The Return of Anastasia
From MURRAY KEMPTON
NEW YORK
TutE large fears and the small hopes of the United Nations had all flown away from New York last week on the frail mission of its Secretary-General, and, while its establishment fell silent behind him, the monthly press briefing by the State Department's Robert McCloskey was a larger occasion than is usual.
McCloskey acknowledged that the Indians and the Pakistanis are fighting one another with weapons substantially provided by our military aid programme as a shield against Communist aggression. The United States would, he said, take a long hard look at where our weapons go in the future. The American taxpayer, if Miss Vanessa Redgrave will indulge a moment's self- pity in the enemy,' is one merchant of death who ends up poorer year by year.
And then Mr. McCloskey lingered a moment to commend the eminently sensible attitude dis- played by the Soviet Union in this crisis. Together appalled, America and the Soviet Union suddenly old nations, confront the Third World. The Soviets have lost control of the revolution and we have lost control of the counter-revolution.
It was altogether not our week to look charitably upon the emerging peoples, even peoples who emerged so long ago as to have almost sunk again. Mme. Chiang Kai-shek has arrived among us at an uneasy time then; the atmosphere, while eminently correct on both sides, had its strains on ours, It has been a long time since our press has looked at Mme. Chiang with an eye free of suspicion; for one thing she is a loser; for another her presence was a signal for liberal alarm that she has come here to seduce Mr. Johnson into the bogs of mainland China.
The latter danger would appear minimal. The United States has, to be sure, endowed Formosa as a kind of Museum of Oriental Antiquities; but Mr. Johnson is no more likely than any other rich patron of the arts to ask business advice from one of the objets. Yet the New York Times. which has dealt kindly with such terrifying examples of her sex as policewomen and senior movie actresses, fell savagely upon Mme. Chiang, even reminding its readers that Mrs. Roosevelt had been wounded to hear her complain about the White House servants. That seemed entirely unfair; being beastly to the servants is an East Asian custom; when adoring crowds pressed too closely upon Nehru, it was his charming custom to beat the nearest head with his cane. What this anecdote proves is that, if you are Asian and abuse the poor, it is best to do it in the name of socialism; the poor may not know the difference, but the New York Times does.
Mme. Chiang drew a great crush of reporters for what was her only press conference in New York all the same. Her questioners at this stage of her game tend to run more than of old to delegates from the women's pages, whose• pre- sence in high percentage can generally be taken as an indication that one more strong woman has fallen out of history. But there remained a large number of journalists of more cosmic con- cern, wary in repose and slightly hostile in their infrequent onsets of 'arousal. Mme. Chiang was just as wary: the ghost of Mme. Nliu reminded all present that the one mistake a suppliant can make in this country is to be too quotable. Pre- sumably she knows that, whatever mysterious boon she seeks, the Johnsons are the only audience which, counts for her; long ago Taiwan won the struggle for the minds of Americans and, now, to hold or lose any mind but the President's is alike of little consequence. The Free Chinese will, Mme. Chiang said, 'certainly' take control of the mainland again, although she had to apologise for not being able to tell even China's friends exactly when, because that is 'what the Communists would like to know.'
Mme. Chiang is a graduate of our own Wellesley College, class of 1915, and, by now, the imprint of that experience is the most notable thing about her. She reminds us that the girls who went to our better women's colleges before the First World War were very conscious of being both adventurous and well-born. By this time, marvellously preserved though she is, her style and manner are unexpectedly like the average for her classmates—that is, Lady Bracknell with a record of having marched with the suffragettes and cherished a friend who worked for the Women's Trade Union League.
She was asked about Tibet and she gave the answer that Tibet had already been granted autonomy and that, when the mainland is free, 'you know the British Commonwealth, if they feel they want to join us and we could be of help to them, we would be very glad to do what we can for them.' Suddenly it was impossible to believe that grown people were discussing some- thing remotely real. Mme. Chiang might have been discussing the reconstitution of the Holy Roman Empire. We were confronting an Anastasia, indisputably the real thing and as indisputably an historical relic. She is better than her successors, but the fact that she has been succeeded is permanent.
As she departed, a visitor asked whether she really thought the United States should bomb
the Chinese nuclear establishment. would not say,' she answered courteously, 'but someone should.' Then she departed with the smile which says that we were all at school together and that we all love one another but it is hard to remember the faces. She had come at that moment as close as she could to looking like Mme. Nhu and the resemblance was as rendered by Miss Helen Hokinson, whose donfic'e is what survives of the Vassar of a generation before Mary McCarthy's. She was a saddening reminder that the only political figures with the power really to disturb our peace are all strangers.
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