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foreigners treat them. To misrepresent conditions to the public, by only dwelling on favourable aspects and avoiding unpleasant truths, is, in my opinion, no service to posterity. Unlike many writers about the East, whose main ambition appears to be to disparage the British by retailing every slanderous rumour they can collect, I am only recounting what I saw with my own eyes or heard with my own ears; and as already explained much of that even I cannot recount.
To finish here with the Hongkong members of our party all except one were thoroughly cowed by the threats to which they were continuously exposed. At a much later date I found that not only had they been compelled to act as spies on us, and to report weekly to the nearest Chinese commander on all our doings, but also they were persuaded to try to break the cypher system we used for our signals. The threats were not confined to themselves, but included their families, left behind in Kweilin. Under such pressure I cannot find it in my heart to blame them. In practice the spying did not worry me, because we had nothing to conceal; but to one who had always stood up for the Chinese cause it came as a most unpleasant surprise. On reflection I can understand the attitude of those zealous supporters of intimidation by Kuo Min Tang doctrine; brought up in an atmosphere of intense suspicion of the foreigner, their behaviour is not unnatural. But what may be excused in a small backward nation, can not be excused in a nation which is preparing to join the ranks of the great powers. Let us hope that the Chinese authorities will realise that this sort of thing will not make for harmony; that it is unworthy of a great people.
We found another small American detachment at Tetang, attached to the Nth Chinese division, and as at other headquarters mortars, Brens, rifles, such like.
In addition to missing the Myosa I was to suffer a further disappointment at Tetang. When the news of the attack on the Myosa had reached Kun-ming the Consul General had sent a Hongkong-trained Chinese doctor to attend on him. I met the doctor before he left; he had a fine reputation and amongst other things had been ship's doctor on a Blue Funnel boat for a number of years. I arranged that he should join our party in due course when we arrived in Kokang. But I now found that he too was under arrest and was being detained, in some place undefined, with the Myosa. This left us without a doctor.