Shikasta

My old friend, I find myself in a mental and emotional conflict that keeps me awake at night, and destroys my pleasure in my work for our great People. When you told me you would send me to oversee Pan-Europe, I told you I was not necessarily the best man for the job. Your reply was that a man conscious of reservations and emotional difficulties would be better than one who was not. I wonder! I work daily, hourly, with our officials, men and women of the highest calibre, and who seem to suffer no indecision in their work. And yet, to repeat, for the last few months this work has not been - I hope? - the results of decisions from us, the Centre.

I loathe the white-ski

Their savagery has never done less than appal me. The cold-bloodedness of the intentions behind their imposition of opium, the wanton destruction of our cultural heritage, or its theft, their inferiority... but I need not go on, for we have discussed it often enough. I live among a race I dislike to the roots of my being. Even in their decline and their subjection, some of them, indeed, many of them, manage to behave as if they have been unjustly deprived of a sinecure, and a few even manage the airs of dispossessed royalty bravely suffering the rabble.

Imagine my situation, then, forced to stand by while a policy is being implemented that my emotions applaud, my lowest instincts enjoy, that returns me to savagery. My old friend, I am writing under pressures you will surely understand, and you will make allowances. I believe that our cadres here are in fact as cheerful and enthusiastic in their work as-they seem to be. They can be so cheerful only because (a) they applaud the policies of the Emergent Nations and approve what they see and have to do, or (b) they do not understand what it is they are seeing - do not understand what it means for us that these policies are being implemented, for surely they ca

Do we really have no objection to being compared with Genghis Khan?

I know that we all have forgone leave that is due to us in the interests of the general good, but I would like to talk to you. Is it true that you will be touring the southern hemisphere this autumn? If so, I could perhaps apply for leave and meet you somewhere.

CHEN LIU reports to the COUNCIL in PEKING

Further to my Report of a year ago. The decimation, if not destruction, of the peoples of Pan-Europe now being official policy on the part of the Emergent Nations, following the Conference in Kampala, I have no more to say on that topic, but merely report a consequent development.

Until now the Youth Armies have been relatively free of division on lines of race. This has been official policy with them, racialism having been identified with the old generation, with the past. While immigrants have been coming into Europe from India, the drought areas of Africa, the West Indies, the Middle East, and settling anywhere there was land or housing available (usually because the inhabitants have died from famine or disease), the Youth Armies have on the whole been scrupulous in respecting local land rights, local land policies, the integrity of areas. If Youth Sectors have commandeered empty villages or untenanted land, it has always been done within the style they have perfected, that of working within these limits, or at least nominally. Sometimes, of course, with the effect, calculated or not, of impertinence. But the real strength of these Armies is being eroded, quite simply, by hardship. For instance, a Pan-European Conference scheduled to take place this month in Switzerland is scaled down to less than half its projected strength because of lack of transport, shortage of fuel, shortage of food. And it will take place next summer, because their clothes are inadequate for the cold, and in Greece for easier access.

Generally, the work of the Youth is being diverted to their own maintenance. I am aware that it has been the policy to deplore the very existence of the Youth Armies, and I am not at this time arguing this point. But it seems to me that a great deal of our denigration of them has been - a perhaps necessary - rhetoric. For in many areas the Armies have been a useful, and indeed often the only, police force and control against every kind of anarchy.

For the first time a note is being sounded among the Youth to the effect that European delegates should take second place to those from the old colonies, on the ground of their inferiority of race shown by past barbarities.

I refer to previous Reports.

CHEN LIU to his friend KUYUANG

I have heard no word from you. Yet I can only believe that you have received my various private letters.

Do we wish to see these millions of young people, some of whom are of course totally misguided in their political thought, but who have proved themselves re-educable, millions who have created throughout the world their own organisations, styles of work, protective agencies, methods of self-discipline - do we wish to see them turn on each other? I ca

CHEN LIU reports to the COUNCIL in PEKING

As a development to matters referred to in the last Report: there is to be a Mock Trial staged on the highest levels of the Combined Youth Armies of the World. The Defendant is to be the White Races. The Prosecutors, the Dark-ski

An individual, George Sherban, a man we have been observing closely since the start of our Beneficent Tutelage, and who before that was under the observation of the Pan-Europe Federation of SDCPD for P of P, is to take the part of Prosecutor. The man who will defend is John Brent-Oxford, an old member of the left wing of the Labour Party in Britain, with a record of work in various fields, mostly representing Britain in Europe for various Labour governments. He was imprisoned under the Pan-Europe Federation, and released on my recommendation to a low-level post in the Youth Supervisory Echelon, in Bristol, England. He is in bad health. He was a member of a well-known legal firm in Britain but his political activities took him away from the law. He is, however, well-enough equipped for a task which will need oratory more than any knowledge of current or previous legal requirements. The choice of both these men is astonishing. George Sherban is of British parentage, and his Indian allegiance amounts to a single grandparent. He is accepted however as an honorary Indian in the Youth Armies. John Brent-Oxford is over sixty. It is too easy to say that the choice of a member of the despised older generation is only to add to the emotional bias against the defendant: I am informed he is very well liked among the Youth who have worked with him. So this choice may be described as cynical, or careless.

George Sherban's brother, one Benjamin, an altogether less charismatic character, is to be one of John Brent-Oxford's "advisers." That is, he will be on the opposite side to his brother. He has recently undergone Top-Level Re-education, with no noticeable results.