MeALyttelton in Malaya
It would be a mistake to make too much of Mr. Lyttelton's remark, on arrival in Malaya, that "the political situation would have to wait." It need not be supposed that he was hinting at any reversal of Sir Henry Gurney's-policy, or that he believed that the military and political solutions in Malaya are capable of being dealt with separately. All that presumably the Colonial Secretary meant was that there can be no lasting political solution until the country is at peace once more. That is obviously true, and Mr. Lyttelton later took the opportunity to make explicit his Government's acceptance of the idea of an independent Malaya. How closely the political and military aspects of the war in Malaya coincide is well shown in an article on another page of this issue. Security is a question of confidence, and confidence is a quality which cannot be evoked by force. In the end the problem of Malaya is the problem of its Chinese inhabitants ; how to root out those who are in revolt and how to protect and encourage the vast majority who have no active sympathy for the revolters. A solution of this problem cannot shirk the issue of citizenship for the Chinese, and no doubt in his talks with Dato Onn and other Malayan leaders, as well as with British officials, Mr. Lyttelton will have had a chance to calculate the risks that must be run when that thorny problem is tackled. Nobody will expect a miraculous change in the fortunes of the war in Malaya as a result of his visit, but it has already had a bracing effect on the morale of the forces of law and order.
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