Man, it has been said, appears to be the missing link between anthropoid apes and human beings. The import of this not entirely facetious remark, attributed to the ethologist Konrad Lorenz, is that the human animal, like it or not, is animal as well as human, instinctive as well as rational. Man's nature, according to psychological and anthropological authorities, is an incongruous synthesis of intelligence and instinct, of humane empathy and animal egoism. His intelligence gives him the means to control his animal instincts but is more often used to rationalize them, enabling him to pretend that they do not exist, or to disguise them behind false and ennobling names. Thus, for example, envy may be called disdain and selfishness self-respect, pigheadedness may be called pride and arrogance responsibility. Ingenious nomenclature of this kind is particularly prevalent in the field of politics.

Sunday, February 11th. The whole day was passed in the company of a certain Colonel Lao, spit and polish, genial, a little self-conscious in his well-cut uniform. He was a Vietnamese representative on the war crimes tribunal and had worked for almost a year on the commission in Vietnam and had attended the Stockholm tribunal.

One six-hour exchange. Perhaps one should not dignify it by a word which does not express what we endured at ten-thousand miles remove from the military mind. Colonel Lao began by expressing, with typical Asian tentativeness, his understanding that we were perhaps quite well-acquainted with the history of his country leading up to the American invasion.