Some remarks

Letter enclosed with this Report to CHEN LIU'S friend, Chairman of the Council, KUYUANC

I have not heard from you. Does that mean you did not get my last letter? Or that you did - I do not know which thought is worse.

If you did, you will not need to read this.
I beg of you to do what you can. Even in the camps and townships of the Youth Armies, which are at least regularly if insufficiently supplied, there is hardship. The suffering generally is offensive and severe. Is it that our Council now bows before the Emergent Nations? The Centre is dominated by the limbs? Is it that this is not weakness but policy? Do we no longer feel able even to express an opinion? Or we protest, but privately? Out here in the colonies of course it is hard to keep adequately informed. But I do what I can: for instance, an analysis of the innumerable meetings, conferences, councils, of the last twelve months through the southern hemisphere, reveals that there were over a hundred speeches on the theme of revenge, and not one (or one recorded) expression of moderation, or even of an intelligent intention to use and exploit human and other resources, rather than destroying them.
My old friend, I find myself in a mental and emotional conflict that keeps me awake at night, and destroys my pleasure in my work for our great People. When you told me you would send me to oversee Pan-Europe, I told you I was not necessarily the best man for the job. Your reply was that a man conscious of reservations and emotional difficulties would be better than one who was not. I wonder! I work daily, hourly, with our officials, men and women of the highest calibre, and who seem to suffer no indecision in their work. And yet, to repeat, for the last few months this work has not been - I hope? - the results of decisions from us, the Centre.
I loathe the white-skinned peoples. Physically they repel me. Their smell offends me. Their avidity and greed have never struck me as anything but disgusting. They are clumsy in movement, awkward in thought, unsubtle, overbearing. Their assumption of superiority is that of the country bumpkin, the big man of the little village, who comes to the city and does not know that the sophisticates find him ludicrous as he swaggers and boasts.
Their savagery has never done less than appal me. The cold-bloodedness of the intentions behind their imposition of opium, the wanton destruction of our cultural heritage, or its theft, their inferiority... but I need not go on, for we have discussed it often enough. I live among a race I dislike to the roots of my being. Even in their decline and their subjection, some of them, indeed, many of them, manage to behave as if they have been unjustly deprived of a sinecure, and a few even manage the airs of dispossessed royalty bravely suffering the rabble.
Imagine my situation, then, forced to stand by while a policy is being implemented that my emotions applaud, my lowest instincts enjoy, that returns me to savagery. My old friend, I am writing under pressures you will surely understand, and you will make allowances. I believe that our cadres here are in fact as cheerful and enthusiastic in their work as-they seem to be. They can be so cheerful only because (a) they applaud the policies of the Emergent Nations and approve what they see and have to do, or (b) they do not understand what it is they are seeing - do not understand what it means for us that these policies are being implemented, for surely they cannot be our policies, our Will? I watch them and wonder if it is possible that our Great People can so willingly agree to deliberate mass murder, or if perhaps they are able to persuade themselves that what is going on is something else.
Do we really have no objection to being compared with Genghis Khan?
I know that we all have forgone leave that is due to us in the interests of the general good, but I would like to talk to you. Is it true that you will be touring the southern hemisphere this autumn? If so, I could perhaps apply for leave and meet you somewhere.