Arthur's own diplomatic effectiveness was founded on exactly that kind of independent thought. It was the tragedy of the trip that he was not given more time just to meet and talk with average African citizens—especially students—because his views always merited special attention since they fall into no predictable pattern. There is a tendency to listen more seriously when the answers are not known in advance—and how do you peg a guy who endorses Establishment products on the one hand and on the other is seriously considering playing a charity match for the Black Panther Milk Fund?

"You see, what I have been so privileged to see," Arthur explained, "is how the system is worldwide now. Whatever happens, wherever, there are reverberations all over the world. We can't afford the chauvinistic luxuries of the past . It can't work that way anymore. Look, I'm American. I'll never give up my passport, but I love the world. I believe now we must all strive to practice what Sargent Shriver calls mature patriotism, what U Thant calls earth patriotism."

STAN WHO?

One reason why it is so easy to credit Arthur's intelligence is that he is a little peculiar in a certain respect: he believes in occasionally consorting with writers such as the three who were traveling with him. When we would reach a new country, Arthur would always make sure to tell the Embassy people that the journalists should be included in all the festivities whenever it was possible. As I said, Arthur had a screw loose in this respect.

In Zambia one night, in the hotel lobby, Arthur said, "Come on, let's have a drink. I'm buying." I look around, but there was no one else who could have possibly made that offer. A professional athlete had actually volunteered to purchase libation with legal tender. Bud said this was a new experience for him, too. I said, maybe this is the way it's done in Zambia, just our luck we've never been here before.

Arthur, of course, does not really drink; what he does is, he asks for a menu in the bar. "What would you like, sir?" "I would like to have a menu, please." What kind of drinking is this? At last, after perusing the list, Arthur picks something that intrigues him. It is odds-on to be served with a straw and in a strange container. This time he selected something called "A Golden Bushman's Cocktail Delight." The typical careful description of the item read something like: "Four kinds of rum, eloquently blended and crushed pineapple, served over cracked ice with a splash of Fanta and coconut shavings; a dreamy potation to enhance any evening; served plain or a la mode in a fresh casaba husk."

When Arthur was finished he was asked if he wanted a doggie bag. But Arthur rarely leaves anything behind. He is a conspicuous consumer. You never saw anybody so skinny devour so much. Where does it go? He has no thighs. His knees are connected to his hips with marionette strings. He says this is a racial slur. I say, no, it has nothing to do with race; it is strictly a personal slur.

About midway on the tour, we journalists had more or less arrived at the conclusion that we were, next to Arthur, the most important members of the expedition. After all, the only others on the tour were the USIS camera crew, but they always had to ride in a truck with their equipment, which severely limited their status. And, of course, there was Stan.

You may wonder, who is this Stan who insists upon intruding on the narrative? A good question. In real life Stan Smith was none other than the No. 2-ranked tennis player in the United States of America, singles and doubles. Unfortunately there were half a dozen good reasons why Stan was totally unrecognized and unappreciated on this particular tour of black Africa. The first reason was that he was a white man; the other five will come to me.

Stan found out early where he stood. Our first day in Africa happened to be Kenyatta Day in Nairobi, a sort of combination Fourth of July-George Washington's Birthday in honor of the Republic's first and only president, Jomo Kenyatta. Arthur was found a place on the reviewing stand. Stan was seated—well, if the truth be told—with the reporters. He was always a good sport and good for a laugh, though. At the clinics Bud, who did the announcing, always introduced Stan as "Bwana Twiga," which means "Mr. Giraffe" in Swahili. This would bring down the house. Stan is long and tall, with big feet. If Bud had had one more week, he could have developed Stan into a bigger comic attraction in Africa than Stepin Fetchit ever was in the U.S.

In Zambia the USIS gave out mimeographed itineraries entitled simply ARTHUR ASHE SCHEDULE. When we landed, the two players were rushed into the airport VIP lounge for an interview. The announcer positioned the two men on either side of him and then began rattling off questions for Arthur. He kept turning, little by little, until at last he nearly had his back to Stan's face. Finally, remembering he also had the white guy, the announcer turned, sort of, toward Stan. He had a good question for him: "How do you like the weather in Zambia?" Stan said that the 10 minutes he had been there it had been fine. But the announcer was not taking any chances. He had purposely held the microphone so far away from Stan that there was no way the response could have been recorded. Then he went back to Arthur.

Next, in Uganda, Arthur stayed at the Ambassador's residence, Stan at a USIS official's house. By now Stan wasn't even invited to make token television appearances, and in Nigeria the Lagos Sunday Post managed to write a whole story about the afternoon's matches without once even mentioning Stan's name. His very existence was becoming somewhat dubious.

Stan's first reaction to finding how the other half lives was one of pique. "Dammit, Arthur," he said. "I don't know how you ever talked me into this."

"I promised you, Stan, the next time I'll tour with you."

"Yeah," Stan says, "and it'll be Alabama and Mississippi."

As the tour wore on, though, Stan came to find peace in this discrimination. He would instinctively move away as the cameramen zeroed in on Arthur. At the various luncheons, dinners and other receptions he developed a dandy little speech that always wisely began: "I can only echo what Arthur has already said..." By the end of the tour, he had become a connoisseur of his own invisibility.

FUNDAMENTALS

There is no African Zone Davis Cup. Despite the fact that they have applied, no black African countries are in competition for the cup. Since there are 48 countries in the cup field this year, and many of the teams are probably no better or worse than those African countries could field, it is possible to say that either mad coincidence or discrimination is the operative factor here.

Nigeria and Ghana offered the broadest tennis talent among the countries we visited, but a wily Kenyan named Yashvin Shretta matched sets with Arthur and Stan on successive nights. In Zambia a little white boy named Brian Knoetze, just turned 12 and weighing 73 pounds, struck Arthur as the best kid that size he had ever seen. In Uganda, where there is a tennis stadium better than any we have in the U.S. except Forest Hills, the best young prospect has already gone off to Middle Tennessee State on a scholarship. In Tanzania, Arthur and Stan were staggered one morning when they watched an 18-year-old named Sari Hashan Anadran play. The boy has had virtually no competition. He learned the game entirely from his father, a gas station operator who himself learned it from reading tennis books by Bill Tilden and Ellsworth Vines. Arthur and Stan watched him only five minutes before they both took his address so that their coaches at UCLA and USC—the best two tennis schools in the country—could offer him a scholarship.

To present the exhibition matches with the two Americans and the best local players, the local U.S. Embassy would tie in with the national lawn tennis association, a pairing that produced some curious results. In some countries the tennis groups charged admission (which by law must be shared with the Embassy). As a result, while the ticket prices were not high, often only a token fee, crowds were often predominantly white. Moreover, in some places where the U.S. might be clearing $150 at best on this venture, little black children, their faces pressed up against the gates, were not permitted in to fill empty seats because they did not have the dime or quarter for a ticket. After he finished a match in one country, Arthur discovered that he had played at an all-white club. In another, he played at a club whose traditions are so racist that in the past members of the U.S. Embassy have not been permitted to join it.

Sometimes, too—particularly in East Africa, where the colonial influences cling—Arthur was teaching tennis almost exclusively to rich young white children. How strange it was to first contemplate the scene in Kenya, with tow-haired boys and girls all impeccably attired in school blazers. Refreshments for the adults at the club included small tea sandwiches and whiskey and water. The little girls tittered when Stan took off his seat pants before them. Here Arthur had come 10,000 miles back to Africa and somehow ended up playing the title role in the first act of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

Yet Arthur was not unusually disturbed by the uneven situation. "Everywhere," he said, "tennis is a game played by the people who have time to play it, who have the leisure. Right off the bat you can disregard 85% of the population when you consider the illiteracy rate in most of these countries—they've never even heard of tennis. All I want is a cross section out there of the 15% left. I'm no going to be impractical and ever expect to get a cross section of a whole country. You must think: if I can just teach one kid who turns out. If we can just find one kid as good as this Anadran in Tanzania looks. That's enough to justify it all. Look how many people know of Kenya only because of Kip Keino. That reason alone. Think of that. That one kid—if he ever gets as good as it looks like he might be—why, for a lot of people, he will put Tanzania on the map."

LIVE, ON FILM

If properly marketed, goodwill can be dispensed at low cost. Even though it must be acknowledged that tennis reaches a small portion of any population, the U.S. certainly gets good exposure when it is able to dish out the teaching and exhibition services of two of the best players in the world. It gets a good bargain, too, considering that the cost is only the price of a couple of tourist plane tickets, a few hundred dollars apiece in honorariums, some booze and hors d'oeuvres for the receptions and a few other petty cash items. With imagination, and just a little more money, most of the USIS men figured out ways to make the goodwill linger. In Nigeria, for instance, all the kids who came to the clinics posed afterward with Arthur and Stan for pictures that would be sent to them. In Ghana the participants were given cheap, little painter's caps with the U.S. stars' names on them, and trophies were donated for the national championships in Arthur's and Stan's names.

Arthur, who endorses Head rackets, brought along a shipment of the $56 models and parceled them out, a couple to each country. The excitement in each clinic was such that Bud had to devise a rotation game called Uganda Work-up to determine absolutely fairly which players should gain this magnificent prize. Immediately before he left for Africa, Stan won a tournament in Phoenix, where a lot of the people donated old secondhand rackets for him to take along. He distributed them in the first country, Kenya. There were school kids there who drove 100 miles, sleeping overnight in a truck, just to make sure they attended a clinic. Yet they did not have enough rackets to go around. It is not hard to imagine how much those old rackets from Phoenix were appreciated in Kenya.

Yet at the conclusion of another clinic there, when Bud asked if there were any questions, a fellow standing along the side of the court said, "Yeah, what do you need the cameras for?"

Another fellow, who had climbed up into one of the umpires' chairs, bellowed out: "Publicity. Just like always, it's all publicity." Many of the others snickered and hooted, supporting that view. Arthur flushed. In an interview on the Voice of America that followed, he kept trying to explain that there were no ulterior motives, that this trip was not "propaganda." And yet, as sincere as he was, when the matter is viewed dispassionately it is difficult to refute the claim of the cynic in the umpire's chair.

The tour cost only about $12,000, after all, while the USIS film was expected to come in at many times that cost—$60,000 or more. The film will be offered to schools, clubs and public theaters all over Africa and anywhere else (except the U.S.) where there may be an interest in it. Artistically, it will probably be very good. The men filming it were all very sensitive professionals who took their task seriously and made an effort to be as unobtrusive as possible. Yet, to do their job they were invariably in evidence, of course, putting everything in a very different light. In essence, we paid $60,000 to dilute the straightforward, even pure, intentions of the tour. How curious that we seem unable to believe that we could send two young men on a simple mission of goodwill through Africa without verifying it on film. No wonder others are reluctant to take us at face value. No wonder, before long, that it was difficult at times to distinguish whether this was a trip being filmed or a film on location. The trouble is that participating in a little bit of propaganda is not unlike being slightly pregnant.

Only once, however, did the film crew commit the project to bad taste. It happened in Lagos, Nigeria on a dreary, drizzly day. We were supposed to be touring the city but instead we went almost to a ramshackle part of town, where earlier the camera crew had spotted some kids playing table tennis on a rickety old table that was set outside in the rain in a grimy dirt plaza that was beginning to turn slippery. Behind it, hovels seemed shriveled up against the rain. Dogs and children scurried about. Older people sat nearby, looking about aimlessly, their dreams long since departed. Everyone was dressed in shabby, colorless clothes that matched the skies.

For reasons that are difficult to perceive, someone had decided that this sorry spectacle would make a great human-interest scene for the film as Arthur, the famous, rich black American athlete, nobly descends to the lower levels of life and plays table tennis with poor little African children. It was a cheap shot, patently false. Arthur didn't want anything to do with it. He refused to play. They pleaded with him. At last, against his better judgment, he said he would come down and watch, which he did. Reluctantly, he slouched down the little incline. The children stared at this strange creature everybody was making a fuss over. Obviously they had no idea who Arthur was. Arthur stood, his hands jammed into his pockets, and watched for as long as he thought he had to as a couple of kids battted the slick little ball back and forth. At last Arthur just turned and scrambled up the hill and into the car. He never looked back.

One day—in another country—a USIS man shook his head and said, "This will be hard to believe, but as soon as these guys leave, all the press around here will call me up and say, 'Hey, what were those tennis players really doing here?' That's hard to believe, I know, but it'll happen, because that's what you get every time the U.S. has somebody in. It's that way almost everywhere. People just won't accept the fact that what they see on the surface is all there is. No matter how many times you tell them, people just won't trust you when you tell them, like, 'It's just a couple tennis players teaching the game.' I know, it's hard to believe."