The Other "Mac"

POLICIES & PRINCIPLES

The most important Briton east of Dover, as his own countrymen say, is Malcolm MacDonald, His Majesty's Commissioner-General for Southeast Asia.

For over three years, the kinetic son of Britain's first Socialist Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, has been trying to keep the disparate, restive, unprepared peoples of Southeast Asia within the free world. He is the other "Mac" of democracy in the Far East. He and Douglas MacArthur are the terminal anchors of a defense that loops around an aggressive Red subcontinent for some 52,000 miles, from Japan to Burma.

A blue flag, bearing the British crown and the legend "Southeast Asia," flies above MacDonald's Malaya headquarters, just across the water from the island fortress of Singapore. Fanning out to the north lie Malaya, Indo-China, Siam and Burma, rich in tin, rubber and rice, overland corridors to India and the Indies, peopled by 68 million. MacDonald's flag expresses a hope: that the weak states in Southeast Asia will work with the West for a new, freer regionalism. As he labors, MacDonald has an eye on history's clock. Will there be time to mold a strong Southeast Asia before Communism moves in?

Evolutionary Revolutionist. MacDonald, now a youthful-looking 48, came up through Oxford and the Labor benches of Parliament, served as Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, Secretary of State for Colonies and High Commissioner in Canada before arriving in Southeast Asia. A self-styled "evolutionary socialist," he hit the pukka sahibs of Malaya and its environs like a revolutionary sans-culotte.

An unpretentious extravert with an unaffected sense of social and racial equality, MacDonald refused to visit stuffy colonial clubs that drew a bar against Asiatics. To his dinner table he invited as many brown and yellow guests as white. All this sprang from a basic conviction. "In the last 20 years," he said, "British policy here has moved in the right political direction--towards local self-government. It is not our political but our social policy that has tended to spoil our relations with the Asiatic countries."

In the process of correcting past mistakes, MacDonald opened his door to all callers regardless of color. At his residence, "Bukit Serene," a grey and yellow stone mansion built before the war as a love nest for the local sultan, the interviews and conferences are all but endless. The Commissioner wants to see everyone. He is relaxed and informal, likes to smoke a long cheroot, wear slacks and yellow sport shirt. When three loinclothed Dyak penghulus (chiefs) from Sarawak dropped in last fall, MacDonald tactfully donned kilts to greet them. Later he took them on their first airplane ride, their first train ride and their first taste of Singapore night life.

The Commissioner spends much of his time afield. On regular rounds, often flying in a tiny Auster, MacDonald meets the peoples he is trying to knit into a cohesive unit. He discusses the rice crop or the damage done to plantings by wild pigs. He samples local food, shelter and festivity; deep in the Borneo jungle he once wowed an aboriginal audience with some impromptu Scottish reels.

Show Window. In his own area and beyond it, at such places as the recent Colombo Commonwealth Conference (TIME, Jan. 23), MacDonald follows up his practice of racial equality and tireless preaching on political and economic themes. "I don't think the Asian people care about Communism as Communism," he says. "Their very natures are opposed to it. But there are two great causes in which they believe passionately--national freedom and the uplift of Asian masses. If we Western democracies show that we strongly support these policies and will help achieve them, Asia will never go Communist."

Malaya is MacDonald's show window. British colonialism had developed it for trade, with incidental benefits to the natives, e.g., in transport and sanitation. There was limited concern for education; in 1948 two-thirds of Malaya's million children between six and twelve received no schooling at all. The color bar rankled. When the Japanese came, the Malay natives were largely apathetic; they had no sense of sharing the country with its British masters.

Despite Blimpish resistance in the civil service, MacDonald is pushing educational and economic plans (e.g., more village schools and a five-year plan to integrate rubber-rich Malaya's lopsided economy). He has had notable results in bringing together the federation's rival Chinese (1,884,534) and Malay (2,427,834) population, mainly through the Communities Liaison Committee, in which leaders of both peoples talk over common problems of citizenship and economic opportunity.

Two to Back Up. If the MacDonald plans work out in Malaya, the chances are better for his greater plan in Southeast Asia. The Commissioner has organized regional conferences on rice and fisheries, lent out British experts in agriculture, mining and other technical fields. It has cost money. In the past three years Britain has spent -L-750 million in southern Asia, including India. British resources are strained, and yet the biggest effort still lies ahead. "It's got to be the real thing," warns MacDonald.

Will the U.S. help? The British fervently hope so. A recent American visitor observed to MacDonald that his job was like that of the player backing up the line on an American football team. The other "Mac" quickly added: "In our English game, the only football I know, it takes two to back up the line."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.