A SPEECH BY NORMAN BETHUNE G311

 A SPEECH BY NORMAN BETHUNE

Comrades, I thank you for the beautiful banners you have given to me and for the kind things you have said about me.

The eyes of millions of freedom-loving Canadians, Americans and Englishmen are turned to the East and are fixed with admiration on China in her glorious struggle against Japanese imperialism. This hospital has been equipped by your foreign comrades. I have the honor to have been sent as their representative. Do not consider it strange that people like yourselves, 30,000 li away, half way around the globe, are helping you. You and we are internationalists: we recognize no race, no color, no language, no national boundaries to separate and divide us.

It is not many months since I arrived here to work with you in this hospital. I used to think of it as “your” hospital, now I think of it as “our” hospital. From you I have learned many valuable lessons. You have shown me a spirit of selflessness, of working cooperatively, of overcoming great difficulties, and I thank you for those lessons. In return I may have been able to teach you a little about medical technique.

It was the adoption of Western technique that was responsible, in part, for the transformation of Japan from a tenth-rate backward nation into a great power in less than fifty years. Technique, in the hands of the imperialists, has made Japan the enemy of the world. Technique in the hands of the workers of China will make her a great power for world peace. We must use that technique for the happiness and prosperity of the millions and not just to make a few people rich.

Why must we learn good technique? Because good technique in medicine and surgery means more quickly-cured patients, less pain, less discomfort, less death, less disease and less deformity. What is the duty of a doctor, of a nurse, of an orderly? It is our duty to make our patients happy, to help them in their fight back to health and strength.

I cannot close without expressing my admiration for the courage and uncomplaining spirit of our wounded, both of the 8th Route Army and the partisans. For these there is nothing less we can do, than to give them the greatest care and skill, in return for what they have endured and suffered for us. For they have fought, not only for the China of today, but for that great, free, democratic Chinese Republic of tomorrow, which they, and we, may never live to see. The important thing is that both they and we, by our actions now, are making that new Republic possible, are assisting in its birth. But whether it will be born or not depends on our actions today and tomorrow. It is not self-generating. It must be created by the blood and the work of all of us who believe in the future, who believe in man and his glorious man-made destiny. Only in this way is it inevitable.

To those who have fallen, to those whom we have not been able to save, let us say: We shall remember the sacrifices of the dead. Our goal is the new China for which they died. In their memory, in devotion to our great cause, let the living and the dying seal our comradeship. In struggle and sacrifice we shall have one purpose, one thought. Then we will be invincible. Then we will know that even if we do not live to see it, some day those who come after us will gather here, as we do today, to celebrate, not just the building of a model hospital, but of a great and democratic republic for the liberated people of China.