The Promise: A Novel of China and Burma (Oriental Novels of Pearl S. Buck) Read Online Free PDF Page A

spent the months learning until the battle of Long Sands.”
    “That tells me why you have learned so well,” the General replied.
    When he had brushed quickly the name of Ling Tan and where he lived he put down the brush and put his hands on the sides of his chair and fixed his eyes upon Sheng’s face.
    “It is against my will that I send these two divisions to Burma,” he said. “I have reasoned with the One Above. I have told him that we must not fight on soil that is not our own, and this for two reasons. In the first place the people of Burma are not for us. They will not welcome us when they know we come to help those who rule them. They do not love the men of Ying who have been their rulers and when we come to aid the men of Ying they will hate us, too. In the second place, the men of Ying despise those not of their own pale color, and even though we come to help them they will not treat us as true allies. They will look on us as servants and they the lords, and shall we endure this when we go to succor them?”
    “What does the One Above say when you tell him these true things?” Sheng asked.
    The General leaned forward. “He says the men of Ying must know how small are their chances to hold their rule in Burma and they will be grateful to us. He says that since they need our help they will show us courtesy and we will fight by their side and win a great victory over the enemy at last.”
    “Is the One Above so sure that we can win?” Sheng asked.
    “Is he not sending our best divisions? You are all seasoned and young and strong.”
    The General sighed and it was like a groan. “So he says, even though Hongkong has fallen to the enemy, and all know that the men of Ying gave that great city to the enemy as though it were a present for a feast day. I say, the men of Ying are doomed and if we go with them we are doomed. I have had all my life a knowledge of which way doom lay ahead, and I have that knowledge now. We ought to stay on our own earth and fight only from our own land. These men of Ying—have we reason to think they will change suddenly in their hearts to us? Have they not always despised us?”
    The General fell silent and sat like a man of stone for a moment. But Sheng saw the veins begin to swell under his ears and on his temples and his clenched fists, which lay out on the table before him like two hammers, grew white on the knuckles and the veins in his wrists swelled. He did not lift his eyes to Sheng’s face and Sheng could not see what was in them. But after a moment this man began to speak in a low voice, thick as though he were choking.
    “The men of Ying have treated us like dogs on our own earth! They have lorded it over us since they won those wars against us—opium wars, they called them, but they were wars of conquest. Their battleships have sailed our rivers and their soldiers have paraded our streets. They took land from us for their own. They refused to obey our laws and here in our country they have set up their own laws for themselves, and their own courts and their own judges, and when one of them robbed us and even when one of them killed one of us, there has been no justice. Their priests have paid no taxes. Tax free they have gone where they liked and preached their religion which is not ours. They have turned the hearts of our young away from our elders. They have sat at our customs gates and taken the toll of our merchandise.”
    Suddenly he leaped to his feet and his wrath burst out of his eyes like lightning. He paced back and forth in the long narrow room in which they were. “And I am commanded to send my best young men to fight for these men who have despised us and trodden us down for all these years!” he shouted.
    Now Sheng himself had lived always in his father’s house outside the city and the few times he had ever seen these foreign men whom the General so hated could be counted on the fingers of his right hand. Once or twice he had seen them on the