152
PARTISAN REVIEW
the national viewpoint? There must be something in
all
the talk
about "public opinion," or less trouble would be taken to produce the
right Pavlovian response in the dog. The Russians and their friends
certainly are under no illusion on this point. Their policy still profits
from the after-effect of the "Stockholm Peace Appeal," that master–
piece of the advertiser's art. It profits no less surely from the colossal
hoax perpetrated by, and upon, the fellow-traveling entomologists
who after six weeks in China and Korea gravely reported that Chi–
nese schoolchildren were collecting and bottling millions of plague–
struck fleas and spiders dropped from U.S. planes. The longer the
Cold War lasts the greater the scope for similar exploits, not counting
such unexpected windfalls (from the Communist viewpoint) as the
celebrated special issue of
Colliers
which temporarily converted half
of Europe to neutralism. This is not just the preliminary maneuvering
before the "real" conflict: it is an essential part of it.
If
India is
lost to the West it will be largely for reasons which do not enter into
any statistical tabulation, though Indian production and population
statistics will have something to do with
it.
(For "India" read
"Japan," or any other country with an unmanageable economic prob-
lem and a shaky faith in democracy.)
,
It is relevant in this context to speculate upon the repercussions
which such an event, and the consequent shift in the world balance
of power, would have upon Western policy, especially if America
and Europe took differing views of its significance: as they would
almost certainly tend to do. Britain, as has been remarked before,
looks upon the Far East as an extension of the Ncar and Middle
East-from Egypt to Persia and Pakistan. France, as an Mrican and
Mediterranean power under urgent pressure to wind up the costly
and futile Indo-China war and concentrate on problems nearer home,
is even more inclined to approach the Indian and Pacific Oceans
setting through the Mediterranean. The remainder of Europe, insofar
as it takes any account of these matters, inevitably follows the Anglo–
French lead. Thus the loss of India, by way of revolution, might come
to mean quite different things to Europe and to the United States.
For Britain it would be an additional reason to liquidate its Indian
Ocean commitments and concentrate on Mrica: a tendency which
is already far advanced. For America it might conceivably supply
