136
PARTISAN
~EVIEW
failed again I had to resort, with great reluctance, in shame and
disgust, to the final means I had selected to attain my objective.
As
I had been their friend and lover and father, their teacher in the
ways of our people and their pupil in the ways of theirs, so, at last,
I became their torturer, hoping now to break them down and force
them to yield what they had not been able to give freely. One day I
ordered them whipped, the next, beaten; all of them, including Reri.
I stood by, directing their tortures and noting their surprise, their
hatred of me, their screams and their pleas for mercy. I could not
help feeling that I had betrayed them; but my guilt only excited
me the more and made me inflict always greater agony and humilia–
tion upon them. It must have been guilt that was responsible for my
extreme excitement, in the grip of which, while supervising the tor–
tures, I would feel an overwhelming hatred of the enemy, and become
convinced that my hatred had brought me so much farther than
love, to the very brink of knowledge. When my companions died, I
trained, in much the same manner, a new group, in which I included
some of the enemy's women. The experiment was repeated. This time
I did not spare myself, but submitted in their company to some of
the same tortures, as if there might:J still be lurking in me an essential
particle of their enemy's nature which was itself either capable of
yielding the truth, or of preventing me from finding it. The experiment
failed again. Again I learned nothing, nothing at all.
I still go to the wards and the camps, and from time to time I
still conduct tortures. I have devised many other means of coping
with my problem, some of them not yet tested. Over the years, I
have grown hardened to failure. I more or less expect it now as an
essential element of my work. But though I am hardened and
toughened and experienced, I find that my work grows more .and
more difficult. Because of my interest in prisoners, new duties have
been assigned to me. Recently negotiations for the exchange of pris–
oners broke down between the enemy and ourselves, and their num–
ber keeps piling np, as ours does in their camps; it is now my duty
to arrange for their transportation to the interior. And then there are
still the many administrative details of my department, to which I
must somehow find time to attend; there are still the hazards and
ever greater complications of our old war, which we have not yet
won, and which, I have become absolutely certain, we will never
win unless I succeed in my task. To know the enemy! It is the whole
purpose and nature of our war, its ultimate meaning, its glory and
