THE NATIONS: We Don’t Care

Last summer Philippines President Elpidio Quirino viewed with militant alarm the advances of Communism toward Southeast Asia. He called for a “firewall” to seal off the Red flame in China. In an address before Congress he asked the U.S. “not to tarry too long in the redefinition of fundamental attitudes toward Asia.”

The U.S. went right on tarrying, and India’s Prime Minister Pandit Nehru rejected Quirino’s proposal for a Pacific Union. Last week in Honolulu, on the way home after a kidney operation in Baltimore, the Philippines President no longer spoke militantly.

“Let China go Communist,” he said. “Let Japan go Communist. We don’t care. We will respect whatever form of government any of our Far Eastern neighbors choose to have. We are not antiCommunist. We are nonCommunist. We in the Philippines . . . are happy under our present system of government. We don’t care about the others.”