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Burmese (Myanmar)

What is this man thinking, colour of saffron? What memories are evoked under that low forehead, under his long womanly hair, tucked under the cap, what dream do those mysterious eyes pursue? Burma is a faraway country: her rivers of turbulent water flow across virgin forests; the sun beats down on her fields, her immense plantations, and come the evening, in the countryside, the long caterwaul of the hunted tiger breaks out. The noises of the world, the quarrels of old Europe scarcely reach these out of the way places. And yet there came from there, loyal servants of England, soldiers for her armies. Did the sight of our bloody conflict, universal upheavals, move these distant and inscrutable men of Asia? Did they understand that a new world was in gestation? Or did they only see in that extraordinary war a stirring of no importance in the light of eternity.