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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 18, No. 11. August 12, 1954

But Do We Care?

But Do We Care?

All this, however, Is outside our Immediate interest, and certainly outside our control. The rivalry between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. will continue, and it is the interest of both powers to maintain a state of world tension: in this way It is easier for each to keep their satellites under a firm control. But war in indo-China is not just a facet of the cold war, it is also, and primarily, an effort by the common people of a former European colony to achieve self-determination and at the same time to establish a new social order. In these objectives we are bound both by our sympathies and our self-interest to support them. If there is anything to be learnt from post-war history it is that the days of colonialism are over, while we know from our expcilrnec with India that a new and far more fruitful relationship betweent East and West in possible.

At the Name time, if there is a danger to us and to our little pocket of Western civilisation on the edge of the Asiatic continent it is much more likely to come in the future, as it has in the past, from the aggressive policies of reactionary governments, than from the social reforms of the revolutionary forces. Japan is still a greater, potential threat to us than China, and we might well feel more uneasy about Chiang Kai Chek and Syngman Rhee than about Ho Chi Minh. On the other hand, we deceive ourselves if we do not recognise that it is the revolutionary forces which are now in the ascendant, and a wise policy would dictate that we attempt not to alienate but to come to terms with them.