114
BOOK REVIEWS
The concerned with what happens outside their village life. "politically effective people" make up only a small fraction of the total. Among these there exists a certain disdain of “impatient condescension" toward the majority of their countrymen. Oligarchies of the ruling classes are in control, and Mills seems to accept that oligarchies will continue to be the norm. The problem would seem to be the outlook for some sort of check upon the oligarchies, and yet still bring about stability and economic progress. Mills notes some hopeful signs of checks and balances developing. For example, a Supreme Court decision in Thailand in recent years went against the government and succeeded in criticizing it openly. Again, in the Philippines an aroused citizenry was able to force the ruling oligarchy to restrain its use of brute force in electoral campaigns, and to reduce to "acceptable" proportions its demands for graft.
One could hope in such a work as this for some pondering on the possibilities of the emerging of alternative leaders. Leaders perhaps of a potentially more capable bent than the present batch. The author touches on this in the case of the Philippines. But what of alternatives to Sukarno? What, by the way, has happened to Mohammed Hatta? And what of the outlook for the development of representative institutions in government? Mills does not go deep enough into this subject,
His analysis of strategic concepts from several points of view - American, Australian, Indian, Chinese - is valuable. But he avoids mention of the implications for the United States in the conscious Philippine tendency toward a pro-Asiatic orientation. Perhaps he does not feel that this will in the foreseeable future affect United States-Philippine relations. But he does not say so.
Mills has a realistic view of Chinese power and Communist activities. His chapters on the Chinese and on Communism are particularly revealing of the methods of infiltration. The "technique of the inside job" for some time has been the chief instrument of Chinese Communist imperialism.
On the economic side he enters in detail into all the familiar subjects: low living standards, low income levels, slowness of industrialization, the sluggishness of agrarian reform, lack of