Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1941, Blaðsíða 22

LE NORD
16
officials and garrisons or indirectly by advisers, as plantation
owners or by other big scale activities. For two or three centuries
they were active in exploiting the natural production of those
vast territories: spices, cotton, tobacco, rubber and a number of
other valuable products, whilst they supplied the population with
their primitive requirements. It was not much for the individual,
but when the individuals are numbered in hundreds of millions,
it means something after all. It is sufficient to say that before
1914 India was England’s best customer, but that is no longer so.
These 1180 million people of Asia, of which it is probably
true to say that 95 per cent. are living at starvation level, might
throughout centuries have formed the reserve of consumers by
which Europe could have maintained her standard of living as
they were gradually and slowly raised above their low material
level to acquire purchasing power for a quantitatively as well
as qualitatively improving consumption.
But that was not to be, and hardly to be expected. It was not
redskins incapable of learning European methods. It was not
wandering tribes, numerically weak, who could be struck down
or enslaved. In British India there were more than 350 millions,
in China about 450 millions, in Japan proper about 70 millions,
in the Dutch possessions 60 millions and so forth. The very num-
bers of these masses exclude the possibility of extermination, and
in view of their intellectual equipment they must sooner or later
find the leader who can organise them so that sooner or later
they will break the bonds by which they are tied to powers of
a strange race and culture.
III.
The leading state in the economic development of Asia was,
of course, Japan, and the means was the same as that employed
by both Europe and America to raise their standard of living.
The Japanese began to industrialise, which from a western point
of view simply means that they began to exploit for themselves
the reserve which Europe intended to thrive on for centuries to
come. They can hardly be blamed for that. They were underfed
and we were getting overfed; it was only human that they kept
their own to themselves. We must not allow ourselves to be
misled by their internal disputes. Whatever the final result may
be — it will be no advantage to us.