Forgotten Wars_ Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia - Christopher Bayly [138]
But none of this washed with Dorman-Smith, to whom Dickie – ‘rot him!’ – was the root of all the troubles in Burma because he flattered and built up Aung San. ‘Let’s face it, our Dickie may be a first-class military commander, but he is a damned poor politician. If he ever became Governor General of anywhere I would expect a spot of bother because he just cannot keep his hands off politics… Probably Dickie will get the order of the White Rabbit from the first Government of Free India.’ Dorman-Smith saw plots all around him, most of them originating with Attlee or Mountbatten. He had recently met Edward Gent and felt he was facing similar trouble. Gent told him that there was an agreement between the British government and Ceylon that the colony would have its freedom in five years’ time. ‘I only hope my people [the Burmese] do not get to know of this!’ Dorman-Smith commented. In London, the civil servant to whom this long lament was addressed, Sir David Monteath, minuted loftily that he had a lot of sympathy with Dorman-Smith, even if his letter was ‘phoney’ in parts.
For the time being, the governor thought he had a few cards left to play. He continued to tinker with building a coalition of the old pre-1941 politicians. The friendly rogue, U Saw, was on the way back with his Myochit party. Ba Maw was heading back too, having escaped prosecution in Tokyo,105 while poor old Sir Paw Tun hung on, gamely trying to put the clock back. From Dorman-Smith’s point of view, any of the flotsam and jetsam of the pre-war years was better than the BNA firebrands. Besides, like many other observers, he sensed that Aung San himself did not know what to do, caught as he was between the British and the old guard on the one side and Thakin Soe and the communists on the other. Military intelligence later reported that Aung San was ‘severely terrified of U Saw, who is really dangerous’ and whose return to power was propelled by ‘criminal gangsters’.106 Aung San lived in perpetual fear of assassination but, according to the assessment, ‘has much personal courage, unlike U Saw’. His courage was perhaps not always matched by his judgement; Aung San had poured out his woes to ‘a motherly type of woman’ who just happened to be a British informant: ‘He did not know what to do; all his life he had been without real friends and now everything he tries goes wrong.’ He was ‘beginning to doubt his ability to live up to the position which he has now acquired’, Dorman-Smith paraphrased with satisfaction.107 All the same, the governor was sensible enough to realize that Burmese opinion was largely on Aung San’s side. Burma wanted to ‘gallop down the road without any help’.108 The ‘middle classes’, such as they were, seemed weak and their representatives were likely to be wiped out at the next election. Dorman-Smith had had a ‘heart-warming trip’ up to Myitkyina and the north, where the Kachins and other minority groups remained staunchly pro-British. Yet the minorities could not really provide a bulwark for continued British government in Burma. Though he was often accused of playing divide-and-rule politics, Dorman-Smith was suspicious of a strongly pro-minority stance. Perhaps his Irish background helped here: ‘resistance groups are awkward things to handle as they may go on looking for something to resist’, he wrote, adding that these ‘special arrangements for minority