Confucius: The Great Digest, The Unwobbling Pivot, The Analects Translation & Commentary by Ezra Pound, Stone Texts from rubbings supplied by William Hawley, a Note on the Stone Editions by Achilles Fang
New York: A New Directions Book, 1951 ISBN 0811201546
Ezra Pound remains an enigma - a fundamental figure of the Modernist movement, inspiration to many, balanced by the fact that he was an antisemite and supporter of fascism, his long life had many ups and downs and his work varied in quality if not in quantity. The Cantos remain his main contribution to Western Literature, and many academics have made a living trying to interpret his great work.
One thing that Ezra was fascinated with throughout his life was Chinese literature, and this book is a compilation of his translations of Confucius ranging from 1928-1950. There has been a lot of controversy around Pound's translations from the Chinese, revolving around several factors: Pound was not fluent in the language, and relied on other's notes and his own poetic sense to create his works. He saw his translations as a re-creation as much as a literal translation, and saw the philosophy of Confucius as a counter-balance to the Western thought on government which he saw as a failed project.
The first parts of this work - the translations of The Great Digestand The Unwobbling Pivot- are in this edition juxtaposed with rubbings from the stone tablets from which the text was drawn - I don't read Chinese characters, but it's a great addition to this text. The Analects, which given the original publication date one can assume that Pound worked on when he was incarcerated after the War, are as a text much less developed than the first two works, and has many more textual explanations from Pound than the other two works (interestingly in this edition there were footnotes marked in the text, but no notes at the bottom of the page or at the end of the book).
I think that in many respects that Ezra has done a good job here - a reader gets a sense of what these texts are, of the difficulty in interpreting some of the verses, and he has provided some pithy language as translation: while the hokey Americanisms that he uses occasionally initially jarred, as I read through they seemed quite apt to present Confucius' character, which is by turns scholarly, pragmatic, realistic and prickly.
Honestly, this is not the work to go to for an accurate or up-to-date version of Confucius (I can recommend Simon Leys' translation of The Analects for that), but for any Poundian, they are worth the effort.
A final short rumination on New Directions Paperbacks from the 50s and 60s. I've always loved the design of these books, their understated covers and font, along with higher-quality paper and bindings, somehow give them an air of authority - they are a tactile and visual pleasure.
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985 (first published in German 1983) ISBN 014007774X
About eighteen months ago I read Heinrich Harrer's Seven Years in Tibet and enjoyed it very much, so when I came across this book I thought I'd give it a go. While it was an interesting read, it is not nearly as good as the first book, and given the way it was written, it was never going to be so.
In the early 1980s, when China's Tibet policy had thawed somewhat, Harrer was able to revisit the country he'd spent time in during the 1940s. It's unclear how long he was there, but it was as part of a guided tour at a time when tourism was just beginning in Tibet, and only limited numbers of foreigners were allowed in. Return to Tibet is a book formed around this visit - it is mostly a comparison of what he saw and experienced when he lived there, to what he's seeing and hearing now (in 1982) with his own eyes, and through the testimony of the Dalai Lama and his circle in Darjeeling.
What Harrer sees and hears appalls him. In particular, the destruction of most of the religious buildings he views as a great tragedy. Those temples and palaces that remain are also a sad sight for him, as he remembers the vibrancy and life that used to thrum through these great buildings when the Dalai Lama ruled his country. He tries to pick his way through the curtain that the Chinese try to draw over the real state of Tibet and its people. He wanders markets replete with Yak meat and butter, but is told by his old friends that in the countryside people are starving. He sees workmen "repairing" temples when he walks past with his group, but when he returns unexpectedly later, they have gone. He is told that temples have many monks, but he sees no sign of permanent residency. Those monks he does see he is tempted to believe are actually just workers dressed in the appropriate gear.
He tells of repression and unlawful executions, but Harrer also shows the reader how the religious life of Tibet has continued despite Chinese attempts to extinguish it. He is constantly pressed by Tibetans for pictures of the Dalai Lama, and does in fact see some on public display, which heartens him to think that perhaps the Chinese really were going down a new path and letting Tibetans express their culture more freely. His postscript, which reports on the 1983 crackdown on Tibet, validated the views of many Tibetans he spoke to that thought that the loosening of Chinese repression was only temporary.
The value in this book is that it is a report on Tibet from someone who knew what it used to be like. While Harrer is not rosy-eyed about the past, what he shows us is how the soul of the Tibetan people and culture had been and was still being crushed by the Chinese. His hopes expressed in the book that Tibet could perhaps become like a Bhutan with India, or a Mongolia (as it then was) with the USSR, i.e. under Chinese rule but essentially free to chose their own path, was naive. Communist China would and could never allow that to happen.
As we all know, since this book was written the degradation of Tibetan culture, society and even the country itself has continued. This book is an interesting historical snapshot of a stage in that process. It is not a sequel to Seven Years in Tibet.
Seven Years in Tibet by Heinrich Harrer, translated from the German by Richard Graves, with an introduction by Peter Fleming
London: Pan Books, 1956 (First published 1953)
Having seen the Brad Pitt movie of this book, and only half-believing that it could be true, I approached this book with much interest. Yes, a lot of the movie was made-up, but not the parts that I thought! Seven Years in Tibet is an amazing tale of struggle and hardship, adaptability, stoicism and ultimately friendship and growth.
Heinrich Harrer was a well-known Austrian mountaineer, famous for his ascent of the North Face of the Eiger, when in 1939 he joined an expedition to climb Nanga Parbat headed by Peter Aufschnaiter. Unfortunately for this group of Germans, war was declared and they were promptly placed into an internment camp by the British in India. Harrer was determined to escape, and escape to Tibet, a neutral country from where he was going to attempt to get to the Japanese lines and then back to Germany. He made several attempts to escape before he succeeded with a group of others. Eventually, only Aufschnaiter and Harrer actually made it across the border into Tibet. Tibet at that time was not only closed to foreigners, but also was a medieval-style feudal society. Harrer and Aufschnaiter, by a series of tricks, stratagems, and begging, managed to gain a foothold in Tibet, and over the course of a year managed to make it to Lhasa. That year involved a series of almost unbelievable treks through the most desolate of country, exposing them to the best and worst of the Tibetan people: the invariably friendly and helpful nomads, the brutish bandits, and the (sometimes) imperious officials, who found these European interlopers both fascinating, and a problem.
Eventually they made it to Lhasa, and were given respite by one of the nobles there. They soon carved out a niche for themselves: Tibet at that time was almost wholly lacking in any form of modern appliances or technology, and Harrer and especially Aufschnaiter (who had an engineering background) set to in assisting the government with flood-mitigation works, sewerage, and other improvements to the town. They moved from being curiosities to being part of the upper-class social set.
None of this had gone un-noticed by the young Dalai Lama, and eventually Harrer was introduced to him, and became his tutor and guide in all things Western. Harrer describes a young man who was very bright, very curious, and very knowledgeable in Buddhist scripture and tradition. Harrer came to admire him very much, as he did the Tibetan way of life, despite its superstition and seeming backwardness.
Unfortunately his time in Tibet came to an untimely end, with the Chinese invasion of 1950. He knew he couldn't stay, but was heartbroken to have to go.
Seven Years in Tibet is not only a wonderful description of a personal journey, but an informative guide to what Tibet was like in its last few years as an independent country on the roof of the world. A wonderful way to while away some winter hours in front of a fire.
This fascinating book is both more and less than its cover would suggest. It is a much broader book in scope than merely looking at the Amur River itself, with the author beginning his journey in Irkutsk, far from the source of even the Onon River, the most Easterly of the Amur's tributaries. Ziegler intersperses his trip, which eventually brings him to the mouth of the Amur, with the history of the lands surrounding the river. He begins this history with Genghis Khan, who grew up in the foothills from which the Onon River springs.
However, most of Ziegler's historical writing is to do with the attempts by Russians to explore, subdue, and exploit the land around the Amur. And what an interesting history it is. Many of the people who moved there became proselytizers for development, suggesting that Southern Siberia was the Russian "West", where not only a civilization could grow, but where a new type of society could flourish. This idea was partly driven by the Russians exiled there for insurrectionist activities, and who re-discovered their Russian-ness in exile.
The Russians back in St. Petersburg were more interested in strategic and resource-getting activities. After the sable and sea-otter were hunted down, timber and caviar became the next targets. Ziegler describes how the rape of the countryside is happening to this day, with the Russian Mafia and Chinese State taking on the role of the early Cossacks in despoiling the land.
Ziegler shows how the early promise of the region - when it was thought that the Amur Basin would be a paradise, with goods flowing from it across to America from Nikolaevsk, the town at the Amur's mouth that would become a new San Francisco - gradually diminished owing to the difficulties of the terrain, the weather, and lack of investment. Even the Trans-Siberian Railway didn't help: the line back West meant that dreams of Eastern development were once again stymied.
As Ziegler travels along the river he sees old dreams that have been shattered, and much despair left in their wake. There are no good modern stories to be told along the river, although much of the past is being twisted to serve nationalistic ends. Much has been forgotten, and much remembered wrongly.
And what of China, across the river? Ziegler shows how a treaty between Russia and China signed in 1689 set a benchmark for mostly peaceful relations since. Both sides choose not to provoke the other, while trying to minimize the other's historic presence in the region by re-writing history.
So, this book, while an interesting social, historical, and political work on Southern Siberia and the relations between Russia and China, is not really a trip down the Amur River.
One more gripe with this book - while it has a good general bibliography and index, the one map provided is hopeless: more than half of the places mentioned in the text are not shown on it. There are no photographs or drawings of any kind in the book, a poor showing from the publishers, as they would have added considerably to the text.
All-in-all this book is a bit of a curate's egg: interesting in parts.
Hidden Horrors : Japanese War Crimes in World War II by Yuki Tanaka, with a foreword by John W. Dower
Boulder, Co: Westview Press, 1996 ISBN 0813327180
This is an interesting book with much food for thought, which endeavours to map out a new path for academic study of Japanese war crimes. Tanaka looks at some specific war crimes committed by Japanese soldiers and sailors, and tries to show how such things could have occurred through looking at the structure, training and beliefs of Japanese society and the Armed Forces in particular.
The first crime he examines in detail is the Sandakan Death Marches, where he notes how the Japanese mostly used Koreans and Formosans (Taiwanese) as guards for Prisoners of War. The brutal treatment handed out to these guards by their Japanese masters, they passed on to the Prisoners under their control. Tanaka also looks at the way Japan did and did not abide by the Geneva Convention, using prisoners for war work, and progressively starving them as Japan's position in the War became more perilous. While not excusing individual acts by Japanese soldiers and sailors, Tanaka shows the reader how the culture of the Japanese Armed Forces and the pressure of war led to such outcomes. It is interesting to note that in the first of the Sandakan Marches many Japanese also died. The horrific logic of war crimes came into play at Sandakan as well, with earlier outrages driving the Japanese to ensure that they left no witnesses alive.
Tanaka then moves on to the topic of rape and "Comfort Women" (a topic he has written on at some length subsequent to this book). He draws parallels here with both the Russians in Germany and the Allied occupation of Japan. The treatment of women in war is often horrific and Tanaka has some ideas on the transgressive nature of women in uniform, and how male bonding in war can lead to such outrages; ideas that others have written on in more detail.
Tanaka's next subject is Japanese cannibalism, on many levels perhaps the most troubling crime. This practice was quite widespread, and was not always the result of hunger. Sometimes dead Japanese were eaten, and sometimes even shot for food. Tanaka can give no real reason for the cannibalism that makes sense, except where is was obviously driven by hunger... certainly it was something that the Japanese wanted to hide when they could, with Allied discoveries of this practice usually occurring after they surprised groups of Japanese, or made sudden advances on the battlefield. The Allied attitude to reports and evidence of these crimes is interesting as well. While the Americans thought that such things should be publicised in aid of the war effort, the Australians were against the idea because of the distress it may have caused on the home front. That there were so few prosecutions for the crime after the war is put down by Tanaka to the reason that it would have caused distress to families of the victims, and the problem of providing evidence that would stand up in a court-room (i.e. of eye-witnesses to the consumption of the flesh, rather than evidence of cooking etc.).
The next chapter, on Unit 731, investigates the concept of "doubling": how doctors could experiment on live people, and how they justify it. Tanaka also here begins to look at Japanese acknowledgement that what they were doing was wrong, at least to the extent that they wanted to avoid punishment. The members of Unit 731 captured by the US were given immunity from prosecution on the basis that they handed over their research, after the US were assured that no Prisoners were used in experiments. The Soviets later showed that these assurances were lies.
Which brings the reader to the last crime that Tanaka looks at, the massacre of civilians at Kavieng. Tanka uses this incident to look at several things: how the Japanese concept of Gyokusai ("glorious self-annihilation") led to the "strategic necessity" of eliminating civilians, and how the soldiers involved knew they were doing something wrong, as they were ordered not to speak of the killings and rehearsed a cover story to explain the deaths away. What is also interesting in this example is that senior officers ensured the massacre happened in such a way that they could avoid blame. The readiness of such officers to blame conveniently dead colleagues for crimes was also much in evidence after the War.
In his conclusion, Tanaka shows how the Japanese Military moved from being a force that was compassionate to its prisoners and its own members who had been taken prisoner (in the early 20th century), to one where it was better to die than be taken prisoner. This certainly had an effect on how the Japanese treated Allied captives. The Japanese belief in themselves as the chosen race, and in their Emperor as a god, had a malignant effect on their treatment of conquered peoples. Tanaka calls in this book for a new historiography of Japanese war crimes, whereby Japanese - in a similar manner to the Germans - look at the whole of the wartime era, and how as a country they could have come to a point where such horrors were allowed to happen. This new historiography has yet to happen in Japan in any major way, although this book is now over 20 years old.
One for the serious students of the Pacific War, this book is worth reading, although in lacking a bibliography it leaves limited options for further study.
A few years ago I really enjoyed readingHall of uselessness by Simon Leys (the pen-name of Sinologist Pierre Ryckmans), and having read other glowing reviews of his work, including the volume under review here, I will slowly hunt them down and read them.
Chinese shadows consists of a selection of impressions from a six-month visit to China in 1974, when the country was still endeavouring to recover from the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution. Ryckmans casts a critical eye over not only the state of the country at that time, but at the standard of critical commentary coming from the West about China and its recent history.
The book has longer and shorter vignettes and reflections on just how badly the Maoist experiment had gone wrong, and how all totalitarian societies end up with the same problems, no matter whether they espouse a leftist or a rightist philosophy (Ryckmans has a lot of fun with the forms of words used by the Chinese government and bureaucracy "sometimes,...leftism is a rightist error").
Ryckmans has several larger points to make in this work. The first is that the first thing that suffers under totalitarian rule is culture. This applies especially to Communist totalitarian regimes, where all of history must lead to the inevitable success of the revolution. When, as had happened in China, some heroes of that history needed to be purged, or the importance of an historical moment changed, one needed to try to change history. This resulted in China in the closure of museums, the destruction of monuments, and the censorship of literature and opera, to the extent that the only theatre that could be shown was that written by Mao's wife, the only books on the shelves were those by Stalin or Mao, and Ryckmans could not visit any University classes or academics in his entire six month sojourn. The destructive power of this sort of repression on a culture is hard to gauge.
The reaction of the lower functionaries in a system where white can be black, and the established structure and hierarchy can change in an instant, is another theme in this book. Ryckmans is constantly frustrated in his attempts to visit archaeological sites, or to meet people, or even in the simple act of asking directions. This, as he explains, is down to the natural fear of functionaries to give him permission to do something when the view of the regime is unclear on whether permission is allowed. It is easier, and safer for the flunky involved, to do nothing and admit nothing. As he writes of the cadres - "...we should consider how unrewarding and dangerous their job is....Directives from on high are deliberately ambiguous; in case of failure, the leaders thus have a fall-back position, while those who applied the policy are stranded and unprotected, and can be sacrificed to the rancor of the masses. It is unfair to criticize Maoist bureaucrats for their slowness and inertia: most often nonaction is their best chance of survival."
Ryckmans is more scathing of those apologists in the West who were writing paeans about China at the time - as he writes about one of them "She could have written in Europe, without leaving her room, if she had had some issues of Peking Review at her disposal; she would have gotten the same results. Her China experience was limited to a visit of a few weeks, and to three dozen interviews." He points out that many of the so-called Sinologists cannot speak or read the language, and have no understanding of the history or culture of China. Yet it is their views that were in the ascendancy at the time of writing.
All of the above smacks of the polemic, but Chinese shadows is much more than that: an elegy to what was lost during the Cultural Revolution, a celebration of innate Chinese cheerfulness, and a corrective to a flawed Western understanding of Chinese history - "If the start of the industrial revolution in Europe had coincided with one of those times when China was wide open to the outside world - which was its normal historical situation - China would never have been out-distanced in the modern 'race to progress'....In fact, because of this fatal historical accident - the establishment of the isolationist and totalitarian Ming system...China confronted the modern world blind and paralyzed, with the worst possible political heritage."
As a reminder of the path taken by China to get to where she is today, and as a book that still has a lot to give the reader, Chinese shadows is worth picking up.
Although it is not a religious text, in many ways The Analects of Confucius have had a similar effect on the human race as the Bible, Koran, or other holy books. It became a guide for living a moral life, and defined a society for hundreds of years. Like many other ancient texts, it has become corrupted over the years by accidental or deliberate elisions and insertions. Add to that the difficulty of deciphering the actual meanings of many of the ancient characters, and the syntax of the writing, and it seems the task of translating the work would not be a pleasurable experience.
I'm not sure how enjoyable Simon Leys (the pen name of respected Sinologist Pierre Ryckmans) found the task, but he has produced something that has, and no doubt will continue to, give pleasure to those fortunate enough to read it. Leys has approached his task with a view to make The Analects accessible to the non-expert English speaker, while still providing a strongly academic work. He explains his choice to publish under his literary pen-name rather than his real name in the following terms - "What I meant to suggest by this choice is that this is primarily a writer'stranslation; it is addressed not merely to fellow scholars, but first and foremost to nonspecialists - readers who simply wish to enlarge their cultural horizon but have no direct access to the original text."
With this in mind Leys has occasionally added words where needed within the translation to enable us nonspecialists to make sense of what we are reading. Sometimes the original defies even this process, where the original text may be incomplete, or corrupted with later additions. Leys' notes - which run to as many pages as The Analects themselves - scrupulously inform the reader when he has added text, and let the reader know when there are alternative readings of any particular analect. His notes and introduction also help the reader by putting the work into its cultural context, as well as providing other amusing or instructive asides into literature and history. As such, they are a wonderful text in their own right.
To The Analects themselves: so much human culture has developed from them, and they are wonderfully descriptive of the human condition, which it seems remains the same in its essentials through the ages. From the pithy " Clever talk and affected manners are seldom signs of goodness.", to the more obscure "Duke Wen of Jin was subtle but not straight; Duke Huan of Qi was straight, but not subtle.", The Analects lead the reader on a winding and occasionally repetitive road through the best and worst of human nature. Thanks to those that followed him, Confucius presaged a revolutionary change in the way the Chinese ran their states: by accepting his contention that nobility did not necessarily come to a person through birth, but through education, they created a society where intelligence and merit was a way to climb the social ladder. This idea was unheard of in most of the rest of the World at the time, and partly explains how China became such a great power by the turn of the Millennium.
In fact The Analects became so powerful that many rulers turned them into instruments of power; by emphasizing some, reinterpreting others, and suppressing yet more. In fact The Analects came to be seen by the twentieth century as reactionary, and both Chiang Kai Shek and Mao Zedong repudiated them. Leys points out in his introduction that Confucianism had become so ingrained in Chinese thought that, in an ironic twist, the Communist idea of "re-education" harks back to the Confucian idea that "errant behaviour came from a faulty understanding...if only the delinquent could be taught, and be made to perceive the mistaken nature of his actions, he would naturally amend his ways."
Unlike many other classic texts of this type, the Analects is not a long work (100 paperback pages), and the nature of the Analects themselves is such that the reader can dip in and out at almost any point. Short though some of them are, this is a work that makes the reader think - about themselves, others, and society as a whole. This translation, and its notes, is a great way into a classic work, and I highly recommend it.
MacArthur's War : the flawed genius who challenged the American political system by Bevin Alexander
New York : Berkley Caliber, 2013 ISBN 9780425261200
I wasn't expecting this book to be such a polemic - it's truly a hatchet job on General Douglas MacArthur, and in the process of chopping him up Alexander makes some strange bedfellows and comes to some interesting conclusions.
This book is ostensibly about the removal of MacArthur from his role leading the United Nations troops in Korea, and the clashes he had with President Truman and the Joint Chiefs of Staff before that occurred.
After a long introduction that mostly concerns the Chinese Civil War and the Nationalist's retreat to Taiwan, Alexander ventures into American diplomacy after WWII, with an emphasis on the Kennan "Long Telegram", and the ensuing American policy, if that's the right word, of containment.
Alexander posits that the North Koreans basically acted alone in starting the Korean War, having advised the USSR that the USA would not respond to their aggression. Thanks to tactical blunders in the UN by the Soviets, the Americans passed a resolution that allowed a UN force to be sent to help the Koreans. It was at this moment that MacArthur showed his brilliance as a field commander, with the Inchon landings, which, at a stroke, changed the picture in Korea and allowed the UN forces to advance into North Korean territory.
It is here that Alexander seems to me to be blinded by his dislike of MacArthur. MacArthur always danced to the beat of his own drum, and rarely allowed wider perspectives to interfere with what he thought was best, usually for him. As a General, he naturally wished to completely defeat the enemy, and what better way than to occupy North Korea. Alexander makes much of his earlier discussion of the American policy of containment of Communism, and accuses both Truman, Acheson and the JCS of grievous wrong by going against that policy. He almost writes as if they were breaking the law by changing their minds, but surely the President makes foreign policy, and if events change the policy too would surely change. The complete collapse of the North Korean armed forces certainly changed events, and I don't think MacArthur can be held responsible for pushing the US into something it didn't want to do - it seems clear that both Truman and Acheson saw that uniting Korea was a positive, and now within their grasp. The JCS didn't see any reason not to agree with that change of heart.
Alexander then pillories MacArthur for not foreseeing that China would intervene in the war if the UN forces approached the Yalu River. He makes much of the lack of US intelligence gathering, and that if they had been more subtle they would have perceived what the Chinese were thinking, and in fact that if they had moved up to the Yalu with South Korean forces only, the Chinese would not have intervened. This is all a little hard to understand. MacArthur was not the only senior commander or diplomat who did not foresee Chinese involvement - in fact there was really only one voice in the US administration who was warning of the probability. Chinese intelligence on US intentions was equally as faulty as the US intelligence on China - the US never intended crossing the Yalu (despite what MacArthur might have thought), so there was no immediate threat to China. And I also wonder, if China wasn't going to intervene until the UN approached the Yalu, why they had nearly half a million troops gathered at the border?
When the Chinese wave broke over the UN troops, it does seem that MacArthur almost underwent some sort of breakdown - after the initial shock and ragged retreat, the UN and Korean forces soon stabilised as the Chinese outran their primitive logistical supply, and a status quo was reached. MacArthur, on the other hand, seemed to think that Korea was lost, and this was when he started to seriously vent his ideas about blockading China, and attacking the Chinese mainland.
One wonders what was going through MacArthur's mind at this stage of proceedings, as he was clearly contradicting his civilian superiors - Alexander doesn't much go in for psychological theories, but here's a couple from someone much less qualified - 1. MacArthur was well known for his narcissistic personality, and after the shock of the Chinese intervention, he was looking for a way for him to regain his glory, or "face". Alexander doesn't discuss MacArthur's WWII record in this book, but it is clear from that time that wherever MacArthur was and whatever he was doing was the most important place, battle, or struggle in the World. Therefore it is not surprising in the slightest that he still saw things that way. 2. Again going back to WWII - in that struggle the aim was total destruction (unconditional surrender) of the enemy, and every means and effort was expended to that aim, without political interference. Korea was a totally different time and place, but it could be that MacArthur expected the political side of the coin to react to his ideas in the same way as they did during the earlier conflict. It's clear that MacArthur was wrong, and Truman and co. were right, but a small amount of thought goes a ways to understanding MacArthur's actions and words at this time.
Alexander doesn't seem to have considered these things, in fact he expends far more words attempting to explain away the Chinese activities than he does trying to understand MacArthur - he spends much more time on the "flawed" than the "genius" of his title.
Alexander finishes the book with a description of the hearings in Washington, which laid out in full the distance between MacArthur's thoughts, and those of the President and the JCS. In his conclusion he makes the claim that MacArthur was trying to usurp the elected President of the United States and create a military dictatorship. This is palpably a ridiculous claim - the quote from MacArthur that Alexander uses as a basis for this proposition clearly relates to civilian interference in battlefield decisions, not grand strategy or political control. The fact that MacArthur, when relieved of his command, made no protest, did not, as most military dictators would, take an army to the capitol, or even encourage his supporters to rebel. In fact, as related by his successor General Ridgeway "He [MacArthur] was entirely himself - composed, quiet, temperate, friendly, and helpful to the man who was to succeed him."
While this book was disappointing in many ways, like all good polemics it has much truth in it, and has driven me to widen my reading on this now little known controversy.
