Hot and Cold
THIS IS OUR WORLD. By Louis Fischer. (Cape, 35s.)
Our OF THE GUN. By Denis Warner. (Hutchinson, 18s.)
BOTH these books are of the kind best described as first-rate reporting, but they are written from entirely different standpoints and cover fields which are allied rather than identical. Mr. Fischer, as might be expected, ranges across the world from the United States, through Britain and France, into Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, Turkey, Israel and the Arab countries, and then right through Pakistan, India, Burma, Viet Nam, Thailand and the Philippines to Japan. It is only at the extreme end of his wide sweep that he overlaps with Mr. Warner, whose study deals mainly with the impact of militant Communism upon China, Japan, Indo-China and Korea : and in this area the methods of the two writers afford an illuminating contrast. While it might be an over-simplification to say that Mr. Fischer is mainly interested in cold war while Mr. Warner's concern is with hot war, the statement may serve as a rough description of the angles from which the two books are approached.
Mr. Warner has written a vivid, close-textured account of what the new, militant Asian Communism looks like when it takes up arms. He is deeply impressed, and anxious to impress his readers, with the sheer physical strength of the weapon which has been evolved by Communist methods in China, North Korea and North Viet Nam : and he believes, almost certainly with justice, that the military advisers of most of the Western nations have not yet fully understood the terrible lesson of Dien Bien Phu. Without intend- ing to write a Staff College textbook, Mr. Warner has produced a series of studies on Communist strategy and tactics which no student of modern warfare can safely ignore. Quite rightly, in my opinion, great attention is paid in this book to Mao Tse-tung's Problems of War and Strategy; for this is not only the source- book of theoretical military training throughout Communist Asia, but it also provides the key to the many successes, and the few failures (which Mr. Warner believes have been made far less probable for the future) in Korea and Viet Nam as well as in the Chinese civil war itself. The exact methods, perfected by experience, for ensuring that 'defeat of the strong by the weak,' which have been worked out over the last twenty years for the use of 'armies in sandshoes,' have never been more clearly expounded or more closely analysed than by Mr. Warner—who has seen them in action.
'Every Communist must grasp this truth : political power grows out of the barrel of the gun.' This quotation from Mao Tse-tung, which supplies Mr. Warner's title, is the real touchstone of the difference between the points of view of Mr. Warner and Mr. Fischer. For Mr. Fischer does not believe that political power grows out of any gun : to him, as a sincere follower of Mr. Gandhi, the gun is the hallmark of failure, no matter who uses it. But as a realist with a working acquaintance with a larger number of influential statesmen than almost any of his con- temporaries enjoys, Mr. Fischer looks forward, not to rapid dis- armament, but to a longish period of 'colder war and warmer relations' between the two great power blocs. In his view, the world is entering a phase in which all governments have a stern mandate from the people to avoid war: and the coming struggle will not be a shooting war, but a competition for the attachment of the neutrals. The strength of the non-Communist world lies in partnership, in sympathetic consideration for the views of others: there must be deliberate planning, accompanied by a kind of 'time-table of liberation,' to offset the present weak places-- colonialism, the colour problem, the frustration of economically retarded nations. This synopsis of a central argument, important as that argument is, does scanty justice to Mr. Fischer's book; which is a vivid canvas of human and national portraits, painted with sincere honesty and with a delicate, sympathetic perception approaching genius.
L. F. RUSHBROOK WILLIAMS
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