A Modern Elizabethan

By V. SACKVILLE-WEST

Mn. PETER FLEMING, as the reading world now knows, is an adventurous young- man with an acid and scornful mind, a fresh and vivid style, and a conviction that he bears a charmed life. At any rate, the recklessness with which he takes his life repeatedly into his hands is sufficient to suggest that he holds that -conviction. He even states it specifically, and with a degree -of grievance : " Nothing," he complains, " ever seems to happen to me." Of all grievances, that strikes me as one of the least justifiable. What he really means, I think, is not so much that bandits annoyingly absent them- selves from the road on the very day he elects to travel down it, as that his determination to live a romantic life is matched only by his determination never to romanticize it. Thus his wit is constantly ready with its lance couched against any possible danger of self-glorification. As he observes, a sense of proportion which is either hopelessly under- or over- developed makes it impossible for him to take any of his own activities seriously.

It would perhaps be ungracious to hint that One's Company is a shade less fascinating. than Brazilian Adventure. I do not think the slight disappointment is due to any personal taste, for generally speaking books about China appeal to me more than books about Brazil. But there was something about that extravagant, high-spirited enterprise which exceeded this more sober account of the experiences of a War correspondent. Still, all the old sense of fun is there : the lightning character-sketches (" the diplomats drift to and fro with the slow, stately and mysterious grace of fish in an aquarium ") ; the descriptive passages, restrained and rare, are still as admirable. If the slight disappointment persists, that is not to say that Mr. Fleming has not again written a travel-book in a thousand. It is only to say that the standard he set himself by his first book was almost impossibly high.

The book divides itself into two parts : the first part concerns the experiences of the author in the new kingdom

• of Manchukuo; the second part his experiences in the Red Communist district of Kiangsi in South China, never pre- viously visited by a foreigner. Accounts of the possible fate Awaiting a Special Correspondent were not exactly reas- suring:.

"I was confronted once more," writes Mr. Fleming, ". with the ghost of hr. Riley. Mr. Riley was a brilliant correspondent of The Times who came out to China a few years ago and was almost immediately murdered in the interior. All the way from Printing House Square to Peking people had reminded me of his unhappy

• fate with a monotonous regularity ; among strangers to whom I • was introduced it was a favourite conversation opening. In the end'even Mr. Riley himself could hardly have wished more fervently than I that he had escaped his assassins."

Such tales, however, were not sufficient to put Mr. Fleming off. Equipped with a supply of visiting-cards, on which the nearest. Chinese phonetic equivalent of his name appeared, .. in this case being Fu Lei Ming, meaning Learned Engraver on Stone, he set out for Manchuli, being involved in a grand .railway accident on the way, when the Trans-Siberian Express took the 'law into its own hands descending a steep hill. Arrived in Manchuria, he tells a good and exciting story of an expedition with a Japanese flying column in an attempt to mop up the local bandits. (This was the occasion on which the bandits were so disobliging as to keep out of the way.) He flew. to Jehol ; he was granted an interview with the :Empe. ror Pe: Yi. Still, not enough having happened, he decided to penetrate into the unexamined region of Red China, entailing an overland journey from Shanghai to Canton. His account of this journey constitutes the most One's Company : A Journey to China. By Peter Fleming. (Jonathan Cape. 8s. (3d.)

interesting and, so far as information goes, the most valuable part of the book.

One does not, of course, read Mr. Fleming primarily for information. One reads hint for literary delight and for the pleasure of meeting an Elizabethan spirit allied to a modern mind. But, since he is also an observer of penetrating intelligence Who travelled to China as the representative of a great and solemn newspaper, it would be foolish to ignore his more serious conclusions. These cOnclusions are given occasionally, never portentously, either in a sudden paragraph or in a few condensed and incisive pages. The note of warning at the beginning of the book, characteristic of Mr. Fleming's resolute modesty, is enough to reassure the most apprehensive reader :

"The recorded history of Chinese civilization covers a period of four thousand years. The population of China is estimated at 450 millions. China is larger than Europe. The author of this book is 26 years old. He has spent, altogether, about seven months in China. He does not speak Chinese."

Alas, I am in no position to judge whether Mr. Fleming's diffidence is justified or not. I have never, I regret to say, been to China. The best that I can do is to let him speak for himself :

" . . the curse of China is ineffectiveness. As you travel through the country you find a continuous pleasure in the charm, the humour, the courtesy, the industry, and the fundamentally reasonable outlook of the inhabitants ; but all the time you are missing something, and you are hardly conscious of what it is until you meet somebody who is effective : who really means to do what he says he is going to do : who can resist the fatal lure of compromise : who can rise superior to his enervating and obstructionist surroundings : who gets things done. Such a man puts your respect for the Chinese on a less academic plane."

And then, more specifically, let him speak on Communism in China : " . . .

the Chinese Communists are not ineffective. The Red Areas are controlled, and rigidly controlled, by a central govern- ment at the 'capital,' Shuikiii. . . . Communism in Kiang& is pro- bably not much further removed from orthodox Communism than the adulterated brand now practised in Russia. It is, of course, very much simplified. The principal tenets to which the peasant is called on to subscribe (or perish) are broadly indicated by the two slogans, 'The Land for the People' and 'Down With Imperialism.' The first is simple and makes pleasant hearing. The second can hardly be so easy to expound to people who have never seen an Imperialist in their life and would not know one if they did. . . . So the Communist. recruit, when in the heat of battle he looks down his sights and sees at the other end of them only the sheepish face of young Liu who used to live in the next village, nerves himself with the memory of all that has been told him about the foreign capitalists who are supplying Liu's masters at Nanking with poisonous gas and aero- planes: and duly pulls the trigger. . . . The chief weakness of the Communist policy, regarded simply in the light of a method of governing the Chinese, is that it comprises a strong element of what may be called internal iconoclasm. The oldest, the most powerful traditions in China are centred on the family, and Com- munism is out to break the family. By abolishing inheritance, and marriage, and ancestor-worship, and by trying to super- impose the conception of a State as the unit to live in and work for, they are defying customs so long established that they have become instincts. It is, I think, this aspect of Communism which is the limiting factor on its spontaneous generation outside the present Red Areas. Only a reproduction of the special circum- stances in which the movement had its birth could result in the occurrence of a parallel outbreak elsewhere in China.

I have picked only a few lines out of the more serious pages of Mr. Fleming's book, and have reproduced them in order to show that his record is something more than a merely frivolous, personal and scathing account of a journey in the course of which he encountered a number of characters apparently' created to shrivel under the flick of his pen. There is thus something for all tastes, for the reader desirous of solid common sense and observation and for the reader to whom the light and witty touch makes a stronger appeal.