the American public, so that the public will be lulled into silence, but the basic policy will be unchanged. Everything, we shall be told, will depend upon the reopening of the Burma Road, but we are awfully sorry we cannot spare the British Navy to land troops at Rangoon. The difficult we do immediately, the impossible a little later on. China belongs to the impossible. And we adore the Chinese.

A hurricane will blow. President Roosevelt announces the intention to use China as a base to invade Japan—the only logical base, but between that announcement of intention and actual planning, there will be another time lag of years. Events will happen and the complex situation will become more complex still, while we say that nothing in the Far East matters until Hider is defeated. The public realizes now that the cutting off of the Burma Road meant the isolation of China and agrees that London was stupid in not permitting Chinese troops to come into Burma and defend her own vital line, but the public will not admit the stupidity of continuing the present policy of dilly-dallying until either Kunming or Calcutta falls. For Japan was listening when President Roosevelt declared China as the only base for invasion of Japan.

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