by Emily Hahn
When the thing broke, Chiang Kai-shek was at Kuling, a mountain-top resort where he liked to spend the hot summer months. He received the news calmly, but it was clear from his message to the nation that he felt uplifted and excited. The humiliation of the Sian mutiny was forgotten. He wasn’t overconfident, but this was the test, and he felt that China was ready for it as she had not been in all the years preceding.
For nearly three weeks attempts were made to handle the affair through diplomatic channels. For the first time Chiang was able to indulge in the luxury of making demands. He knew they wouldn’t be met, but that was not the point. He asked Japan to admit responsibility for the latest upset, to apologize, and to pay indemnities. That gesture done with, he turned to his nation and made a formal promise. China would not make any settlement infringing on her sovereign rights or territorial integrity. No alterations would be tolerated in the status of the Hopei-Chahar Council. No more local officials would be shifted at the behest of any foreign government. No restrictions on the positions held by the Twenty-ninth Army would be tolerated. The period of Japanese expansion in North China, he said, had come to an end.
Japan forthwith attacked.
It was the fashion among foreign observers, during the years preceding Pearl Harbor, to laugh at Chiang’s technique of defense. There was something ludicrous, we found, about his continued withdrawal. Each time the Army retreated the Generalissimo made a statement pointing out that he had ordered the retreat, and that it was a part of his whole “strategy of depth” or “defense in depth” to give way so that the Japanese might tire themselves out and venture farther and farther from their bases. There was really nothing else he could have done against an army so much better equipped, as the Japanese were. Today we can see it his way, but in 1937 and 1938 we laughed.
And yet the defense of Shanghai was not at all laughable; it was admirable. The Japanese threw their main weight against the army here, for Chiang’s chief line of defense clearly must be the Yangtze Valley, and Shanghai was the gateway to Nanking and all that lay beyond. North China, he had decided, must make shift as best it could; the Japanese already had their feet in the door there. For three months, hampered as they were by the neutral third-party settlements in the city, the Chinese held out against the enemy around Shanghai. Four hundred and fifty thousand of them were killed in that period.
The Generalissimo contradicted the boasting of his information officers, of whom wartime convention demanded assurances to the public of quick victory. He said repeatedly that they would hold out and, if necessary, retreat (he knew they would have to retreat), and that the war would last at least three years. The Japanese, on the other hand, said they would mop up the entire situation in six weeks. Some of them actually may have believed this, but the scale of their preparations indicated a less optimistic viewpoint.
Until Shanghai was given up a steady stream of traffic flowed along the Shanghai–Nanking road. During a motor trip between the cities, the British Ambassador’s car was shelled by a Japanese plane and the Ambassador himself was seriously wounded. Japanese bombers also attacked British and American gunboats in the river. Foreigners, taking their constitutional rides around the suburbs of Shanghai, were fired on and badly scared. But the Western powers satisfied themselves with diplomatic protests of medium-strength severity. Madame Chiang and Donald were involved in an incident when their car, speeding on the road from Nanking to Shanghai during an air raid, got out of control and overturned in a ditch. Mayling suffered several broken ribs and a slight concussion, but she carried on with the day’s program.
In the meantime the Reds were being as good as their promise, busily and cheerfully going about the process of incorporation into the Nationalist forces. In September the C.E.C. decided how the troops were to be realigned. The Eighth Route Army joined the Nationalist Eighteenth Group Army and was sent to the “Second War Area” in Shansi under Yen Hsi-shan’s jurisdiction. The rest of the troops were lumped together as the “New Fourth Army” under their own general, who was directly responsible for them though he was answerable to a Nationalist general. The New Fourth Army specialized in the guerrilla warfare the Reds knew so well after their years in the wilderness, and when the Eighth Route Army was formally incorporated—in April 1938—they moved south to Nanking and Hankow, there to start operations under the flag of the Republic.
“They made trouble from the start,” said one of their Nationalist colleagues who is now working out of Taiwan as a guerrilla. “I was in charge of commissary transport between Nanking and Wuhan, and the Reds were so busy filching ammunition and snarling up my orders that I began to wonder which side it was safer to turn my back on, them or the Japanese. They never had any genuine intention of co-operating. Co-operating with the Reds was a standing joke with the rest of us.”
However, none of this situation was publicized and for several years the West didn’t suspect it. Chiang and his closest advisers had the idea that it would react unfavorably on the Kuomintang if this fretful question were to crop up once again, after it was supposed to have been settled and the settlement had been greeted with such enthusiasm overseas. Censorship of news—all news—about the Chinese Communists became a habit at Nationalist headquarters, and ultimately this habit boomeranged.
It is easy to understand, however, why Chiang took the attitude he did in 1937 and 1938. The Red problem must be allowed to rest, he felt, until the time came when he could not possibly continue to ignore it. He must stand by the agreement he made after the release from Sian. At first he had no reason to regret his decision, for after the Lukouchiao incident he found himself the recipient of profitable attentions from Moscow. In August 1937 he signed a treaty with Russia in which the Russians repeated the promise already made by Chinese Reds in Sian: they would lend no more support to “independent” political and military forces within the country. Russia and China agreed not to make war on each other, either alone or as allies with other powers. No other power making war on either of these nations was to be aided, directly or indirectly, by the other.
Benefits of a nation-wide dimension were soon to stem from this pact; in the meantime there came a personal and very welcome sign of released pressure from Moscow. Chiang Ching-kuo was sent back.
The first inkling of this development was a cable, signed with Ching-kuo’s name and addressed to his mother in Fenghua, saying that he was on his way home across the Sinkiang trail, bringing with him his Russian wife and children. None of his family—his father, his mother, or anyone else—had known for certain, all those years since 1927, whether he was alive or dead. During the infrequent periods when Madame Sun was on speaking terms with her brother-in-law she conveyed reassurances, but these statements lacked conviction. Now he was coming back hale and hearty. His mother in Fenghua wept for joy, and the town went wild. Chiang himself controlled his transports as a superior Confucian must, but there was no doubt of his delight.
Ching-kuo arrived. He had grown into a stocky, bristle-haired man, shorter than his father and with no resemblance to him in build. He had the gait and manners of a Russian. His Chinese was halting and he spoke only the dialect of the South, where he had lived as a boy. His handsome blond wife didn’t speak the language at all. She looked puzzled and out of place in her Chinese dress, and one cannot help feeling very sorry for her in those trying first weeks, responsible for the care of two clamorous children among the alien corn.
It developed that Chiang Ching-kuo not only looked Russian but felt that way. Twelve years in Moscow and Siberia without any contact with his own people had sent him back in an uncertain, chip-on-the-shoulder mood. It wasn’t long before he was at outs with both Chiangs. He had been brooding about the domestic situation; he refused to call Mayling “Mother.” Within several days he departed to Fenghua with his wife and children and set up housekeeping with his mother’s clan. However, a few months straightened out the worst of the confusion, and as the Japanese War continued father and son patched it up. By t
he end of a year they were good friends; by the end of two years they had forgotten there had ever been bad blood.
On the national scale, too, Moscow continued to play Santa Claus. It was clear that the Russians had no intention of joining in the war personally, but they were eager to provide the tools and let Chiang get on with the job, within the limits permitted by their Chinese deputies. China was furnished with a credit of one hundred million dollars (Chinese currency) and a four hundred-strong fleet of bombers and pursuits complete with pilot instructors. A fleet of transport trucks began running back and forth across Sinkiang and the eastern reaches of Russia. Litvinov at the League Assembly pleaded with the Western powers to do something about Japan. With virtuous horror he retailed the aggressive actions of the island empire—the attack without warning, the invasion, the blockade of the China coast. Russia was China’s only champion for two years; incidentally, every word Litvinov said was true. The League reacted as the Russians had known it would, with the usual formal condemnation, for which the Japanese cared nothing, and futile committee recommendations. China had long since learned that the League had no teeth with which to defend anybody. Litvinov’s gesture had no effect, but the situation seemed clear-cut. Chiang and the Chinese Reds were presumably as one.
Chiang was directing the defense of Shanghai from Soochow when the position in the treaty port became untenable. The Japanese poured in men and material until they outweighed the defending army, and though they lost sixty thousand men they continued to supply troops. Shortly after the Chinese order to withdraw on October 27, more Japanese landed south of the city in Hangchow Bay. After that there could be no step-by-step Chinese retreat, but only all-out flight. The way between Shanghai and Nanking lay open to the invaders, but the Japanese paused to send out a feeler, by way of the German Ambassador, for a peace offer. None was forthcoming, and they started again on the inland road.
Chiang prepared for the worst. Some of the government offices were immediately transferred to Hankow, and the most important of them he sent farther west, early in 1938, to the Szechuan capital city, Chungking. He had sized up Chungking during his flying tours in earlier years and noted it as being virtually impregnable. There were difficulties in carrying out this movement, for the war lords were suspicious and jealous of their position in that remote country. But it had to be done, and Chiang reflected that an advance guard of government officials might well save him trouble later on. With what remained of the government, a shadow organization, he and Madame settled in at Nanking to wait for the blow.
They were gloomy, anxious days. The Chiangs knew that the important part of the struggle was not among the soldiers, grievous as their losses were, but over in Europe and in Washington, where China was appealing for help and getting only diplomatic shuffling in reply. The matter was “indefinitely postponed” at the Nine-Power Conference in Brussels. The British felt that they could not afford to antagonize Japan, and in America, though public opinion was mildly indignant against Japanese action, nobody had yet organized it. Japan had been nibbling away so long at Chinese territory that we had got used to it, and were disinclined to pay attention to more of the same. It is odd to reflect that popular feeling might never have risen as high as it later did if the task of disseminating anti-Japanese propaganda had not been shouldered by American leftists, who knew their job and did it superlatively well.
But in spite of their efforts, in the late days of 1937 Europe thought China ought to write off her losses, settle again with Japan, and stop bothering people.
Donald’s reminiscences of the Generalissimo at this point are vivid. He had never been able to feel close to the Chinese leader, chiefly because of his stubborn whim never to learn to speak the language. Mayling was their only point of contact: Mayling was Donald’s shining star. He often declared her a better man than anybody else in the government, and if there was a hidden barb in these words for Madame’s husband, this was natural. Donald was smitten, in his peculiar antiseptic fashion, by his pupil and thought she wasn’t appreciated as she should have been.
But now, as third man in the party that fled before the Japanese vanguard with courage and as much dignity as one can muster in the act of flight, Donald found himself tardily beginning to appreciate Madame’s husband, too.
At the end of November the three of them flew away in the family flying boat to Hankow. News soon arrived of the sack of the capital city and its attendant horrors. The Japanese were later to admit that the occupation of Nanking was one of the greatest disgraces ever incurred by their army. For a few days the Western world was shocked out of apathy, and for years afterward psychologists were trying to explain the reason for these excesses. There was a theory that the men were so intoxicated by their speedy success in attaining Nanking that they got out of hand; the three-day license customarily permitted a victorious Japanese army lengthened out to three weeks, or even more, before the officers regained control. It is more likely, however, that the soldiers were still fuming with rage at having been held up at Shanghai, and Nanking was at once exhaust and revenge.
When the turmoil died down, the Japanese set out to follow the Chinese to Wuhan. Europe and America regarded this fact with dismay. Japan did mean business, then!
During their travels together deeper and deeper into China, Donald was puzzled and amused by the Generalissimo’s habit of “humming.” It was his only comment on the adverse situation, and Donald noticed that it seemed to soothe him. If the Australian had been interested in the private tastes of his Chinese friends, he would have known what Chiang was doing. Poetry in China is recited in a kind of chant. Chiang was repeating to himself, for solace and inspiration, the thoughts of the warrior poets who were his models of deportment.
The troops and civilian refugees adapted themselves with Oriental readiness to a life of extreme discomfort in Hankow. Houses were crowded, funds were short, prices soared. Yet they settled in somehow, and Chiang even started one of his academies going again, and continued to give the cadets his long, repetitive, and—it must be admitted—platitudinous lectures on the good life for hours on end.
Chinese have a nervous trick of filling in the pauses in their speech, those same places where the American says “uh,” with the two words that mean “this”—“chih ke,” or as it is pronounced, “jerga.” Chiang often uses it when he is making a speech. Its use would sound in translation something like this: “We must then exert ourselves heroically to make this, this, this, Republic of China wealthy and mighty, and to make this, this, this, this people’s livelihood more healthy.…” To while away the hours as they stood in the sun while the words poured on, irreverent young officers would count the number of times they heard “chih ke” in the course of the morning. Afterward they compared notes and argued about the differing results. As time went on they laid bets on it in advance, rather like a ship’s pool. Yet with all Chiang’s foibles, they loved him still. The more the Army was held up, the more fervently they clung to the symbol of their leader.
The news grew worse. A war lord who had once been induced to desert Feng Yu-hsiang and had been rewarded with the leadership of Shantung, now turned coat again and submitted to the Japanese. His action aroused more wrath than surprise in Hankow. It was the nature of the beast, and because of shortages and the size of the problem the Kuomintang could not have hoped to hold Shantung forever anyway. But he must not be allowed to get away with arrant treason: he was tried and executed. North was gone; now it was the turn of South. Near the end of October 1938 Canton fell to the invaders with scarcely a shot. The same monetary blandishments that had tempted the Shantung war lord, it was said, had turned the scale here. Indeed the easy conquest of a city that had shown it could be tough on occasion indicated that the gossip was well founded.
As the fall of Shanghai had menaced Nanking, so did Canton’s loss leave the way wide open to Hankow.
“We will move on,” said the Generalissimo. But he and his wife postponed their departure, amidst the bu
stle and exodus, until the last possible moment. Much to Donald’s nervous irritation, Chiang strolled about the airfield while the plane was readied, “humming” the whole while, mysteriously drawing strength and solace from ancient boasts.
The ineffably patient Dr. Hollington Tong (Dateline: China) shows how the Western idea of propaganda ran up against Chiang’s old-fashioned prejudices. The superior gentleman ignores the opinion of inferior people. To adapt his behavior and ideals to the standard of barbarians would be to lower himself. The Generalissimo would not have put it that way, but it is the way he felt. Good manners in China involve a lot of camouflage, courtesy, and gentle surface mannerisms calculated to hide all ugly emotion. But between themselves this surface is ignored. We don’t mean it, necessarily, when we sign our letters, “Yours sincerely.” Chinese don’t mean it necessarily when they talk about their own unworthiness. It shocks them, nevertheless, if someone drops that talk and puts up a boastful front. And so, when confronted as he was, time and again after the beginning of the war, with the Western conception of propaganda, when told that he and his people should speak up and boast nakedly, Chiang resisted. The Information Ministry had to fight him every step of the way.
There were difficulties in the opposite direction as well. Sometimes Chiang lost his temper with foreigners. Thumping the table was all right within the family circle, as it were, but really, when it came to talking like that to outsiders——
“When the Japanese were approaching Hankow,” says Dr. Tong rather sadly, “the British Chargé d’Affaires delivered to us ten conditions drawn up by the Japanese as the price of their agreement to a neutral zone in Hankow.… The Generalissimo was greatly displeased by the willingness of the British to transmit such demands from our enemy and unburdened his mind frankly in an interview with the British Chargé at which I was interpreter.”
Tong demurred and failed to interpret the full strength of the Generalissimo’s speech. Chiang persisted. “I sought the support of Madame Chiang,” confesses Holly. “She spoke to the Generalissimo in support of my position and they had a quarrel.”