Read Online Pilgrim Son: A Personal Odyssey by John Masters - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: John Masters
Tags: Literary, General, Asia, History, Literary Criticism, War & Military, American, Biography, Autobiography, India
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rolled in, reeking of seaweed and tar, reached the dais and turned to confront our mass of khaki uniforms and military moustaches, all standing as we waited for his order to be seated. 'Anchor!' the admiral bellowed.
Lecturers visited us in a steady stream, but the only one who left a lasting impression on me was a youngish gentleman from the Foreign Office who gave us a most interesting, depressing and, as it turned out, penetrating interpretation of Russia's attitudes and policies. He said that the Russian leaders believed that capitalism was about to collapse. Russia would join various co-operative bodies, such as the United Nations, only in order to hasten that collapse by working to prevent agreement or co-operation. Their main fear was that the capitalist world, seeing the end of its system as inevitable, would launch a war to stave it off. More specifically, he said, Russia would never negotiate treaties to end the official state of war with various central European countries, until she had established Communist governments in them. The lever to achieve this was a clause in the armistices which permitted Russia to maintain troops in any country, and on her lines of communication to it, until a peace treaty had been negotiated with that country. The most useful ex-enemy country to Russia in this respect was the furthest west, Austria. For as long as Russia delayed making a peace treaty with Austria, she could keep troops in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and Bulgaria.
The Yugo-Slav attacks on unarmed American transports strayed over that country were not merely a snook cocked at the West, but a demonstration to the people of the countries about to go under that no one, not even the United States, was going to help them.
I left this lecture in a grim mood. It seemed to me that if we accepted this sort of aggression from the Soviets now, we would have to face much worse in the future. They were acting in precisely the same way as Hitler had done in the mid '30s, and we were responding in the same way, too, by talking or waving pieces of paper, instead of instant and overwhelming retaliation. I thought the Americans should have dropped an atom bomb on the Yugo-Slavs within six hours after they shot down the first of those planes, and sent troops in to run another election, a free one this time. If the Russians had tried to interfere, they could have had the same treatment. Instead, no one had done a thing, because we had no politicians with the guts to make the people face the unpleasant truth. So, like everyone else who will not learn the lessons of the past we were going to be condemned to re-live it. We would drag again through the '30s and '40s, under continuous pressure and outrage from an armed and murderous dictatorship (which had already murdered rather more of its own subjects than Hitler killed of his).
I felt tempted to stay in the army, where I could at least work to see that we won the next war, as we had the last. But the problem was not military, it was political. Only Parliament could save the future, and I had been into all that. I put the sad prospect of an endless grey half-war, with a real war under unfavourable conditions as the only prospect at the end of it, into a corner of my mind, and resolved to stick to my plans.
In October, on my way to visit the Combined Operations school in North Devon, I turned aside to perform a painful duty. On a day in May 1944, the Japanese had sent a number of 105 mm shells into my brigade headquarters, in North Burma. One splinter stunned my Intelligence Officer, standing next to me in our foxhole. Another killed the artillery major who had just flown in to command our few guns. After the campaign I wrote a letter of condolence to, among others, the mother of the major. She was living with another son, a parson of the Church of England, who was rector of a village under the southern slope of Dartmoor. The parson had long since written asking me to come, if I
Lecturers visited us in a steady stream, but the only one who left a lasting impression on me was a youngish gentleman from the Foreign Office who gave us a most interesting, depressing and, as it turned out, penetrating interpretation of Russia's attitudes and policies. He said that the Russian leaders believed that capitalism was about to collapse. Russia would join various co-operative bodies, such as the United Nations, only in order to hasten that collapse by working to prevent agreement or co-operation. Their main fear was that the capitalist world, seeing the end of its system as inevitable, would launch a war to stave it off. More specifically, he said, Russia would never negotiate treaties to end the official state of war with various central European countries, until she had established Communist governments in them. The lever to achieve this was a clause in the armistices which permitted Russia to maintain troops in any country, and on her lines of communication to it, until a peace treaty had been negotiated with that country. The most useful ex-enemy country to Russia in this respect was the furthest west, Austria. For as long as Russia delayed making a peace treaty with Austria, she could keep troops in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, and Bulgaria.
The Yugo-Slav attacks on unarmed American transports strayed over that country were not merely a snook cocked at the West, but a demonstration to the people of the countries about to go under that no one, not even the United States, was going to help them.
I left this lecture in a grim mood. It seemed to me that if we accepted this sort of aggression from the Soviets now, we would have to face much worse in the future. They were acting in precisely the same way as Hitler had done in the mid '30s, and we were responding in the same way, too, by talking or waving pieces of paper, instead of instant and overwhelming retaliation. I thought the Americans should have dropped an atom bomb on the Yugo-Slavs within six hours after they shot down the first of those planes, and sent troops in to run another election, a free one this time. If the Russians had tried to interfere, they could have had the same treatment. Instead, no one had done a thing, because we had no politicians with the guts to make the people face the unpleasant truth. So, like everyone else who will not learn the lessons of the past we were going to be condemned to re-live it. We would drag again through the '30s and '40s, under continuous pressure and outrage from an armed and murderous dictatorship (which had already murdered rather more of its own subjects than Hitler killed of his).
I felt tempted to stay in the army, where I could at least work to see that we won the next war, as we had the last. But the problem was not military, it was political. Only Parliament could save the future, and I had been into all that. I put the sad prospect of an endless grey half-war, with a real war under unfavourable conditions as the only prospect at the end of it, into a corner of my mind, and resolved to stick to my plans.
In October, on my way to visit the Combined Operations school in North Devon, I turned aside to perform a painful duty. On a day in May 1944, the Japanese had sent a number of 105 mm shells into my brigade headquarters, in North Burma. One splinter stunned my Intelligence Officer, standing next to me in our foxhole. Another killed the artillery major who had just flown in to command our few guns. After the campaign I wrote a letter of condolence to, among others, the mother of the major. She was living with another son, a parson of the Church of England, who was rector of a village under the southern slope of Dartmoor. The parson had long since written asking me to come, if I
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