The Message in Far-off Places

I HAVE a clear but not too happy remembrance of a sticky night in Singapore, in the latter part of March of 1961. A group of us were sitting around the porch of Allan's house; Allan, the Scotsman who had spent eleven years in Malaya, most of it in the jungle and a lot of it drunk. Besides Allan and his Malayan wife our group consisted of Dick, an Anglo-Malayan and the high mogul (if that is the word) of the AA group in Singapore, a couple of American lady alcoholics whose husbands were stationed in the Far East, and my wife and myself.