Practicing History_ Selected Essays - Barbara W. Tuchman [50]
No doubt many would unhesitatingly answer yes to that question. It seems to me, however, that insofar as biography is used to illumine history, voyeurism has no place. Happily, in the case of the greatest English writer, we know and are likely to know close to nothing about his private life. I like this vacuum, this miracle, this great floating monument of work that has no explanation at all.
Address, Symposium on the Art of Biography, National Portrait Gallery, November 14, 1978. Telling Lives: The Biographer’s Art (Washington, D.C.: New Republic Books, 1979).
* See “The Assimilationist Dilemma: Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story,” this page.
II
THE
YIELD
Japan: A Clinical Note
Ever since the Manchurian incident, Japanese foreign policy has been reaping the world’s condemnation. Unlike an individual, a nation cannot admit itself in error; so Japan’s only answer has been to tell herself that her judges are wrong and she is right. To strengthen this contention she has built up the belief that she acts from the purest motives which her fellow nations willfully misunderstand. The more they disapprove, the more adamant grows Japan’s conviction that she is right.
This conviction of righteousness, and its corollary, the feeling of being misunderstood, find daily expression in the speech and press of the country. An example is the following passage from an editorial on the Ethiopian conflict: “There must be some reasons that justify Italy in attempting to solve the Ethiopian situation by force, but Premier Mussolini seems to have been misunderstood by the other Powers.… Our country went through bitter experiences as a result of such misunderstanding at the time of the Manchurian Incident.… The world attributed that Incident to the Japanese military and denounced it harshly. This was the outcome of lack of correct knowledge about the situation on the part of the other Powers.”1
Not only are other nations delinquent in understanding. The next most frequent charge made against them by the Japanese is that they fail to show sincerity. An instance is the stand Japan takes concerning her refusal to sign a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union. She justifies her position by carrying the attack into the enemy camp. “The Soviet Union is laboring under a mistaken notion about Japan,” says an Army spokesman. “If they really want peace in the Far East they should show us the sincerity of their intentions … before seeking to conclude a non-aggression pact with this country.”2
Injured innocence is an attitude which Japan frequently assumes in answer to foreign disapproval. Last summer when the League Council adopted a resolution condemning Germany’s denunciation of the Versailles Treaty, the Soviet delegate suggested that a similar resolution might be applied to the Far East. A Japanese editorial on the subject stated: “It is clear that the Soviet representative had Japan in mind,” and then asked blandly, “Has Japan done anything in contravention of international treaties?”3 Needless to note, the editorial made no mention of the Nine-Power Treaty. Again, Japan points with fine indignation at one of her foreign critics who, during the Manchurian Incident, “went so far as to charge Japan with occupying Chinese territory.”4
With its implied horror at the accusation of having occupied Chinese territory, as if it were an act of which Japan had never dreamed, a statement like the above seems to foreign readers incredible. In real bewilderment the foreigner asks himself what purpose the Japanese