Pals

Britain's Ernest Bevin was tired and blue around the gills when he came ashore at Colombo, Ceylon to attend the Commonwealth Foreign Ministers Conference. "I can't stand this climate," said Bevin. "It's like August bank holiday on Hampstead Heath." His hosts arranged to have him carried in a sedan chair with four strong bearers. Said a friend to Bevin: "You are using a means of transportation which your old union* would not approve."

Last week as the ministers ended six days of sessions, Bevin was reminded again of his union days. Summing up what the Ceylon conference had accomplished, he said that his followers used to ask if anything ever got done at trade union conferences. Bevin would reply: "We meet all our old pals. We remain pals."

That was a good description of the Ceylon meeting. Few concrete agreements emerged, but the ministers of the United Kingdom and seven Dominions had freely discussed explosive Asiatic questions--without explosion.

When the pals parted, they could look back on some work done, problems faced and attitudes aired:

Item: The ministers agreed to chip in -L-7,500,000 to help wayward sister Burma, which had left the Commonwealth, get back on her feet.

Item: All agreed that a peace treaty with Japan should be signed soon.

Item: India's Jawaharlal Nehru carried the ball for full & friendly recognition of Communist China. Canada's Lester Pearson was for going slow.

Item: Malcolm Macdonald, Britain's able commissioner general for South-East Asia, reported that he was hopeful of Communist defeat in French Indo-China. Nehru disagreed. He considered Emperor Bao Dai a French puppet.

Item: Australia's new Conservative Foreign Minister, red-haired Percy Spender, presented a plan for a kind of Asian Marshall Plan. All the ministers agreed to start work on this and hoped that the U.S. would join in.

Much conference time was spent belaboring the point that low living standards in Asia encouraged Communism. No one denied that, but, as the Ceylon meeting ended, London's Economist raised an all-important caveat: "The most immediate requirement is obviously that of defense. Communists at least do not share the Western illusion that one can dispense with bayonets provided there is a promise of bread . . . The first assurance that the Commonwealth needs to give not only to its own Asian partners but to the newly formed independent Asian nations is of assistance against violent internal or external attack."

Thus bluntly defined was the problem of what the West might do for Asia. What could Asia do for the West? Ceylon made a gracious start. Buddhist priests at Kandy, learning that Bevin has a heart ailment, invited him to view the cherished relic of Buddha's tooth, which they say has curative powers. Usually the tooth is taken from its jeweled cases and exposed only once in seven years.

What with the conference harmony and the tooth-viewing, Bevin left Ceylon looking better than when he arrived.

*The Transport and General Workers Union.

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