Ba Jin Quotes
Victory is for them, not for us. We have not made profit out of our country's misfortune. Victory does not bring us luck.
Ba Jin. Cold Nights. Translated by Nathan K. Mao and Liu Ts'un-yan, University of Washington Press, 1978.
America had reached an agreement with Colombia to buy the Canal Zone to built an inter-ocean canal. There was great momentum in the US and much of the world for such a project. But the ever changing government of Colombia decided to reneg on the agreement and demanded more money. Roosevelt felt that the United States was being “held up” and so he supported a small insurgent group in Panama who declared Panama independence from Colombia. President Roosevelt sent an American warship to be sure that the Colombians could not land forces and put down the revolution. Roosevelt then negotiated a treaty for the Panama with the new revolutionary government of Panama. This divided American public opinion much of which thought that in effect Roosevelt, not liking the terms the Colombian owners of Panama insisted upon, just took Panama through the fiction of a revolution. TR thereafter always tried to explain his actions. See {589008} for additional material.
Ba Jin was a Chinese writer and author. He also wrote three original works in Esperanto. As a political activist he also wrote The Family.
