In early April 1922 Edna Lee Booker arrived in Peking seeking an interview with President Hsu Shih-ch’ang. Inevitably, she found herself knocking on Donald’s door. He invited her to a four-day picnic at his holiday home – a temple in the Western Hills. ‘Mr Donald was famous as a host and organised his picnics in a grand way,’ she wrote in her memoir.
His ‘temple’, in reality a one-time Imperial hunting lodge, was perched high in the mountains far away from all things foreign and modern yet life moved on in a sophisticated way. We dined by candlelight, enjoyed beautifully served dishes with appropriate wines, and wore evening dress. During the day we rode on donkeys over hills which through the ages have given shelter to holy men seeking to solve the mystery of life. It was an unforgettable experience.25
Back in Peking, Edna Booker caught a train from the capital’s silver-domed station to Mukden to interview the Old Marshal Chang Tso-lin. The ‘Mukden Tiger’ turned out to be a slim little man with a kindly smile and gentle manner. He was dressed in a short black velvet jacket over a long satin robe. Looking at Edna through shining brown eyes beneath a black satin hat studded with an enormous pearl, he explained why he wanted to remove the Chihli Clique from Peking. ‘China is sick,’ he said, ‘and like a sick man may need an operation. The operation will be painful, but I hope it will be justified by results.’ General Wu Pei-fu was ‘an obstacle preventing reunification’ and would therefore have to be removed. ‘I have no presidential ambitions,’ he added. ‘I am working only for the good of China.’26
Later that month, Chang Tso-lin marched on Peking again but suffered a comprehensive defeat at the hands of General Wu. ‘The Fengtien forces have been rolled back and are trying to make their way to Tientsin and Kalgan,’ The Times reported. ‘Chang Tso-lin is himself in flight to Mukden.’27
Sun Yat-sen also suffered a serious reverse in his own province of Kwangtung, where General Chen Chiung-ming, the commander-in-chief of his army, rose in revolt and expelled him from Canton. Sun fled to Shanghai but returned to Canton the following February and re-established himself in power, largely by playing off one group of mercenaries against another.28
He sought help for the struggling republic in the United States and Europe. Every Western country refused to take him seriously, so in 1923 he ended up in Moscow. At the Hotel Lux, so the legend goes, he met an unemployed revolutionary named Mikhail Markovich Gruzenberg, the 39-year-old son of a Latvian blacksmith who spoke English with a Chicago accent, having lived in the Windy City as a tsarist exile for 11 years, during which he acquired an American wife named Fanya.29
Lenin was close to death and Stalin was locked in his winner-take-all struggle for the succession with Leon Trotsky over the latter’s plans to foment world revolution through the Comintern rather than consolidate the revolution at home. Someone at the Kremlin, however, found time to speak to the Chinese visitor. Mikhail Gruzenberg, taking the nom de guerre Mikhail M. Borodin after his favourite Russian composer, was sent to Canton in October as the Politburo’s special adviser to Sun Yat-sen, with orders to bring China into the Soviet orbit.
It was an inspired move: the beefy Bolshevik got along incredibly well with the little doctor. He was an impressive figure: more than six-feet tall, with a full head of dark, glossy hair, a walrus moustache and a proud leonine head set firmly on a pair of weightlifter’s shoulders.30
At the same time, Lev Karakhan, author of the pro-Chinese ‘Karakhan Manifesto’, was sent to Peking as the Soviet minister. He was given substantial funds, which were secretly distributed to Borodin and his comrades in Canton, as well as the Chinese Communist Party, union activists and various fellow travellers, including at least one senior American newspaperman in Peking.
Striding from one meeting to another in his khaki commissar’s uniform, Borodin hammered the Kuomintang into a formidable political and military weapon. He drafted a new constitution for the party and with General Galen, the nom de guerre of Vasily Konstantinovich Blucher, a former corporal in the Tsar’s army, established the Whampoa Military Academy on an island near Canton. Sun’s protégé Chiang Kai-shek, who had trained in the Soviet Union, was installed as commander. Chinese Communists were planted in key positions within the party hierarchy: Mao Tse-tung was head of the press and propaganda department, while Chou En-lai, a brilliant young Marxist recently returned from Paris, instructed Whampoa cadets in political theory. One of Chou’s protégés was Lin Piao, the future commander of the People’s Liberation Army.31
Within a year Borodin and his Soviet comrades had penetrated the top echelon of the Kuomintang and were tackling their main task of converting the rank and file to Communism. Sun, however, was all too aware of their intentions. While he was happy to take Soviet money, he insisted that Communists could join the Kuomintang only as individuals with no loyalty to any other party.32 Nevertheless, the Nationalist movement now consisted of two overlapping but distinct groups: conservative members of the Kuomintang on the Right and Communists on the Left. It was only in deference to Sun Yat-sen that they united in an uneasy coalition to take on the warlords who were causing mayhem in the provinces.33
At 2.30 am on 6 May 1923 a band of 1000 renegade soldiers derailed the Blue Express from Nanking to Tientsin at Lincheng in Shantung. As the locomotive ploughed to a standstill, they attacked the carriages with blood-curdling yells, smashing windows and firing their guns in the air. A Romanian passenger threw a teapot at one of the bandits who took aim and shot him dead.34
At bayonet point, 26 Westerners and 100 Chinese were taken hostage and marched out of the railway cutting into the foothills. The hostages included Lucy Aldrich, sister-in-law of John D. Rockefeller Jr of the Standard Oil dynasty, and the American journalist John Powell, editor of the China Weekly Review (formerly Millard’s Review of the Far East).
Stumbling in the dark, the captives were forced along a rough trail to a crude fort. In the morning, the bandits examined their loot: evening gowns, feathered hats, watches, wallets stuffed with paper money, bed-clothing, portable typewriters, toiletries, briefcases. One young bandit ate a tube of toothpaste, while another danced around in a pink satin corset.35
Fortunately, the rebels had no idea of Lucy Aldrich’s true identity and, scratched and bruised but otherwise unhurt, she was released along with the rest of the female passengers. The male prisoners, however, were marched further up the mountain to the Temple of the Clouds at a place called Pao-tzu-ku high above Roy Anderson’s home city of Soochow. When he heard what had happened, Anderson made the trip south from Peking and was carried uninvited into the bandits’ camp in a sedan chair to assume the role of peacemaker.36
Meanwhile, John Powell’s friend Carl Crow talked the American Red Cross into sending him to the bandit area to establish contact with the foreign captives. ‘One day we saw in the distance across the valley a long caravan of carrier coolies approaching our stronghold,’ Powell wrote in his memoir.
After a wait of what seemed to be hours the head of the caravan appeared at the gate of the temple courtyard. The sweating coolies were carrying several large boxes, each bearing the insignia of the Red Cross. We tore into the boxes in short order. They were filled with food: bread, cans of bully-beef, vegetables and fruit, and even several boxes of California raisins. That night we staged a never-to-be-forgotten banquet.37
Having succeeded in setting up a regular supply chain for the Europeans, Carl Crow was then approached by one of the local warlords and paid US$3000 to do the same for the Chinese captives, who had been existing on whatever scanty rations they could scrounge from the bandits.38
Anderson spoke the local dialect and in accordance with local custom asked the bandit chief Sven Mao-yao to nominate ‘an elder brother’ with the power to negotiate on their behalf. Over the next four weeks, he reasoned with and cajoled the bandits, warning them of the severe reprisals that would be inflicted on their people by foreign armies unless they released th
e hostages. But the bandits remained intransigent in the hope of receiving better terms. They wanted to be granted an amnesty by the Nanking government and to be recruited into the Nationalist Army with uniforms and proper rates of pay.
Meanwhile, Chinese troops had thrown a cordon around the bandit camp, cutting off their supplies. The Chinese Government commissioned Carl Crow to feed 2000 bandits and their dependants so they would not confiscate supplies intended for their captives. Finally, Roy Anderson brokered a ‘win-win’ deal under which the prisoners would be released and the bandits recruited into the Chinese Army. Scruffy and unshaven, the hostages were brought down from the mountain in sedan chairs and on the backs of donkeys.
Chinese newspapers hailed Anderson as the hero of the stand-off and compared him with the legendary Frederick Townsend Ward, organiser of the Ever Victorious Army in the Taiping Rebellion.39 Carl Crow rated the six weeks he spent in Shantung ‘one of the most interesting holidays it is possible to imagine. I learned a lot about the techniques and ethics of banditry and also a good deal about the cost of living in China.’
In the winter of 1923–24 Bill Donald took time off from his duties as director of the Economic Bureau to see an old friend, Farmer Whyte, who was visiting China. Writing in the Sydney Daily Telegraph, Whyte said that when his train pulled into Peking station, ‘an old Daily Telegraph colleague of mine was there to meet me. We had not seen each other for 22 years. Today he is one of the big men of China, an adviser to the Government of China on foreign affairs – another Dr Morrison. I am speaking of W. H. Donald, head of the Bureau of Information.’
In trench coat and rakish fedora hat, Donald posed for a photograph for Whyte and wrote a caption: ‘Greetings from the Yellow Temple, Peking, W. H. Donald.’40
Despite his high spirits, Donald’s eyesight was giving him serious trouble and he took a long holiday to visit the United States by way of Europe to consult specialists. He spent six weeks in New York with Harold Hochschild.41 Donald had acquired a British passport from the British Embassy in Peking in 1918 which had been renewed in 1924 (and again in 1931 – as shown in the photographic section). While he was away, Herbie Elliston lived in his house in Tsung Pu Hutung, spent weekends at his temple in the hills and did his job at the bureau. He later used his knowledge of the Donald persona to write a definitive profile of him in the mass-selling American magazine, the Saturday Evening Post.
Donald had just returned to Peking when the Old Marshal, Chang Tso-lin, made another attempt to capture the capital and take over the Central Government while most of the Northern armies were down on the Yangtze fighting the Nationalists. Rose Venn Brown was now working for Asiatic Petroleum, the East Asian arm of Royal Dutch-Shell. She happened to be visiting Shanhaiguan, the town in North China where the Great Wall runs down to the sea. ‘I walked along the Great Wall looking over Manchuria on one side and Chihli[1] on the other,’ she said. ‘Little did we think that in less than two weeks a modern war would break out at the exact spot on which we were walking. We just got through before Marshal Chang Tso-lin mobilised his troops.’42
In late September Donald visited Chang’s great opponent General Wu Pei-fu at his camp. Wu had once been described in The Times as ‘an attractive personality, and his smile and beaming eyes warm one to friendliness’. As well as being an able commander who drilled his own troops, he was also an accomplished poet ‘with a healthy appreciation of spirituous liquor’. Compared with his autocratic contemporaries, his nickname was ‘the Liberal General’.43 Donald noted that Wu’s eyes were clear, skin fresh and he looked fit – ‘no evidence of Shaoshing wine’.44
However, the campaign did not go as the Old Marshal planned. Despite equipping his Fengtien Army with modern radios to aid communication and machine-guns to cut down large numbers of the enemy, he was being roundly defeated by General Wu until Wu’s main ally, Feng Yu-hsiang, dubbed ‘the Christian General’ after baptising thousands of his troops with a garden hose, suddenly betrayed him. ‘General Feng,’ Donald wrote, ‘mistaking Judas for Christ, turned on his patron and erstwhile friend, Wu Pei-fu, while the latter was being jammed in a nasty corner fighting Chang Tso-lin at Shanhaiguan.’45
Having taken over Russia’s interests in Manchuria, the Japanese were anxious to extend their influence on its ruling warlord. As Wu moved his forces along the Peking–Mukden railway line, Japanese spies in Tientsin radioed his movements ahead to a receiver on the Old Marshal’s train. Japanese field guns manned by Japanese gunners in the vanguard of the Manchurian Army laid down a barrage around Wu’s railway terminus at the Shanhaiguan border crossing point, inflicting 10,000 casualties in a few hours.46
With the whiff of cordite in the autumn air, the telegraph wires cut and food in short supply, it seemed like old times. Donald drove his large American-made Locomobile roadster from Peking to Feng Yu-hsiang’s headquarters to the north of the city. The Christian General had made headlines when he invited the Melbourne-born Sinologist, the Reverend Robert Henry Mathews, to conduct Bible classes among his men. The China Inland Mission, believing Feng would introduce a new moral code into China, was only too willing to send the clergyman up from Shanghai to take care of the spiritual well-being of his army.47
Feng assured Donald he was a true Chinese patriot and promised to restore peace and stability to the people. His political henchman C. T. Wang added that Feng was bound to defeat General Wu; in a matter of days Wu would kill himself or flee from the battlefield. Indeed, Feng’s defection emboldened another warlord, General Chang Tsung-chang – known as ‘the Dogmeat General of Shantung’[2] – to join forces with Chang Tso-lin. General Wu’s army was routed and driven south to the Yangtze.
Fired with crusading zeal, Feng then seized Peking and tossed the pro-Chihli head of state, General Tsao Kun, into prison. He also evicted Pu Yi and the Manchu Royal Family from the Forbidden City and placed them under armed guard. Burgoyne Chapman sounded a note of caution. ‘As for General Feng, apart from his incorruptible sincerity, I hope that the Church abroad will not expect any specially “Christian” action from this Christian General,’ he warned.
To do this would be as dangerous an error as when certain enthusiasts advertised Dr Sun as a Christian patriot years ago. In the dearth of great men, Dr Sun stood out as an idealist of unselfish sincerity, who would, however, use any means and any men to attain his object. He everywhere encouraged Russian agents and Bolshevist propaganda against the ‘wicked capitalist powers’ and the ‘unequal treaties’.48
Sadly for the evangelical movement, Feng was funded largely by Soviet money and the code of his forces, the Kuominchun, or National People’s Army, was actually Matthew, Marx, Luke and John. Marching into battle, his troops sang ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ with suitably altered Marxist lyrics.
Rose Venn Brown was as accustomed to war as many of the Chinese generals. The former assistant registrar at Sydney’s Royal Hospital for Women was in London when World War I broke out and volunteered for service with the British Expeditionary Force. Three months later, she was in war-torn France as assistant accountant of the YMCA. Over the next four years she organised Red Cross centres as far north as Abbeville on the Somme near the Dutch border and supervised entertainment for the troops in YMCA canteens. After the war, Rose stayed behind to locate and photograph hundreds of previously unrecorded graves of the Australian fallen at the Abbeville cemetery and then contacted their relatives back in Australia.49
One of her AIF friends in Peking was Harold John Timperley, a 26-year-old West Australian who had joined Reuters’ staff in the capital. For the past three years, ‘Timp’ had been working on Donald’s old paper, the China Mail, with his boyhood friend from Perth, Colin Malcolm McDonald. He was soon enmeshed in the Peking news scene and became a member of Donald’s group. With his bright blue eyes, wavy blond hair and refined tastes, he reminded one visiting European woman of ‘a marquis from the court of Louis XV’.50
Born at Bunbury in 1898, Timperley had served with the AIF in France during World War I, starting as an 18-year-old recruit with the famous 11th Battalion, the first infantry unit to leave Western Australia. Transferring to the Pay Corps, he didn’t forget his mates in the 11th. He wrote to the West Australian two months before the end of the war criticising ‘smug stay-at-homes’ and demanding that Australian servicemen should get their old jobs back.51
Meanwhile, Rose Venn Brown had just made it to Shanghai when war broke out between the provinces of Kiangsu and Chekiang for control of Shanghai’s narcotics trade. The military governor of Chekiang, General Lu Yuang-hsiang, had jurisdiction over Shanghai, a post which entitled him to $6 million a month in protection money from the city’s hundreds of illegal opium houses. ‘The Kiangsu troops have come to take Shanghai from Chekiang and it looks as if they will win,’ Rose wrote to a friend in Australia. ‘They are advancing rapidly and if they get to the arsenal and the forts at Woosung, the Chekiang troops will be defeated. The fighting is only about four miles outside the settlement, so we can hear the guns quite plainly. It is like being in France again.’52
The Shanghai Municipal Council declared a state of emergency and mobilised the Volunteer Corps. This latest version of the ‘opium war’ ended when General Sun Chuan-fang, the military governor of Fukien, joined forces with the Kiangsu commander, General Chi Shi-yuan. Sun’s Eastern troops reached North Station in Chapei and occupied the Kiangnan Arsenal, thus ensuring General Lu’s defeat. At 3 pm on 12 October, Lu boarded a steamer with his chief of staff and the chief of police and fled to Japan with his ill-gotten gains.
Towards the end of 1924 the treacherous Feng Yu-hsiang invited his fellow pro-Russian Christian Sun Yat-sen to Peking to resurrect the Republican Government and unify the country. Perhaps wisely, his spiritual mentor Robert Mathews had moved to Szechuen in the far west to spread the Gospel and supervise the work of young Chinese seminarians.53 Sun left Canton in November and made his way to Peking. To his immense pleasure, a cheering crowd of 100,000 people took to the streets to welcome him. But Sun’s hopes of reconciliation were dashed almost immediately when he was struck down by a serious illness. An exploratory operation disclosed he was suffering from cancer of the liver.
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