SESSION V
them.
271
I think this was true in Germany.
They are not systematically
organized to live with the tocal people or even talk their language,
and this is talked about a lot, this isolation. I'm not in a position to
know that it is true, but I have no reason to believe it isn't true. The
children go to American schools to a iarge extent, that are set up
especially for them, So 1 think that there is a failure to take advantage of the opportunity, and [ believe that this has been pointed out
ta be quite in contrast to what the Soviet Union does; they send their
people over to roll up their sleeves and apeak the language and mix
with the people and live at the level of the people, It would be very
difficult for us to get Americans to go over there and live at the teve)
ot the community in which they are supposedly working.
DUNHAM: On the other hand, the Hritish charge d'affaires in
Peking conducted a seminar in Washington ten years ago when he
came back, before he went to Harvard to do some special studies,
and he pointed out that the Russians he isolated themesives {rom
the people and they were not allowing their children to associate with
the Chinese children. So their approach is not uniform across the board.
FREMONT-SMITH:
That's a comfort.
DUNHAM: Lthink these things are uneven and a lot reflects, |
think, the personality of the people involved. iknow of a acience
attaché, and I won't say what country he was in, who almost delib-
erately trolated himse!{ from the ecientitic community and expected
it ought to come to him. [ff you have a cultural attaché of that type,
he isn't going to learn anything, Even af he doesn't know the lan-
guage, he should be cutgoing,
FREMONT-SMITHE But there had been a policy here at the State
Department with reepect to this in order to encourage in every pos-
sible way,a relationship of these particular attachés to the community,
TAYLOR:
This is apropos of nuclear accidents or what’
FREMONT-SMITH: I'm talking apropos of international relations
of which nuclear accident is only one. We spoke of what we would
do in the future if we had an incident in France and I'm raising the
issue, what would we do in the future with any kind of incident”? We
are bound to have conflict as we are having many right today. We
aro bound te have confiicts with nations, and the way to deal with
these conflicts is to know as much as possible, at least, about the
culture and the attitude and the mood of the people and not to be
insensible,