BRAINWASHING The Story of Men Who Defied It, by Edward Hunter. 310 pp. Ferrar, Straus and Cudahy. New York. $3.75.
Edward Hunter's earlier book gave the world a new word: brainwashing. It was then defined as the calculated destruction of men's minds, the horrifying extremes in psychological warfare being waged against the free world and against the very concept of freedom and freewill.
In his new book, the author redefines the term, and differentiates between brainwashing and brain-changing. "The former", says Hunter, "referred to pressures just short of the atrocity of overt interference by medical science with the functions of the brain," On the other hand, he points out, "Brain-changing means alterations in thinking brought about by the sort of treatment hitherto identified with a doctor's prescription or a surgeon's scalpel," He cites Cardinal Mindszenty as one who underwent brain-changing. Information most persistently tracked down in his case indicates the use of both drugs and hypnotism.
The Reds claim that they are doing nothing new. They conceal the fact that down through history, whether in the Spanish Inquisition, in the atrocities of the conquistadors or, in the worst excesses of colonialism and slavery, science was not enlisted to put the plans across. Both brainwashing and brain-changing are worse than "the most devilish tricks of primitive witchcraft," For when civilized man bends medical discoveries to the breaking of men's minds, in order to make them submissive to Communism, it is "incalculably more evil than any savage using potions, trances, and incantations,"
The methods used to make 'learning' and confession palatable and workable are borrowed freely from three sources: evangelism, psychiatry, and science. The Communists take over the language of these fields and give them topsyturvy meanings. As the author puts it: "Brainwashing is a combination of this fake evangelism and quack psychiatry in a setting of false science," Every time the Reds can make a prisoner write a confession and read it aloud, his "I confess" is unconsciously one more repetition of "I submit," Often they resort to the threat, "Confess, for we have already proved you a liar." A man, hearing this repeated ad infinitum, may worry himself sick trying to untie what was not even a knot, but "only a fake rope trick,"
The long-range objective of brainwashing is to win converts who can be depended on to react as desired at any time anywhere. This is the inside-out meaning they give the word voluntary and why they condemn free will with such ferocity, for its existence is basically inconsistent with Communism.
The author emphasizes: "The retention of his own individuality by a single person is recognized as a deadly menace by the whole monolithic structure,"
The brainwashing process is like injecting small doses of poison into a man's bloodstream at intervals: "The whole process is a series of pressures, including arrest or house detention, isolation from outside sources of information, interrogation, endless and repetitive assertions by teams of psychological workers, fatigue, malnutrition, exhaustion, autosuggestion and, finally, the mergence of obsessions, hysterical states, in which confessions are freely given and the subject can no longer distinguish his beliefs from reality or properly recall his past fund of information,"
Psychiatrists trace the path by which mental disorders came in order to effect a cure. The brainwashers reverse the process to make the well sick.
It is tragic to learn how the hopelessness-inevitability complex which the Reds induced in POW's and civilian prisoners to break their hope was aided by taking Attlee and Bevan, and other VIP's, through the "Model Reform" Prison in Peking, allowing them no word with a single inmate, and then exploiting their visit as proof that the prisoners could hope for no help or sympathy from the outside. He cites the change to elation or hysteria in Fulbright scholar, Harriet Mills, after the visit of the British VIP's.
Most of Hunter's new book, however, is concerned with men who successfully defied brainwashing. From the experience of many prisoners interviewed since their liberation from Red China, North Korea or the prison-camps of Europe, he has deduced the ways of resistance. In a world still suspended between cold war and hot, this makes the book a "must" for the orientation courses of our US military forces and for all who want to know what happens when Reds take over today. This is also the most interesting reading in the book.
Hunter presents, among many, missionary-educator John Hayes (whose story is more convincingly told than as an "Unforgettable" for Reader's Digest); former engineer and "Y" secretary, Sam Dean; Army Captain Herb Marlatt; press photographer Frank Noel; master technical sergeant, Robert Wilkins, who went through tortures that killed others and came out intact; and the American negro POW's who man-for-man stood up to brainwashing better than others and astounded the Reds who expected them to be push-overs. It was Wilkins who kept up his own morale, and then that of his buddies, by talking motor-cars, then selling motor-cars to be delivered after liberation. The prisoners got to talking about the make of cars they preferred, the places they would go, the girls who would go with them, and discussed matters so excitedly sometimes that the Reds thought they were getting enthusiastic about their indoctrination courses. It started as a game with Wilkins, he ended up with 550 orders; and still later the men called or wrote him saying "Where's my car?" He became district manager for one of the leading car companies. The author has managed to keep his material interesting without exaggerating, an unusual accomplishment these days. Moreover he has built up a case for the possibility of resistance to the diabolical thing called brainwashing which is convincing. The techniques, used consciously or unconsciously by those who defied the Reds, Hunter believes can be disseminated and emphasized throughout the world, even in the satellite states, and can pull the rug out from under brainwashing-wrecking Communism's most potent weapon. Awareness of how it is perpetrated can bring about its ultimate defeat.
"Knowledge of it" says Hunter, "is mental vaccination". This vaccination should be required. One American colonel, who "confessed" to germ warfare, and is now serving sentence, said to the author, "I would have given my soul to have known those facts," Actually had he known, he would have saved his soul, as well as the souls of many of his men—and in some cases their lives.—GERALDINE FITCH
BEHIND THE BAMBOO CURTAIN By A. M. Dunlap Public Affairs Press Washington D. C. 1956 208 pages US$3.75
Coming to China in 1911 when this country was engulfed in revolutionary upheavals, Dr. A. M. Dunlap spent forty years in China with but short interludes of absence. He was a resident first in Peiping and then in Shanghai. In the autumn of 1952, he was compelled to leave for his home country, when conditions on the Chinese mainland under the Communist rule made his further stay impossible. Throughout these forty years, he was an on-the-spot observer of the kaleidoscopic changes that had come over this country: rise of Dr. Sun Yat-sen and establishment of the Republic of China; the stamping out of warlordism; achievement of national unification under the leadership of President Chiang Kai-shek; progress made in political, economic, social, cultural and other fields of endeavor; the War of Resistance against Japan; the struggle for national survival in the late 1940's; and the taking over by the Communists and its aftermath. In his dual capacity as college professor and medical practitioner, he was in close and daily contact with the Chinese people from almost all walks of life. As "a physician anywhere in the world has special access to the hearts and minds of his patients," he had the added advantage of observing the Chinese as individual persons in a manner that few foreigners have been able to do. With such a background, the author is well equipped with all necessary qualifications to undertake a work in which he not only recorded the important developments but also the yearnings and reactions of the Chinese people in the first three years of the Communist rule on the mainland.
Based principally on letters in the form of diary written to his oldest son, Donald, and his wife, Helen, and to his colleague of the Peking Union Medical College days, Dr. Henry S. Houghton, the book started with his letter to his son and daughter-in-law dated April 29, 1949, just three weeks before the Communists entered Shanghai and ended with one to Dr. Hough ton on October 18, 1952, on the eve of his departure for the United States after his forty-one years of stay in China. Thus his letters covered a period of about three and a half years. They gave a day-to-day account of the changes which were taking place under the Communists. Though fragmentary and personal in nature, and there is not much that has not been known, the book serves a very useful purpose. As pointed out by Dr. John Leighton Stuart, farmer American Ambassador to China, in his introduction, "there is a lesson in this book which reaches far beyond China. The newspapers tell us every day of the subtle wooing of all areas within reach of Communist propaganda; the same promises are repeated over and over. Only after Communist control is complete do the people of 'liberated' nations realize that they have been talked out of their right to direct their own lives. Those who want to remain free would do well to read this eye-witness account of what happened when Communism came to China." To those who naively believe in what the Communists have to say, these words give food for thought.
The first few months of the Communist rule referred to as "Honeymoon Phase" aroused much false hope among the populace, both Chinese and foreign, including even those who had been critical of the Communists before. The author was not exceptional, as he frankly admitted in one of his letters: "Our local situation, were it not for the outside interference noted above (referring to the Nationalist bombings), would seem to be getting under way in a satisfactory manner. While the 'People's Administration has a long way to go in perfecting its machine, there are many signs of progress. Everyone is hoping for better business conditions and a revival of exports and imports. With the country under a single administration a great step forward might be expected." However, not all people were deceived by this "Honeymoon Phase." "Among foreigners who were not at all deceived by the soft line taken by the Communists were the 'White Russians.' Most of these people had fled Russia to get away from Communism and they knew about all the methods used. At one time there were over thirty thousand White Russians in Shanghai, but they were the first to leave as the Communists approached the port city. Many left during this "Honeymoon Phase." Today there are probably not more than eight hundred of these people left in Shanghai and most of them are aged."
The "Honeymoon Phase" was short-lived and the hope for better days proved to be a forlorn one. Pressures on individuals and organizations began to intensify. Since the fall of 1951, one campaign followed another in rapid succession. Just as the "ideological reform" and the "three anti's" were instituted against the intellectuals with the avowed purpose of destroying all independent thinking, so the "five anti's" was launched against the merchants in getting the wherewithal to prosecute the war in Korea. A reign of terror prevailed. Fear gripped the people. "The usual family and friend visiting among them is not being done any more. Incidentally, much of the social life in the homes has disappeared. Children and servants provide quick transmission to the sources of all control." Executions and suicides were daily occurrences. "As many as sixty (suicides) were recorded daily" in Shanghai. "During this period, when great numbers of harassed merchants were committing suicide, the tall buildings in downtown Shanghai were frequently used for that purpose. When one walked along such buildings it was highly desirable to keep very close to the budding. Pedicab men and pedestrians were sometimes killed by falling bodies." This was the period, said the author "when most foreigners saw the handwriting on the wall and made attempts to leave China. Along with many others we sought to terminate the services of our staff and close our office."
In view of the fact that the Communists made bold claims about the anti-American sentiments among the Chinese people on the mainland and their wholehearted support to the puppet Peiping regime, the author notes the following: "As the time neared for our departure, many Chinese colleagues, students, and friends came to bid us goodbye. Many were concerned over possible reactions in America with regard to the anti-American propaganda which had been foisted upon them. Almost in identical words they asked that a message be brought back to the American people to let them know 'the Chinese do not hate them.'" In another place, the author had the following to say: "In this period of world tensions it is well for Americans to remember that the old and traditional friendship which has bound the Chinese and the people of this country together over the years still exists even if it is not articulate. It is not easy for those without firsthand knowledge of China to understand how completely the present masters of China are hated by the people. That the officials are conscious of this antagonism is borne out by the fact that Russian advisors and Communist officers travel from place to place in curtained and speeding motorcars. China may be typified by the old Yangtze River as she plows her way to the sea. She may at times have her course deflected by outside forces; but sooner or later she rights herself and flows serenely forward. A culture such as the Chinese have had, which stretches back more than four thousand years, and has withstood many pressures through the ages, some as great in magnitude as the present one, will again emerge and China will take her place beside the free nations of the world."—F. C. YOH
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The horse has hoofs to tread on frost and snow; his hair protects him from storm and cold. Grass satisfies his hunger and water his thirst. When it strikes his fancy, he raises his feet and gallops. This is the true nature of the horse, and he has no use for a tall pavilion or grand sleeping chamber. —Chuang Tse
Translated by Edward Y. K. Kwong