The British meanwhile progress, no doubt. In many respects the British administrations in Singapore and Malaya are more enlightened than some of the local governments in the United States. But whatever the reason, they do not seem to belong to the Chinese who live there or even to the Malays. They are governments for the people, and not (so far as the local people seem to judge) governments of the people.
Is it reasonable to ask in the mid-1950s that decent British officers and civil servants convert themselves into apocalyptic fanatics of a weird composite Asian nationalism? Can the British make revolution in Malaya when they are rather fatigued with their own Labor revolution at home? Can we Americans, who have made nothing, absolutely nothing, out of the heroism and romance and tradition that might have been reconstituted as the ancient kingdom of Ryukyu (Okinawa), be in a position to chide the British for not doing that which we ourselves do not undertake?
The Communist magic is strong, bad magic. In North Korea it created officers in an unreasonably short time, developed fanatics while we were trying to develop gentlemen, and came close to defeating us in the perilous weeks of the Pusan perimeter. In China soldiers of whom many Americans despaired when they fought on the Nationalist side became desperate assault infantry under Communist training. The timid and quarrelsome Annamites who had given the French so little trouble before Communism organized them, fought like leopards once they read Marx, Lenin, Mao Tse-tung and Ho Chi-minh.
Was this why the Communists were able to continue in Malaya? No one has ever accused the British Army of a lack of ingenuity. The forces who developed desert raiders, coastal commandos, air-dropped banditti, and a plethora of amusing, shocking, and audacious innovations cannot be accused of a lack of imagination.
The British did use psychological warfare in Malaya strategically, tactically, in the field, in the cities, by radio, and by print. When Carleton Greene was directing the British PsyWar effort from the headquarters of that redoubtable gentleman, Malcolm MacDonald, British Commissioner General for South East Asia, he even resorted to the device of writing individual letters to known Communists and leaving these letters scattered through the jungle. The British used white propaganda, black propaganda, grey propaganda; if there had been a purple propaganda they certainly would have tried it. Alex Josey came close to it when he shocked the planters in Malaya by delivering socialist speeches over the Malay radio in an attempt to pull the Left wing off the Communist bird.
Sir Henry Gurney, the High Commissioner of the Federation who was murdered in 1952, was a veteran of irregular warfare. He had faced the Zionist terrorists in Jerusalem and was a man without fear. His approach to the problem of confronting Communism was hopelessly sane. The Communists were offering young Chinese the intoxication of craziness, of a mad and heroic righteousness to justify the misspending of their lives. Sir Henry's answer was decency, goodness, security, prosperity, authority, liberty under law. He offered everything except glamor, terror, inspiration, and romance—
Everything except the chance to join the British side.
What kind of British side?
A British side which, like the Communist side, would welcome the makers of the future, the builders of the next civilization, the arbiters of history.
The Communists have presented a high bid against the U.S. and Britain as well as the other Western powers. We have not yet overbid them. The high bid is the opportunity to join, to belong, really to be equal, not just legally equal, and, above everything, to share, to struggle, and to work under conditions of heroism for a common goal.