THIS BOOK IS a superficial account of an unsensational journey. My Warning to the Reader justifies, I think, its superficiality. It is easy to be dogmatic at a distance, and I dare say I could have made my half-baked conclusions on the major issues of the Far Eastern situation sound convincing. But it is one thing to bore your readers, another to mislead them; I did not like to run the risk of doing both. I have therefore kept the major issues in the background.
The book describes in some detail what I saw and what I did, and in considerably less detail what most other travellers have also seen and done. If it has any value at all, it is the light which it throws on the processes of travel – amateur travel – in parts of the interior, which, though not remote, are seldom visited.
On two occasions, I admit, I have attempted seriously to assess a politico-military situation, but only (a) because I thought I knew more about those particular situations than anyone else, and (b) because if they had not been explained certain sections of the book would have made nonsense. For the rest, I make no claim to be directly instructive. One cannot, it is true, travel through a country without finding out something about it; and the reader, following vicariously in my footsteps, may perhaps learn a little. But not much.
I owe debts of gratitude to more people than can conveniently be named, people of all degrees and many nationalities. He who befriends a traveller is not easily forgotten, and I am very grateful indeed to everyone who helped me on a long journey.
PETER FLEMING
London,
May 1934
NOTE. – Some of the material contained in this book has appeared in the columns of the Times, the Spectator and Life and Letters. My thanks are due to the editors of these journals for permission to reproduce it here in a different form.