Weihsien camp's greatest difficulties with law and order had to do not so much with the justice as with the strength of its laws. The main problem was the political one of generating governmental power, rather than of ruling with wisdom and justice—though that was by no means easy. It seemed strange that in an enemy internment camp, the peril of anarchy was much more immediate than the threat of tyranny. And yet, as we gradually and anxiously came to realize, our small civilization was endangered because it seemed unable to develop strong laws that could be enforced.

Stealing was what made our need for stronger government so acute. As rations became shorter, the tendency to steal grew. By the last year or so of the war, it was becoming a threatening social problem. It was, indeed, not only the most understandable but the easiest thing in the world to bring off.

Stealing was easy because camp supplies passed through a multitude of hands. They were distributed to the kitchens, the bakery, and other utilities by gangs of men, and worked on there by innumerable shifts of butchers, cooks, bakers, stokers, and general helpers. At any one of these points, it was ridiculously simple for one man or a group of men to slip off the job for a moment with a bucket of coal, a sack of flour, a piece of meat, a basket of potatoes—or whatever the supplies might be.

The only time as manager of the kitchen I ever managed to catch anyone red-handed was when a practiced pilferer made the mistake of jumping the seasons in her apparel. One hot August day, I saw one of the vegetable women, a big, rather tough middle-aged Russian, the widow of a British army sergeant, working in a large overcoat while she was chopping carrots. I do not fancy myself as a brilliant investigator, but the overcoat made even me come awake with suspicion. So I asked her to open it. At first she refused, counterattacking with a torrential display of temperament. But being by now fairly sure of my ground, I insisted and began firmly to remove the coat from her broad back. At this she relented completely, and with many knowing winks and gestures, showed me her handiwork with real pride. On the inside of that coat I found fifteen large pockets sewn into its heavy lining. In every pocket nestled either a fat potato or a carrot!

Butchers had an even easier time of it with more valuable articles. Two of them worked alone in an isolated room for an entire day handling our most prized possession—raw meat. It was absurdly simple for one—when the other was momentarily absent —to run home with four or five good cuts from the three-day supply for the whole kitchen.

Often, when I saw these men running back to their rooms, bundled up in their heavy coats, I would wonder what other flesh might be accompanying their own. But unless one was sure of one's ground, a manager could hardly demand that the man empty his pockets. Ill-grounded accusations of theft are not calculated to build up a team spirit! The mechanics of prevention were difficult, as difficult as the mechanics of stealing were easy.

The people of the camp were strongly tempted indeed to take advantage of these many opportunities. They were almost always hungry and cold; while no one starved or froze, everyone wanted desperately to have more to eat and to feel the comfort of being really warm. When food and coal were there for the taking, even consciences that normally were strong would weaken. The power of these temptations was especially acute for men and women with families. Haunted by the thought of their children's discomfort, they could scarcely be expected to refuse to take with them some morsels to cheer up the house. It was a hardy and rare spirit that could, in such circumstances, ignore the immediate and pressing claims of his family. Noting the awesome strength of such temptations, as well as their devastating consequences to our social order, I was struck by the strange way in which the natural—and in most respects—noble loyalty of a man to his family can, unless tempered by some wider loyalty, become the springboard for dangerous social chaos.

Although stealing was understandable, its peril to the community was nonetheless critical. The supplies each utility received were pitifully inadequate and increasingly so. Edible meat, lump coal, sound potatoes, flour, oil, sugar, and the other staples were available in such small amounts that any cut in the supplies was serious.

If 150 pounds of meat—only a fraction of which was first grade, the rest being skin, fat, innards, and so on—was all that eight hundred people got for three days, then the removal through the butchers of that essential fraction, say twenty pounds, meant a staggering reduction in the rations of each of the diners. If our coal issue was mostly fine dust, to take home the few lumps scattered in the pile left the other stokers with an almost impossible task. Those of us who worked in the utilities saw at once the disintegrating effects stealing had on our whole corporate life. We feared its consequences from the very first case that appeared.

Initially, it was a puzzle to me why a community where stealing was so natural and posed so dangerous a threat to its life, should have had such great difficulty in establishing its own law. Why were people so apt to be against legal measures to prevent crime when such measures were so clearly in their own interest as members of the community? But as Matt and I thrashed out this problem, we came to see that in fact the law had always had an ambiguous, dubious role to play in our lives, and that this situation probably tended to weaken immeasurably its legitimacy and force among us.

In the first place, all public supplies and property had a strange dual ownership. They belonged both to the Japanese enemy and to our community, complicating endlessly for each internee the moral question, "Is it right to steal?"

To most of us, stealing from the Japanese seemed morally justified—if not, indeed, incumbent on us as enemy nationals. The Japanese had taken by force from the mission compound all the equipment we used; the metal and coal issued to us had been forced out of the Chinese. Even the food we received had been purchased with a false currency, supported only by the enemy's arms. Why not, then, gladly steal these things and in this way get back at them for the immeasurably greater theft of the wealth of the rest of the Far East? To cap all this, most of the internees had not forgotten the way in which their personal property and their businesses had been arbitrarily and ruthlessly confiscated by the Japanese authorities. The prevailing attitude of the camp was, therefore, that since the Japanese had no moral right to what they had commandeered in China, an internee was thoroughly justified in taking back from them all he could.

To this feeling of moral justification was added the less tenable but still widely held view that by stealing from their captors, each internee was by that much sabotaging the Japanese war effort and aiding the Allies. In the case of the pound or two of meat, this line of thought was optimistic to say the least. If stealing from the Japanese, however, had forced them to replace what had been taken, there might have been some point to the argument. But we never found an instance in which the Japanese replaced or restocked any supplies depleted by theft.

In every case the Japanese would say—and with some justification—that since they had already provided coal, bread, or food for our subsistence, they were not responsible for the subsequent theft of these items by our own people. Besides, they liked to add with sarcasm, in spite of the theft, these stolen supplies had still been consumed "by the camp." They agreed that in this case the distribution, being by and for the thieves, was unfair. But after all—and here they would smile courteously—it had been long agreed between us that the distribution of supplies would remain solely the responsibility of the internees themselves.

It looked, therefore, as if this argument were to a high degree an attempt to rationalize on patriotic grounds the desire to steal for oneself. This rationalization contained within it enough of a seed of truth so that with assiduous cultivation, it could produce a fine flower of legal disputation. To hear a perpetrator describe it, one would have thought that a theft at night of lump coal from the kitchen pile was, in fact, a dashing commando raid into enemy territory. One would think that in dodging the manager and the Discipline Committee, this patriot was in fact slipping through the fingers of the Japanese Consular Guard!

For all its benefits, the black market unquestionably contributed further to the general disrespect for the law. Almost everyone had in one way or another participated in this trade or enjoyed its fruits. Even though everyone knew it was illegal, and thus against his own sworn promise "to obey camp rules," it was regarded as both good and right. By means of a rigid distinction between "enemy law," to which we owed no moral obligation whatsoever, and our own "camp law," which still bound our consciences, most internees were enabled to cling to their respect for legality and morality in general, while at the same time snatching what they could from their captors.

This rather fine distinction, so obvious to the more respectable, middle-class leaders of the camp, was by no means so apparent to everyone else, as was illustrated by the sad case of Goodpasture. "Goody," as he was called affectionately by his friends, was a leading British importer, a man in his early fifties. While he was, I am sure, intelligent enough in affairs of trade, he was hardly a strong or dominating sort of man. A small, genial man with a smaller mustache, he had a much younger wife who did not appear overjoyed with her bargain. Consequently, Goody lavished most of his love on his twelve-year-old son, a young man with a promise of far more spirit, and certainly far larger biceps, than his mild, diminutive father.

In the early days, almost everyone was involved in the black market; Goodpasture, not wanting to pass up any good thing, began to participate, too. As Goody ruefully admitted later, however, he was not the most suave or adept of black marketers. He found it arduous at his age to clamber up to the top of the wall to negotiate with the Chinese farmers on the other side. Once up there, he always found that his Chinese was not as good as he had at one time thought it was. Designed in fact to give orders to rickshaw boys, it was hardly sufficient for these delicate discussions about times, places, quantities, and prices. He didn't really know what the Chinese were saying, and several times he discovered he had made agreements about prices and quantities he had no intention of honoring. His nerve wasn't as steady as it used to be either, and he had to rest a while after each sortie on the wall in order to get his heart quiet again.

He was about ready to give all this up when to his surprise and delight, he discovered that his young son could do everything he'd been trying to do, and do it with remarkable skill. Soon their roles were reversed, and Goody, Sr., was standing guard on the ground while Goody, Jr., risked his neck on the wall at night. As Goody used to boast quietly to his envious friends, "I'll tell you, chaps, the boy is becoming a pukka second-story man. You should see the way he clambers all over that wall, tells the Chinese what to deliver, and then bargains with them on prices. Some day he'll be paying his dad's chits at the club, hmmm?"

To the proud father, his son's activities seemed innocent enough. He had spent his life under the benevolent aegis of the majestic British law. Within its supporting structure, his own self-identity and self-esteem as a reputable businessman, as well as his profits as an importer had grown as he prospered. To doubt this law or to question its hold over his own conscience could never have crossed Goodpasture's mind. Thus for him these nightly excursions were merely a temporary expedient, a kind of entr'acte brought on by the strange and totally abnormal conditions of an enemy prison camp. It never occurred to him that his son would view them in a different light.

To Goodpasture, Jr., however, camp existence was no entr'acte. This was life, the whole of life. The only law he knew was the Japanese law his father and he were engaged in flouting. The memories of British existence in Tientsin, related of an evening by his parents and their homesick friends, seemed to him both old-fashioned and unreal. What he had learned from his experience was that life was pretty chancy; its good things came only if a smart fellow took what he could when he could. Above all, he must keep clear of the clutches of the authorities.

Then the inevitable happened. There occurred a number of serious cases of theft from the rooms. The disappearance of clothes, watches, money and so on, became more and more noticeable. Finally, when a set of valuable tools was stolen from the carpenter's shop, it became plain that some rather practiced thief, or possibly a group of thieves, was at work. A concerted search was made. As a result, the carpenter's tools were found stashed away in an old tunnel where teen-agers were known to gather.

Certain clues indicated beyond question that it was Good-pasture, Jr., who had put them there. A few days later some more objects were found in his mattress. His father was, as might be expected, both horrified and incredulous.

"Imagine my son stealing! And from our own people, too!" he moaned in genuine dismay. And his despair only grew when it became clear that the boy, now fourteen, had steadfastly lied to everyone—to the committee, to older friends, and to his father. To him there was no distinction between laws and between authorities; and he was willing to challenge the camp establishment as readily as he had been to defy the larger order upheld by the Japanese army.

Community morale is a vague, irrational matter of atmosphere and moral tone—not a matter of logic. It would seem that once a basic moral standard is flouted in one area it is difficult for standards to be upheld in some other area. I was made aware of this tone of unlawfulness when, as manager, I heard a stoker on the boiler side say to a friend as he was putting his coke "perk" into his bucket to go home for the night, "These committeemen and that damn manager say we shouldn't take home lump coal, - do they? Well, every one of those bloody committeemen have stolen stovepipes in their rooms—stolen from the same bloody Nips. Why is the coal I take home so different, except that I'm not a pukka big shot! Probably old man Campbell is well supplied with coal anyway—the stoker on No. 2 boiler lives right next door to him—the very one who got Campbell his extra stovepipes!"

Once a general moral justification had been given to stealing from the Japanese and defying their law, and then almost anything in camp which anyone wanted to steal could be argued around to being the property of the Japanese.

The conditions of camp life certainly encouraged stealing. But it was also true that the maintenance of our civilization depended directly on its prevention. The real threat that wide-spread stealing posed for us was not merely the amount involved. The greater danger lay in what it did to the utilities themselves as organizations of cooperative labor.

A moral disease such as stealing could have the same disintegrating effect on our utilities that a case of bubonic plague has on the human anatomy. During that last year, this effect was revealing itself. Our community never did, in fact, disintegrate. But the mechanism of its self-destruction was visible to us as the amount of stealing took a sharp rise in the last year of camp. The mechanism operates roughly like this:

As thefts increase, and the stolen goods are seen, heard about, or even smelled in the rest of the camp, inevitably rumors start to circulate. One hears that meat is disappearing "regularly" from the butchery, potatoes from the vegetable tables, and coal from the piles. Other workers, hearing these reports of goods enjoyed at home, begin to lose interest in resisting their own forms of the same sort of temptation. As a helper in the kitchen said once to Stan, "If all these other guys are taking stuff home to their kids, why the hell should mine go hungry? I'm going to get in on this before it's all gone!"

The virus spreads. Twenty-five pounds of meat stolen grow to fifty, and then to a hundred, and pretty soon the diners are getting noticeably less than their fair share of the issued supplies.

At this point the disintegration reaches a new stage. The character of the kitchen changes, and with that change its ability to maintain itself as an organization with integrity begins to weaken. Matt saw this in the Labor Committee office. Men who had worked for a considerable period as cooks in the kitchen and seemed happy on the job would ask to be transferred. When Matt wanted to know why, their answer would go something like this:

"The kitchen isn't what it used to be. Everybody is suspicious of everybody else. Most of all, the people suspect me, the cook. I'm supposed to be responsible for my shift—that means for the honesty of my crew. I don't know if they're taking stuff behind my back or not—probably a little, but I have no idea how much. If they're taking a lot, then we're a bunch of phonies, pretending to feed the diners but actually feeding ourselves.

"I'll tell you, Read, I'm no bloody missionary saint—oh, excuse me, I always forget you are one of those—but I will not be held responsible for something I don't approve of but can't prevent. That is why I want out—and there are plenty of others who feel the same way!"

When Matt told me of this conversation, my heart sank.

"Well, the disease is spreading, all right! In fact, it's going so fast that it's driving the remnants of remaining healthy, honest cooks like Brockman, right out. My God, it even makes me want to quit. If I can't control the stealing, I don't want to be responsible either."

"Yes, and that's not all," said Matt. "A couple of shady characters came to see us in the labor office yesterday—Old Tom and a friend of his. They had heard that Brockman wanted to get out. They were offering to set up a new cooking shift which they would head. I told them no dice, naturally. Any shift run by those two would siphon stuff out so fast it would be a lucky diner that ever saw a chunk of meat. You can see what is happening. As the honest chaps get uneasy and want to move out, the scroungers move up—up from the ranks of helper and right into the heart of the organization itself, to cook if Brockman quits and, brother, if you quit and no one else will do it, they'll move right into manager, too. Then the disease will have killed the patient, and the kitchen as a means of feeding the diners will have died. Immorality, my friend, is not merely the private demon of the 'missionary saints,' Brockman flung at me. It's more like a public demon, and it can bring a society to its knees as surely as any physical plague!"

"But Matt, what would happen then?" I asked. "I agree that if the utilities ever became a means of getting supplies to a few instead of to everybody, they would have to be disbanded. It would be better to divide the supplies individually as soon as they are issued. But you realize, don't you, that such an individualized economy wouldn't work. Each individual would get so little—especially in oil and flour—that he couldn't possibly bake bread or make stew for himself. Large families might make it, but smaller ones or single people never could. Such a 'state of nature' before society, a la Locke, where everyone does every-thing for himself, would mean malnutrition and ultimately starvation. No, we have to live corporately, as a social community, or we're extinct!"

"But if we are to remain a communal organization, there must be enough law enforcement to keep that stealing from spreading further," said Matt. "You managers better begin to work with discipline a little more closely, I think. Unless there's law around here, there won't be much of a camp left!"

As I went home that night from Matthew and Edith's, I felt more worried than at any time since we had first arrived. How could the stealing be stopped? How could we watch each corner of the kitchen every day? And if we couldn't, how could we develop enough strength in our laws to control this disease that was threatening slowly to choke us?

How were we to enforce our laws? During the early stages of camp, the forms of punishment boiled down to varieties of "moral pressure," or more accurately, the "pressure of public disapproval." If men were caught and convicted of any sort of crime, their names would be posted along with the crime on the bulletin boards of the camp. Recalling how such unfavorable publicity would have affected careers or social ambitions in Peking or Tientsin society, most of us thought this threat would be sufficient to control behavior. Since I had never been really hungry or cold before, and since I had felt in my family, at school, or on a faculty the deadly results of social disapproval, I assumed that I'd rather face anything I could think of—hunger or cold—than the humiliation of such posting.

I began to wonder about this when I noticed in the kitchen how informal forms of moral pressure, in this case the obvious disapproval of his mates, failed to get Jacobson and his like to work. It was plain that such men would rather have easy jobs than the approval or even the admiration of everyone else. Feeling that this independence from the crowd's approval was in some respects strong and possibly creative, I began to wonder even how ethical was the pressure of public opinion as an instrument of shaping social behavior.

It was, however, the ineffectiveness of moral pressure in our situation that most impressed us. Mere public opinion seemingly almost never changed anyone's antisocial behavior. A second incident involving Mrs. Witherspoon illustrates this ineffectiveness.

As was mentioned earlier, after the two men escaped from the camp in April, 1944, every internee had twice each day to gather with his group at a set spot and to stand in designated rows for about an hour while the camp was counted. Since the Japanese were now very strict about this whole matter, if any individual in a group was late, the whole group had to remain an extra three-quarters of an hour.

Most people came to their place in roll call as soon as the great bell began to ring, and waited for the guards to arrive. Not so Mrs. Witherspoon. Unfortunately for her section, her back window overlooked the ballfield where they were gathered. Thus she would stay in her room, "combing her hair" as she explained, until she saw the guard run up. Then she would leave her room, and stride as quickly as she could down her row and onto the ballfield. Like some great rhino seeking to be unnoticed, she would attempt to squeeze her wide bulk invisibly into her place in the line at the last minute. Naturally, since she was hardly designed by age or bulk to be a sprinter, she was late time and time again. The guard would get to her place before she did, or he would see her wallowing in that direction, and each time he was infuriated and made the entire four hundred people remain overtime. Her neighbors were thus daily enraged with her, and did not attempt to hide the fact. The internee warden repeatedly pleaded with her, begged her, and tried to order her to appear with the rest when the bell sounded. She always refused.

In desperation, the warden and the Discipline Committee called on the chief of police. They told him that the community had sought in vain to get this woman to cooperate. Since the community was unable to control her, it should not be held responsible for her, said they. Therefore the section should not be punished for her stubbornness. Having watched her antics once from a distance, the chief agreed. In broken English, he put the point quite well, "Group have not responsibility for her; she have none for them."

If moral pressure could affect the antisocial, this thick-skinned lady would have wilted quickly enough.

Another instance in the winter of 1944-1945 showed even more clearly the futility of looking to community pressure as the sole basis for law. This was a case of stealing that involved as ill-assorted a pair as could be imagined.

One of them was John Chamberlain, the well-to-do representative of a large British machinery corporation. Chamberlain was the perfect picture of the British colonial. Even after two years, his scuffed shoes were always shined, his threadbare trousers creased; his worn shirts immaculately pressed. An ascot tie was always at his throat, a silk kerchief in his pocket, and his mustache was neatly trimmed to the last stiff hair. He had always been gay as well as immaculate. But now the gleam in his eye had, so to speak, enlarged. The buoyancy and charm were still very much present, but unsteadier, more wayward, and so more forced.

The other member of the pair could hardly have been a greater contrast. He was Willie Bryan, a swarthy Eurasian from Shanghai. There were many Eurasians in the camp. Often they were incredibly handsome people with striking black hair, beautifully molded features, and a golden skin. Willie's brother George, who worked on my shift in the kitchen, a friendly, nervous guy, was like that.

But Willie himself was one of the ugliest and most sinister-looking men I had ever seen. He slouched, where Chamberlain stood straight; he was dirty, unshaven and unwashed, where Chamberlain was groomed and clean. Willie had probably dressed in silks in Shanghai; but here he was too lazy to care. Though not particularly large, Willie was strong; above all, he moved with a catlike grace which showed he could handle himself, and was probably adept with the large knife he always kept by him. His eyes were small, insolent, humorous, and most of the time languid. But they could gleam red with hostility when Willie got angry. A large scar ran across his face. Everyone knew Willie could be intensely dangerous if he wanted to. He came to camp with an awesome reputation—for gambling, gun-running, narcotics, and all the rest. People spoke of him with affectionate fear—and to him with hopeful respect, as if intimacy with him might afford some sort of protection, even while they were also trying to make it clear to him that, as a Eurasian, he was far below their social level. His actual character was not easy to assess. Most of the time he was a cheerful, friendly person in a sardonic sort of way, and good company. But one felt an inner coldness and cruelty that may have been the cause of this universal reaction of fear.

Once I saw the whole supplies gang, of which Willie was the leading spirit, drop off four bags of lump coal at the door of a Greek boy on the gang as the carts wheeled by. Willie and the boy leaped off, stuffed the bags in the door, and were back on the cart almost before I could catch my breath. I reported this incident to discipline and showed them the bags. After that, when we passed on the street, Willie would only spit. We never exchanged a word again. I was glad this had not happened in Shanghai.

One night a middle-aged woman, an Anglican missionary, saw John and Willie taking lump coal from the supply pile. She reported this at once to the Discipline Committee. The lawyers in the camp had devised for us an intricate judicial system. Now began its first real testing.

According to this system, any serious accusation against an internee must first be brought before the Discipline Committee, where the accuser would have to state his case and be examined by the accused. If in the mind of the committee there was sufficient evidence, the case would be brought before the camp court. This court consisted of five judges to be chosen by lot from a panel of some forty "honorable men." Since this panel of forty had long since been selected by the nine-man committee, the court was ready to function when a case came up once the five judges for that particular case had been drawn by lot.

The day after reporting the case, the woman duly accused Chamberlain and Bryan before the Discipline Committee. At that meeting the two of them offered as a defense the justifications we all knew so well: (1) Coal was the recognized "perk" of the supplies gang. If they were to be convicted, the entire laboring force should be similarly treated, although it was pointed out by a committee member that lump coal taken at night hardly counted as a "perk." (2) They were actually helping the Allied war effort since the Japanese would have to replace the coal from their own supplies. They felt, as Willie sardonically remarked, that they should be feted, not punished, by the camp for having risked their skins to relieve the Japanese of some of their coal! In spite of these arguments, the committee agreed that a case had been made against them, and that the trial would start the next day.

The camp buzzed with excitement. These were two of the most colorful characters around; this was our first serious criminal case; and everyone was intensely curious about the way the untried judicial system would work. The committee room where the trial was to be held was jammed. A crowd, including everyone not at work, gathered outside. People stood looking in the windows, talking out the possible legal tangles. All were generally delighted that these two heroes had unwittingly caused that item longed for by every internee: an Event!

The five judges arrived and nervously took their seats. Then the Discipline Committee appeared. Ian Campbell, as chairman, was prosecuting attorney. Everyone fell silent, waiting for the trial to begin. At that moment someone noticed that the chairs that were to hold the two defendants were empty!

For a time the court waited, embarrassed and not quite sure what to do. Then Campbell, obviously upset, dispatched the constable, an enormous, jovial British police chief from Tientsin, to round them up. The constable came back abashed and genuinely puzzled.

"Chamberlain and Bryan won't come," he announced. Then, in a tone of bewilderment, he added, "They told me I couldn't make them come until they were convicted."

Obviously, the officer had been rendered completely speechless by this argument.

"So I said," he continued, "'Don't you want to come—to defend yourselves in the court? How can you get a fair trial if you don't defend yourselves?'"

"'Oh, the hell with that'—pardon Your Honor—said Bryan. 'That ruddy court can't do anything to us anyway, so why should we give a damn what sort of a sentence we get?'" The constable repeated this bit of realism as if he completely failed to comprehend it with his mind, but his awed tone showed that somewhere, viscerally, he understood what was being said. The assembled judges, muttering "Oh" or "Shame" at this, were obviously in a state of deep shock. If you are a magistrate, it is one thing to be defied, feared, maligned, and even hated. But to be ignored as too piddling to warrant an hour of anyone's attention is a mortal blow to the self-esteem of any guardian of law and order. Against this humiliation, as Bryan well understood, there is no defense.

The ensuing trial could hardly be called dramatic. The onlookers were torn between amusement and disappointment; the participants were embarrassed as they went through the motions of the trial procedures. Chamberlain and Bryan were seen now and then, lounging lazily outside the windows. Needless to say, a verdict of guilty was handed down to the empty defendants' box; the expected penalty was imposed. The names of the two men were to be posted as convicted of stealing.

After the court adjourned, I was among a sizable crowd watching an irate Campbell post this notice on one of the camp's bulletin boards. A huge, handsome man, with innate courtesy and a good deal of common sense, and a not too well-concealed awareness of his own prestige, Campbell was the epitome of the massive, respectable power of the colonial ruling class. He now despised Chamberlain, who had so clearly let down his class. Willie was too strong ever to despise; but Campbell was too much on the side of law and order to like Willie, and far too much the "gentleman" to respect him. But we were all a little tainted, and Campbell was no exception. Although he tried to look down his nose at Willie, Willie wasn't having any. The confrontation of these two men was thus a classic: the one representing the mighty of the world who wield law and order, often for their own benefit, and the other, from the ranks of the "wicked," who sense the flaws in the mighty and hate above all their smug respectability.

Behind me I heard someone snort. Turning my head, I saw that it was Willie. He was reading the notice over Campbell's shoulder. When Campbell turned to stare at him coldly, Willie laughed sardonically, full in Campbell's face. You could feel in that laugh all the age-old Eurasian resentment against the entrenched power and respectability of these representatives of the British Empire.

"So those five bastards under the guidance of the head bastard here convicted me of stealing, have they? The ruddy hypocrites! Why, I helped two of them scrounge the bricks and pipes for their stoves from the supply house—and they have the nerve to say 'naughty, naughty Willie' to me!" And as the crowd stared in amazed silence—even Campbell was made speechless—Willie walked away laughing as undismayed at this posting as he was deeply wrathful at the hypocrisy of life. Basically, I am sure; he was content to savor his total triumph over an impotent and barely respectable law and order.

That evening, Matt and I talked over the problems of "moral pressure" as a basis for law.

"We make a great to-do about the force of public opinion," said Matt, "but when the chips is down, it’s a skittish and unreliable thing at best. It may light on some unfortunate with a surprising and unjust weight, and at the same time remain indifferent to a real menace. Society seems to disapprove with equal relish the genius and the criminal, the saint and the malingerer! And it will always express sympathy for the outlaw if the government happens to be unpopular. In other words, more often than not, society approves and disapproves of precisely the wrong people. A thousand factors may divide and confuse public judgment. Through this maze of loopholes, the offenders like Willie escapes, unscathed by a pressure too diffuse to touch him."

"Even more, Matt," I put in, "the Willies of the world can always find plenty of friends—those who are accustomed to the illegal, those who hate the government, and those who just plain like him. You know, I think the only place this moral pressure or moral force really works is where the government is immensely respected, where an absolutely unified public opinion can be created, and where each member is so intimately related to the others, and so dependent on them, that disapproval really hurts him.

"This works only in small and select groups such as families and schools, corporations and totalitarian states. Most of them, schools and corporations at least, are fooling themselves when they think no force but moral pressure is used, because the school can always use the coercion of expulsion if the moral pressure doesn't work. In a camp like this, where you can't expel anyone and where there is no unified public opinion that can hurt anyone, to count on moral pressure alone is hopeless.

"The real difficulty with the concept of a social order based on moral pressure is that it assumes that everyone is already moral. Look at the way Willie laughed at those poor chaps who were the judges. If their moral condemnation of Willie is to stick, they have to be clean themselves—and who hasn't been involved in some shadiness in this place?

"Anyway, what does moral condemnation mean to a man who doesn't care about being moral, or even being thought moral? Will he change his tune because of it? Never! He couldn't care less! Without the threat of some sort of harm to the offender, without some form of force, no system of law is possible in a world where universal morality cannot be assumed. And if it could, then after all, no system of law would really be necessary!"

Like most people, we thought that a legal and political problem such as ours called for an administrative solution.

"Too much stealing? Then get a larger police force, patrol the kitchens and the supply dumps—and keep the bums from taking the stuff out!"

That was the solution offered by almost all who after this trial found themselves pondering the problem of stealing. It seemed obvious to all of us that enough dependable men circulating around the camp at all hours would be able to do the job.

With real hope, the camp committee and the managers of the utilities sat down one night to make out a list of men for the proposed police force. The meeting lasted only about a half hour. We began, of course, with a discussion of the men who would be put on the force, that is, who would be "good chaps, dependable and honest," as the secretary of the camp committee said, comfortably wetting his pencil, preparing to write. But the moment names were suggested, we found ourselves in trouble.

"Jones, oh good heavens no! It's no good letting him patrol the camp alone at night—you'd have to put someone else on to watch him."

"Smith? Yes, of course. Good man, absolutely reliable. The heart of the supply gang. Won't allow any stealing when he's around. No sir!"

"But look here. If you move him off that gang to watch some other chaps at their work, the members of the supply gang will really start moving stuff out. Why put him somewhere as a nonworking policeman when he's already keeping the lid on things where he works?"

So it went. Every time we came to the name of a man whose integrity was in question, all agreed it would be worse to make him a policeman than to keep him on as a worker—for who would watch the watcher? Every time a man of integrity was mentioned, the head of his utility would complain that his organization would collapse without this man and men like him. The meeting broke up because no list could be made; there were no names anyone wanted to put on the list.

"You know," said Matt as we walked home that night, "no group can legislate itself above its own moral level. You don't get honesty by shifting a man from a worker's uniform to a policeman's. Solutions to the problem of law and order won't come because men take on other jobs. They will come only if the community has a sense of responsibility to its own welfare. No increase in the police force will add to that! . . . Old Irenaeus once said, 'Only the immortal can grant immortality to the mortal.' We might paraphrase that in our situation, 'You can't handle the problem of corruption except by incorruption.' And among us wayward humans, this makes it tough to build a lasting social order."

What were we to do? Evidently if stealing were to be prevented, it would be only because people feared the punishment following on their act. It was not at all easy to conceive an effective mode of punishment in an internment camp.

Our first efforts to find a real penalty were futile. To the mild slap of moral disapproval through posting was added the denial of the convicted man's few extra privileges in the camp: the right to shop in the canteen, to use the barber shop, library, shoe shop and sewing room, and to attend entertainments. But how silly all this turned out to be! His friends could buy him cigarettes, soap and toilet paper at the canteen, and surely, as we agreed, the risk of losing his chance for a haircut would hardly deter a man bent on stealing ten pounds of first grade meat!

Next the Discipline Committee began considering setting up their own jail. It would not be difficult: all that was needed was to clear a room, put in some furniture, and get a good lock on the door and some bars on the windows. But as they thought it over, it became plainer and plainer that a jail inside a camp wears a different face than one outside. Most of the men I heard talking about it agreed that to get out of work, to get away from the worried "little woman" and have some time to read and chat with friends, would be a distinct pleasure. Besides, as everyone realized at once, being locked up in our situation had a certain glamour; it was sure to make a hero out of any otherwise uninspiring individual. For everyone rallied round the man clapped into the Japanese jail, and the difference between the two was too subtle for public opinion. Probably friends would bake him small cakes, and generally turn the whole thing into a lark. Worst of all, the committee realized they would have to explain to the Japanese why he was in jail, leaving the possibility open that they might wish to punish him on their own. As a result, the committee reluctantly decided to give up this notion. Every obvious means of punishing lawbreakers disintegrated in their hands.

The camp committee called another meeting to discuss further penalties. The most frequently mentioned of these was that of reducing a convicted man's food ration. But it was thought wiser to move into such stricter measures gradually, and that a trial balloon might be launched to gauge the camp's sentiment. Also, this might give the committee time to make the camp aware of the seriousness of the situation. After debating several alternatives, the men agreed that cutting off a man's comfort money seemed to be the best first step. Some of the lawyers in the camp—who also attended the meeting—were told to redraft the camp constitution accordingly.

This was not a simple matter legally, since comfort money came to each internee from his own government through the Swiss. It was not clear by what sort of right the camp committee could interfere. But, as we managers of the kitchens pointed out, since the same problem would arise if we sought eventually to cut a man's food rations, given him by the Japanese, we might as well tackle the central issue at once: Did the camp want to grant its government this sort of authority in order to prevent stealing?

The legal basis for the new law devised by the lawyers that night centered on the duties of the Finance Committee. That committee's main function was to organize and distribute the comfort money brought to camp by the Swiss. It seemed legally sound to deny a convicted man the service of that committee along with other camp services, and thus make it impossible for him to receive his comfort allowance. On this basis, the lawyers reworked the constitution formed early in the camp, and so by the end of the evening, we had a new and stronger document. We went home feeling much relieved.

With this new constitution then, the camp committee and those others of us who were interested "went to the country," as they say in England. A series of general meetings were held at which the new constitution was explained to the public, and the reasons for its more stringent parts elaborated in great detail. Campbell and John McCracken, then head of the General Affairs Committee, hammered constantly at the theme that this was a moment of decision for the community. It faced breakdown and anarchy, the slow decay of its necessary institutions, unless the stealing was stopped, and firm law was the only way to stop it. Others of us argued the same case in small groups. We seized every chance to bend someone's ear on the matter, pleading that now our community had the opportunity to vote for its own survival. We were confident of a stunning victory at the referendum ten days later, especially because there seemed to be no concerted movement opposed to our proposal.

We could hardly believe our eyes when the results had been tabulated. The new constitution was defeated by a large majority. Quite evidently, the camp simply did not wish to have the strong government which might have saved it.

Over and over Matt and I discussed these results: Why had they voted this way? Surely they wanted to eat—and surely they had understood that rampant stealing was certain to lead to anarchy? To answer this question, we talked to many about how they voted; gradually we began to see what was going on.

Of course, there were people who gave the familiar legal argument that no internee government had the right to take away an internee's money: "This money is sent to me by my own government, and no ruddy committee or court is going to lift it off me!"

It was plain that one reason for the vote was the refusal to recognize the authority of an internee government over their own lives and acts—a refusal that indicated strikingly the very conditions the new constitution was designed to correct. Apparently, as long as men did not feel a sense of identification with a moral responsibility for the community of the camp, they would continue both to steal from it and to vote against punishments for stealing.

Even more apparent from our conversations was the fact that a great number of internees saw themselves as suffering, rather than gaining, from this new law against stealing. While no man wishes his goods to be taken from him, equally, no man wishes to be punished for stealing if he is contemplating it as a real possibility. Obviously a great number were contemplating just that. The trial balloon had certainly been a success, but it had not brought us the message we wanted.

It seemed clear that the community did not want a more effective law, for the same reason, ironically, it so desperately needed it, namely, that it was morally too weak to keep from stealing from itself. We were faced with the uncomfortable and frustrating truth that a democratic society can possess no stronger law than the moral character of the people within it will affirm and support.

This fascinating, if discouraging, legal development demonstrated clearly to me that any civilization rests only on some ethical basis. Talking to Matt one evening after the vote, I said, "It occurs to me that the old idea, taught us in so many political science classes, that constitutions and laws create community, is false. You know the social contract theory; Men come together, form a political community by contract, and on this constitutional and legal base the community and its cooperative life are established.

"It should be turned around. A good constitution is the expression of a deep underlying moral will of a community, not its cause. Only where a certain ethical self-control exists do the people want an effective law; and so only then is a social constitution possible.

"One of the mistakes of our liberal culture was not so much its emphasis on moral power as that it gave that power the wrong role in society. Moral pressure can never replace police, courts, and other ways of enforcing obedience—these will always be necessary. Rather moral power is their foundation, or at least the foundation of a firm, just system of laws that will curb the more selfish tendencies of men. If it is true, as we've seen, that no society can survive on moral pressure alone, it is equally true that it cannot live without some deep moral consensus lying back of and supporting its necessary governmental structures."

When this constitutional change failed, we realized that the survival of our small civilization now depended solely on the integrity of its individual members. In a most direct way, the work of our utilities rested upon the honest men in our midst.

They alone could prevent wholesale stealing, not only by refusing to steal themselves, but also by making clear that they would report anyone who did. This was no easy task in a small camp where feelings were strong and where a man was thrown constantly together with the person he might have reported. If the numbers of such men did not decrease, the tide of stealing might be contained. If for any reason their numbers declined, then nothing could prevent the collapse of our utilities.

This point was increasingly apparent to me during the last year whenever we would look for a new stoker, cook, or kitchen helper. The question uppermost in the minds of the Labor Committee and the managers was no longer, "Has he the skill to do his job?" but rather, "Has he the honesty to be trusted with these supplies?" For the skill, while important, could be learned, but the integrity could not. Yet it was indispensable to our common life. However highly developed our technology might have been, a technique was of no real service in the hands of a dishonest man.

The ultimate roots of social law and order extend down to the same moral and religious depths of the self where lies the basis of cooperation and sharing. If a man is committed only to his own survival and advancement, or to that of his family and group, then under pressure, neither will he share with his neighbor nor be obedient to the law. Had our community been made up solely of such men, all cooperative action devoted to the production and distribution of food, and all courts and laws devoted to the maintenance of order would have become inoperative.

My early indifference to the moral element in society faded, as our splendid institutions were threatened with collapse from within. I had thought that the only vocation that the camp could not use was the religious calling. But now it was clear that all the many secular vocations and skills the camp needed were of use to us only if the men who performed them had some inner strength.

Hardheaded men of affairs are inclined to smile at the moralist and religionist for concentrating his energies on the problems of morality and conscience far removed from what he considers to be the real business of life: that is to say, producing food, building houses, making clothes, curing bodies, and defining laws. But as this experience so cogently showed, while these things are essential for life, ultimately they are ineffective unless they stem from some cooperative spirit within the community. Far from being at the periphery of life, spiritual and moral matters are the foundation for all the daily work of the world. This same hardheaded man of affairs will probably continue to smile—but the effectiveness of his day-to-day work will still be based on that ethical core.

My thoughts seemed to have run into a strange dilemma I concluded ruefully a few days later. Two things that apparently contradicted each other had become transparently clear in this experience. First, I had learned that men need to be moral, that is, responsibly concerned with their neighbors' welfare as well as their own, if human community was to be at all possible; equally evident, however, men did not or even could not so overcome their own self-concern to be thus responsible to their neighbor.

How was such a dilemma possible, and above all, how could it be resolved? The presence of this contradiction did not represent an error in thought, I was sure: experience pointed too clearly to the truth of both sides of the paradox. Perhaps then human life is itself a dilemma, in some strange but actual contradiction to itself, and unable in its own terms to overcome the contradiction. In that case, attempting to smooth out the contradiction in thought will only result in falsifying the reality we are describing.

A resolution of such a contradiction in existence could only take place in life, not merely in thought about it. A better philosophy, a clearer and more coherent way of thinking about things will not be enough. Only a change in the mode and character of man's existence will resolve this sort of problem. If the self were to find a new center from which both its own health and security as well as its creative relation with the neighbor might flow, such a possibility alone could provide the answer to this dilemma. And I began to wonder if there was such a possibility of a new center for human existence—or was man left with a crippling self-contradiction which he could not himself resolve?

#

— [click hre] for next chapter ---

#