Hopper Advocates Stronger Policy in Pacific Because of New Developments

America should abandon her tendency to "scuttle and run" in her Pacific policy and adopt a more responsible attitude said Bruce Hopper, assistant professor of Government, in a Guardian lecture broadcast over station WAAB last night.

"Resolve what we will about Europe", he said, "we simply cannot stay out of Pacific affairs. The forces there affect too closely our true self-interests. What I would like to suggest is that 'scuttle and run' is inspired by a short view of the present set of facts, facts which are rapidly changing. Vital problems arising from new forces are creeping upon us unaware."

Most important of the new developments, Professor Hopper believes, is the industrialization and modernization of Asia. "Formerly raw materials flowed to the already established centers of civilization, but now a new process is apparent: civilization flows out to the sources of raw materials, reversing the process by which Europe expanded. This means that the industrial revolution is rolling into Asia, where are great untapped sources of raw materials." It is interesting that private capital has proved incapable of opening these resources, he continued. Asiatic industrialism is developing largely as a state enterprise, with the resulting emphasis on military defense as in the case of Japan and Russia's great socialistic development of Siberia.

Other significant trends include the astonishing shifts in population centers and the new political relationships. The former is largely a result of the decline of the reproductive rate in Northern Europe, the growth of new centers in Asiatic Russia, and their high general reproductive rate which is expected to increase the population in the Soviet Union from 170 millions now to 340 millions by 1975. "More than half of the world's population are in Asia and are still to be educated to consume modern industrial goods. From a purely economic point of view, America's self-interest lies in development of relations with these new industrial areas."