U Saw's Bet

The firm hand of the British Empire clamped definitely this week around the neck of one of her stiffest-necked subjects. Somewhere in the Empire, perhaps in Cairo, perhaps in the Far East, Premier U Maung Saw of Burma was fussing and fuming under detention.

It was a secret where U Saw was arrested, but the brief announcement from 10 Downing St. made no mystery of why he was arrested. "It has come to the knowledge of His Majesty's Government," the communique said flatly, "that he has been in contact with Japanese authorities since the outbreak of war with Japan. This fact has been confirmed by his own admission. His Majesty's Government has accordingly been compelled to detain him and it will not be possible to permit him to return to Burma."

When the grinning, skirt-clad Premier arrived in London last fall, he had one thought in mind: to pry a promise of dominion status for Burma out of the British Government. But he got small change out of Winston Churchill, Secretary of State for India & for Burma Leopold Amery, and the rest of British officialdom. Churchill, said U Saw, was "very blunt," adding that he himself had been very blunt in return. As the ultra-nationalist Premier left Britain for Burma, via the U.S., he remarked Delphically that the Japanese were very clever people and that "we would rather trust the devil we know than the devil we don't."

After he reached Honolulu, U Saw had reason to know the Japanese devils better than ever. He had barely left his Clipper, when Japanese dive-bombers screeched down on Pearl Harbor. It may have been the hell of that Sunday morning that tipped the scales in Japan's favor.

U Saw returned to the U.S., left for Lisbon by Clipper the day before Christmas. There he may have made contact with the Japanese, and from there he was reported to have flown to Cairo. It was probably there that the British cooped him.

Whatever the reason that U Saw had decided to bet on the Japanese, he had laid his money down too early. Even if Burma should fall, the Premier was now in no position to collect his bet.

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