Chapter I Foreward
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project HENRY CLINTON REED Initial interview date: September 1986 Copyright 2015 ADST A MEMOIR FOR MY FAMILY La Fornace Lucignano, Italy CONTENTS I. FOREWARD 1 II. ECUADOR 6 III. DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 42 IV. MEXICO CITY – SAN FRANCISCO – CHILI 55 V. IRELAND 73 VI. ITALY 84 VII. PORTUGAL 94 VIII. LIFE AS ANDEAN FEUDAL LORD 99 IX. WASHINGTON 103 X. ANGOLA 114 XI. MOZAMBIQUE 140 XII. AFTERWORD 147 CHAPTER I FOREWARD In the narrative “Viracocha" about my adventures among savages of the upper Amazonian jungle and travel down the Amazon to Para, Brazil when I was nineteen, I touched on my background and said this experience had had a profound effect on my outlook on life. My wife Frances has urged me to continue with a narrative of the rest of my life as a family record. I do so because I would like to have a similar account of the lives of my Puritan and pioneer ancestors. I'm aware that anyone writing a personal piece of this kind is bound to try to present himself in the most favorable light. In order to try to offset this tendency, I have given as truthful an account of my life as I can. I have also quoted the views of State Department officials in controversial phases of my career. Readers can judge for themselves. It is evident that a person with my background and lack of formal training could not easily fit into an ideal, conventional, well disciplined Foreign Service. I believe I was an asset to the Service but recognize that if there were many people like me, it would tend to disrupt rather than improve the system. That I reached the top had to be in spite of and not because of my nature. I believe no one else could have done my job and enjoyed it more and as a result had a happier diplomatic career. Perhaps the fact I was not burdened with the pains of ambition had something to do with it. As these notes will show, I agree with the sense of the Ramayana that there are three things which are real: God, human folly, and laughter. Since God and human folly are beyond comprehension, we must make the best of laughter. On my return to Guayaquil from the Amazon, my parents received me with joy, as if it were the miraculous reappearance of a beloved son. For the rest of their lives, they gave me all the love and tenderness that parents sometimes feel towards a wayward son. In Guayaquil, I was appointed Honorary Norwegian Vice Consul for the few months I had before going back to school. Aside from lost passports and getting drunks out of jail, my duties were mainly related to problems of the Norwegian colony in the Galapagos Islands where their fishing and canning enterprise was falling apart. They were a rough, disgruntled lot, anxious to get back home after their dreams of riches had vanished. This colony had a two-masted schooner that shuttled between the islands and the mainland under the command of Captain Bruun, a ruddy, heavyset, crude man in his late fifties. Everytime he was in port, he regaled me with reminiscences of the great life in Norway and cursed the day he joined the disastrous Galapagos colony and was forced to deal with incomprehensible and despicable people like the Ecuadoreans. His parting, words were usually, "It ain't no fun anymore." In this work, I ran on to only one worthy man. His name was Worm-Mullet, a former diplomat who had somehow become involved in the original project of the Galapagos -1- venture. He lived in a cheap hotel and often came in to chat with me; he had only one suit, blue serge, worn in the seat, yet he always looked impeccably dressed and well groomed. I liked talking with him; he never complained about anything or anyone. Yet I found it depressing to see such a fine man in such a hopeless situation. He had no relations with the colonists; his function seemed to be to try to salvage what he could in the final debacle. - - - - - - One day Count Augusta Thun, Director of the Bank of Italy and South America, came to see me. He planned to be in town for a couple of months and wondered whether I would be willing to accompany him a few times a week during his usual evening stroll along the waterfront and main boulevard so that he could practice his English. I had no friends in Guayaquil and was happy with the suggestion. Thun was an attractive man with a sense of humor, born in a twelfth century castle on the Austrian-Italian border. He attended the military academy and university in Rome, then was assigned as aide to the Italian Military Attaché at the Kaiser's Court. He gave me a vivid account of the Kaiser and the pomp of his Court as well as of the vulgarity of Mussolini and his regime. After the evening stroll, we would stop at a sidewalk cafe for a drink. One night at a table next to us sat a girl from an Italian operetta company that was in town. Thun asked her where the company was going next. She thought for a moment and said, "I don't remember, but it is a place far away." Thun said, "Colombia?" "No." "Mexico?" "No, ah I remember, it is the place where they make the hats." I mention these insignificant events because the job foreshadowed my future, and Worm- Mullet and Thun, together with the few people I met at the end of my Amazon voyage, belonged to what was to be my world the rest of my life. - - - - - - On the boat from Guayaquil to Panama, I met some young Colombians. It was at the time the Sacco-Venzetti trial attracted world attention. They were indignant about the case. I had paid little attention to press reports but instinctively thought the United States Courts should be right. I was a fool to get into an argument about which I knew nothing. I swore to myself not to argue again if I could help it. Throughout my life I have stuck to this rule except for the inevitable argumentations of college life. I have thus avoided countless disagreeable and useless moments even though it often irritates people who like it. On the voyage from Panama to New York, I met a Chinese boy who, like myself, was on his way to Dartmouth College. He was the son of a Hong Kong banker who had sent him to English public schools but decided an American college education would be more useful in the present day banking world. Leong was a delicate, sensitive boy, and in New York he was terrified. He stayed close to me; we traveled to Hanover together; and I helped him get settled in a boarding house where he had been assigned a room. He was so unhappy, he slept in my dormitory room until my roommate arrived. -2- I had brought my Amazon trophies and decorated my end of the room with them. When my roommate arrived a few days later, I was talking to Leong. After glancing around the room, he looked as if he had walked into a chamber of horrors. He asked what was "that thing" on my desk. I said it was a shrunken human head. He grabbed his bags and rushed out in terror. A few days later he came back and said he had tried to get assigned to another room without success - he was sleeping on the floor in a friend's room. He asked for a copy of my class schedule so he could come into the room to study when I was not there - he would only come into the room if I put "that thing" in the cellar storeroom. As the days went by, I would often return before he had finished his studies. Soon he moved into the room with me. My roommate was called Plato by his friends. Events had forced him to put up with me, but this did not include Leong. He came from a small New England town and had not seen a Chinese before. Like many Americans, he looked on Chinese as laundrymen or coolies. That Leong's schooling was better than ours meant nothing to him. At this time, Dartmouth was predominantly WASP. There must have been a few black students, but there were none in the class of '31. The only two Asians in the college were a Japanese upperclassman and Leong. Dartmouth was founded as an Indian school, so there was much ado about the two or three Indians still on the rolls. Once I was out of the Amazon alive, I thought I would integrate into American society like any other normal person. But at Dartmouth I found out differently. The excruciating experiences I had undergone had not only matured me but carried me far beyond. I felt older than my classmates. Who would want to be a big man on the campus? School activities and sports seemed vapid. I had one peculiar incident the first year. Dartmouth prided itself on its liberalism and advanced educational methods. It was one of the first colleges to give students intelligence tests. I was baffled by the questionnaire. About mid-term, I discovered the class was divided into two parts on the basis of the test. My roommate was in the higher half.