In order to understand the current crisis in native affairs on Guam we need some knowledge of the changes that have taken place on the island since its discovery by Magellan in 1521. In the four centuries which have elapsed since discovery this small island of only 225 square miles has been the meeting place of many diverse influences from the Old World, the Americas, the Orient and the Pacific. It became a port of call for early European trans-Pacific voyagers, for the Manila galleon, and for whalers in the nineteenth century. Thus, due to certain accidents of history, we have been able to assemble a documented account of culture history and change on Guam across several hundred years, and this record is fraught with meaning as regards current problems on the island.

Psychological characteristics of enemy peoples were studied almost frantically during the recent war with a view to more effective psychological warfare. Answers were sought to questions like the following: How does the average enemy individual think and feel? Can his mentalemotional constitution be exploited to disrupt his will to fight? And how did he get that way?

Prior to 1941 almost no one investigated the phenomena of personality development in Japanese society. Even the Germans were subjected to very little systematic study. After the bombs began to fall, when collection of essential data had become impossible, both governmental and private initiative backed research into “character structure” among enemy peoples.

The world's greatest repository of historical information is to be found in the twenty-five officially approved Chinese standard histories. This collection begins with legendary ages and continues to the beginning of the Tsing or Manchu period. Because only parts of a very few histories have been translated, this collection remains almost completely unavailable, except to expert sinologists. Altogether the histories have well over twenty million characters, the equivalent of at least forty-five million English words. If this series were translated with appropriate notes and printed in the same format as the parts of the first two that have appeared, there would be about 225,000 pages, making about 450 volumes of 500 pages each. This translation is the greatest single task awaiting sinologfcal scholarship today.

More than one hundred textbooks in American and world history, geography, modern problems and civics were examined recently by social studies and Asiatic specialists to evaluate the accuracy and adequacy of the material included on the Far East. Their report, Treatment of Asia in American textbooks (104 p. 40¢), has been published by the American Council, Institute of Pacific Relations, New York. Dr. Howard E. Wilson, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, coordinator and editor of the report, writes that “There may be arguments over what pupils need most to be taught about Asia; there can no longer be argument over the necessity of their being well informed.” One significant recommendation made by all the analysts was that experts in Asiatic affairs should be consulted more frequently by textbook authors and publishers to insure “accuracy, relevancy, and comprehensiveness of information included” on Asia.

The current belief is that China is a country where most land belongs to landlords who do not till their soil but suck the blood of their tenants. Dr. Sun, founder of the Chinese Republic, was under this impression when he specified in his program that “all tillers must own their soil.” The Chinese Communists took this as one of their most basic points of attack. To quote Edgar Snow:

Now, wherever the Reds went there is no doubt they radically changed the situation for the tenant fanner, the poor farmer, the middle farmer, and all the “havenot” elements. All forms of taxation were abolished in the new districts for the first year…. Secondly, they gave land to the land-hungry peasants…. Thirdly, they took land and livestock from the wealthy classes and redistributed among the poor. Redistribution of land was a fundamental of Red policy.

Japan's ambitions on the Asiatic mainland are now a matter of history. The Kwantung Army and the South Manchurian Railway Co. wished to repeat the achievements of the East India Co. One rattled the sword while the other worked with facts and figures, in order to lay the foundation for an empire. They had great achievements to their credit, and final success eluded them only because the whole world was against them.

When the Kwantung Army created the “Manchurian Incident” of September 18, 1931, it undoubtedly wanted some sort of change in China's Northeast, though it is doubtful that it had at that time fully set the course of the action that it took during the ensuing months. Finding things easy, it decided to feel its way into North China. Early in 1933 it went into Jehol and then crossed the Great Wall, the adventure ending in the Tangku Truce of May 31, 1933. In 193S it forced the Chinese Government to remove General Yü Hsüeh-chung and his troops from Hopei, to close down Kuomintang Party headquarters in North China, and to dissolve the Peiping Political Council. But by that time the Japanese militarists had already set their hearts on an “autonomous” North China under their control.