The latest move of the N.Z. Government, is quixotic to Hay the least, that is the decision to send N.Z. troops to bolster the failing bastions of European Imperialism in Malaya. The United Kingdom must realise that the days of their Colonial exploitation in S.E, Asia are irrevocably over.

They may be able to hold on for a few years in Malaya but in the interim they are further antagonising the people of Malaya and the whole of Asia at a time when the goodwill of the Asian world is of the utmost importance to the preservation of world peace. However they appear to be unwilling to relinquish the last vestiges of their Imperial pride in the face of the mammoth forces of emergent Asian Nationalism. The public reason given for their tenacity is that they are stopping the spread of the dread bogy Communism. Personally, I consider that the people of Malaya have every justification for turning Communist in an even more virulent form than they are at present.

Whatever the revolt it has evolved from discontent within; from a country that has had its natural economy ruined by a century of British Colonial Mercantilism which has ruined the native Industries in the interests of Industrial Britain, which has imported innumerable other Asiatics to work in the mines and industries, and so Malaya was meta morphosed from a happy self-sufficient country, to an over-populated country dependent for its economy on the fluctuating world markets in such cash, export products as rubber and tin.

Malaya has a chance of joining an economic union of other South East Asian States in which she will exchange industrial products for food from the rice bowls of Indo-China etc. If Britain withdraws soon before she does any more damage it will need a strong government to restore the ravaged economy of the country, and Judging by the work in East Europe a totalitarian gov ernment would appear to be eminently suitable for the task.