The Ugly American (6 page)
Authors: Eugene Burdick,William J. Lederer
They were listening intently. These men had lived long with the threat of violence and death just at their back. They could not be deceived by soft words. They would recognize the truth, even if it were hard.
"The first thing is that we must decide very surely and exactly what it is we want. Before we make the smallest move we must agree on that," Finian said. And then he asked them, with absolute openness, "What is it that we wish to do?"
There was an electric moment in the clearing, a thin tense shred of silence. About each of the men there was a tautness, an expectation that was almost palpable.
"Tell us what is to be done?" U Piu asked. He did not look up.
Finian knew that this was a critical moment, a point of balance. U Piu, he sensed, was testing him.
"It is not for me to say," Finian said flatly. "It is for all of us. It is your country, your souls, your lives. I will do what we agree upon."
Subtly, so subtly that it was beyond the capacity of the eye to tell what was happening, the line of men seemed to become straighter, more firm. Their backs went straighter, their hands stopped playing with twigs and pieces of dirt; they looked up at Finian. The tiny invisible things that make up a posture of decisiveness, Finian could not detect. He only knew that it had happened.
This was, he was sure, the first time that these men had ever been told by a white man that a big and important decision was entirely their own . . . and would be followed by the white man.
"The big thing? That is what we must name?" one of the men said softly, his mind revolving around the question. "The big thing we want is that all of our people become Catholics."
A few of the Burmans looked at Finian for his reaction, but his face was impassive. His pain had come back, but no expression crossed his face. He was taller and more clumsy than any of the Burmans, and he knew it was important that he crouch as they did.
"No, that is not the final big thing we want," U Tien said. He spoke slowly, reaching carefully for the right words. "I do not care if there are Buddhists or Anamists among us. Or if there are Methodists or Baptists, or even nonbelievers. Before the Communists came there were such people among us and they did not forbid me to worship the way I wanted or to raise my children in my faith. But the Communists have made all worship impossible except the worship of Stalin, Lenin, Mao. In the areas the Communists control everyone must believe in one
single
thing: Communism."
Again there was a moment of silence, as the men thought of what had been said.
"U Tien is right," one of the Burmans said. "I too am a Catholic, but I do not require that all of us be Catholics. What this means, I think, is that the thing we want is a country where any man can worship any god he wishes; where he can live the way his heart says. That, I think, is the final big thing."
There was some more discussion, some of it heated. Once or twice the Burmans looked at Finian, but he merely stared back at them. Finally they came to agreement and they fell silent . . . their silence indicating their agreement with U Tien.
"If you wish, I will sum up what you have said," Finian said. "The important thing, the big thing, is a country where any man may worship and live as he wishes." Then he added, humbly, "It is not my right to approve or disapprove, but I agree with you."
The Burmans' faces lighted, and the tiny wet clearing rang with laughter. U Piu, who was more exuberant than most Burmans, smacked his hands together with pleasure. Finian, for the first time in five weeks, was unaware of the sullen pain of dysentery.
"Now, the next step is harder, more difficult to think through," he said quietly. "It calls for great honesty and much information and much thought. It is this: Why do we not now have the freedom to worship or live as we please? Why is this?"
"Because the Communists do not permit it," one of the men said quickly, almost automatically. "They burn the churches; they beat men who follow the politics of U Nu; they ridicule confession and confirmation. The Communists deny us all freedoms."
"But why do Burmans believe what the Communists say?" Finian asked quietly. "Once the Communists were only a few. Now they are many and they control many areas. They are Burmans like you. It means nothing to say Communists deny us freedom. Why do we allow them to deny us the freedom?"
"Mostly because many of our people believe in what they say," U Piu answered.
"But
why?"
Finian asked stubbornly, and his posture made it clear he would not attempt the answers.
The argument became so heated that Finian could not always follow it. Several times one or more of the men were angry. One man, Toki, who was a withdrawn and silent man, stood up, walked over to a tree, and pulled off a branch in his hands as if the intensity of what he felt could only be dissipated through his fingers. But in all the wild, loud talk Finian could tell that there was a pride and a sharp sense of discovery. Finally the talk quieted. Then men looked at U Tien as if he were their spokesman.
"What we think . . . and the words may offend you, Father ... is three things," U Tien said slowly. "First, the Communists can deny us freedom because many Burmans have become Communists. Secondly, many Burmans have become Communists because they think that the Communists are against the white man . . . the Westerner. I apologize. Father, for saying this. It is hard, but most of us feel that the white man has not always been just. It is a hard thing, but it is true. Thirdly, many Burmans are for the Communists because they think the Communists will do good things for the people . . . for the peasants and cheap-pay workers. Give us land and more food and maybe automobiles and radios and chea' medicine. That, we agree, is why the Communists are al to deny us freedom to worship."
"That seems to me sound and true," Finian said, as if he were merely summing up their statement. "First, that what we want is freedom to worship and to live. Secondly, that we will not have that freedom again until many Burmans stop being Communists; and they will only escape when they realize that Communism is evil for all. I am sure in my own mind that the Communists care nothing about white men or brown men or black men, but only for power. But you must not take my word for any of this. Together we will look at the facts and see what we discover." He paused and his teeth came together sharply from the pain.
"Tomorrow, if you wish, we will meet again at the same time and will read together what the Communists say they want and how they go about getting it," Finian said. "We will read and find this from things that the Communists themselves write and from things they themselves do. Then, perhaps, we will have the truth and will know what we must do."
He stood up and the pain was suddenly so great that he felt he would faint. His face paled and the beads of sweat broke out on his face and rolled with a salt taste into his mouth.
U Tien made a movement toward him, a quick gesture of support, but Finian shook his head. He slowly shook hands with each of the men and thanked them for coming.
The next afternoon the Burmans were back. This time they were eager to talk, full of enthusiasm and words. They had thought since they left and they were, in a quiet way, desperate to communicate their views.
"Father, before we do anything we must have all the information that it is possible to have about the Communists in this area, I think," one of the Burmans said. "It is right to know what we want in a faraway day, but first we must know the difficulties that lie in the way."
Finian held back a smile of excitement. What the Burmans were proposing was exactly what Finian was going to propose as the third step: the gathering of intelligence.
The rest of the Burmans nodded agreement. Eagerly and in great detail they began to disclose the extent of local Communist power. They told of merchants who were secret Communists, revealed which students were leaders, and which democrats, who were propaganda carriers, where the arms were cached, the extent of guerilla warfare. They talked steadily for two days. They drew sketches in the ground, pointed out locations on maps. They were astonished at the extent of their knowledge and also somewhat frightened—for no single one among them had realized that the Communists were so powerful. There was no village which did not have a shadow apparatus of Communists, no Western organization which was not spied upon. In some villages the Communists dominated everything with a chilling ferocity. Elsewhere they merely propagandized endlessly on the two themes of the evil of the Western white man and the love of the Communists for the common people.
"Now we know all that we can possibly know of the Communists and we know it equally. Each of us is as informed as the rest," Finian said. "We are not like the Communists who carefully conceal information from their people. Now we must decide what can be done. What shall we do?"
The argument raged every afternoon for two weeks. Ideas, words, enthusiasm, anger, commitment, and excitement boiled in their meetings. And finally, painfully and chaotically, agreement came.
Many months later Finian summed up in his report what they had done. By then it was possible to see things more clearly.
"What we discovered," he wrote, "is that men are persuaded of things by the same process, whether the persuading is done by the Catholic Church, Lutherans, Communists, or democrats. A movement cannot be judged by its methods of persuasion for, short of violence, most successful movements use the same methods. What we discovered in our long discussions in the jungle were these things:
1.
We desired a community in which choice of life and religion existed.
2.
But this was impossible because many Burmans had been deceived into believing the Communists.
3.
Therefore, we had to demonstrate to the people that the Communists had no interest in them, but were interested only in power.
4.
This had to be done skillfully, but without force. It had to be by a process of persuasion. Therefore, we had to make ourselves experts in persuasion.
5.
We had to persuade in terms of events which are known to Burmans.
6.
We had to persuade in words which would be understood by everyone.
7.
Complex ideas had to be put dramatically and powerfully.
8.
The persuasion had to be done at a time when the audience would be receptive. And it had to be done on all levels.
"Once the eight Burmans had agreed on this, the rest seemed almost easy. The hardest part was the waiting and the planning. We had to wait, for the time was not right; and we had to plan, for we were only nine against three thousand active Communists.
"The first thing my eight associates did was publish a small, cheap, newspaper on the ditto machine I had brought with me. They called it
The Communist Farmer.
This was cunning, because the title could mean anything. Initially the Communists did not know whether to support or oppose the newspaper, which appeared mysteriously and suddenly in marketplaces, stores, doorsteps, village squares, buses, and streets. In each issue there was an article by a famous Communist—Stalin, Marx, Lenin, Mao Tse-tung, Chou En-lai, Plekhanov. One issue had an article by Karl Marx in which he attacked the stupidity and backwardness of the peasants. Another issue offered a speech by Stalin in which he justified his slaughter of 'kulaks' on the grounds that agriculture must be collectivized. The rest of the issue was a simple reporting of facts about farming difficulties in Russia, the agricultural progress in the United States, hints on how to increase farm production, advice on how to use fertilizer.
"The Communist Party was confused for only two issues. Then they attacked the paper savagely in speeches, by radio, and in other papers. They pointed out that
The Communist Farmer
was reporting only part of Communist theory; but they could not effectively deny that what was reported was authoritative. They roared in their own papers that Stalin loved the peasants. But this was oddly unconvincing in the light of his murder of the 'kulaks.' Within a month, the Communist press was printing almost nothing except replies to
The Communist Farmer.
"Then they made an all-out effort to suppress the paper. But this only made the paper more desirable, and copies became prized. Then they threatened to kill the men who printed and distributed it; but here, for the first time, their espionage failed and they could never discover who we were. The Communists slowly became buffoons in the eyes of the local Burmans. People actually laughed at statements made at Communist rallies. In Burma a party may be feared, respected, efficient, fierce . . . but if it is antic, it is hopeless.
"Communist leaders in the northern province were replaced. Then the new leaders were purged . . . and their replacements were in turn removed. A joke began to circulate that the quickest way to die was to be made a high official of the Communist Party.
"And then the climax came. The man from Moscow arrived in Anthkata, a Russian expert on Burma. He was tall, wiry, hard-faced, a veteran of purges, conspiracies, plots, and counterplots. He had never failed. His name was Vinich.
"Vinich had made elaborate plans before he smuggled himself into Anthkata. He had developed a thorough plan for the extermination of
The Communist Farmer.
And he took steps to assure that his presence in Anthkata would not be known. He had discovered long ago that natives should do their own political work . . . foreigners should come in only as a last resort, and then always as quietly as possible.
"His plan was so good it almost deserved to succeed. There was only one thing wrong. The Communist apparatus had been penetrated by a spy: Toki. Toki was thorough and inconspicuous, and his memory was infallible.
"Three weeks after the arrival of Vinich,
The Communist Farmer
began to appear almost daily in bars, teahouses, offices, public toilets, boats, oxcarts, country villages, courthouses, everywhere. And each day it advertised that on June 10, at 2:00 p.m., there would be a radio broadcast of great importance from Myitkyina with a message of importance even to non-Communists.
"On June 10 there were few people in Anthkata, if any, who were not listening to the radio. Somehow the broadcast had become a critical event . . . everyone felt that it was important.
"Promptly at 2:00 p.m. on June 10 the voice of the announcer stated that the following half-hour had been bought by an organization called the Burmese Educational League. Then a rough country voice, heavy with Anthkata accent, came on.
" 'We think that the Burmans of Anthkata have been badly misled by vicious propaganda directed at Soviet Russia and the Communist Party,' said the local voice, speaking slowly. 'We think that this is a bad thing. So today we are allowing the official spokesman for the Soviet Union and the Anthkata Communist Party to speak. You will hear the voice of Vladimir Vinich of Moscow, Soviet Russia, who is living in the village of Ton Mou in secrecy. Last week Mr. Vinich called a meeting of the local Communists to discuss what Communist policy in Anthkata would be. To make sure that Communism is presented fairly, we of the Burmese Educational Society tape-recorded that conversation; and I am now going to play part of it for you. Communists, like everyone else, deserve to be judged by their own words, not by the words of any vicious detractors. Friends, the next voice you will hear is that of Mr. Vladimir Vinich of Moscow, Soviet Russia, speaking on Communism's aims.'
"There was a scratching, the whirring sound of a tape recorder, some static, and then a loud, harsh voice speaking excellent, but Russian-accented, Burmese.
" 'You have been arguing for three hours and I have not spoken during that time,' said Vinich's somewhat tired voice. 'It doesn't matter what's happening here. I'm not asking your advice. I'm telling you the facts . . . and the only conclusions that can be drawn from those facts. First, stop talking about Russian tractors and promising we will send some here. We can't do it. We've got all we can do to supply military hardware to Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam. Second, bear down on the owners of property. Don't talk about "socialist ownership of lands." That only scares the peasants. Peasants are backward types. They want private property, not collective farms. Later they'll see the necessity for common ownership, but not now.'
" 'What about the anti-American propaganda, Comrade?' a voice asked.
" 'You've gone too far on that,' Vinich snapped. He was obviously at the edge of losing his temper. 'You push anti-Americanism so far it becomes a form of chauvinism and the Burmese begin to overlook the deficiencies of the Burmese government. Don't blame everything on the Americans, save some blame for the local opposition.'
" 'It is hard to criticize our government right now . . . a Burmese voice said.
" 'Of course it is,' Vinich cut in. 'But you've got to remember that the worse things are, the better they are. Lenin said that. Which means that the mulberry and rice crops have to fail here. Which means that the road transport scheme has to fail'
"The whir of the tape-recorder grew louder, then stopped. The local Burman's voice, innocent and almost unctuous, came up strongly.
" 'We are sure you are grateful for hearing about the principles and standards of Communism and the Russians' plans for Anthkata from a high Russian spokesman,' the voice said without sarcasm. 'We hope that you feel armed not to believe in the silly lies which enemies spread about Communism.' "
A day after the broadcast the nine men met in the jungle clearing again. For the first time Toki did not tear at small pieces of twig. He was a fulfilled man and he laughed softly at the joking remarks made by his friends.
"What we must do now is to make the same effort in other provinces in Burma," Toki said firmly. "And beyond Burma also. In Sarkhan, for example, the trouble is beginning. Their language is almost the same as ours. We can show them how to fight the enemy before the enemy is too strong to conquer."
He turned and looked at Father Finian. He wasn't looking at him for approval. Toki and his friends had made their own decision and their own way. The look which Toki gave was one of friendship and equality Father Finian felt a flush of pleasure The pain in his bowels had finally disappeared, and he was already calculating the distance to Sarkhan and hoping that the food was not too much different from that of Burma.
Before leaving Burma, Father Finian added a paragraph to his personal diary "It. is reassuring to learn that what is humane and decent and right for people is also attractive to them." he wrote. "The evil of Communism is that it has masked from native peoples the simple fact that it intends to ruin them. When Americans do what is right and necessary, they are also doing what is effective."
