John Keswick, younger brother of the Jardines taipan Tony Keswick, acknowledged that times were changing. He served in the Shanghai Volunteers and raised money for refugee relief, ‘but otherwise we worked in our offices, played tennis and polo, and danced and dined at night, an exciting, rather unreal life’.1
The Japanese moved quickly and skilfully to consolidate their victory. Apart from isolated pockets of resistance, they now controlled the Chinese Municipality of Greater Shanghai. Chapei, Nantao, Yangtzepoo and Pootung, which had all suffered huge damage, would later be included in a collaborationist regime under Wang Ching-wei. Much of Hongkew had virtually been wiped off the map. Over the next three years, 18,000 German Jews and 4000 Polish Jews were allowed to settle in ‘Little Tokyo’ as part of a Japanese program of urban regeneration. The sight of Hitler’s allies helping stateless Jewish refugees to find a new home added a surreal dimension to the Shanghai panorama.2
Despite protests from the British Foreign Office and the newly knighted inspector-general, Sir Frederick Maze, all customs revenues held in the Hong Kong & Shanghai Bank were transferred to the Yokohama Specie Bank.3 The Japanese Consulate also insisted that the number of Japanese in the Municipal Police Force be increased, that Japanese applicants be given senior administrative posts in the council; and that the overall number of Japanese in council employment be enlarged.4
Each of these measures was designed to increase Japan’s stranglehold on the British sector of the divided International Settlement. At crossing points, Japanese sentries were given free rein to humiliate Westerners. Face-slapping became a hazard for Chinese and Europeans alike. Emily Hahn reported the case of an Englishwoman who crossed Garden Bridge on what was, according to new, unannounced Japanese rules, the wrong side.
‘The sentry shook her arm, hustled her across to her proper place, and slapped her face,’ she wrote in the New Yorker. ‘She reported it to the British Consulate. They made representations. Next day she prudently went down to another bridge to do her crossing and all unwittingly walked through a gap reserved, for no particular reason, for rickshaw coolies. She was again slapped, and again she reported the incident to the British Consulate. They made representations . . .’5
Alfred Turner had joined the Municipal Police in 1937 as a 21-year-old probationary sergeant. At 3 pm on 6 January 1938 he complained to a Japanese constable about the rough handling of some Chinese hawkers who wished to pass into the British sector at the Brenan Road crossing. The Japanese constable punched Turner on the nose and shouted, ‘It’s none of your damned business!’ Several Japanese soldiers then dashed across the boundary line and dragged Sergeant Turner into occupied territory, threw him to the ground and beat him.6
When Inspector Frederick West was informed that the Japanese were holding one of his men, he drove to the crossing and ordered his release. Instead, West was also grabbed and savagely beaten. The two British policemen were freed only when a senior Japanese police officer arrived at the scene and restored order. Once again the British consul Herbert Phillips made representations . . .7
Harold Timperley and Colin McDonald returned to Shanghai where Timperley wrote a new account of the Nanking atrocities and filed it to the Guardian at one of the settlement’s three cable offices at 8 pm on Thursday 16 January. The Japanese had installed censors in each office to suppress critical news dispatches and at 10.45 the following morning he learned his story had been stopped and that his presence was requested at Japanese military headquarters.
The Japanese, however, sent a copy of Timperley’s cable to the Japanese Foreign Office in Tokyo, which radioed a truncated form of the message in the Japanese diplomatic code to their foreign embassies. This was intercepted by an American listening station and sent to Washington for deciphering. The telegram read:
Since return [to] Shanghai [a] few days ago I investigated reported atrocities committed by Japanese Army in Nanking and elsewhere. Verbal accounts [of] reliable eye-witnesses and letters from individuals whose credibility [is] beyond question afford convincing proof [that] Japanese Army behaved and [is] continuing [to] behave in [a] fashion reminiscent [of] Attila [and] his Huns. Not less than three hundred thousand Chinese civilians slaughtered, many cases [in] cold blood.8 Robbery, rape, including children [of] tender years, an insensate brutality towards civilians continues [to] be reported from areas where actual hostilities ceased weeks ago. Deep shame which better type [of] Japanese civilian here feel – reprehensible conduct [of] Japanese troops elsewhere heightened by series [of] local incidents where Japanese soldiers run amock [in] Shanghai itself. Today North China Daily News reports [a] particularly revolting case where [a] drunken Japanese soldier, unable [to] obtain women and drink he demanded, shot [and] killed three Chinese women over sixty and wounded several other harmless civilians.9
The Americans kept Timperley’s message secret – disclosure would have revealed that the United States had broken the Japanese diplomatic code. Timperley protested to the British consul Herbert Phillips about the attempt to muzzle him. He refused to report to Japanese military headquarters and filed two further stories on Nanking, which were also suppressed. Phillips made representations . . .
Then in April Timperley left Shanghai for London to publish a book entitled What War Means: The Japanese Terror in China, containing graphic testimony on the Rape of Nanking. The book had been written, he explained in the preface, because of the suppression of his Guardian stories ‘by the censors installed by the Japanese authorities in the foreign cable offices at Shanghai’. Japanese claims that the reports were ‘grossly exaggerated’ had spurred him to find documentary proof to confirm his information. He had had ‘no difficulty in discovering a wealth of corroborative evidence from unimpeachable sources’.
He also smuggled a cine-film out of China showing scenes of Nanking before, during and after the Japanese occupation and including the first filmed shots of the Japanese atrocities to reach the West.
Upriver in Hankow, the American attaché Jimmy McHugh resumed his daily conversations with Bill Donald in Donald’s large, ramshackle flat on The Bund. Donald was now 63 and his nerves were as frayed as anyone’s over the Japanese bombing and the constant military setbacks. As a release from the ever-present tension, he talked to McHugh about the past.
‘It slowly dawned upon me that he expected me to accept as master to pupil, without argument or question, his version of events in China,’ McHugh noted in an intelligence report dated 20 January 1938.
In fact he irritably rebuked me on more than one occasion when I attempted to cross-question him or suggest that any conditions other than those which he was describing might exist. I therefore gradually assumed the role of meek listener.10
One of Donald’s main concerns was a Soong family feud which had simmered in the background ever since H. H. Kung had replaced his brother-in-law T. V. Soong at the Ministry of Finance four years earlier. T. V. was currently governor of the Bank of China in Hong Kong but Ayling and Mayling wanted to find a solution which would enable him to rejoin the government without bringing the whole edifice crashing down.
Mayling was the channel for several offers from the Generalissimo to T. V., who not only rejected them but made his loathing of Chiang and Kung abundantly clear. Pleading ill-health and the need for a rest, Mayling flew to Hong Kong on 11 January to try to break the deadlock. As usual, Donald was at her side but she had taken a fancy to Jimmy McHugh and invited him to accompany them. ‘She is undoubtedly a woman of outstanding ability and personality,’ McHugh wrote to his ambassador.
She radiates it, in fact, and hardly ever fails to captivate those who meet her. She is thoroughly feminine and makes full use of those attributes. She impresses one as being more Western than Chinese in her mental processes. She speaks English perfectly in a pleasing, well-modulated tone of voice which never fails to attract attention. She always presents an attractive, well-groomed appearance and, a
lthough by no means a beautiful woman, her eyes have a lustrous, appealing quality which at once command attention and leave the impression of having been in the presence of a lovely creature. I believe she married her husband purely for position and that she has been a deciding factor in his subsequent rise.11
The family feud erupted almost as soon as Mayling’s plane touched down in Hong Kong. Ayling, Chingling, T. V. and another brother T. L. Soong were all there, as well as one of Ayling’s sons, David Kung, who was driving around in a Cadillac. Mayling, Ayling and T. L. all supported Chiang Kai-shek and were therefore working towards a rapprochement, whereas Chingling’s devotion to the Communist cause made her anti-Chiang and therefore a natural ally of T. V.
Donald’s position was difficult: he was aware of the allegations against the Kung faction regarding ‘squeeze’ from American aviation salesmen but his loyalty to Mayling put him firmly in that camp, despite what Jimmy McHugh described as his ‘frantic but rather futile efforts’ to stamp out corruption. Furthermore, he had once jokingly suggested to T. V. that the young man should make himself dictator of China and had been appalled when he later raised the subject with him in all seriousness. Since then, Donald had ‘lost no opportunity to stress both to Madame Chiang and the Generalissimo that Soong was ambitious, unscrupulous, selfish and domineering’.12
McHugh found himself the ‘unwitting confident [sic] of parties on both sides’. Two days after he arrived, T. V. Soong told him that Dr Kung was trying to have him dismissed as head of the Bank of China. He had turned down other government posts, he said, because he did not want to become ‘tainted’ by working with him. Chiang had written him a very bitter letter for declining to rejoin his government and Soong’s attitude towards him remained one of contempt, bitterness and aloofness. Soong also denounced the ‘venality’ of the Ministry of Finance. ‘They are spending the reserves which I built up, without any regard for the future,’ he said. ‘All they think of is lining their own pockets and after that they don’t care.’
‘The present dissension is an advanced stage of a struggle for the control of China which has existed for several years between Mr Soong and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek,’ McHugh wrote in his report of the conversation.
The question of the moment concerns the terms under which Mr Soong might agree to make peace with his family and accept a post in the Government thereby assuring a united front for continued resistance to Japan. The alternative thrown at him by his family is the cancellation of his last remaining governmental connection – his post as head of the Bank of China.13
McHugh then approached Cyril Rogers of the Bank of England who had come to China in 1935 with Sir Frederick Leith-Ross, the British Government’s chief economic adviser, to initiate banking and currency reforms. Over dinner, Rogers described Ayling Soong as a ‘modern Borgia’. He warned there would be serious repercussions on the stability of China’s finances and credit status abroad if T. V. Soong were dismissed. Moreover, Rogers would sever his connections with the Nationalists and return to London, thereby withdrawing Britain’s direct financial support to China.
‘I have reason to believe,’ McHugh wrote, ‘that the state of China’s credit abroad has been seriously misrepresented to Chiang Kai-shek by Dr Kung in connection with the latter’s recent elevation to the post of President of the Executive Yuan [effectively making him premier of China].’ There was deep unrest over the conduct of the war and great dissatisfaction over Chiang’s failure to sweep away a large group of corrupt politicians and militarists and replace them with more reputable figures.
Shortly after McHugh’s meeting with Rogers, Donald exploded angrily when an article appeared in the Hong Kong press announcing Mayling’s presence in the colony. ‘She apparently arrived on Tuesday by air with General Chiang’s Australian adviser, Mr W. H. Donald, and other officials,’ The Times correspondent reported from the colony. ‘Additional interest is lent to her visit by the presence of several other notables, including her brothers, Mr T. V. Soong and Mr T. L. Soong; her sisters, Mme H. H. Kung and Mme Sun Yat-sen. Rumours that Mme Chiang is here for important conferences are denied in trustworthy quarters.’14
Donald blamed Jimmy McHugh’s meddling in the Soong family’s affairs for the leak, a charge the American hotly denied. However, he was getting too much sensational inside information about the workings of the Nationalist government to drop his central role in the drama, even at the risk of offending Donald. On the afternoon of the 18th, he saw T. V. Soong again. ‘Their whole organisation is rotten and about to fall apart,’ Soong confided. ‘The time will come, and very soon, when they will have to come to me on bended knee and ask me to save them.’
McHugh suggested that Chiang Kai-shek had become a symbol of Chinese resistance to the Japanese. ‘That is just the impression which Donald works to create,’ Soong replied. ‘Actually, [Chiang] is a second-rate militarist and possesses a medieval mind. China can never make real progress while he is in control.’
Regarding corruption, McHugh added in his report that Donald had complained to him many times that he and Mayling had pressed Chiang to shoot corrupt members of his government but he refused to do so. T. V. Soong also claimed that Dr Kung was ‘a mere figurehead and puppet in the hands of his wife and the Generalissimo’. Having been one of the wealthiest men in China before joining the government, Kung had been the target for an added measure of criticism over Ayling’s activities and his own ministry. He was, admittedly, a sick man, suffering from heart trouble.
Nothing was resolved at any of the meetings and Mayling, Donald and McHugh flew back to Hankow on 19 February. Mayling complained bitterly that people believed the reason China was losing the war was because it had a ‘petticoat government’. Even the fact that the railways were congested was blamed on the inefficiency of her Aviation Commission.
On Donald’s advice, Mayling resigned as chief of the Chinese Air Force, citing the injuries she had suffered in the car accident on the road from Shanghai to Nanking in August the previous year. Nothing must be allowed to diminish her aura in the eyes of the world. ‘Donald often claims that his sense of humour is the only thing that has permitted him to survive all of these years in China and until recent months I know him to have been a remarkably cheery person,’ McHugh noted. ‘Of late, he has exhibited increasing signs of irritability and short temper. He possesses a blind faith in Madam Chiang Kai-shek. He has put up with the conditions in the belief that he can get Madam Chiang away from the influence of her family and set her up as the saviour of China.’
In late February the new British ambassador to China, Australian-born Archibald Clark Kerr, arrived in Hong Kong on his way to Shanghai. He intended spending several days there meeting diplomats and Chinese dignitaries. Soon after his arrival, however, he received a telegram from Bob Howe, the British chargé d’affaires who had been holding the fort since the attack on Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen. He informed Clark Kerr that the Japanese had displayed ‘aggressive, intolerant disregard of the ordinary rules of international intercourse’ towards the British community in Shanghai. Morale had hit rock bottom and a firm hand was needed to rescue British prestige.15 Clark Kerr cancelled his plans and hastened to Shanghai.
To make matters more difficult, Anthony Eden had resigned as foreign secretary on 20 February over the manner in which Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s Government was appeasing Germany, Italy and Japan. His replacement was the lanky giant Lord Halifax, one of the arch appeasers who was liable to bend even further in the face of the Japanese typhoon.
The British Embassy was now located on the top floor of the Jardine Matheson building on The Bund, directly across the river from Pootung. Sir Archibald and Lady Clark Kerr moved into a well-appointed villa called ‘Number One House’ in Frenchtown, adjacent to the smoking ruins of Nantao.
Archie Clark Kerr was a robust, barrel-chested man, with extensive experience in the diplomatic gladiatorial ri
ng. He had been born at his grandparents’ house, ‘Clovelly’, at Watsons Bay, Sydney, on 17 March 1882 and christened Archibald John Kerr Clark. He added a final ‘Kerr’ to his name to make it appear he had been born at the Kerr family’s Scottish seat. Indeed, he was so keen to appear Scottish that on joining the Foreign Service in 1906 he omitted any mention of his Australian origins in his entry in Who’s Who.16
Lady Kerr, known as Tita, was the former Maria Theresa Diaz Salas, the beautiful blonde daughter of a Chilean millionaire. The couple had met in March 1929 while Clark Kerr was based in Santiago and had been married one month later when he was 47 and she just 18. Their marriage had survived the rigours of their previous posting – Iraq – but it would not survive China.
Around this time, a small dinner party was held at the home of John Alexander, a young secretary at the British Embassy, which would have a profound effect on Clark Kerr’s term of office and on China’s war effort. The guests were Emily Hahn, Ed Snow and his wife Helen Foster Snow, a.k.a. Nym Wales.
According to Emily Hahn’s version, Alexander asked Ed Snow what he thought about the English co-operative movement. Snow had just written his classic work Red Star over China on the Chinese Communist Party after travelling to Yenan with the help of Rewi Alley to interview Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai. He confessed he knew nothing about co-operatives, so Alexander explained the concept to him.
Shanghai Fury Page 36