Wanted: another John Hay

Title

Language

English

Source

The American Chamber of Commerce Journal Volume XXV (No. 4) April 1949

Year

1949

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Abstract

Editorial

Fulltext

Editorials (i... to promote the general welfare” The adoption of the Atlantic Pact, which binds the major nations of the West into a defensive alThe Atlantic Charter and the Marxian Opium Dream liance, was the inevitable outcome of the deliberate wrecking by Russia of the United Nations Charter which it once was hoped would unite all the peoples of earth. The Russian oligarchs from the first have waged a campaign of virulent hostility just short of open warfare against all other governments, and the Atlantic Pact, to be followed possibly by a similar Mediterranean pact and, as advocated by President Quirino, a Pacific pact, is the measure of the price they have to pay, — a world on guard against them. In just retribution, Russia today stands isolated; without a friendly government or people to give it countenance; its only “allies,” those nations on its borders which it has overrun. They would save face by continuing to address their lying propaganda to the peoples of the world over the heads of their governments, but this becomes ever more exaggerated and absurd as they become more hysterical. So much for the “crafty” men in the Kremlin and their Marxian opium dream of world enslave ment to one totalitarian power. History is said — sometimes fondly, and some times with weariness — to repeat itself, and one wonders whether it could possibly repeat Wanted: itself in the present China case. One Another could hope that it might if the hope did John Hay not seem quite so vain. Henry Adams (1838-1918), in his autobiography, “The Education of Henry Adams,” wrote: “The drama acted in Peking, in the summer of 1900, was, in the eyes of a student [Adams], the most serious that could be offered for his study, since it brought him suddenly to the inevitable struggle for the control of China, which, in his view, must decide the control of the world; yet, as a money-value, the fall of China was chiefly studied in Paris and London as a calamity to Chinese porcelain. The value of a Ming vase was more serious than universal war. “The drama of the Legations interested the public much as though it were a novel of Alexandre Dumas, but the bear ing of the drama on future history offered an interest vastly greater. Adams knew no more about it than though he were the best-informed statesman in Europe. Like them all, he took for granted that the Legations were massacred, and that John Hay, who alone championed China’s ‘administrative entity,’ would be massacred too, since he must henceforth look on, in impotence, while Russia and Germany dismembered China, and shut up America at home. Nine statesmen out of ten, in Europe, accepted the result in advance, seeing no way to pre vent it. Adams saw none, and laughed at Hay for his help lessness. “When Hay suddenly ignored European leadership, took the lead himself, rescued the Legations and saved China, Adams looked on, as incredulous as Europe, though not quite so stupid, since, on that branch of education, he knew enough for his purpose. Nothing so meteoric had ever been done in American diplomacy. On returning to Washington, Jan uary 30, 1901, he found most of the world as astonished as himself, but less stupid than usual. For a moment, indeed, the world had been struck dumb at seeing Hay put Europe aside and set the Washington Government at the head of civil ization so quietly that civilization submitted, by mere instinct of docility, to receive and obey his orders; but, after the first shock of silence, society felt the force of the stroke through its fineness, and burst into tumultuous applause. Instantly the diplomacy of the nineteenth century, with all its painful scuf fles and struggles, was forgotten, and the American blushed to be told of his submissions in the past.” A few years after the diplomatic stroke so high ly praised by Adams, came the Russo-Japanese War, one of the results of which was, — thanks to the in tervention of the first Roosevelt, that Russia was ef fectively blocked in Asia for a number of decades. But Japan took Russia’s place as a menace to China and ultimately came near to total conquest. Today, with Japan eliminated, Russia has started rolling forward again, — thanks in part to the second Roosevelt’s concessions at Yalta. And the Russian gains in the North are made the more dangerous by the victories in the civil war of 139 those elements in China which draw their inspiration from Russian “communism” rather than from the free democracy of the West. China’s troubles and sufferings, and the world’s difficulties over China, do not come so much from faulty Western diplomacy, however, or even from any present lack of Western power to aid, as from the fact that China is still, in the international political sense, a virtual vacuum. With the threat of conquest from one direction eliminated, a threat from the other direction immediately develops. If the government which at present seems to be slowly forming can fill the vacuum, that may be a positive gain wherever the immediate ideological in spiration may come from, for there remains the hope that the Chinese “Reds” are, first of all, Chinese. America is not interested in winning for itself the control of China, and never was. Adams’ state ment that the struggle for the control of China must decide the control of the world, is to be doubted. He gemony is not determined by areas or populations, but by power. But America is deeply interested in China being controlled by the Chinese rather than by the Russians, acting for themselves or through pup pets. If the Chinese “Reds” are not puppets, then per haps America in due time could take certain mea sures, — of friendship and aid, to keep them from ever becoming an advance guard for further Russian penetration, imperialistic or ideological. As in the days of John Hay, fifty years ago, are we too prone to consider ourselves impotent and to accept in advance a prophesied result of current dev elopments, seeing no way to prevent this? Is there today a John Hay who, through some bold stroke, will wrest another chance for the Chinese people out of the welter and ruck of the present con fusion? Indian Home Minister Patel at New Delhi re cently pointed a distinction that may prove of value in clarifying the present world conCommunism tention over communism. and Commu- In warning the Indian commu nist parties nists that the Government would suppress violence, he said that it would not seek to exterminate the ideology under lying communism, but that it would have no alter native to suppressing the Communist Party “if it persisted in exploiting every situation in order to cause chaos.” There are no doubt numerous idealistic people in the world, outside of Russia (perhaps more outside than in), who, if not believers in the whole commu nist system, see a possible social gain in the abolition of the private ownership of the “means of produc tion,” — a gain in exchange for which they would as sume the risks of the consequent tremendous increase in the arbitrary powers of government. Many would favor such a development outright if the change from private to public ownership were progressively and always legally and ethically effected, as seems at pre sent to be happening in Britain. But even these people, — not hostile to commu nism as such and even convinced or half-convinced that a communist economic system would be prefer able to capitalism, are outraged and rightly execrate the means adopted by present-day Russia allegedly to promote world communism, and deeply distrust and flatly impugn its motives and aims, as a world power, as well. By what right, under any code ever lawfully framed by man, may the Russian oligarchy, through the conspiracies it foments everywhere, sap and de stroy the chosen institutions of other peoples, creat ing dissention and tumult and riot, disloyalty, betray al, crime, and treason? Is disintegration and chaos the road to a new and better order? Can hatred prepare the way for love? Does evil turn to good? Is not the Russian so-called communism plainly the satanic thing which its measures at home and abroad, show it to be? The ideology of true communism we can study and reason about. Present-day communist parties should be dealt with for the criminal organizations which they are. President Quirino, in his remarks on March 4 before the conference of the 81st District of Rotary International at the Manila Hotel, Investment deigned to make a good-natured Risks — Natural reference to the editorial in the and Otherwise February issue of this Journal in which we spoke of his wearing rose-tinted glasses when he delivered his address on the State of the Nation before Congress. He admitted that he was an optimist. He de clared that he does not propose to be a crape-hanger and that in addressing Congress he was not presid ing at a wake or leading a funeral. That was good rhetoric. He honored and pleased the assumed writer of the editorial by dubbing him a “very good friend of our people,” but implied in his speech that this writer was among those who are sour seekers of disaster, frightened by bugbears largely self-created. We are hesitant about taking advantage of Mr. Quirino’s condescension to enter into public argument with him. We would take no pleasure in proving him wrong, especially on the topic which he chose to speak on to the Rotarians, — conditions in the Phil ippines as they relate to American capital invest ment. We wish he were right and that our fears, so-called, were only self-created. But a wish is not a conviction, and we are sorry to say that Mr. Quiri no’s arguments were not convincing. Dropping all idea of arguing with the President, may we not simply advance a few reflections that oc curred to us in reading a report of what he said? In the first place, we do not believe the country is doomed because of import control. We do not be lieve that the country is doomed at all, though we do think that the country’s advancement is being serious ly retarded and that we may all come in for much needless suffering as a result of this. And not alone because of import control, but because of the ever extending autocratic government control over every phase of the country’s economy. And not only be cause of that, but because of the discrimination throughout much of this control against so-called alien enterprise, which, only to mention the Flag Law, goes so far as to deny the right to ownership of the smallest tract of land to aliens. Enacted legislation has been definitely handicapping established business and much of the projected legislation threatens to handicap it further, especially in the fields of corpo rative organization and of labor-capital relations. 141

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