The Foreign Admiral (2)
A silence hung in the air, heavy enough to prickle the skin.
Upon the dais, the welcome ceremony for the French delegation had frozen solid in an instant — undone by the discourtesy of Sébastien Lespès, Vice Admiral of the Far East Squadron.
Today's gathering marked the first official exchange between the French Republic and our Korean people since the French expedition of 1866, and it had been unfolding in a decidedly promising direction. During the tyrant's monarchy, France and Joseon had never found occasion for any real contact. Catholicism, a tangle of political complications, and the simple absence of any felt need for broader diplomacy had seen to that. In a word, the previous regime had been incompetent. Thoroughly so.
What's more, today's ceremony mattered as much to the French themselves as it did to our Republic. Beyond the Indochina Peninsula lay China, a market of staggering size, and a Far Eastern market whose potential remained virtually untapped. If France could build a trustworthy ally in the Far East, it stood to seize an economic bloc to rival the British Empire itself — and in doing so, recoup every failure from the Napoleonic Wars through the Franco-Prussian War. And, of course, salve the wounded pride of the French people while they were at it.
But then why...?
One thing was certain: Vice Admiral Lespès was no personality case bent on wrecking a party. French politics was not so corrupt, nor so chaotic, that it would plant a man of that caliber into an Indochina enterprise of such immediate importance.
And yet — why had Lespès gone to the trouble of learning our language, only to stand upon the dais, a little apart from the crowd, and raise doubts about the injustice of war and the quality of my leadership? And so rudely, at that — in the presence of the principal figures of both sides, meeting for the first time.
I kept an easy smile trained on Lespès's shameless face, which still demanded an answer with undiminished composure, and set my mind to work. Instinct, honed across decades on the international stage, spoke clearly. The conversation unfolding here today would decide the course of both nations' relations for the next ten years.
Let's think this through.
I did not miss the provocative question from Sébastien Lespès — rude as it might appear — nor the subtle expression of Admiral Amédée Courbet, who stood behind him with a pale face, seeming to restrain his subordinate.
Ah.
And in a moment, I had the answer.
The clue was this: most of the French delegation looked genuinely flustered by the Vice Admiral's discourtesy. And the man behind him — the one whose face, for all its composure, still carried a shadowed, telling corner.
...They planned this beforehand.
That man was none other than the head of the French delegation himself: Admiral Courbet, commander of the Far East Squadron. Yes. The two of them had conspired. To take the measure of this country — our Republic — and of me, the man who stood as its symbol. To determine whether our Republic, and I myself, would truly be of use to them — to their homeland, France.
So that's it.
They loved their country. Genuinely. An alliance is no light thing. All the less so when the other party is a weak Far Eastern nation still regarded as uncivilized. Unlike empty guarantees of independence or the offer of protectorate status, an alliance was a pair of shackles binding both sides — a subject of the gravest weight.
And so the two of them had resolved to put us to a test. Whether these Orientals truly understood the essence of revolution. Whether this young, seemingly naive Tongnyeong was a man who could actually be trusted. That the method was rude and rough — by the standards of another nation, and by the European yardstick still applied to countries that had not yet, in their view, received the light of civilization — was another matter.
"Ahem."
Having pieced the whole affair together in that brief deduction, I recovered a composure that was no longer feigned. I nodded toward the startled French delegation and our own cabinet ministers with a look that said all was well, and opened my mouth.
"Let me ask you again, Vice Admiral. Is that the whole of your question?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"The question. I wanted to know whether that was the heart of it."
When I answered him like a man of good humor, it was Lespès himself — the one who had posed the question — who found himself thrown off balance.
"You're... going to answer?"
"What's the matter? You asked a question, didn't you? Then I ought to answer it."
"Ah— well..."
Whether he had never imagined this turn of events, or whether he was simply a man incapable of lying, he lost his composure and, without meaning to, glanced back at the face of his superior — Admiral Courbet.
"A-Admiral."
"Well. We've been found out."
And then, across the pale mask of the foreign admiral, a smile split wide from ear to ear. Frankly, it was a little unnerving. I had guessed right — but I hadn't expected the guess to land quite so precisely.
Then the Admiral spoke.
"Well. You've scored a hit."
"You looked unwell. Was that an act as well?"
"An act?"
With a voice suddenly fuller than before, the pale, sickly admiral who had been coughing and looking ready to seek a bed vanished from the room.
"But I am unwell. That much I have no wish to conceal."
The Admiral, his back now drawn ramrod-straight, remarked that were it not for the medals and epaulettes on his chest he would have set dignity aside and applauded me — and then he asked his question.
"The Vice Admiral is without fault, Your Excellency. He is an excellent staff officer who faithfully carried out the discourteous order I myself commissioned. And so I will not hide. I will put the question to you again, plainly. Why do you drive your own people into the pit of hell that is war — when there are ample means of avoiding war as an instrument?"
His eyes glittered. It was a light in which interest and suspicion collided.
"Is that your real question?"
"It is."
"Very well. I'll explain."
Having accepted the Admiral's test without hesitation, I spoke also to the French delegation and our cabinet ministers, who still stood about in awkward uncertainty.
"The rest of you, sit as well. This is something I have long wanted to lay before everyone."
At my invitation, they took their seats, if reluctantly. Meanwhile, a few quick-witted Foreign Ministry staffers approached the citizens who had drawn near the dais, offered their apologies, and eased them back. Once I had confirmed this, I drew a light breath.
The necessity of war. War. Was it truly necessary?
Was it like this when I stood at UN Headquarters, too?
The conviction I had first proclaimed upon the international stage — the interests of the Republic of Korea, the prosperity of peace, the cooperation of all nations — I hoped it would reach them as well. The wish set my heart pounding.
Having ordered my thoughts, I let out a slow breath in a voice without rise or fall, my expression calm.
"Before I answer your question, I will pose one of my own. I am not seeking a correct answer. It is simply the expression of a small wish — to share this subject with you in earnest, before I offer my own reply."
As I opened, every gaze in the room turned toward me. They were gazes I had long since grown accustomed to.
"Gentlemen of France — if Napoleon had swept all of Europe, would peace truly have come to the world?"
It seemed the subject had seized the interest of the delegation and the Admiral at once. The Admiral closed both eyes, an intrigued curl at the corner of his mouth, and rested his chin in his hand as he sank into thought. The other members of the French delegation were shaking their heads of their own accord.
I gave them time enough to think, and then spoke again.
"My answer is: impossible. In the history of humankind, there has never been such a thing as eternal peace. Not for you Europeans, from Genesis onward — and not for us in the East, the age of Yao and Shun included. In the history of our species, war has been inevitable."
Like a university lecturer, I straightened my back and began to unspool my convictions in a gentle voice, and I could feel my tongue loosening as I went. Ah. A familiar sensation. The same one I had known before the mushroom cloud over Seoul took my last moments from me.
"And so I reject, outright, the necessity of war as the Admiral has framed it. War is not something that is necessary. Precisely because it is war, it is the question humanity must always keep asking."
"That sounds a little like wordplay."
"Well, it may sound like wordplay. But—"
I answered the Admiral's interruption with a gentle laugh.
"But human beings have never feared sacrificing a great deal for a few decades of peace. Throughout our history, brief stretches of peace and prosperity have always existed. In the grand narrative of thousands of years they are vanishingly short — and yet we have treasured those brief peaces, and through them we have come as far as we have today."
Those of you with any learning will already know this. In the history of humankind, the average span in which prosperity, coexistence, and peace have held their ground has never exceeded twenty years. For all manner of reasons, war and strife never ceased in Europe; they called an average of ten years of peace their longest stretch, and that was a mere thirty years ago — and even that was only possible because their battlefields had shifted beyond Europe, to Africa and elsewhere.
And Asia? The Far East, which had kept its peace for long ages, had that peace broken long ago by Europeans who smashed the locks in the name of civilization and the spread of Christianity. In other words, for a Frenchman — one of the principal authors of that broken peace — to stand before me and raise doubts about the cruelty and necessity of war was a comedy all its own. Still, drawing on an experience of life a little longer than theirs, I resolved to offer them a measure of counsel.
"I do not wish for war either. Who does? But I affirm the decades of peace and prosperity that will settle, however briefly, in war's wake. If we who live in the present — we who now face this problem called war — do not shrink from that danger, then we leave a great gift to the generation that follows us."
"Hmm."
"Do you not think so as well?"
I spread my arms and invited their thoughts, and more than a few of them listened with low, thoughtful murmurs. Then Admiral Courbet asked a question.
"But as you yourself have said, peace is short. And still?"
I answered his question with a faint smile.
"That is the work of the next generation."
"The next generation, you say?"
"Just so. Whether the next generation tends that gift well and passes it on is a matter of their own capacity. The gift of peace and prosperity that our generation builds — whether the next generation cultivates it and hands it forward is their capacity in turn. And so if each generation does not abandon its duty in this way, humankind may yet enjoy peace for a very long time."
Even so, Admiral Courbet's expression did not ease.
"And if that next generation fails?"
What a stubborn man. Anyone listening would think he had achieved immortality.
"If they forget, they pay the price. One would like to think there is no fool so great as to topple a tower his ancestors built with every hardship — but look at the history of your own Romans, and you will find plenty. Then it is simple. We start again from the beginning. Humankind will begin again from the start."
"Begin again..."
The Admiral seemed struck by my answer, and murmured the words again and again. In the interval, I studied the face of the Admiral lost in thought.
That look—
He looks exhausted.
The unexpected aspect gave me pause. Was the Admiral weary of war?
Four years already. He has every right.
The Indochina expedition was, officially, a five-year campaign; some counted it as long as eight. It was a long and little-known French war. And Admiral Courbet, as its commander-in-chief, had been a living witness to the countless lives — French and otherwise — that had vanished for nothing in the jungle.
That's why he asked me about war.
Having come to understand something of his tangled feelings, I swallowed a sigh and spoke again.
"People commonly believe that the past is forgotten."
"Hm?"
"But they are wrong. The past is not forgotten. It accumulates. The past is the evidence of the reality we stand upon. If the history of humankind advances, reality only climbs higher — by way of those stairs called the past."
A few of the government officials and the Frenchmen, grasping the true intent of my words, let out brief murmurs of admiration at my boldness and insight. I did my best to ignore their gazes and went on.
"And so the past will go on accumulating without end. Without distinguishing whether it was a war that brought grief to all, or a peace. History is not merely the memory of what has been. It is also the proof that our civilization continues. The civilization of the present is built upon the piled-up past of you Europeans, the past of us in the East, and the memories of some old man in Africa."
"..."
By then, Admiral Courbet was staring at me with a vacant expression. Yes — simply gazing at me, his pupils unfocused. Even so, I did not stop speaking. No — projecting the self I had been on the day a brilliant orange light rose over Seoul, the self that had known regret, I could not stop.
"Admiral, I wrestled with myself until the very moment I resolved upon revolution. From what I have just said, you will easily have gathered that I have studied history. And so I will tell you this: throughout all times and places, human beings fall into two kinds. There are those who treat life itself as the highest priority, and those who insist that there are values more sacred than life."
"What are you trying to say?"
"Our ancestors have generally resolved upon war in the name of the latter, and ended war for the sake of the former. That dilemma you carry in your heart right now."
"..."
I watched the Admiral, who had now closed both eyes and fallen silent, and waited for his response. If, even after I had said this much, he could not accept in his heart the meaning of the medals on his chest and the weight of the baton of command, then I would have to revise every strategy before the opening of the war against the Qing. How could one discuss victory with the commander-in-chief of an allied nation who was already crying out from the fatigue of a protracted war?
After several minutes of that silence, Admiral Courbet's voice — weary, heavy — brushed my ear.
"Your Excellency."
I lifted my head, and the Admiral's complicated expression came into view — a mixture of remorse and regret.
"For how many thousands of years more will our kind go on repeating war?"
From the way the words ended, I understood that this was his last question, and I answered with a calm face.
"Longer than that is possible. But I believe in the possibility of the brief peace that war will bring."
"..."
"Yes — a scant few decades of inadequate peace that barely balances the books. But if the next generation enjoys peace bought with the blood our generation shed, and if the generation after that remembers its duty and tends that peace — then our devotion will have been repaid."
"Ah."
And so our exchange of questions and answers came to an end. There was no clean concession, no yielding as in a duel — and yet I was certain I had left a deep impression upon Admiral Courbet and the French delegation. And, for that matter, upon the officials of our own government as well.