The following observations are based upon eleven and a half years of active participation in the building of the Oriental Library, now some 16,000 volumes, at Claremont. This activity was preceded by ten years of miscellaneous collecting and of discussion with faculty members and friends of the institution. The proverb about hindsight applies: the principles which guided us can be stated much easier now than when we began.

Present disturbed relations between France and the republic of Vietnam add a special significance to the story of how near France came, in 1863 and 1864, to abandoning her colony in Cochinchina. It was by using as a base the three southern provinces of Cochinchina (Basse Cochinchine) which she had conquered from Annam that France subsequently established her protectorate over Cambodia, annexed the remaining three provinces of Cochinchina, and eventually extended her suzerainty over Annam, Tonkin, and Laos. Had she not decided to remain in Cochinchina, therefore, it is doubtful if she would have attained the rank, of an important imperial power in the Far East.

The current belief is that China is a country where most land belongs to landlords who do not till their soil but suck the blood of their tenants. Dr. Sun, founder of the Chinese Republic, was under this impression when he specified in his program that “all tillers must own their soil.” The Chinese Communists took this as one of their most basic points of attack. To quote Edgar Snow:

Now, wherever the Reds went there is no doubt they radically changed the situation for the tenant fanner, the poor farmer, the middle farmer, and all the “havenot” elements. All forms of taxation were abolished in the new districts for the first year…. Secondly, they gave land to the land-hungry peasants…. Thirdly, they took land and livestock from the wealthy classes and redistributed among the poor. Redistribution of land was a fundamental of Red policy.

French Indochina presents a veritable mosaic of languages, among which are representatives of all the major language families of Southeast Asia. This country has long served as a geographical cul-desac for the continental mass of Asia and thus has received a variety of cultural and linguistic influences, producing one of the most complex ethnological pictures to be found anywhere in the world. Within its confines may be found languages belonging to the Mon-Khmer, Malayo-Polynesian, Annamese-Müöng, Thai, Kadai, Miao-Yao, Tibeto-Burman, and Chinese stocks. Generally the centers of distribution for these language stocks lie outside Indochina, which has received only a trickle of speakers from linguistic spillage across its borders; only one of these stocks (Annamese-Müöng) is an exclusively native product of Indochina. Little is known of most of these languages, and even the more important among them (Annamese, Khmer, Lao) have not yet received adequate modern linguistic treatment. The main outlines are sufficiently clear, however, and afford us data on the cultural history of the country.

Japan's ambitions on the Asiatic mainland are now a matter of history. The Kwantung Army and the South Manchurian Railway Co. wished to repeat the achievements of the East India Co. One rattled the sword while the other worked with facts and figures, in order to lay the foundation for an empire. They had great achievements to their credit, and final success eluded them only because the whole world was against them.

When the Kwantung Army created the “Manchurian Incident” of September 18, 1931, it undoubtedly wanted some sort of change in China's Northeast, though it is doubtful that it had at that time fully set the course of the action that it took during the ensuing months. Finding things easy, it decided to feel its way into North China. Early in 1933 it went into Jehol and then crossed the Great Wall, the adventure ending in the Tangku Truce of May 31, 1933. In 193S it forced the Chinese Government to remove General Yü Hsüeh-chung and his troops from Hopei, to close down Kuomintang Party headquarters in North China, and to dissolve the Peiping Political Council. But by that time the Japanese militarists had already set their hearts on an “autonomous” North China under their control.

In thinking about the claims to independence of the large civilized nations of south and Southeast Asia, we are prone to forget or to ignore the fact that these regions also contain more than eighty million tribal minorities. These large minorities are not negligible quantities in the ethics of democracy; not even a single individual is of such trifling importance as to be brushed aside with the classical adage de minimis non curat praetor. Professor Robert M. Maclver has emphasized that, just as the human being is unable to unfold his potentialities without the protection and care of society, so society cannot attain its maximum development without granting to every individual every opportunity for full self-realization and individualization. The same is true, I think, also of minority groups.

The development of the natural resources of French Indochina for industrial growth has played a small role in the economy of the country. Handicraft industries have, until recently, produced all manufactured articles. A few modern industries have developed under French control, but French policy has discouraged colonial industries that might compete with exports from France.

Last March, the Inter-Asian Conference at New Delhi gave clear expression to the sympathy of Asia's peoples with Vietnam in its fight against colonial imperialism. And this was not just an empty gesture. The Hindu government has decided to place limits on the passage of French airplanes over India; and Indian longshoremen have refused to work for the revictualling of French troop transports.

There are those who will see an “Asiatic racism” in such manifestations as these. They will recall the Japanese propaganda for a “Greater Asia” which in fact would but have been an Asia dominated by Nipponese imperialism. The Inter-Asian Conference assumes an entirely different significance. It resumes the long-term trend which began in the first decade of this century, for the renovation of Asia by the democratic ideal of Western Europe.