"IT IS a privilege and a pleasure to write this brief note to Ambassador Vum Ko Hau?s remarkable book. What I know of him, how high a regard I have for him, will appear in the profile of him that I wrote for The Guardian magazine of Burma several years ago and which is reproduced in this collection. The memoirs themselves project a deeply human profile of a remarkable man who, like the memoirs he has composed, is simultaneously simple and sophisticated, modest and proud, shy and out-going, a man whose heart is in his native hills and yet who feels quite at home in the glittering diplomacy and statecraft of London or Paris, United Nations or Rangoon. Here is a man who loves the folklore and folksong of his people, the Chins of Burma, who is so deeply conscious of his origins as to call himself "Vum Ko Hau of Siyin" after the valley in which his ancestors and he were born, and yet who is also fond of the cultures and the fine things of the world, the literatures, the arts, history, music and even the rare coins. U Vum Ko Hau wrote to me a few months ago to say that he was preparing the"memoirs for the press with the very modest purpose of satisfying the wish of his late father — an illustrious man whom I had the honour to meet in the hills a few years before his death — that the family be traced and put on the record and the family papers and stories and songs be? preserved and handed on to the future generations. Only a very small edition is contemplated, U Vum Ko Hau wrote, for the book would be for family and friends alone. Even then, however, I at once felt that the author was either unaware of or too modest about the value of the book ,he was writing. In the Chin Hills there is much in the way of oral history, but little is on record. The tombstones and the monuments tell some tales, but how much can they tell ? And this oral history, how long can it endure, for memories of man fade. Not history alone, but the cultures, the mores and the traditions of his people are going into the book, I gathered from what little U Vum Ko Hau wrote to me in outline, and I told him that such a book will be a treasure to the historian as well as the anthropologist, the social scientist and the administrator, and scholars of Burma and of the world. More and more scholars the world over are realizing that there is no such thing as pure history, pure law, pure science, or pure arts : these are interlinked, and poor is the historian who looks upon his role as that of a recorder of dates and events, poor the lawyer who can only glibly cite the statutes and the ancient precedents, poor the artist who can only dream of beauty in the abstract. More and more the frontiers of fields of study and scholarship are expanding, and there is much lending "and borrowing and overlapping, and each field of scholarship, whatever name it bears, only marks a degree of emphasis. Thus this book which contains, in the author?s own words, "a sort of blend of history, biography, ethnography, primitive culture, political events, arts, etc" is bound to interest and excite scholars in many fields. And what a pleasant and potent blend the- book makes ! 1 There is yet another reason why I expect that this book will have a much wider circulation and a much greater value than the author modestly anticipates. People in Burma do not write memoirs or collections like this. Our literature is rich, and authors and scholars are many who more than attain international standards. But come to biography, come to meVnoirs, authors are shy and reticent. The result is that a large part of our contemporary history is going by unrecorded. In a decade or so, the historian will find it difficult to get together the raw material for his work. He may find some old newspapers and bulletins, but much of the history that is being seen at close quarters, lived through, or made by people like Ambassador Vum Ko Hau would have been lost. People like U Vum Ko Hau, but not U Vum Ko Hau himself, for here is his book, and before this he has written and spoken, and after this too, we must hope, he will continue to write and speak. Here, therefore, is not just the folksong of the Chin Hills, or the story of a family, but an important part of the living history of our country. Here in this book is much meat and many beautiful gems, and in writing the book the author has done much more than fulfil the wish of his late father; he has given us a gift we can treasure and enjoy.... Maung Maung Rangoon, March 27, 1963.