• * * * Although he was only 37 when
he was killed last Saturday, I think Ian Morrison was what is generally understood by a great man, and I am quite certain that he would have been remembered as one had he lived. It was not merely that he was an extremely enterprising and clear-headed correspondent with very mature political judgement. His character had a sort of translucent quality, so that behind his diffident manner and his boyish appearance people of all races recognised in him a man to be liked and trusted. He had an almost feminine blend of sympathy and intuition, yet he was tougher and more single-minded in his purposes than colleagues who looked much more like thrusters. Everybody liked him, at all levels ; he was becoming a legend in Eastern Asia, and no Single individual did more in the last ten years for what remains
of our prestige there. When I heard of his death I remembered that last year, near the borders of Tibet, I had been given a letter to deliver to him, but our arrangements for a rendezvous had failed, and I still had the letter somewhere. I found it in a drawer. It is a dull letter, from a little engineer called Hsi' who wrote from the Sining Electrical Works, Tsinghai Province. It begins: " Dear Mr. Morrison,—I often think of you since you went away. I do not forget you at all. . . ."
People have long memories in Asia, and Ian Morrison will not quickly forfeit the place that he won in them. Christopher Buckley was a very good man, too.
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