Extracts from an address that was given by Dr. William T. Close, at the Royal York Hotel, Toronto, Ontario, Oct. 17th, 1964.
Introduction: Dr. William T. Close of Greenwich, Connecticut, attended Harrow School and Harvard University. He was a pilot of the U.S. Army Air Corps during the war, is a graduate of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, and did his post-graduate work at the Roosevelt Hospital, New York.
From Independence to May 1964, he was Director of Medical Services for the Congo. During this time he was also official physician for the British and American Embassies. When the Congo gained independence and most of the white doctors left the country, he was the one white surgeon who in face of the dire need remained at the 1800-bed Leopoldville Hospital where he performed as many as 350 operations a month.
Dr. Close came to the Congo as part of a Moral Re-Armament force invited by national leaders. His help was sought by General Mobutu to give character training to the Congolese Army in the qualities needed for leadership. He lectured as well to foreign units with the United Nations.
His work in the Congo brought him into close touch with the leaders of that country. He was asked to help in the negotiations between former Prime Minister Adoula and Mr. Tshombe. He was also head of the medical commission appointed by the Central Government to keep Leftist leader Antoine Gizenga alive after his capture.
Dr. Close is admirably qualified to present a realistic picture of Africa, as well as to clarify the challenge that faces the free world today.
Dr. William T. Close:
It is a very great honour to be invited to come to Toronto to speak to you. I feel it to be a privilege and a responsibility being in Canada. I had the pleasure of meeting one of your outstanding officers, a man who was the liaison officer between the United Nations Armed Forces in the Congo and the Congolese National Army, a Colonel with considerable military training and also with considerable heart power. I think he did more than any other non-African to win the heart and confidence of General Mobutu. And he did more in terms of helping to stabilize Army headquarters than almost any other man working out of the United Nations.
The Congo today is a country in considerable agony. There is a full-scale Vietnamese type, Chinese-backed guerilla war going on right now. In an immensely rich nation there is poverty and massive unemployment. In an immensely fertile country there is gnawing hunger and in some areas, starvation. Murder and arson have brought fear and terror.
Let me very briefly refresh your mind as to recent history in the Congo. The Congo has a population of 14,000,000 people, in an area of almost 1,000,000 square miles. That is about the size of the U.S.A. west of the Mississippi. She has a 40% literacy as compared to 10% for the rest of central Africa. She mines 60% of the world's cobalt, 70% of the world’s industrial diamonds, and 8% of the world’s copper and tin. These mineral wealths are an asset to the country but have also been the targets of forces out to control certain areas of the country. She also has palm oil, rubber, coffee, bananas, tea and cotton as exportable products. Her gross national product was more than one billion dollars in 1958, exceeded only by Nigeria and South Africa in countries south of the Sahara.
The Congo became independent on June 30th, 1960, and a week later a full-blown mutiny and massive exodus of most of the technicians and professional men in the country occurred. For several months the press was closed down; curfews established; the right to meet was denied, arbitrary arrests and acts of terrorism became the order of the day. Technicians from foreign countries friendly to the first Prime Minister flocked into the country. Then the United Nations came in.
This regime was overthrown by President Kasavubu, the elected president of the Republic, and General Mobutu took over the reins of government by setting up a College of Commissioners made up of the best university-trained Congolese available. Lumumba was assassinated and Mr. Gizenga took over the reins of his party.
At that point the country was split into three major factions. Gizenga in the Northeast centred in Stanleyville; Tshombe in the Southeast in the Katanga, who had declared his secession; and the (Joseph) Ileo, then (Cyrille) Adoula government, in the rest of the Congo.
In August 1961, under the auspices of the United Nations, a new government was formed with members of every rival tribal faction represented in a cabinet of some forty-eight members. The job of maintaining law and order, as well as the suppression of forces of subversion, fell on the shoulders of the National Congolese Army. Through hard work and diplomacy General Mobutu gathered together the various army factions into one national unit.
For the past ten months there has been a guerilla war in the Congo. Six months ago I was in the Congo and flew over rebel-occupied territory in the Kwilu. It’s a province in the southwestern part of the country. I saw village after village burnt out, deserted missions destroyed and abandoned, and found villages that seemed whole but were completely devoid of people. This is a colossal tragedy for the country. The Kwilu is one province that had come along further than any other province in the country in terms of its economy, transportation and especially its administration.
What is this war that is going on in these last months in the Congo? It is part of a plan to replace the present Western-backed government by a People’s Republic of the Congo. The headquarters of this movement is Brazzaville, across the river from Leopoldville in the former French Congo, and has been headed by Gbenye. Gbenye is now in Stanleyville and has recently set up a People’s Republic of the Congo in that Eastern city.
In the Kwilu, the guerilla war has been part of this effort. The man heading it is called Pierre Mulele. He was Minister of Education in the first Congolese government. When Lumumba was assassinated, he escaped to Cairo and then to Peking where he underwent training for six months in guerilla warfare tactics. Mulele aims to throw out the present government and to set up a People’s Republic of the Congo.
Mulele’s men, who number over 15,000, mostly between 14 and 18 years old, use exactly the same tactics as are being used by the Vietcong in Vietnam. They recruit from village chiefs who are told that if they do not supply a given number of young men and food, their whole village will be liquidated and burnt. There is a large degree of superstition exploited systematically by Mulele to maintain discipline and instil fighting spirit into his men.
At a recent Afro-Asian People’s Solidarity Conference in Algiers, the Chinese delegation announced that they fully supported Mulele’s activities and objectives. By so doing, the Chinese announced to the world that they would not only continue to arm and finance Mulele, but would increase the amount of support in the future. Recently, the official Peking Peoples’ Daily came out in strong support of the rebels.
Peking is particularly interested in the Congo for her mineral wealth. China wants to produce a bomb. She has just exploded one and for her continued work she needs uranium, nickel and cobalt. She has her own uranium supplies in the province of Sinkiang. She gets her nickel from Cuba, but cobalt today is in Africa, particularly in the Congo, Northern Rhodesia and Malawi. Since 1960 the Communist Chinese have bought more than 8,000 tons of cobalt ore from Morocco, but those pits - they are called the Bou Azzer Pits - are almost exhausted. Now Peking seems to be moving into Eastern and Central Africa.
Peking operates into the Congo from the capital of Burundi, a town called Bujumbura. Right now there are at least 11 diplomats there, and the new Ambassador, Liu Yu-fang is a high Red Army officer. The Communist specialists have film showings on guerilla tactics, using Vietnam and Laos as examples, in their hotel.
You may have read that Tung Chi-ping, the assistant cultural attaché of the Burundi Chinese Communist Embassy staff, recently defected. He confirmed that Pierre Mulele studied guerilla warfare in Peking for six months, then set up two revolutionary bases in both Congos within a year after his return to Africa. They were financed and outfitted by the Chinese Communists. Drives can be launched against areas that are vital in the mining operations of these countries.
A little over three months ago the last United Nations troops pulled out of the Congo. They had numbered 20,000. At that time the Congo had to cancel all the celebrations for its fourth Independence Day because of seething unrest in the country; because of a 70% unemployment in Leopoldville; because of grenade and TNT attacks in the capital city, and because of bitter, violent guerilla warfare going on in four major areas of the country.
Shortly after this Prime Minister Adoula, who had been backed by the United Nations and the United States, resigned; and 45-year-old Moise Tshombe, leader of the Katanga who was run out of Africa by the United Nations and the United States, was asked to form a new government.
The United Nations has spent over 500 million dollars in the last four years to ‘keep the cold war out of the Congo’. That figure, incidentally, is five times the normal United Nations budget for a year like 1964. 42% of that budget was paid by the United States. A major part of the United Nations’ effort and the United States’ effort was to remove the Belgians even when the Congolese authorities, both military and civil, wanted the better technicians to stay. Now Washington is paying some 89 to 100 million dollars to bring back some 10,000 Belgians into the country.
I went to the Congo in May 1960, two months before Independence. Some of the Congolese leaders meeting in Brussels during the pre-Independence round table conference, had seen a Moral Re-Armament African film called Freedom, a film which deals with the internal struggles of countries about to become independent. These leaders requested that a Moral Re-Armament team, armed with this film, come to the Congo as soon as possible. Seventeen of us went, amongst whom were black and white from South Africa, men from Nigeria, Switzerland, the United States, former leaders of the Mau-Mau revolution and white settlers from Kenya. This force was immediately thrown into a conflict between the major tribes of Lulua and Baluba in the central part of the country, the Kasaï. We worked with the leadership of these tribes for six weeks and as a result of this work, a major reconciliation was made possible. I don’t have time to go into the details of that.
Shortly after Independence, in the early days of July, the mutiny broke out. There was a massive exodus from the country pushed by panic. I went over to the 1800-bed Congolese hospital. Most of the doctors had left. Actually, for the first nine months there were three of us in that hospital. There was a Belgian doctor doing internal medicine, Dr. Beheit. There was an Egyptian doctor called Bill Morgan doing obstetrics and gynaecology. He was actually a refugee from Cairo. He never would tell me how he got his name. And I was doing the surgery.
Shortly after this, I was asked to take on the care of the First Para-Commando Battalion of the Congolese Army. Along with the work of a battalion surgeon (which wasn’t too rigorous, to be honest, because they were in very good shape) the Commanding Officer asked us to give training to the whole battalion and seminars for his officers on basic subjects such as ‘What is patriotism?’ ‘What is loyalty?’ ‘What is a national conscience?’ ‘What does it take to be a good soldier?’ ‘How is a unit subverted and what can you do about it?’ ‘The connection between moral weakness and threats to national security.’ ‘How do you build unity in a home?’
Now, the reason this Commanding Officer was interested in these factors in his battalion was because, during the early post-Independence period, some of his officers and some of his best men had been bought, bribed, seduced and subverted - taken out of sound army units and put into small political units. He was interested in the security of his outfit.
What is the situation on a bigger front, as far as Africa is concerned? We just have time to touch on it. I believe the situation in Central Africa today is as crucial as the situation in Southeast Asia. If we were not in a major political campaign in the United States more of these facts would be known.
The Communist Chinese would be able today to consider that a yellow belt is almost ready to be stretched across the continent. Let me tell you what I mean. Madagascar is a big island off the south-east African coast. In the last two years there have been 15,000 Chinese come to this island, 2,000 of them conservatively estimated to be operatives by intelligence people - not American intelligence people.
In Tanganyika, Prime Minister Nyerere told a friend of mine recently that he doesn’t expect to last until December. There are colossal forces working to get him out. People who know the situation there and whose judgment I trust, say that this country is moving very fast into the same situation that Ghana finds itself in.
Zanzibar, which some of the Western press consider a great triumph of Nyerere’s, is a stronghold of Chinese Communists. It is China’s Cuba off the African coast.
Kenya, where I was a few weeks ago and where I had a long talk with Prime Minister Jomo Kenyatta for whom I have considerable respect, is hanging on by a very thin string. The Minister of Interior there is in close liaison with the Chinese; the Minister of Information is just back from Peking. The Russians are just moving into a hospital - modern, fully equipped, ready to give free care to the people that come to them for the next two years. They are making bids to take over the agricultural processing plants for the nation’s agriculture. If they succeed in this they will control 80% of the national economy.
Jomo Kenyatta, whom a lot of people feared before he became Chief of State, is today the man who is keeping chaos and bloodshed out of that country.
Across from Kenya is Rwanda and Burundi. Burundi, I mentioned before, is the staging area for the Red Chinese efforts into eastern sectors of the Congo. In Rwanda, with the Bahutu government in power, there are tremendous numbers of refugees - Batutsi refugees both in the Congo and in the southern Sudan and over in Uganda - and the amount of fighting to infiltrate in that area is considerable.
In the Congo, Stanleyville is in the hands of people who have proclaimed it as the center for the People’s Republic of the Congo. There is open rebellion to the present government in many areas in this country. It is a cauldron.
The former French Congo had a revolt some 18 months ago when the President, put in power by the French, was overthrown by a movement pushed by the labor union. The present man, Dembat, is a man who has most of the Communist countries’ embassies in his country and many of them, especially the Chinese, are actively planning against the present Western-backed government in Leopoldville. Dembat himself, has just come back from Peking.
Gabon, this little former French West African country, had a revolt some months ago when President Mba was unseated by a people’s uprising. President De Gaulle sent troops in and he got back on his seat. Today troops that were used for this reversal of the coup d’état are no longer in the area. The French have reduced their forces in West Africa from 26,000 to some 6,000. You know the history of Ghana and Guinea. This whole central belt of Africa which has a huge population concentration with a very, very low economic status, is right now a cauldron for revolution.
These battles are being fought on three fronts. They are being fought on the military front, the economic front, and on the ideological front.
Militarily the West can still out-punch any other country in the world, and I thank God for it. I think we need our weapons and need them desperately. Economically we can still out-buy and out-sell any other country in the world, and I thank God for that. But ideologically the West is not even in the field of battle. It does not even operate in that arena. That is why we are losing.
Let me tell you what I mean by ideological battle. I mean a battle to win men - win them, not buy them. I mean a battle which depends not on what we say, but what we do, how we live and what we live for. This is ideology. A man living ideologically lives, breathes, talks, works, fights twenty-four hours a day to win men to the idea which motivates him. Most of us in the West consider this standard operating procedure for a Communist. If a Christian does it we often call him a fanatic.
In Moscow, in Peking, in Bujumbura, in Brazzaville and in many other centers of the world today men sit and plan specifically how to win men, how to subvert them, how to make them servants of their ideology. It is the old method of Yenan, well worked out and well proven. These men know how to exploit hate and fear and lust in order to take over a country or a continent.
A few days ago I received a newspaper clipping from the Algerian left-wing paper Revolution Africaine. This clipping was put out by Reuters and it states that the rebels led by Pierre Mulele have assignment orders from Peking which include 36 rules of conduct. Rule 6 calls on them to ‘hoodwink the enemy by all methods. To send beautiful girls in order to tempt the enemy.’ Rule 22 calls on the rebels to do anything in order to ‘seize the rifles of enemies who are isolated, enemy guards who are drunk, and those who are having fun with the girls.’
General Kin Me, a Chinese guerilla specialist, is responsible for guerilla strategy in the Congo today. He operates from Burundi. Surely the answer to this overt moral disarmament is moral rearmament.
The forces of anti-God, of Communism, are advancing not by their ideas and dialectic in Central Africa. By and large they have not had the three and four years training that is required to make an efficient Marxist-Leninist dialectician. They have had training in terrorism and guerilla warfare tactics. These ideologists are advancing far more through the corruption and lust for power and pleasure of the so-called Christian, Western-backed governments.
I had a little dispensary in the middle of the old African part of Leopoldville. This is a densely populated, rather poor section of the town. I often remember seeing a Cabinet Minister riding by in a big, black car - an American car - and if you were on the sidewalk you could hear people say, ‘Look at that man riding around in a big, black car. Where do you suppose he got it from?’ ‘He got it from the Americans.’ ‘We can't even get inner tubes for our bicycles! Throw him out and throw out the people that put him in power.’
Now the Russians who have a huge embassy there, or had before they were kicked out, did very little more than use large quantities of money to bribe people and grind out pamphlets pointing out the corruption in the Western-backed government and calling on the people of the country to throw them out.
When Mobutu took over from the Lumumba government, he set up a College of Commissioners. One of the men he put into a position of considerable responsibility was a young Congolese, a man who had a university education, and a man who had considerable courage. In very short order this man personally kicked out Mme Blouin, a very well-trained, half-French and half-Guinean agent and kicked out Serge Michel, a renegade Frenchman who had been used for propaganda purposes on the radio, etc. I was the doctor for various western embassies and I often went to the cocktail parties. And at that time in the history of the Congo the conversation was mostly about this young man, and the conversation went something like this:-
‘Gee, this young man is terrific. Why, he’s got tremendous courage. He’s our boy. He’s the man we want.’
Well, about six weeks after these acts of courage, his name became less and less mentioned, his star began to fall. We knew this man and knew him very well. We had been fighting steadily for him to become the type of man who could lead his country in a straight way. He knew that we were no angels, that we had no wings coming out of our shoulder-blades. But he also knew that we had made certain decisions to live straight in our own lives, as well as to fight for straight living in the lives of others.
One day over in Brazzaville we saw where this man’s effectiveness had gone. The Communists had put a Belgian woman on to his tail, and every day the man commuted over there to be with this woman. This became public knowledge and then all the conversation around the embassy circuits was: ‘Tsk, tsk, tsk. That poor young man! Why, he looked like he was going to be our boy and now he has gone down the drain! Well, we had better look for somebody else.’
The thing that was obvious was that the way a lot of people acted at these cocktail parties had nothing to do with helping a young man like that to become what he was meant to be. None of the so-called Christians in our embassies either loved that individual or that country enough to fight for him. We did. We went up into his apartment one day and said, ‘Brother, the way you are behaving, you are betraying your country and you know it. You need to change.’
That young man today is the head of a crowd of young politicians who call themselves ‘ceux qui attendent’ (those who are waiting). And because of our fight for him, he changed. Now, I don’t know whether the present situation in the Congo is going to last very long. I doubt it. If it doesn’t this man may play a capital part. But I give you that as an example of how certain forces - the forces of anti-God - work through the moral dis-armament of certain responsible citizens.
If the tactics of the forces of anti-God and anti-Christ are to exploit hate and fear and lust, then it stands to reason that those of us who call ourselves Christian should be so living and fighting that we can cure these factors. The question is - are we? The answer is a resounding No!
I had more moral-medical problems to deal with as physician in one so-called civilized, Christian, western embassy, than I did in the First Para-commando Battalion of the so-called uncivilized Congolese Army. I don’t stand in judgment but I say it with a colossal ache in my heart.
I had the unhappy duty of taking care of one of our American army colonels, shot in bed with his mistress. I don’t judge the man. I happened to be squadron booze officer for my squadron during the war. I am in no position to judge him. But I would say this, that the time is way over-due that those of us who go overseas need to grow up. Simply to grow up.
In the big VIP hospital called Clinic Reine Elizabeth in Leopoldville there are two European doctors, one an alcoholic, and an Egyptian running an abortion racket. The man who is cleaning up this mess is not a Christian nor a Westerner. He is a Pole. That makes me think. I hope it makes you think.
The continuing history of Bobby Baker and now the Jenkins affair in Washington are but a few of the dramatic examples of how our living today is failing to match the principles we talk about. This, ladies and gentlemen, is why we are losing the war of ideas.
We need a colossal revolution in the West if we are to revitalize the faith and principles we talk about. We need a colossal revolution literally of moral re-armament.
I would like to tell you of an incident that happened to me on the second day of the mutiny to illustrate the possibility of this. The first day I was in the hospital, that is the first day of the mutiny, I went over and introduced myself to the Belgian Sister who was in charge of the operating room - a fantastic woman and a fantastic nurse. I said to her, ‘If I can help I would be glad to give a hand. I am a surgeon.’ She welcomed that and she called a young fellow named Sam. Sam was a young Congolese, her assistant, an operating room technician, a very good one - a young man who I found out later was one of the leaders of Kasavubu’s youth wing. She said to Sam, ‘Sam, this is an American doctor who is coming to give us a hand during the trouble.’ Sam took one look at me and said, ‘I want you to know that the answer for this country comes over Radio Moscow twice a day,’ and he walked out. He went to every pavilion in the hospital, that is 1,800 beds, and told the patients if they fell into the hands of the American surgeon they would be killed. I found that out two weeks later.
The second day was by far the worst for us in that hospital. We had two operating rooms going. There was an older Belgian surgeon who was there in one operating room operating on some white people who had been cut up when their car had been attacked. He had the Sister as his first assistant. I was in the other operating room operating on some Congolese soldiers who had been shot by the Belgian paratroopers and I found this young fellow Sam as my assistant. There was a lot of terror in and out of the hospital that day. The troops were all over the place. When any of their buddies were being operated on they came right into the hospital and sometimes into the operating room. I am not the sort of surgeon who does his best with a bunch of guys running around with tommy guns and camouflage helmets.
But with all the fear, by far and away the worst element that morning was the colossal grinding bitterness between the two operating rooms. The Belgian doctor ran out of nitrous oxide - one of the gases used for anaesthesia. He wouldn’t come into my operating room to get another tank. We ran out of a certain kind of sewing material - catgut. None of the Congolese in my operating room would go next door to get some more. There was an absolute cold, hard, steely wall between the two operating rooms, so much so that it made work just about impossible.
I was operating on a big trooper who had a bullet wound in his thigh. I stopped operating for a minute and said to Sam: ‘Sam, I was thinking about you very early this morning.’
He said, ‘Yeh! What were you thinking?’
And I said, ‘I had the thought that it was the attitude of superiority and arrogance in some white doctors, maybe like me, that has made you bitter, and I am darn sorry for it. But,’ I said, ‘there are many like me who are giving our lives to put that right. Now come on, let’s get to work.’
There was a long silence and finally Sam said, ‘You are right. You are the first white doctor I have met who has had the guts to admit he is wrong.’
I said, ‘Brother, I have been wrong plenty and I doubt that today will be the last day. Let’s work.’
So we worked. And during the rest of the morning I told him very simply some of the places in my own life where I had needed to change. At the end of a very tragic morning - we lost a lot of patients, and we had a young Congolese Abbé in the operating room for that reason - Sam went out of the room and he came back with a wet towel. He got down on his hands and knees to wipe the plaster of Paris off my shoes; I got down on the floor with him and he said, ‘I have got to meet some of your Moral Re-Armament friends. These are some ideas you have been talking about.’ So I said, ‘Fine. I have got a young Nigerian university leader who sprained his back. Maybe you can give him some physiotherapy.’ Sam was very good with his hands.
The next two weeks were real hell on our service. Not only did we have an awful lot of work to do, but a lot of the other surgical services - in fact all of the surgical services in Leopoldville - exploded from within because of the tremendous division, bitterness and fear between the Belgian personnel and the Congolese personnel. We had the same trouble. The Sister and Sam absolutely loathed each other. The Sister was a fantastic nurse but (and this takes courage in the face of so many nurses in this room) she was like many operating room supervisors - a very tough cookie. I used to tell her, as a matter of fact, that if she had been in charge of the Congolese army there would never have been a mutiny. They wouldn’t have dared. And she used to give this fellow Sam holy hell or unholy hell whichever way you look at it, 24 hours a day and Sam loathed her, and she was scared stiff of Sam. She was white, he was black; she was Belgian, he was Congolese; she was Catholic, he was Protestant; she was the boss and he was determined he was going to be. It got to the point after a week they wouldn’t work in the same room. We fought very hard, my friend from Nigeria and I, for both Sam and the Sister. Sam was absolutely sure that the Sister would be the last person to ever change her attitude on any point at any time for any reason. And the Sister felt the same way about Sam. One day two weeks after I had been on that service, two weeks of battle and hard work, Sam came into the operating room and he called the Sister and said: ‘Sister, I have been doing a lot of thinking. I realize we cannot build this country of mine on the basis of hate and bitterness and I have hated you and the Belgians for what you have done to my people.’ He said, ‘I want your forgiveness and I want your help to become different.’ The Sister got absolutely sheet white and took off. The next morning she didn’t show up for work and I went to see the Reverend Mother, a very great lady, and told her what happened. She said: ‘Don’t worry. Actually the Sister spent most of the night on her knees.’
That evening the Sister came back and she called Sam to the operating room. She said: ‘Sam, last night you really touched me.’ She said, ‘'I am the one who needs to ask for your forgiveness. I have been scared stiff of you.’ (And I might add with some reason.) But she said, ‘I have also resented and been bitter about the way you have treated us after we have done so much for you.’ She said, ‘I am the one who needs to change and I need your help to be different.’
Well, Sam took off and I thought we’d lost him. But a half hour later he came back and the three of us worked out a modus operandi in our operating room which enabled us to do an average of 350 operations a month for a year and a half. It is a lot of surgery. We would never have done it if Sam, and the Sister and, I suppose, a proud American surgeon hadn’t found the grace of God Almighty to change.
Now that taught me a very big lesson. There were many men in Leopoldville at that time who were my seniors in the profession and they certainly had more experience than I did but because they did not, or would not, attack the basic problems of fear and arrogance and bitterness they were not allowed to continue to operate.
Think of that in terms of foreign aid. Think of that in terms of technical aid and material aid in countries that desperately need it. I believe if you think about it you will agree with me that the lack of this factor may be the one reason why a lot of our foreign aid either goes down the drain or is turned against us.
I understand there are some doctors in this room. I think our profession must, of course, cure physical diseases just like a housewife has to cook the breakfast and the rest of it. But beyond that I believe we have to take on our shoulders and into our hearts the task of curing the diseases of society - fear, hate and arrogance - if we are going to be real physicians.
There was a young doctor-patriot of the Philippines. He recognized this when his country was being devastated by a corrupt and evil colonial power. It happened to be Spain. He wrote a book called ‘Cancer’. He was exiled but he returned to fight again. He was captured and was executed by a garotte. That’s a piece of wire around your neck that gets tightened.
In one of his books ‘Filibustersmo’ he is talking to a young M.D. and challenging him to fight for the life of his country. The young M.D. says to him, ‘What you require of me is beyond my strength. My destiny is different, my aspiration is limited to relieving the physical sufferings of my fellow citizens.’
The patriot-doctor replies this: ‘What are physical sufferings compared with moral sufferings? What is the death of a man when we consider the death of society? Perhaps someday you will be a great doctor if you are allowed to practise in peace; but greater still shall be he who will infuse new life into this anaemic people. You, what do you do for the country that gave you your existence? That gave you life and provides you with knowledge? Don’t you know that a life which is not consecrated to a great idea is useless? It is a pebble lost in the field without forming part of a building.’
That is quite a challenge to the medical profession, and a challenge we need.
Science and our profession are advancing at lightning speed. My seniors in the profession know that better than I do. We talk of massive transplants and artificial organs. And artificial hearts are just around the corner. We talk of Cyborgs, creatures born out of the science of medical cybernetics whose physiological processes will be remotely or automatically controlled so that they can be launched into space free from the usual physiological limitations of mere earthlings. This isn’t a pipe dream. It is part of advance research being done. Many of these advances are outside our daily experience, yet they are reality. Technically and materially we have become giants but where are we morally and spiritually? - the two factors that will determine how these advances are used. The energy of God Almighty and the energy of nuclear powers are equally remote from daily experience today. Let me quote from Barbara Ward in her book, ‘Freedom and Faith’:
‘But, some will say, we can prove the existence of nuclear power by setting up immensely complicated experiments. Then,’ the saint continues, ‘I say that the experiments of the religious life work in exactly the same way. We, the scientists of goodness, tell you that if you will take the raw materials of your all-too-human mind and body and process them through the laboratory of detachment (by which I assume she means selflessness), humility, prayer, and neighbourly love, the result will be the explosion into your life of the overwhelming love and knowledge of God. Do not think you can know God unless you submit yourself to this experimental process, any more than you can produce nuclear fission without an Oakridge or a Harwell. But we promise that if the experiment is carried out under clinically pure conditions then the result is scientifically certain. The pure of heart shall see God. (By that I take it to mean men whose motives and aims are pure as well as the regular matter of purity). That statement of fact is as experimentally certain as that H2O is the constitution of water, and it is proved by the same experimental means.’)
In our Western society we need desperately and urgently to restore faith, if real freedom is to be saved not only on the African continent but on our own continent. When men cease listening to God and obeying they become the subjects and slaves of other men’s designs. Other men may be individuals, or a State. This is tyranny. William Penn put it very simply, ‘Men must choose to be governed by God or they condemn themselves to be ruled by tyrants.’ Faith will not be restored in our communities because people believe it to be useful, another commodity, another preservative. It will be restored only when people believe it is true. People will find it is true only when they see proof of it lived out on two legs….
That is what I mean by faith. I mean something that has got legs on it. Something that has got teeth in it. Not the sentimental, aspirin, Cross-less stuff which so often poses as Christianity today, and incidentally does more to rob the millions of their manifest destiny than any card-carrying Communist. The faith I am talking about is a revolutionary commitment to seek God’s will and obey it. That is the type of faith that can reshape this world to make ‘Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven,’ a marching order, not just a pious patter.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is Moral Re-Armament. And it is this revolution that men like you and I with our wives and families are challenged to live. Herein lies the key to the struggle for continents.
Edited by Andrew Stallybrass, 27.08.2024, to remove some personal family remarks.
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