Imperialism on the March

Early in June this year a VUC student en route to Japan spent a sleepless night in Manila, capital city of the Philippines. It was not the tropic heat that disturbed his slumber, nor the merciless attack of the mosquito: the clatter of rifles and machine-gun fire that commenced soon after dusk was only interrupted night long by the occasional explosion of oil and ammunition dumps.

"Slight activity due to 'bandits'," was all the American news service cared to report.

That night the peoples of Luzon were fighting for their independence, fighting as they had fought the Japanese eighteen months before—not for the masked oppression by a puppet Rojas, but for the full right to self-determination such as they might have expected from the forgotten principles of the Atlantic Charter.

One month later an oil tanker was discharging at the Shanghai waterfront. The radio operator told "Salient" of the conditions prevailing there. "The port might have been the naval base at San Diego," he said. "Barracked in the city were some two hundred thousand American troops." Press reports of the time denied all such rumours, quoting in reply a United States General: "The only American troops stationed today in China are the 20,000 Marines assisting in the repatriation of Japanese war prisoners."

And now "Salient" is in receipt of first-hand evidence of the true situation in Hong Kong and on the adjacent mainland.

It is no mere dislike of the Chinese Red Army that prompts the United States to send her emissaries to the stricken natives of the China coast, and it is no small body of recalcitrant generals that urges military support of a corrupt, degenerate, and malevolent government that has neither the confidence of the people, nor the intention or ability of legislating the least social reform, however necessary.

For one hundred years the Don Juans of the West have competed and fought for the raptures of Chinese exploitation, and today Uncle Sam, with a nation on the verge of vast economic expansion, having wooed the Judas Chiang, has won his unworthy affection.

And while the showmen of the Pacific juggle with the Atomic Bomb on the Bikini stage, further back in the news blackout the runners of Wall Street are busy establishing the interests of Farben Industries, Du Pont Ltd., and I.C.I.—the monopoly firms of American capitalism.

It is clear that the peace of the Atomic Age will depend largely upon the immediate military and political developments in the "Far East"

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Mr. Hurst, delegated NZUSA to the Conference of the World Federation of Democratic Youth held in Prague, November last, recommended that his parent body do not affiliate with WFDY as the latter appeared to him a somewhat radical organisation. Figures quoted by the travelling secretary Mr. Williams, printed on page 4 of this issue, dismiss this impression entirely, but evidently Mr. Hurst does not conceive of any good that could come out of affiliation to a federation not completely of his own political aspirations.

If the aims of WFDY are not the aims of world youth then we as conscientious students must work within that body and see that they are made so: if those aims are common, however, and it appears that this is correct, then it is the duty of NZUSA to see that we are not left alone outside this progressive and powerful body.

Our reply must be—Affiliation.