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realized that the police were unrealiable, the volunteer brigades were hostile and the army was split down the middle. It vacillated, embarking now on a half-hearted purge of the army and pleading secretly for help from the British. At the same time, though, it confused matters by trying to improve relations with the communists in private discussions. To the annoyance of the British government, Nu again publicly denounced ‘imperialists’ – their identity was scarcely concealed – in an attempt to curry favour with his leftist former colleagues.43 Yes, of course compensation would be given to British firms, the government said, but this was no different from the compensation given to Western firms by the recently installed communist government in Czechoslovakia. And Burma’s debt repayment to the British was no different from the one embarked on by the communist USSR in the 1920s. Anyway, the British government was itself socialist; it had simply avoided the Soviet way of blood, pleaded Nu, once again longing for retirement to a monastery.

Though Nu’s speech stirred up a flurry of pained letters from the British ambassador and even a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger epistle from Stafford Cripps, this trimming cut little ice with the communists.44 It also made the War Office even more suspicious about handing over military hardware to Burma. Relations between the two governments were further strained when the Burmese began alleging that British military procurement and sale in the whole of South East Asia Command was corrupt. They had been reliably informed that huge quantities of military stores, which should have gone to Burma under the Attlee–Nu agreement, were actually being sold off on the Singapore black market and were probably finding their way into the hands of Malayan and Burmese communists.45 In Rangoon itself there were persistent rumours and allegations that the British military supply board (a civilian organization) was in cahoots with local Anglo-Burmese and Indian businessmen. Rather than selling to government, it was secretly disposing of war surplus to the highest bidder, in the best traditions of the old ‘black-market administration’ of 1945. Whitehall was somewhat muted in its response to these allegations because they seemed only too plausible.

Besides denouncing the British, Nu tried other ways to revive national unity and outflank the communists. In early April he masterminded a final burial ceremony for the embalmed remains of Aung San and his colleagues. Medical opinion supported the interment; the bodies, still lying in state in the Jubilee Hall, were decomposing rapidly.46 But Furnivall understood the political motive behind the ceremony: Nu’s attempt to invoke the spirit of Aung San to revive the old wartime nationalist alliance. Members of the armed forces drew Bogyoke’s bier to his last resting place and some communist leaders attended the burial, but past comradeship could not hide present differences. On 8 May the final act of this older drama was played out. At dawn on this cloudy morning U Saw walked out of his prison cell wearing his usual jacket and a longyi. He chatted briefly with his guards and shook the hands of the men who were about to hang him.47 All appeals, private and public, had failed. Dorman-Smith could do nothing for him, even though he had written a letter to him claiming that the trial was biased and had publicly declared, ‘I know U Saw. I know him to be an honest man.’48 In fact, as Furnivall noted, ‘Dorman-Smith’s appeal for mercy on behalf of U Saw was perhaps the most certain way of ensuring his execution’, as most Burmese believed that Dorman-Smith was somehow connected with the assassination of Aung San.49 British associates who might have taken some of the blame for murder had been quietly frog-marched off the political stage, to the relief of both governments. In his final moments, U Saw turned to Buddhist priests, saying, ‘He who dares to do things, must dare bear the consequences.’ Two of his Burmese associates were hanged with him. Later that day Nu hosted a rally for