10. A Story That Started Well, Before the Plot Changed Dramatically
Kenneth Folkes’ career in military intelligence began well, before the plot of his story took a series of unfortunate twists. He had enlisted as a private, and in less than a year, had risen to major and was in charge of an entire country’s counterintelligence. To be sure, New Zealand was a small and out-of-the-way country, but still – it was a rapid rise. Once he got to New Zealand, however, things soured for Folkes. He saw the New Zealanders as backward colonial bumpkins, ignorant of even basic security practices, and intellectually lazy. In reality, his contempt for New Zealand’s practices was a reflection of his own intellectual laziness and unjustified arrogance.
Folkes had only a few months’ training in British military intelligence practices, had limited experience, and held an imperialistic worldview that deemed New Zealanders inferior to the English. That mix was toxic, and blinded him to the possibility that there might be ways to do things other than what he had learned in his few months of training back in Britain. That was bad, but what made things worse was that Folkes let his disdain for the locals show. Unsurprisingly, they resented that, and grew antagonistic in reaction to his contempt for them.
