Afraid of Ants

SARKHAN by William J. Lederer and Eugene Burdick. 307 pages. McGraw-Hill. $5.50.

There were these ants, see? They were forced to live among the impenetrable bamboo of the jungle, and they longed for more space. So the ants decided to destroy the elephant and take over the broad trails he had smashed through the jungle. When the ants attacked in force, waving their tiny feelers, the elephant did not even see them. He thundered down the trail, trampling them underfoot. Then a new generation of ants came along, and they were much cleverer. Instead of attacking in the open, the ants lured the elephant deep into the thick bamboo, where he could neither see nor move about easily. The ants swarmed up his legs and attacked his eyes, mouth and the soft pink flesh inside his trunk. The elephant thrashed around, confused and maddened, and in the end he was reduced to a pile of whitened bones.

This cunning little fable is used by William I. Lederer and the late Eugene Burdick as a kind of summing-up of their latest oversimplified, sometimes fatuous but, as usual, highly readable attack on U.S. policy in Southeast Asia. Returning after seven years to the ancient and mythical kingdom of Sarkhan, where they first discovered The Ugly American, they find the usual ragtag group of bumbling, arrogant and stupid Americans. The Communists, of course, are as smart as ever. Even smarter. For, instead of being satisfied slowly to win over the Sarkhanese masses because the Americans are too lazy to learn their language and customs, the Communists are plotting a fraudulent invasion of the tiny kingdom so that the U.S. will rush its elephantine army into the dense bamboo. Naturally, the plot succeeds. The strained Lederer-Burdick point is: the U.S. elephant had better get the hell out before the Asian ants nibble it to pieces.

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