Quotessence
Home / Authors / Edgar Snow Biography
Edgar Snow

Edgar Snow Biography

Journalist

Related Quotes

“Had the United States taken the lead in such a world war against poverty, disease and ignorance it would itself have found some means of transition from the “military-industrial complex” escapism into which it has fallen. But aren’t we already doing enough with the four to five billion dollars annually expended in foreign aid? Directly and indirectly, by far the greater part of such sums go into military hardware that is of no value to the poor and is often used as a means of repressing and reducing any chance of peaceful change. In machine­ poor lands much of the rest goes into the pockets of military sycophants, profiteering merchants, landlords, politicians and the quick among the have-gots. It goes into cars and gasoline and freezers for the few. Too much of it tends to intensify class hatreds, the chasm between rich and poor, and dislike of the Yankees who bring gumdrops but not the means of work.”

AmericaPovertyMilitarismMilitary Industrial Complex
Book:Red China Today: The Other Side of the River
Create image

“The streets of downtown Shanghai likewise seemed a continuous freak circus at first, unbelievably alive with all manner of people performing almost every physical and social function in public: yelling, gesturing, always acting, crushing throngs spilling through every kind of traffic, precariously amidst old cars and new ones and between coolies racing wildly to compete for ricksha fares, gingerly past "honey-carts" filled with excrement dragged down Bubbling Well Road, sardonically past perfumed, exquisitely gowned, mid-thigh-exposed Chinese ladies, jestingly past the Herculean bare-backed coolie trundling his taxi-wheelbarrow load of six giggling servant girls en route to home or work, carefully before singing peddlers bearing portable kitchens ready with delicious noodles on the spot, lovingly under gold-lettered shops overflowing with fine silks and brocades, dead-panning past village women staring wide-eyed at frightening Indian policemen, gravely past gambling mah-jongg ivories clicking and jai alai and parimutuel betting, slyly through streets hung with the heavy-sweet acrid smell of opium, sniffingly past southern restaurants and bright-lighted sing-song houses, indifferently past scrubbed, aloof young Englishmen in their Austins popping off to cricket on the Race Course, snickeringly round elderly white gentlemen in carriages with their wives or Russian mistresses out for the cool air along the Bund, and hastily past sailors looking for beer and women—from noisy dawn to plangent night the endless hawking and spitting, the baby's urine stream on the curb, the amah's scolding, the high falsetto of opera at Wing On Gardens where a dozen plays went on at once and hotel rooms next door filled up with plump virgins procured for wealthy merchants in from the provinces for business and debauch, the wail of dance bands moaning for slender bejeweled Chinese taxi dancers, the whiteness of innumerable beggars and their naked unwashed infants, the glamour of the Whangpoo with its white fleets of foreign warships, its shaggy freighters, its fan-sailed junks, its thousand lantern-lit sampans darting fire-flies on the moon-silvered water filled with deadly pollution. Shanghai!”

ChinaCommunismDebaucheryShanghai20th Century Shanghai
Book:Journey to the Beginning
Create image

“In the morning I inspected my traveling companions and found a youth and a handsome old man with a wisp of gray beard sitting opposite me, sipping bitter tea. Presently the youth spoke to me, in formalities at first, and then inevitably of politics. I discovered that his wife’s uncle was a railway official and that he was traveling with a pass. He was on his way back to Szechuan, his native province, which he had left seven years before. But he was not sure that he would be able to visit his home town after all. Bandits were reported to be operating near there. “You mean Reds?” “Oh, no, not Reds, although there are Reds in Szechuan, too. No, I mean bandits.” “But aren’t the Reds also bandits?” I asked out of curiosity. “The newspapers always call them Red bandits or Communist bandits.” “Ah, but you must know that the editors must call them bandits because they are ordered to do so by Nanking,” he explained. “If they called them Communists or revolutionaries that would prove they were Communists themselves.” “But in Szechuan don’t people fear the Reds as much as the bandits?” “Well, that depends. The rich men fear them, and the landlords, and the officials and tax collectors, yes. But the peasants do not fear them. Sometimes they welcome them.” Then he glanced apprehensively at the old man, who sat listening intently, and yet seeming not to listen. “You see,” he continued, “the peasants are too ignorant to understand that the Reds only want to use them. They think the Reds really mean what they say.” “But they don’t mean it?” “My father wrote to me that they did abolish usury and opium in the Sungpan [Szechuan], and that they redistributed the land there. So you see they are not exactly bandits. They have principles, all right. But they are wicked men. They kill too many people.” Then surprisingly the graybeard lifted his gentle face and with perfect composure made an astonishing remark. “Sha pu kou!” he said. “They don’t kill enough!” We both looked at him flabbergasted. Unfortunately the train was nearing Chengchow, where I had to transfer to the Lunghai line, and I was obliged to break off the discussion. But I have ever since wondered with what deadly evidence this Confucian-looking old gentleman would have supported his startling contention. I wondered about it all the next day of travel, as we climbed slowly through the weird levels of loess hills in Honan and Shensi, and until my train—this one still new and very comfortable—rolled up to the new and handsome railway station at Sianfu.”

SocialismCommunismChinese RevolutionCommunist China
Author:Edgar Snow
Create image

“It is impossible not to recognise the Long March as one of the great triumphs of men against odds and men against nature. While the Red Army was unquestionably in forced retreat, its toughened veterans reached their planned objective with moral and political will as strong as ever... Their conviction had helped turn what might have been a terrible defeat into an arrival in triumph.”

MenLongHas BeensMightPoliticalTurnsStrongMoralImpossibleTerribleRedArmyDefeatConvictionObjectivesTriumphMarchOddsRetreatVeteranMight Have BeenRecogniseArrivalsPolitical WillAgainst The OddsRed Army
Author:Edgar Snow
Create image

“Mao lived very much like the rank and file of the Red Army. After ten years of leadership of the Reds, after hundreds of confiscations of property of landlords, officials and tax collectors, he owned only his blankets, and a few personal belongings, including two cotton uniforms. Although he is a Red Army commander as well as chairman, he wore on his coat collar only two Red bars that are the insignia of the ordinary Red soldier.”

YearsWellsTwoTenTaxesOrdinaryRedArmyPropertyIncludingSoldierBarsOfficialsBelongingUniformsCoatsFilesCommandersBlanketChairmanCollectorsCottonCollarsMaoLandlordRed Army
Author:Edgar Snow
Create image