For Sir Archibald Clark Kerr, Britain's special envoy to Indonesia, time dragged as sluggishly as a sick carabao. While he waited for Indonesians and Dutch to get together, the Ambassador visited Surabaya, where tall, mustachioed Major General Eric Mansergh, Commander of the Fifth Indian Division, invited him to give British troops a lecture about Russia.
The lecture hall was Surabaya's Rex Cinema, hot, humid and jampacked with soldiers. Britain's former Ambassador to Russia and next Ambassador to the U.S. stepped up to the speaker's stand. First he tried to pour himself a...