The Ugly American (27 page)

A Factual Epilogue

It is not orthodox to append a factual epilogue to a work of fiction. However, we would not wish any reader to put down our book thinking that what he has read is wholly imaginary. For it is not; it is based on fact. It is our purpose here to give our reasons and our sources.

Although the characters are indeed imaginary and Sarkhan is a fiction, each of the small and sometimes tragic events we have described has happened . . . many times. Too many times. We believe that if such things continue to happen they will multiply into a pattern of disaster.

It is easy in a time of great events—of Sputniks and Explorers and ICBM's and "dirty" and "clean" atomic weapons— to overlook one of the hard facts of history: a nation may lose its power and integrity slowly, in minute particles. We believe that a nuclear cataclysm is unlikely, but that our free life well may be lost in a succession of bits and fragments.

The authors have taken part in the events in Southeast Asia which have inspired this book, and in both the records and in the field we have studied the Communist way to power. As writers, we have sought to dramatize what we have seen of the Americans who represent us in the struggle.

Little documentation will be necessary for some, like Colonel Hillandale, Father Finian, John Colvin, or the Ugly American himself, because they served America well. Suffice it here to record that they were drawn from life. There is an obligation, however, to discuss the validity of less creditable fictions like Louis Sears, George Swift, and Senator Brown.

Ambassador Sears, for example, does not exist. But there have been more than one of him in Asia during recent years. He is portrayed as a political warhorse, comfortably stabled by his party while he awaits a judgeship. It would be out of order to name those diplomats who have demonstrated this system in action (some, luckily, were able, hardworking men), but the roster of our ambassadors throughout the world bears out the fact that too often personal wealth, political loyalty, and the ability to stay out of trouble are qualities which outweigh training in the selection of ambassadors.

Many of Sears's actions are based on real events in which more than one real diplomat took part. The press attack on him in the Sarkhanese press and his inability to read it was part of our fiction. It was inspired, however, by the fact that in the past two years there has been at least one strong anti-American press campaign in every capital city in Southeast Asia, and in most of these capitals the American Ambassador, like Sears, was unable to read the local papers. (One diplomat was sufficiently concerned to send the local newspapers to Washington so that the Library of Congress could translate them for him.)

It would seem a simple fact of life that ambassadors to at least the major nations should speak those languages. Yet in France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, and Turkey, our ambassadors cannot speak the native tongue (although our ambassador to Paris can speak German and our ambassador to Berlin can speak French). In the whole of the Arabic world—nine nations—only two ambassadors have language qualifications. In Japan, Korea, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and elsewhere, our ambassadors must speak and be spoken to through interpreters. In the entire Communist world, only our ambassador to Moscow can speak the native language.

If ambassadors were mere figureheads surrounded by experienced, linguistically-trained career diplomats, their inability to speak or read on the job would be little more than an insulting inconvenience to the local officials, as Louis Sears's ignorance was to Prince Ngong of Sarkhan. Unfortunately, ambassadors are more than figureheads; they are in charge, and, like Sears, their misunderstandings can have grave consequences. Moreover, the career men on their staffs are generally not linguistically trained for their jobs. Instead, they are frequently the Joe Bings of our book.

In his masterful analysis of the Foreign Service, John Osborne states that the most important element in a good Foreign Service officer is "the faculty of communication." Yet, as James Reston reported in the
New York Times
of March 18, 1958, "fifty percent of the entire Foreign Service officer corps do not have a speaking knowledge of any foreign language. Seventy percent of the new men coming into the Foreign Service are in the same state." These figures represent those who can speak
no
language other than their own—not even French, Spanish, German, or Italian. The number of Americans in the Foreign Service who can speak any of the more difficult languages is miniscule.

In addition to our Foreign Service staffs, we have more than a million servicemen overseas. Only a handful can speak the language of the country in which they are stationed, and when difficult military and scientific data are involved this handful shrinks to almost zero. So be it, but that our trained representatives in Asia are little better qualified in languages is unacceptable. On the other hand, an estimated nine out of ten Russians speak, read, and write the language before they arrive on station. It is a prior requirement. The entire functioning staff of Russian embassies in Asia is Russian, and all the Russians—the officials, stenographic help, telephone operators, chauffeurs, servants—speak and write the language of the host country.

In the American embassies the servants, the messengers, and the interpreters are locally hired. The telephone operator in almost every American mission and agency in Asia is an Asian. It is, of course, a maxim of espionage that one of the most useful agents is the planted employee. The story of Gilbert MacWhite and Li Pang is imaginary; but the conditions of the story exist in every American mission in Asia, and models for the two Chinese servants were known personally to one of the authors.

When, in our story, Prince Ngong finally persuades Sears to believe that the press cartoon was favorable, he is demonstrating a fact. Because we must rely on interpreters who are almost always non-Americans, our on-the-spot information is both second-hand and subject to minor censorship and editing without our knowledge. The recent turmoil in Indonesia emphasized this handicap. We had to rely on native translators to interpret the press, the radio, and personal conversation. Following Asian etiquette, by which one avoids telling one's employer of matters which would distress him, the interpreters gave our diplomats rose-tinted reports of local sentiment and events. Only after a dangerous delay did it seep through to our soundproofed representatives that Indonesia was in the grip of political upheaval. In Indochina our military and diplomatic missions could speak only to the French— whose view of the rebellion against them was one-sided, to say the least. One of the authors seeking to hear the Vietnamese side of the question without using either a French or Vietnamese interpreter succeeded only through an American priest who, like the Father Finian of our book, was fluent in the native tongue. Like the Russians, but unlike ourselves, the Church realizes that its work in Asia cannot be done without close communication with Asians.

Blockage of information itself is not the only penalty we pay. Think, for a moment, what it costs us whenever an official American representative demands that the native speak English, or be not heard. The Russians make no such mistake. The sign on the Russian Embassy in Ceylon, for example, identifies it in Sinhalese, Tamil, English, and Russian. The American Embassy is identified only in English.

John Foster Dulles stated what was in our minds when we wrote the stories of Colonel Hillandale, the Ragtime Kid, and John Colvin, on the one hand, and of Sears and Swift and Joe Bing, on the other. He said, "Interpreters are no substitute. It is not possible to understand what is in the minds of other people without understanding their language, and without understanding their language it is impossible to be sure that they understand what is on our minds."

Mr. Dulles' point is at the heart of our story about "The Six-Foot Swami from Savannah." George Swift could not speak the language and could not understand what was in the minds of the Sarkhanese; and so he offended. His story is fiction, but his protocol blunder actually happened to one of the authors almost exactly as told, although he did not punch anyone.

Americans like Swift, who cannot speak the language, can have no more than an academic understanding of a country's customs, beliefs, religion, and humor. Restricted to communication with only that special, small, and usually well-to-do segment of the native population fluent in English, they receive a limited and often misleading picture of the nation about them. A recent American ambassador to Ceylon—an able, extremely popular diplomat—had an experience which pointed up this dilemma. He had become intimate with the leaders of the political party in power, a group relict of colonial days composed largely of the rich and English-educated upper class. The ambassador apparently got all his information from them, because he gave no warning to our State Department before the nationalistic political upheaval occurred which suddenly left his friends with but 8 of 101 seats in the government.

On the other side of the ledger, we have told the story of the ugly engineer and Colonel Hillandale who, speaking the language, were able to go off into the countryside and show the idea of America to the people. These characters are based on actual Americans known to the authors. There are others like them; but by and large they are not beloved of the American officials in the various Asian capitals, and are a wild exception to the rule.

While the few Hillandales and the many Russians roam the barrios and the boondocks, most Americans are restricted, both by official tethers and by language barriers, to communion with each other. The kind of ingrown social life portrayed in the story of Marie Macintosh is real, though she is not. The Asians themselves have given it a name. We first heard it one day in Bangkok when we invited a Thai to spend the evening with us. He replied that unfortunately he had to attend an "S.I.G.G." When we asked what he meant, he expressed surprise that we did not know the term.

"We use it," he said, "whenever we are referring to an American cocktail party, dinner, or gathering of any kind. It means 'Social Incest in the Golden Ghetto.' "

Vice President Nixon, in his National Press Club speech on his tour of Latin America, said, "I could have concentrated on a whole round of cocktail parties and white-tie dinners. If we continue to concentrate on that area we can figure we will lose the battle." What our diplomats need to do, he said, is to get out and mingle with students, labor leaders, and opinion makers, who comprise the "wave of the future."

In his report on the U. S. Operations Mission to Vietnam, Leland Barrows stressed the fact that too many of the Americans there were to be found concentrated in the capital cities, while there were almost none out in the countryside. The models for Joe Bing and George Swift are not fiction.

In the story "Everybody Loves Joe Bing," the fictional Ruth Jyoti makes the point that the Red world is far better at public relations than is the free world. Her speech and her interviews are fabrications, but her point is not. For example, America brings large numbers of Asian students to America each year. This is a constructive idea; but, unfortunately, America requires that all candidates for these fellowships speak English, since their instructors here will be able to speak nothing else. This means that the Asian students must be drawn from one class—the well-to-do minorities of the bigger Asian cities. And Asia is very largely an agricultural area.

The Communists are not so restricted in their approach. In Yunan Province, China, they have a vast schooling system for students from Southeast Asia. The students, roughly 30,000 strong, come from Indonesia, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and the fringe areas of Vietnam. The term is eighteen months, and lectures are delivered in the native language of the student. Courses include agriculture, tanning, printing, blacksmithing, and other crafts which country people from small towns need. The students live in dormitories with their fellow countrymen, and religious guidance is provided by clergymen of their own faith.

It is not surprising that when the Southeast Asians return home to their farms and villages they are enthusiastic about the Chinese Communist regime.

In the stories of Major Wolchek and Major Monet, "The Iron of War" and "The Lesson of War," we have tried in fiction to describe a condition of avoidable ignorance. For years both we and our allies have put in much expensive effort trying to ferret out in advance the Communist plan for both tactical maneuvers and great conquests. Yet, during the struggle in Indochina the authors could find no American (or French) military or civilian official who had read, or even studied a precis of, the over-all Communist operation plan contained in
The Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung,
published by Lawrence Wishart, Ltd., London and International Publishers in the U. S. A four-volume edition was published in 1954, but the basic material was available in print as early as 1934. (A useful shorter study is
The Organizational Weapon—A Study of Bolshevik Strategy and Tactics,
by Philip Selznick, McGraw-Hill, 1952.)

In his remarkable work Mao, one of the brilliant tacticians of our time, analyzes almost every campaign and battle in which his Red Armies fought He dissects every defeat (very few) and most victories, and he explains what they taught him. In doing so he lays down a pattern of strategy and tactics which the Communists of Southeast Asia have followed undeviatingly.

The battles which led to Dien Bien Phu were classic examples of the Mao pattern. And yet our military missions advised, and the French went down to defeat, without having studied Mao's writings.