The generality of the white delegates - about seven hundred of them, stayed in their enclave of tents that day, and when they emerged for a meal or other purposes, behaved quietly, avoiding eye confrontation, and if challenged, smiled, and were bland and polite. They behaved, in fact, as so many of their subject peoples have always had to do: they were trying to be invisible.
This day, and after that night's session, and next day, the whites were in real danger, but after that, the emotions lost force.
Our agents were assiduous. It is clear that all were misled to some extent by their very proper enthusiasm for justice. They talked of "a total victory" over the white races. But what could they mean? They seemed to imagine not only a "verdict in their favour," but even summary justice of some kind. But to be carried out how, and on whom? The person of John Brent-Oxford? On their fellow delegates? I can only conclude from these fevered (but of course entirely understandable) reports, that the atmosphere and feelings in the camp must have been running very high, and beyond any reason.
I was struck then, and am struck again, by the difference in tone between the early reports of our agents and the later ones. Because of what can only be judged by us as their wrong assessment of situations, must we now assume that their assessment of other matters is sometimes faulty?
For the second evening session, guards escorted the whites, in a body, to the amphitheatre. The guards were appointed by the organisers, and included both Sherbans, Sharma Patel, and other "stars." The white delegates sat together, during that session, and were positioned opposite to the place reserved for our people, the Chinese. This gave the impression of a confrontation, for as I said, no other delegates sat according to national or racial origin.
It is clear that the confrontation, whites vs. Chinese (which is how it looked) was disapproved of by our delegates, who had felt that an honour (a proper, justified, and appreciated honour offered to our Beneficial Rule) was being denigrated and even mocked, because the hated and despised whites were now being similarly set apart, and immediately opposite themselves. Even if for very different reasons.
Once again there was the opposition between the "accusers" led by the - silent - George Sherban, and his group, and the "accused," the old white, and his group.
Once again, the late afternoon fading into dusk, the lighting of the torches, the attractive children, the constant coming and going between floor of arena and tiers and between camp and amphitheatre, which was crammed, packed, jammed with people.
All of the second night's session was taken up by representatives from South America, young men and women from the Indian tribes. Thirty of them. Several were wasted with disease. It is hard to imagine how some made the journey at all.
I will not go into detail.
This indictment was even more powerful than that of the Indian from the United States, because the events described were more recent. Some of the victims stood before us...
The incursion of Europe into South America. The conquest of brilliant civilisations
through rapacity, greed, guile, trickery. The savagery of Christianity. The subjection of the Indians. The introduction of black people from Africa, the slave trade.
The devastation of the continent, its resources, its beauty, its wealth.
The casual, or deliberate, murder of the Indian tribes for their land, by introduced diseases, by starvation, by depredation - crimes that have not even now been completed, since there are still pockets of exploitable forest left - and everyone knows that where there is something that is capable of giving profit, then exploited it will be. The destruction of the animals, the forests, the waters, the soil.
One after another, the Indians stood forward and spoke - or, rather, shouted, or called up their accusing phrases, so that all the intent and listening thousands could hear. The white people, particularly the Spaniards, in their place on the tiers, surrounded by their guards, sat directly accused, culpable, guilty - reaping the hatred of those massed young people, representatives in more than one sense, for now they were, for that time, the murdering destroyers whom - as themselves and as individuals - they certainly had never done anything but condemn. But now they might very easily be lynched... and the old white man was forgotten, for all eyes were elsewhere. And again there sounded the deep, hissing, blood-chilling groan.
Immediately opposite the Spaniards stood the small crowd -of Indians, some of them being held up, because of their weakness and disease - these groups stood there with the lights of the flaring torches on them, while the thousands kept up their hissing groan. And then, at a signal from the prosecuting side, the children began to extinguish their torches. Soon the great amphitheatre was dark, shined on by the stars and the strengthening moon. And the crowd began heaving itself up and clattering away.
Our agents all said they expected that it would be found that the two Spaniards had been killed in the darkness, but it was not so.
That was the first normal night. At midnight, they all crowded around the mess tents, finding what food they could. The contingent of whites asked the guards to leave them - and this made a good impression. The two Spaniards had joined them, and it seems that shortly some sort of informal seminar was in progress, on affairs in the South American continent, with the Spaniards and the two Sherbans prominent. The old white was also popular. In fact, for every night of that month, from midnight until four and the start of the morning session, they all, particularly George Sherban, were to be seen everywhere, each the focus of attentive groups. Seminars. Study groups. Classes. These words were used by all our agents. The old white was sought after because I gather the youth were curious to hear about the last days of "British democracy" and the Labour Party - ancient history to them. Also they saw him as a figure redeemed by his willingness to confess his crimes to the People's Tribunal, and to offer the last days of his life to the Service of the Workers.
At four a.m., when the amphitheatre filled, the whites were again escorted to their place opposite the Chinese delegation, but when there, they consulted briefly, asked the guards to leave them, and then dispersed themselves to sit at random among the others. This gesture caused some people, Agent Tsi Kwang, for instance, indignation, as it appeared to her an insult to the Correct Judgement of the Masses. But on the whole, it was well received. The high point of ill-feeling, and the possibility of assault and worse, was in fact passing. Soon the whites mingled freely, but still withdrew to their own tents to rest. And it was not long before even this was dropped.
That day there was a switch in emphasis, much to the annoyance or disappointment of all our agents, who were hoping that "something concrete" would result from the previous night's crisis of feeling. They expected, it is clear, an acceleration or culmination of bad feeling.
But racially the temperature was lowered, because there followed a series of "witnesses" testifying to the effects of military preparations, the arms build-up, submarine warfare potential and actual, the fleets patrolling the oceans, and above all, the instruments policing the skies whose very existence threatens whole continents with sudden death at any time.
The evening session was taken up by a series of recitals, or accounts, which sounded like laments, because of the necessarily slow, emphasised, simplified words, of the progress of war - the First World War, a European war, and the way its savagery impacted on non-European races made to fight in it, or forced to give up raw materials; colonies "lost," or exchanged, or freshly conquered; colonies used as battlegrounds for conflicts not their own. The Second World War, engulfing nearly all the world, its appalling devastations, again fought mainly between the white races, but using the other races where they could, or needed to, and the savage culmination when the Europeans dropped the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And then the Korean War, and its total barbarity, its illogic, its destructiveness, its strengthening of the United States - and its corruption of the States. The French in Vietnam. The United States in Vietnam. Africa and its attempts to free itself from Europe. If this is to be an attempt at actuality, then I must report that at this point there were certain veiled references which could be taken as a criticism of us, as well as of the Soviet Union, in Africa.