Wilmott Ragsdale to Morgans, from Bangkok, December 19, 1959 -- "dictatorships are more efficient"

Dear Murray and Rosa,

I got the front page of the News Tribune with some notes on the margin from Fred Haley. He reported you as saying that I am the only person you don't owe a letter to. I can only say that this shows that you and Rosa are absolutely no good. Here I have been waiting for months and months getting more and more scared because I have not heard about an advertised birth. I wrote frantically to Phyllis and received a letter yesterday after months of waiting. ...

I was seriously sorry to hear about the miscarriage, the more so because Janie had one too a few months ago. A second young baby would have been a handsfull on a trip through Europe, but everything can be managed. Typically I don't know what we'll be doing eight months from now, whether at the University of Wisconsin, or working as a correspondent in India, or still here with the Asia Foundation. I am now indulging in paralysis, waiting for two of the prospects to dissolve so that I will be happy about the remaining one. 

Teaching here is about as boring as possible. But I have been running around setting up a Foundation and reestablishing the Journalism school. In this I am a great success, having boosted enrollment from 18 last year to more than 200 this year. And my foundation for the Press is offering Pulitzer prizes, lectures, scholarships, etc. I got Prince Wan [Prince Wan Waithayak was Deputy Prime Minister of Thailand at the time] the former president of the UN to head my foundation, and the AP has written a piece about it which might be in the Tribune, unless my youthful antagonist Sonny Banker cuts it out.

Life under martial law is quite puzzling and frustrating here because the Thai exercise dictatorship so gently, most of the time. The last similar situation was in Germany and I got knocked down on the curbing in Cologne. But here the people are too docile and unenthusiastic. And since dictatorships are more efficient, the U.S. diplomatic (and British) seem to think that everything is very "good and healthy," because of the Asian equivalent of the trains running on time.

But there's nothing democratic about it, and not even anything fundamental that the U.S. can count on as pro-western--except the personal fortunes of the ruling clique. After my story in Newsweek on the revolution, I bought a gun and locked the doors at night--but of course nothing happened. But now, because of my concern to make my Foundation succeed I have become a coward and write nothing except feature stories about opium and white elephants. 

I thought I might get interested in Buddhism, but I find that it’s hopelessly illogical, which is perfectly acceptable, except that the Buddhists keep claiming that it is all provable as if it were physics. 

Instead Thailand has become in a way my Aleutians. I have at last read The Red and the Black, and Pere Goriot, and Eugenie Grandet, and The Betrothed, and Lord Jim. The first and last are great. I remember Howard Daniel as reading The Red and the Black enthusiastically when I last saw him in New York. 

Thailand is a poor place for men's gifts but great for women, so I sent Rosa, Phyllis and Dinny some silk. You have to write now and tell me you got it. Noel and Dana love it here. Amy is fine and healthy. We plan on Harstine in 1961. 

love,

Rags