'US Should Cut Dutch ERP' To Help Set Indonesia Free

"If the Dutch continue to repudiate withdrawal from the Indonesian Republic, the United States may have to use the Marshall Plan as a weapon against them in Europe," Government Professor Rupert Emerson told the Massachusetts League of Women voters at their international relations conference in Agassiz Thursday morning, attended by many Radcliffe students.

Emerson presented his views on the Indonesian problem in a symposium on "U.S. Foreign Policy in the Far East." John K. Fairbank, professor of History, and Edwin O. Reischauer, of the Far Eastern Languages Department, summed up the Chinese situation and the Japanese occupation respectively.

The United States must work with the moderate nationalists now controlling the Indonesian Republic, Emerson asserted. "Should they fall, it may lead to a swing to the Communists as the only ones who can be successful."

Indonesians Deserve Freedom

Even if it means seriously impairing Dutch economic recovery in Europe by cutting off aid under E.R.P., we must set the Indonesians on their own feet, under a government of their own choice, the government professor added.

Fairbank, speaking on China, warned that there is a "prospect that the Communist success will be duplicated in other regions of Asia."

He feels that the major reason for U.S. failure in China is that, in following an anti-Communist policy, we have blindly overlooked some local factors. "We need to develop a local approach to each area, in order to ally ourselves with the forces of progressive social change, rather than against them," he claimed.

In the report on Japan, Reischauer stated "democracy will either win in Japan, or American foreign policy throughout Asia will have the props knocked out from under it." Although the occupation has been relatively successful thus far, Reischauer claimed that the time has come for a reevaluation of our policy.

Too rapid a push toward reform on the part of the national government, involving dogmatic policy directives, has resulted in killing democratic methods.