Anti-Memoir of Andre Malraux, Part 2

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It's time once again for our regular Friday edition of weekly from the Atlantic Monthly with Richard Piet Here now is Mr Pyne this week in The Atlantic Monthly we're responding to all of the kind requests for the second part of the answer A memoirs by Andre Malraux thank you very much for indicating your desire to hear part two the mutinies of one hundred twenty eight the incredible six thousand mile long march that carried the Chinese Communists toward power the first stirrings of the Cultural Revolution that now contorts China these crucial moments are recaptured by Andre Malraux in this second and concluding excerpt from his and a memoir to be published by hold Reinhard in Winston the section ends with a rare conversation with now to June as he prepares to launch the cultural revolution an act described by the psychiatrist and author Robert J. Lytton as The Last Stand of a great revolutionary against internal and external forces pressing him along that treacherous path from hero to death spot the translation from a rose French is by Terence Kilmartin I am alone with the masses waiting forty years of Mao and communism Andre Malraux. I am alone in the drawing room of the consulate general the entire Gulf is framed in the windows of warm haze bathes the aggressive skyscrapers which crush the Imperial waterfront of the days of Lake and grab the mist transforms the ships in junks into graves silhouettes under a rapid sky I passed through Hong Kong in one thousand nine hundred eighty eight on my way from Nehru's India to Japan that leaved plants on the president balconies of the Chinese hotels in Queen's Road tumbled as of old over the thousands of little postman's in front of the antique shop I remember a day in one thousand nine hundred eighty five or one thousand nine hundred six the sun was shining over the Gulf the blue quivered the colonial administration had succeeded in preventing every printer in Saigon from printing the newspaper of the young and Nom movement Lando him at the time of the buck news boy. The militants had reassembled some old presses not come to buy type from the only type found from Salem the Shanghai to Hong Kong mission I return to Saigon with some English type without accent impossible to print the paper one day and I'm a nice worker came in pulled out his pocket handkerchief knotted into a bundle the corners standing up like rabbit ears they're all leaves he said grab an acute accent circum faxes to the directory it will be more difficult perhaps you can do without them tomorrow some press workers will bring all the accents they can he emptied the characters jumbled up like jackstraws onto a Prestone align them with the tips of his expert fingers and let his comrade followed him they all knew that if they were caught they would be sentenced not his revolutionaries but his the eaves. Forty years ago below me now I can see the roots of the mission still father below down as far as the sea front the gigantic bamboo scaffolding that being hastily dismantled or type winds blow them down and a type moon is hovering around the island at the moment I have seen again the Chinese women with their embroidered she dresses reminiscent of the days of Nanking and the old trade women with the stumps of feet the adventurous who are no longer to be found in Singapore are here in plenty they are all Chinese and I've just been listening to stories like those I used to hear in Shanghai before one thousand nine hundred eighty the shipload of blind people arriving at the nuns hospice after escaping from Cannes Tom where the police no doubt organized the escape to get rid of them the young Chinese from Borneo who came to participate in the building of the new China and loading it had escaped penniless and taken refuge with the missionaries who got them jobs and fireworks factories where they steal the crackers to gamble and the junk loaded with clandestine passengers which the captain scuttles the bottom of the junk opens if he is stopped by the people's police or the British police in front of me across the bay the new territory is stretched to the black bar which closes the horizon communist China. It is present even in the city with discreet control of all the unions and through the spectacular department store it has just opened Red China sells what it makes it is not very much but every little thing represents another battle won in the background the atom bomb in the foreground the spot and smiles of the shop assistants even the toys are austere and the trappings of the perfect communist housewife seem like an offering before the portraits of Mao and the images of a long mop above this accumulation of fibers two cases and most bottled all the importing goods of which the people democracies are always so proud these mythological images hold sway the few cases in furniture of the capitalists may be less crude than these but then who was it who cross the river who was a to trudge through the Tibetans knows after a quarter of an hour what is sold here pales before what is dreamed about all the better for the fact that both the brave militia men and the heroic militia woman of the posters are social realist nearly all the images of the Long March are in traditional Chinese style for the millions conglomerated on the rock of Long Kong the vastness that stretches behind the black bar of the horizon is not the land of the peoples commune the individual blast furnace is in the giant factories nor even of the atom bomb it is the land of the Long March and of its leader just as Russia beyond the Triumphal Arch in Niigata Lloyd was not the land of the call Jose is but of Lenin in the October Revolution there are now no more than twenty thousand survivors of the Long March and eight hundred responsible it is said on the other side of the bay it pervades the popular imagination as the drama Yana still pervaded the imagination of India as Olympus once pervaded the imagination of Greece. Everything had begun with victories in the autumn of one nine hundred twenty eight the thick Congress in Moscow finally recognizes the importance of peasant action in the revolutionary struggle it is the end of the first years of Red Army is spring up mutiny after a mutiny breaks out in the armies of the common Tang and the mutineers joined now in the chinking mountains but he supplies will not feed an army January one thousand nine hundred nine mouth principle general to take a break through the blockade and joined up with other Red troops in December the whole of southern gangs I have conquered and the first prevent you will serve your government proclaimed the Kuomintang Now the nineteen government opens the first encircled entered annihilation campaign with one hundred thousand men against mout forty thousand by a war of maneuver in which the bulk of the red forces always brought to bear on I thought they had columns which Mao has lured deep into his territory in thanks to the support of the local population the army of Nanking is scattered in two months four months later the second campaign commits two hundred thousand men in seven separate columns same tactic fame results. A month later junk I shall take personal command of three hundred thousand men mouth forces attacked five columns in five days capture a considerable amount of war material and in October Chang withdraws the forces of the third campaign of annihilation the Chinese Soviet republic is proclaimed under the chairmanship of Mao in December one thousand nine hundred one two hundred thousand men come over to him from then King the red army starts offensive operations of his own in one thousand nine hundred three in and King opens before a campaign of annihilation loses thirteen thousand men in a single battle and sees its best division destroyed the junk I checked advisors among them from full canals and from CIC former chief of general staff of the German army have taken part in the campaign and learned its lesson for the VIP campaign of annihilation one king assembles nearly a million men with tanks and one hundred airplanes Mao has at his disposal one hundred eighteen thousand soldiers about two hundred thousand militiamen armed with pipes and four aircraft captured from hunting no fuel no bombs no all Tillery little ammunition jungle Shekh no longer advances into communist territory he surrounded with a ring of blockhouses a new Wall of China him ing it in the Red Army realizes that it is trapped was it then that mouth out of you and that. Japan had declared war on China and now wanted to become the symbol of the Chinese people resistance to aggression and then King was doing far less fighting against the Japanese than against the communists. In that case it was essential to get to the north the real battlefield yet it first with thousands of miles Reddam across the West would told to bet in spite of all the obstacles in spite of the opposition of various tribal chiefs mouth remained confident that the whole of peasant China was on his side provided the messages got through to the people somewhere or other a region favorable to the establishments of a communist government would be pound as in gangs side there was in the long march and in Dubai the bill element of romantic adventure than a hint of Alexander's expedition which is by no means foreign to mouth character but first of all they must to get out the red army under constant bombardment and already lost sixty thousand men in this vast seed ninety thousand men women and children would attempt to break through the blockade as to take a had done in the chinking mountains little by little but Frontline army was replaced by partisans on October sixteenth one thousand thirty four concentrated in southern King's Eye It took the enemy fortifications by storm and veered westward the long march had begun. Mules were loaded with machine guns and sewing machines thousands of civilians accompanied the army how many would remain in the villages or in the cemeteries how many of the dismantled machines carried on mule back would be found again one day buried along the seven thousand mile route the partisans with the red tasseled pikes in there had stopped by leaves which shook like that it would hold out for a long time yet some of them for three years and then King forces killed them but Mao's army marched on and one monk harassed from the air it fought nine battles broke through four lines of blockhouses and one hundred ten regiment it lost a third of its men decided to keep only its military equipment and a few field printing presses stopped advancing toward the northwest which battled the enemy but slowed its march considerably junk I checked had gathered his forces behind the Yangtze and destroyed the bridges but one hundred thousand men and their artillery were waiting Mao before the quite shallow river the Reds wiped out five divisions held a meeting of the Central Committee in the governor's palace and rolled fifteen thousand desert as an organized you can raise up the Golden Sands river of the poems had yet to be crossed. Mao turned southward and in four days was fifteen miles from you non-food with junk I Psec it established himself it was a diversion for the main body of the Red Army was marching northward across the river there it was a top two river no less difficult to cross than the Yangtze and where the last Army of the typing had been wiped out by the imperial forces Moreover it could only be reached through the vast forests of the law where no Chinese army had ever penetrated but a few red officers who had been such one at once set free from a low chieftain mount to go she added with these arms that do drives as he had done with all the villages his soldiers had passed through the government army is the common enemy to this the tribes responded by asking for ARMs which mounts you Tevez you to give them low lows then guided the red through their forests where the nan thing airport lost all trace of them to the top to ferry which together they captured in a surprise attack it would have taken weeks for the Army to cross the river by means of the herring junk I check airman reconnoitering the river and down the columns again it armies had bypassed the forest and would soon be ready to give battle once more this was the time when entering spoke of the funeral march of the Red Army. There was only one bridge much farther up the river between steep cliffs across a rushing torrent the army exposed to continuous bombardment advanced by forced marches through a storm along a narrow trail above the river which by night reflected the thousands of talkers tied to the soldiers' backs when the advance God reached the bridge it found that half the wooden flooring had been burnt out faithing them on the opposite bank the enemy machine guns all China knows the fabulous gorges of its great rivers the fury of the waters pent up by sheer peep which Pierce the heavy low clouds under the echoing cries of the birds of prey it has never ceased to picture this army of torches in the night the flames of the dead sacrificed to the gods of the river and the colossal chain stretching across the void like those of the gates of hell for the bridge of looting now consisted of the nine chains which supported its plank floor and two chains on either side which the handrails with a wooden roadway burned there remained these thirty nine minute chains no longer a bridge but it skeleton thrusting over the savage rod of the waters binoculars revealed the intact section of the roadway and of a looted probably alien from behind which came the crackle of machinegun fire. The Red Machine guns opened up under the whistling hail of bullets volunteers dangling from the precinct chains began to advance link after enormous link white caps and white cross belts standing out in the mist winging their bodies to heave themselves forward one after another they dropped into the raging waters but the lines of dangling men swaying from their own efforts and from the horse of the wind whistling through the gorges advanced in extra Glee toward the opposite bank the machine guns easily picked off those with clinging to the fore supporting chains but the curve of the other nine chains protected the men advancing below them grenades at their belts the most dangerous moment would come when they reached the fragment of roadway still in place and hosted themselves on to it which would only be possible at best for nine men at a time the prisoners were later to declare that the defense was paralyzed by the sight of armed men suddenly springing up from the chains of the middle of the river perhaps most of Chiang's mercenaries accustomed to fighting to bethen Bryggen armed with flint lock had no stomach for hand to hand combat with soldiers who had carried out such a legendary exploit before their very eyes the first volunteers to hoist themselves on the bridge had time to bring their grenades at the enemy machine gun nest which were firing blind the enemy officers ordered barrels a pair of them to be tipped over the remaining planks of the roadway and set fire to them too late the assailants dashed through the curtain of flames the machine guns fell silent on both sides of the river and the enemy retreated into the forest the army crossed the bridge beneath the ineffectual bombing of the Air Force. It is the most famous legend of Red China the memory of every Chinese that string of dangling men waving toward freedom seems to be brandishing a law the chains to which they cling Nevertheless this famous episode called The Red Army fewer men than those which followed it reached a region where the blockhouses of Nanking was still few and regain the military initiative but it still had to cross the high snow covered passes of the Chechen mountains it had been warm in June in the Chinese lowlands but it was cold fifteen thousand feet in the cotton clad men of the South again to die there were no paths the army had to build its own track one Army Corps lost to bird of its animals mountain upon mountains to corpse upon Cope's one can follow the long march by the skeletons fallen under the empty sacks and those who battle for ever before the peak of the feathers of dreams and those who skirted the great drum for the Chinese the drum is the bronze drum with its vertical faces and the endless jagged immensity of the mountains the murderous cloud that hid the gods of the Tibetans knows at last the Army within the stashes of hoarfrost reach the field of Mao cuming down below it was still summer. There were forty five thousand men left. Look for Tommy and the vague Soviet authorities of soon problems awaited Now there the red forces now mustered one hundred thousand soldiers but after a disagreement which allowed in and when a successful offensive now set off again for the great grasslands with thirty thousand men to take stayed behind in such while the great grasslands also meant dense forest the sources of ten great rivers and above all the great swamp lands occupied by autonomous tribes the queen of the man who tried gave orders that anyone who made contact with the Chinese Red or otherwise was to be boiled alive for one's mouth failed in his efforts to negotiate empty dwellings banished cattle narrow defiles in which the tribesmen rolled boulders down on them sheep cost the man's life there remained fields of green corn and giant turnips each of which mouse and could feed fifteen men and the great swamp land. The army advanced guided by native prisoners anyone who left the trail vanished endless rain in the immensity of the Southern grasslands and stagnant waters under the white mist or the livid sky no firewood no trees in the army had no tents as protection against the rain the white caps had been replaced with big Some had the clouds drifted low over the marshes and the horses stumbled in the bottomless mud at night the soldiers slept on their feet tied together like bundles of firewood after ten days they reach comes to an ending for has had a bend in the pursuit over buried in the marshes Mao and now commanded no more than twenty five thousand men the field theatre started up again in front of soldiers dressed in animal hides turned inside out and the ragged lines at Banstead last among stones their flags threadbare Newport of a mustard by nineteen supported by the Chinese Muslim cavalry who were to finish the Red Dog once and for all but in spite of their exhaustion no mercenary port could have beaten these volunteers who were only a battle away from the red bases and centi the horses captured from the Tartars of the Chinese steps were laid upon the cavalry of your nan on October twentieth one thousand thirty five at the foot of the great wall mouth horsemen wearing hats of leaves in mounted on little shaggy ponies like those of the previous toric cave paintings joined up with the three communist armies of Hansie of which Mao took command he had twenty thousand men left of whom seven thousand had been with him all the way from the south they had covered six and I have thousand miles almost all the women had died and the children had been that long the way the Longmont was at and. When you go into the communist store when you look at the mountains beyond the New Territories peoples China is the mark and now would be inconceivable without it nothing remained of the nation except shame nothing remained of the land except famine but while tens of thousands of dead men or deserted had been replaced tens of thousands of absent comrades were neither dead nor does that is they had stayed behind because they belong to the third order of peasant emancipation in many regions the guerilla warfare stirred up by the long march was to last for two years holding down the whole enemy division sometimes whole army or the repression Tang's by a million victims had left the peasantry of that province without a voice but not without hate a long march and broad hope to two hundred million Chinese and this hope had not disappeared with the last combatant this tattered phalanx followed by the last stragglers had played the role of the horseman of allies on its arrival at the great wall it declared war against Japan the military retreat had ended in political victory wherever it had passed for the Chinese peasants the Red Army had become the army that the pendant the peasants and China. Peaking was once orientated by the crossing of two road without pavement totted up in which the ramparts of the citadel and the value to bastions of the Gates appeared as a through rain thought a camel's from the Gobi Desert low past one after another and their attendants accompanied them slowly the dust the caravans and one wall of the ramparts of gone here are the gate in the pale blue morning the car passes enormous bamboo scaffoldings above tiny willows then pink acacias which are not occasions and everywhere the side like swooping of the mouth plants when the engine stops a great cause something colors filled the silence after a numerable seemingly empty rooms the office of the minister marshal Chen he. Arm chairs walks drawings undersecretaries interpreters the market was jovial and smooth faced the Chinese often aid within a few months and he has a big piercing laugh he wears the almost star lenient costume of the cadres and seems like the Soviet generals of your to have retained nothing of his origin is the son of a magistrate indeed to have no origin he began his career as assistant to attach one warlord he went through the military college join to take in the darkest days of the struggle then commanded the real God of the long march on the continual attack victorious over the Japanese commander of the poor Tom A then of the People's Liberation Army of West China it was he who took men King in Shanghai in one thousand nine hundred eighty nine How is general to go quite recovered thank you and German Mouth very well the preliminary exchange of courtesies over. I realize I have forgotten the health of the president of the Republic Lou Shelties this does not appear to disturb the model who proceeds to expound the basic principles of Chinese policy is interpreted occasionally assisted by ours translates all of them from the people the government is anxious to get rid of poverty and ignorance to see to it that everyone is assured of the necessities of life and that there is a general blossoming of progress on the basis of the socialist system capitalism present some interesting aspects notably in the technical here but it must be rejected as a system because the director of an industrial concern ought not to be soley responsible for the fate of a million men if you Mero who has studied Marxism is that early as anyone will understand that even though capitalism might have been able to obtain a few into dental results here only communism could ensure the progress and development of the country as a whole quite still as the Marxism while we were indulging in up eliminates have you taken we had exchanged compliments on our respective works like MO The marshal is a poet and the husband of a well known actress who is working as a propagandist in a people's commune in short he stresses the Chinese government is didn't know him and to build up China to its own efforts in a few decades to anyone who knew the China hold the praise however jovially pronounced takes on a historic grand. Externally the Chinese government is pursuing a policy of peace it wants a peaceful world in which the people choose their own political system China which has borne its share of colonialist in imperialist exploitation has the duty of supporting liberation movement everywhere from eight hundred forty to nine thousand nine hundred eleven it happened the ravages of British imperialism then of Japanese imperialism and now American imperialism. Is a satellite of the United States he cannot make a move independent of Washington France withdrew from China after the Second World War She has adopted a realistic policy on the European front as on others here's pursuing a policy of self-defense with regard to the United States of Independence Marshall no doubt he'll talk like there's two hundred left wing journalists and to all the ambassadors he has received I've had enough experience of the Soviet Union not to be surprised by these phonograph records but when the marshal opens his mouth I still have to expect that he himself will speak I thought closer to him when we were exchanging compliments on our writings his genuine warmth in Niven's what he says but still. A suddenly becomes more animated the reports on Vietnam are contradictory says Mr Harriman really did go to Moscow to talk about Vietnam the American papers often get their facts straight. Don't you think there's far more to it than a disagreement between newspapers people in France also talk of American policy as if there were only one but the forces at work in the United States with respect to the Vietnam War are probably fairly divergent. He looked at me as if to say it's possible and inquires with rugged affability are you in favor of the neutralization of a country to begin with. Our Vietnamese friends prayed that it would mean permanent partition ever since the Americans intervene directly neutralization has become a hollow word there is only one solution the withdrawal of the American forces conditions are more and more favorable This war is developing the more it escalates the more the obstacles multiply the determination of the Vietnamese people is growing stronger and will end by porting the Americans to quit the country do you think it impossible for a great power to maintain one hundred fifty thousand men in a theater of operations for ten years. Or so there are one hundred and fifty thousand now in July nine hundred sixty five he knows it as well as I do probably better soon there will be more I say the Americans have imposed a war on the Vietnamese we are taking Vietnam side if they leave they will still be a world power they don't withdraw their forces they will lose still more base for the Vietnamese nation it isn't a question of pace but of life or death the Americans are bombing where they please in their view the whole of the policy in Asia is at stake the loss of one march on domino doesn't finish off again with the man who loses it and the United States will not be able to keep troops stationed abroad indefinitely sooner or later they will have to evacuated I won in Berlin. Would their withdrawal from Formosa involve a Russian withdrawal from Siberia in your view or a more open spaces in the north than in Southeast Asia the Marshall laughed his mouth open and from ear to ear all the same he enters Taiwan is not part of the United States Siberia is part of the Soviet Union and has never been Chinese on the subject of been doomed I use the expression China's global policy in every sphere China has considerable leeway to make up he goes on and will still require a big effort before he is capable of conducting a global policy Meanwhile we know whom we are with and whom we are not what I told your ambassador on July fourteenth is still true the Vietnamese have no other choice but to continue the fight if the United States are sincere in their desire to negotiate why do they talk about sending two hundred thousand men a million men to Vietnam they've got into the habit of making threats how do you mean and bomb bomb bomb threat in May and June that in one thousand nine hundred sixty they were not certain of the outcome of the war but they are now our experience gives us the same certain day the American forces a scattered all over the world look at a map there in Formosa where the propping up a dictator chunk I shake in Vietnam with a dictator car after the dictator D.M. in Korea with a dictator really another in Pakistan with a dictator I come in Laos with to me in Thailand with the king are we in how wide or Mexico or Canada. Our experience with jungle effect taught us that one must alternate periods of fighting with periods of negotiation in Korea fighting and negotiations took place time will take nearly to the point where the sound of the voices sometimes drowned that of the gun the Vietnamese are wise and farseeing they were Marxist before we were we have every confidence in them on that one terminations to carry on the struggle for five ten twenty years until the last American leaves Vietnam and reunification is achieved for the rules of China as collation is the long march of the Naam always the same thing the model continues look at the Korean War the intervention of the seven feet in the Taiwan Straits the occupation of Thai when and then the UN rushing to the assistance of the capitalist aggression in the Congo the AM of the American attack on North Korea was to threaten our security we were forced to intervene to depend on yourself afterward we said American prisoners free without reciprocation after the Korean War the American stepped up their meddling in Vietnam where the situation is not dissimilar but better for you if the United States does not extend its aggression it will not be necessary for China to take a hand in the operations but if you die of she will on Chinese territory and perhaps some Vietnam needs than a total soul appall I doubt this model has always followed Lenin's maxim about the defensive tactics of revolutionary armies against the foreigner and has always stressed that Darlene only for to defend Russian territory. Lenin said people who believe that the revolution can be long to order in a pollen country are either pools of a bucket. But in Vietnam it is no longer a matter of launching the revolution the marshal speaks as if he held himself responsible for the Vietnam War such a responsibility would redound to his credit but what are the facts the Prensa tributed dn confused to Chinese artillery which was not there at all other Vietcong guerrillas armed by China probably know them but they have also been to a considerable extent by the Soviet Union and by arms captured from the French and the Americans as the Chinese Communists were by arms captured from chunk i Haec their ideology their tactics their confidence come from now as do a certain number of their organizers and liaison officers but no one here has asked me Do you believe that the guerrillas of the South are trained or at any rate directed by the Northern troops who are satellites of the Chinese waters the marshal would not be averse to giving me that impression and yet they have Nom seems incapable of producing a national government the Americans are forced to intervene directly in the war the prisoners are not Chinese it is a Western obsession a rule has said to me to believe that wars of liberation are conducted from abroad I know from experience the limits of the help that guerrillas can receive the advice they can accept so I do not believe that escalation even as far as Peking nuclear war aside can save a Saigon government which resembles that of junk on the West. The American model continues never cease to violate our airspace do Chinese spy planes fly over the United States they have declared that there can be no sanctuary as there was at the time of the Korean War very well under the pretext of supporting South Vietnam they bomb you know who is to say that tomorrow they will not take the pretext of China's support for North Vietnam to bomb us they think they can do whatever they like we must weigh the consequences of future interns and in the end we shall win as we did against the Japanese and against junk I checked look at their intrigues in the Dominican Republic in the Congo a terrible trouble everywhere unlike Great Britain and France they must be resisted as soon as European colonialism leaves a American imperialism takes its place the Vietnamese up fighting not only for themselves but for China and for the whole world and they deserve all our admiration and respect when I met. For the first time it was the offer of a new to do today. Not the man waiting for me outside of you can be a mounting the bridge of when I met Einstein it was the mathematician not the a me able shag a violinist to greeted me Princeton I am well aware that the Marshall is not now but he is the foreign minister of peoples China one of the figures around whom history proud was he commanded the rear God of the long march under continual heroism and the writer quickly came to the surface in heed and the scientist in Einstein in January where was the conqueror of hang tight. China is conditioned to the phonograph record he is conditioned to ceremonial and in spite of a certain and buttoned quality Marsalis obviously on the job in the martial everything springs from convention and this is accentuated by translation there is no real dialogue obviously I cannot say to him Marshall the United States only dominates the Vietnam game through their air power and it is not the Chinese who are fighting that air power but the Russians I retain only his mixture of firmness caution and because of your use of pledges limits he said openly and tacitly to the conflict between China and the United States I only heard his real voice when he said and on Vietnamese territory to General De go is right to resist the United States in Europe they are not omnipotent but they have profited from two wars in the First World War the last one hundred thousand men in the second four hundred thousand in Korea they lost three hundred thousand very popular so they made a miscalculation and now they're going to do their arithmetic in Vietnam narrow felt that colonialism dies when the victory of a Western expedition over in Asia an army ceases to be a poor gone conclusion I think so too. But why does the marshal seem not to envisage the use of atomic bombs by the Americans if they came into conflict with China we hope friends will use our influence to get the United States to withdraw we must face up to the Americans to bring them to leave the country the American people are good they have produced remarkable achievements in two thousand trailers but the policy of the recent leaders has gone against the deepest S.B. relations China does not seek a large scale war he wants a coalition of peaceful forces to compel the United States to abandon its policy of aggression this could only benefit the world and the United States that. The United States would find his solicitude touching our ambassador watches for my reaction none of this is new to me the mentee in monologue which always seems to be addressed to the masses still goes on this intelligent man a chess companion at the peak of his dazzling career is not talking to convince me he is performing a ritual I tell him that the United States as I said to Nehru seems to me to be the only nation ever to have become the most powerful in the world without thinking too whereas the power of Alexander the Napoleon the great Chinese emperors was the consequence of deliberate military conquest and that had present I cannot discern any American global policy comparable with that of imperial Britain or the Marshall Plan or what President Kennedy was after. That the United States seems to me for the moment to be repeating the mistakes which were all too familiar to us for our for Pro Publica made them before they did I add As for the influence we may be able to bring to bear on the United States I believe that it is of the same order as that which you can bring to bear on the Soviet Union China adapt the feelings to the fact after the October Revolution under Lenin and under Stalin the U.S.S.R. was sympathetic to the Chinese people and we were to them after the defeat of Japan we became accustomed to the idea that the U.S.S.R. exhausted by the war had no desire to intervene in far eastern affairs and we did not pin a hoax on help from a the socialist construction of China cannot be based on the assistance of the U.S.S.R. under whatever form one must rely on oneself above all the Russians got things under way but we can carry on without them and by nine hundred sixty four we had paid all our debts when crew strong tried to smother us he stopped then resumed since Khrushchev the Soviet leaders of one of the world to be dominated by two great powers which is unthinkable for every country because small is equally a part of the world I'm surprised not by these asseverations but by the level of the conversation as I used to be in a Soviet Union when I heard Marxist intellectually rigorous or subtle in private think in public to the level of humanity. Does the marshal believe in the man to use and he professes Rollman treason works better in action than in speech and for him the United States is not the nation the twice save the freedom of Europe but the nation that supported Juncker. General the Go has never been in favor of a deal had Germany he laughs but neither do we support a five fold human a no doubt he means the United States Soviet Union Britain France China with India scratching at the door to company three's a crowd however there will never be too many allies on behalf of peace if we were to combine our efforts to bring about peace what do you envisage negotiations after a pledge to withdraw following an actual withdrawal of the American forces Marshall reflects the question must be studied Perhaps I should be in a position to give you a reply in a few days the decision is one for WHO team in tambon dong far as I know they still insist on withdrawal as a prerequisite have you brought in a proposal with you minister not Marshall people expecting one in order to reject him but no doubt he was also anxious to discover the nature of the discussions I'm to have with Challen lie with the president of the Republican possibly with Mao the same endless Carrados those I went through to reach the Marshall it's the same building the same succession of empty rooms and in the prime minister's office the same cane chairs with the same covers the same drawings in a say in the top of this when we shake hands the interpreter this time a woman speaks French without an accent probably Tonkin Chinese and the political the Cabul areas with million who have the attitude of the Prime Minister's amicable a distant hers almost hostile. Joe and lie has changed little for his age naturally the hollows in his face have deepened he is dressed like a marshal but he is thin. It's difficult to guess the ologists of most of the Chinese leaders but he is obviously an intellectual the grandson of a Mandarin he was the political common saw in the Canton cadet school when chunk I commanded it among his successive functions including the Premiership he preferred that of foreign minister and I'm reminded of a diplomat who welcomed me to Moscow around one thousand nine hundred eighty nine he was wearing a Monaco in a town where Clinton's wife wore a cap I have known for a long time that diplomats are a race apart a race to which Marshall Cheney does not belong but to which Joe and why Mao's right hand man on the Long March does need a truculent not jovial hopelessly Bane and has written to the cat I was very struck by General de goes criticisms in his last press conference of the Russian and American plans for world that Gemini and also by the praise of the Pacific where the fate of the world will be played out appalled I answer Len in one thread the joint action was perfectly conceivable provided the slogans and apply exact kept separate Joe absently we haven't forgotten that you are familiar with Marxism with China nor have we forgotten that you were on the lawn of the same time as the G. men you wanted Dominion status for Indochina the French would have been well advised to endorse. I am grateful to you for remembering the more so because the other founder of The Young and the movement Paul died in Kandahar. Did you ever see jungle check again never to pity. And invasive gesture I should like to ask him and do you. For nobody knows what happened at this eon into dent and that is not the least of the reasons for the complex leaving my interlocutor inspires and me into them but I didn't thirty six junk I checked while on an inspection tour of the anti communist forces in the north was arrested by the leader of the Manchurian forces the young Marshall Chong way lying it was generally assumed that he would be executed but an envoy from the Russian intervened and the generalism A was released against his promise that at last he would fight the Japanese and not mouse horses on his return until he kept his promise which flabbergasted everybody not least the American pledge could possibly have bound him to this extent that envoy was Joe and lie on my visit to theone I thought a Babs of a favorite junk I checked was living at the time of his arrest this pattern is a copy of the palace of a great Emperor's paper it resembles like everything which was copied in the nineteenth century especially the Summer Palace she was a restage set but on the little terraces above the weeping willows the pink some of the most of Bush's look like those of the eighth century there was a pug ode where a stage general had become an irrigation God and in the distance the burial mound of the founding emperor the generalism escaped into the wood which overlooks the pavilions in the marble junk and was captured. I was here at the time the curator told me this is his bed it was a European camp bed when we came in with the captain and the soldiers there was nobody here but he had let it fall on the bathroom. And I was on the big bridge over the river when a female student threw herself in front of Chung we Yanks call and shouted Don't let the Japanese crush China again blood will be shed here let our blood flow to stop our humiliation she was crying and everyone who heard her was crying and the young marshal started to cry as well the captive generalisable had begun by snapping at jungle language asked him as general if I'm your general you can start by obeying my orders and you go and lie has arrived one of Chairman Mao's expressions I said now has caught on in France though the French are a little puzzled by it that the United States is a paper tiger. United States has a real tiger and Hill in its teeth but if that tiger comes here it will change into a paper one because the most powerful army in the world can do nothing against universal guerilla action All right those tanks our aircraft are nearly all American We took them from chunk I check all the American We gave him the more we captured not all jarring soldiers were that bad you know Americans are better no matter every Chinese knows that the people's army is the sole guarantee of the distribution of land and the war will take place here that war will be a continuation of the war against Japan conquer I check and the Americans in Korea in Taiwan in Vietnam although the minister thinks that negotiations on Vietnam and not even imaginable he makes it clear that hoochie mean could not be the sole representative of the anti Saigon forces there must be negotiations with those who apply to and other words the National Liberation Front and Hanoi but the prompter. It is a tactic similar to the one I saw the French Communist Party attempt in one hundred forty four overall control of the gorillas being out of the question delegate guerrilla leaders of Chinese persuasion who will keep a check on what you mean he also talks about the United Nations which he thinks China should not join before Formosa leave and he seems to be torn between an Afro-Asian organization more or less controlled by China and the transfer of the UN from New York to Geneva I asked him Do you think the present policy of Japan can survive your possession of the bomb he looked at me sharply I don't think so you know those as well as I do that in the United States the thought to be the original one of the characters in black and if young man I'm reminded of the photograph in the Canton museum in which he alone remains visible among the cadets surrounded by blurred figures like the shades of Hades who were born Dean Gollin junk I share general the go I tell him is of the opinion that the contacts that Blish through our ambassadors are at a standstill his thick eyebrows pointed toward the temples like those of the characters in the Chinese Theater underlying his air of a studious cat muses with a bizarre attentiveness without any obvious we are in agreement on the terms which define our peaceful coexistence. We want and dependent you asked the foreign minister if we would agreed to negotiations on Vietnam prior to the withdrawal of the American troops we will not negotiate either about Vietnam or anything else until the Americans go home that means not only quitting Saigon but dismantling the bases in Santa Domingo Cuba the Congo Laos Island and the rocket launching sites in Pakistan and elsewhere the world could live in peace if it doesn't it is because of the misdeeds of the Americans who are everywhere and create conflicts everywhere and we come to the conclusion of this excerpt from the anti memoirs of Andre Malraux the second I am alone with the masses waiting forty years now and communism and thank you for your interest reprints are available Condor a letter to Richard Piet P Y A T T weekly from the Atlantic Monthly W. N.Y.C. Thank you Mr Pipes you have been listening to weekly from the Atlantic Monthly with Richard Pyatt if you would like a reprint of the article read today some the current or a letter to Mr pioneer in care of weekly from the Atlantic Monthly W. N.Y.C. New York one hundred also of them I'm join us again next Friday at eleven for the next of these broadcast.