by Emily Hahn
They also agreed that Burma must be saved in order to shield India from Japanese invasion as well as to regain the use of the Burma Road. Chiang was more than willing to contribute troops to this end, and he was startled when his offer was virtually turned down. The British accepted only one Chinese division of seven thousand men, the combined Fifth and Sixth armies. Like Stilwell, Chiang construed this as a snub from the British—which in fact it was. The incident didn’t add to his love for the nation, and it intensified Stilwell’s Anglophobia. Later, when the first Burma campaign was lost, neither Chiang nor Stilwell saw reason to change his mind on the subject. But common misfortune didn’t bring these two any closer together.
Lieutenant General Stilwell was traveling out from America during the Generalissimo’s trip. He was close upon Chiang’s heels in New Delhi, where he heard the news of Singapore’s surrender. On March 3 he flew to Lashio, and there met Chiang, who had gone straight on from India to inspect the situation.
“Impressions of Lashio,” noted Stilwell: “strained attention of Fifth and Sixth Army commanders while Chiang K’ai-shek was talking to them; sharp, clipped staccato voice of Chiang K’ai-shek on upper porch of Porter House; hushed quiet below.…”
The reason for that strained attention and hushed quiet is revealed in Tong’s memoirs. That afternoon during the Generalissimo’s daily nap, owing to some mix-up in arrangements, all his English-speaking aides wandered off separately on informal tours of inspection. Scarcely were they out of sight when his telephone rang; headquarters wished to warn the distinguished visitor that an air raid was on the way. There the Generalissimo was with nobody to interpret for him, and there was H.Q. with nobody speaking Chinese. Chiang was in a rage when the Chinese returned. He had no time to tell them off properly; the Japanese planes were practically overhead. “We had barely time to scramble into a car and get out of town to a safe place before the raiders arrived,” confessed Tong. (Dateline: China, p. 183.) No wonder the Generalissimo’s voice sounded clipped and staccato. However, his greeting of Stilwell was cordial.
The ensuing two months moved swiftly and tragically. Angry echoes of that time still rumble through our post-mortem literature. The British editor of The Stilwell Papers says in chilly accents that the defensive campaign was doomed from the start and Stilwell showed limited vision in attempting it: “With Siam in Japanese hands … it was physically impossible to hold Burma south of Mandalay, because every position could be turned from the east.… As things stood in the summer of 1942, there were only two things to do: the first was to hold the frontier of India and the second to do nothing further, or if for prestige an offensive was considered imperative, to build up a sufficient force to drive the Japanese out of Burma once their maritime foundations began to crack and crumble. To attempt an all-out attack before this set in was little short of lunacy.”
What concerns us is a different matter; the impact of Chiang Kai-shek on Stilwell, and vice versa. In The Stilwell Papers we see not only the portrait of the Generalissimo as Stilwell saw him—pigheaded, ignorant, dishonest, preoccupied with piddling little questions of “face,” caring only for power, wildly disorganized in his military strategy, and, most damning indictment of all, hopelessly out of step with Western methods. We also see the American, at once keyed up by his responsibility and weighed down by it; full of nervous energy that went sour when it was frustrated; incapable—surely to an abnormal degree?—of appreciating that there are more points of view than one’s own, and that the world is a good deal larger than America. Putting it simply, Chinese are not Americans. Stilwell must have known this in theory, but when he ran up against the fact it always surprised and dismayed him, and set him on the boil.
Most of the Chinese officers under him, he discovered, were inefficient or dishonest or cowardly. They wouldn’t obey his orders. Often he suspected they had conflicting orders from Chiang. He stormed back and forth between Chungking and the rapidly deteriorating battle line, extracting promises, making demands, tearing his hair with exasperation over these impertinent people who not only didn’t behave like Americans, but weren’t even ashamed of their discrepancies. The inevitable defeat in May sent him with a handful of followers on the heroic march across the mountains into India, where—tired, ill, and in his way magnificent—he made the remark that went round the world: “I claim we got a hell of a beating.”
Not once did it occur to him that the Chinese method, which he considered skrimshanking and cowardly and unfair to China’s allies, the contemptible out-of-date traditional method of warfare, “defense in depth,” which meant in blunt words simply running away until the enemy was tired out chasing you—not once did it cross his mind that sometimes the Chinese way might after all be the right one.
Anyway Burma was now in Japanese hands, and the only way in to Free China was by air.
While Stilwell railed against the inefficiency of his allies and swore to get Burma back no matter what stood in his path, Chiang and his people in Chungking were taking the defeat even harder. With them it was not only a matter of pride. What now was to stop the Japanese coming on into China whenever they felt like it? Not fear of the Western allies, for they had been shown up in Hongkong and Singapore and the Philippines, as well as Burma. The Japanese would attend to Chungking as soon as they had the time. And the Chinese feared they would be helpless to resist, for other people were getting the supplies that had been earmarked for them. Their disappointment and apprehension were so keen that American observers began to worry for fear Chungking would collapse altogether.
The U. S. adviser on Far Eastern Political Affairs, Stanley Hornbeck, was disturbed. The Chinese, he said, were receiving no reassurance anywhere. Things were going badly for their allies, and though the U. S. Government had promised to send goods to China, these goods did not arrive. How long would the Chinese go on accepting the situation? Once they concluded that they wouldn’t get any aid, they would decide that it was not worth while to continue with their resistance, that the United Nations weren’t sure to win anyway.
“From now on there is only one way by which we can make sure of maintaining China’s confidence; we must deliver goods.”
This opinion was shared by the President and most of the State Department, but it was simply impossible to get enough material ready and shipped before it was snatched away again to meet some emergency elsewhere. Nor had the question of adequate freight transport yet been answered. Then, in June, part of the Tenth Air Force in India, which Chiang had been assured was for China, was whisked off to the Middle East.
“Bang!” wrote Stilwell in Chungking. “Brereton to go to Egypt with all the heavy bombers and all the transports he needs. Bang! The A-29s are to be held at Khartum and diverted to the British. Now what am I to say to the G-mo?”
What he had to say did not matter, as it turned out; the Generalissimo had heard the news before he brought it, and had plenty in turn to say to him. Madame, too, was full of reproaches. Stilwell was angry with her, but in spite of himself he admired the lady; his admiration shows in the diary through his acid remarks even when he is being most catty.
Chiang had a reply ready and written out for Roosevelt. He presented “Three Minimum Demands”: three U. S. divisions must be sent to India for him, with five hundred combat planes, and there must be a guarantee of five thousand tons a month flown in over “the Hump,” or “the ferry” as the flyers called the mountain range they had to cross between Burma and Kunming.
“All by the end of August!” exclaimed Stilwell. “Utterly impossible.”
It did look impossible. At that time all available planes, those of the U. S. Air Force as well as the commercial Sino-American line, the C.N.A.C, had succeeded in bringing in merely a fraction of this, an average of a hundred tons monthly. The Generalissimo’s advisers had acquired what looked like a fantastic faith in aircraft possibilities from Chennault, who was always claiming that the war could be fought cheaper, with better results, if only everyone would co
ncentrate on air power.
The Chiangs followed up their ultimatum with explanations and what Stilwell considered thinly veiled threats. They would have to make other arrangements, said Chiang, if these conditions were not agreed to. “China cannot go on without help.… The pro-Japanese activity is very strong.”
In his anger at being bullied Stilwell forgot that what Chiang said was in fact true, that China really could not go on much longer without help. Even when he did recollect this unpalatable fact he raged that it need not be true, that it was the fault of the Chinese. Why wasn’t their organization better? Why couldn’t these people behave like sensible Americans?
To make the situation more awkward for everybody concerned Chiang Kai-shek now decided that Stilwell was the villain; Stilwell stood between Chungking and Washington, and Chungking suffered at his hands.
In the Generalissimo’s experience it was customary that matters of top importance should depend entirely upon the personality of the man, or men, who acted as go-between. That was the way his world went. Suppose that the representative of another power should approach the Chinese Finance Minister or one of his ministry with a request for a loan. Among Asians there was a certain pattern that would be followed. If the Minister or his official happened to like the applicant, or saw the chance of making something on the deal, the loan would go through. But if the ministry man didn’t want to allow it, for no matter how personal a reason, it wouldn’t go through.
As Westerners we deprecate this attitude and claim that personal considerations never affect our decisions of public interest, though in fact personality does sometimes creep in. The Chinese, however, are accustomed to the method and to their own attitude; they know no other. They are quite frank about it, in their way, but their way is obscured by conventional politeness, and so Westerners often do not recognize the situation in all its naïveté. Stilwell didn’t grasp the fact that the Generalissimo was blaming him, Joseph Warren Stilwell, for the whole unsatisfactory state of affairs. Yet to Chiang it seemed clear that this bad-tempered officer was at the bottom of his troubles. Hadn’t Roosevelt promised planes and all the rest of it? Were they arriving? They were not.
“What is being done amounts to disobedience of [the President’s] orders,” said the Generalissimo in Chinese to the uncomprehending Stilwell. (Madame was standing by to interpret.) “Less than ten per cent of what he agreed to give China has been supplied. I do not entertain any doubt that the President is sincere. What has been done is perhaps without his consent or knowledge. As chief of staff to me, you are responsible for seeing to it that the promised material is forthcoming.”
Mayling didn’t interpret this part of her husband’s remarks. She, at least, realized that the American was not as resilient as her husband expected a chief of staff to be.
The censored interview was duly reported to Roosevelt, and Stilwell gleefully noted that F.D.R.’s reply was quiet and dignified and gave no satisfaction. Later he learned to his fury that F.D.R.’s message had never been sent, and he decided that T.V., who was being an absentee Foreign Minister in Washington, simply hadn’t forwarded it. Stilwell was steadily being wound round with tentacles of suspicion. Like many another Westerner before him, he couldn’t withstand the atmosphere of intrigue.
He was disappointed that the President did not simply take his irate advice to get tough with “the little dummy.” Instead, Roosevelt sent Lauchlin Currie out to investigate the matter. Currie talked at length with Chiang, and also with Stilwell, and afforded both of them a good deal of relief merely by listening.
Chiang took a grip on himself and returned to comparatively cordial relations with his chief of staff. Before the peacemaker left he was invited with Stilwell to one of the rare Chiang social occasions, a quiet dinner with the family: Dr. and Madame Kung, the Chiangs, and Madame Sun. Chingling was now a resident of Chungking and one of the group: she had left Hongkong when it became untenable and was amiably supplying living proof of the united front. Stilwell noted:
“Madame Sun is the most simpatica of the three women, and probably the deepest. She is most responsive and likeable, quiet and poised but misses nothing, would wear well.” (The Stilwell Papers is dedicated to her.) “… Chiang Kai-shek was late. He had been doing his evening prayers, which are not to be interrupted by anything. This is a new angle. Anyway, he takes it seriously, whether it’s sincere or not. Maybe he is fortifying his intuition by communing with his Maker. He leans heavily on his supposed knowledge of psychology.… How do you move a guy like that? How do you get his point of view? He can hurdle logic and reason by using his ‘intuition’; he dismisses proven principles and methods by saying that Chinese psychology is different; he jumps to a conclusion in keeping with a fancied resemblance to some former experience; and his obstinacy refuses discussion. He has lost all habit of discussion, in fact, because everybody around him is a Yes-man. No one dares tell him an unpleasant truth, because he gets mad. He’s in a hell of a fix, and the best he can hope for is to maintain the present unsatisfactory balance of influence by fear and favor. He is not taking a single forward step, or doing anything concrete to improve the position of China, and so, incidentally, his own.”
In Washington, Currie reported that the alliance between China and America was in danger; something must really be done soon to supply the material that had been promised so often. He also recommended that Stilwell be relieved. One must admit that he was right: either Stilwell or all the Chinese should have been removed from China.
The latter alternative was impracticable, and for reasons best known to themselves, the powers left Stilwell there, too.
In the calm that followed Currie’s oil-pouring, Chiang was ready to consider the new Burma campaign. He had already modified his Three Demands. The Military Council drew up a plan with four reasons for retaking Burma:
“(1) to establish a base from which to start a counteroffensive against Japan; (2) to prevent Germany, Italy, and Japan from joining forces in the Middle East; (3) to open a line of communications from India to China so that large quantities of supplies could be brought into China, ‘thereby enabling the Chinese to complete their plan for a general counteroffensive at an early date’; (4) to keep the Japanese too busily occupied to seize the initiative anywhere else in the Pacific.” (Romanus, Stilwell’s Mission to China, pp. 225–226.)
The plan was received with favor in Washington. The British were not enthusiastic, though for a time they did not oppose it outright. They felt that the importance of the four points did not warrant immediate attention, whereas their own problems did. Among themselves they accused Stilwell of the same fault he said they had—seeing only his own theater and ignoring the over-all picture.
A soldier without any personal reactions wouldn’t do much good at his job, so we should not, perhaps, carp at Stilwell for his insistence on Burma. He was determined to get back, just as MacArthur was determined to return to the Philippines. And he had other, excellent, reasons. Burma must be recaptured so that China need not continue to depend on the miserable trickle of supplies coming in over the Hump, and the time to get it back was as soon as possible. To do this he must reorganize the Chinese Army.
There is no doubt the Army needed reorganizing. Most of the same difficulties faced a reformer as had existed ten years earlier, when Chiang had just begun to eliminate the war lords. The fact that the Generalissimo had done remarkably well in the time, considering the other tasks he was forced to shoulder simultaneously, was lost on Stilwell, who was either ignorant of Chiang’s career or completely uninterested. All the American saw was that the Army wasn’t unified, that most of the men were loyal to their provincial commanders to the detriment of the nation’s welfare, and that there was a good deal of shortchanging in salary payments and grafting on commissary supplies. Stilwell decided that it was all the Peanut’s fault. (“Peanut” was Chiang’s code name for cables. Stilwell adopted it and finally preferred it to all the other epithets he applied to Chiang.)
“Troubles of a Peanut dictator,” he wrote in one of his private summaries. “At first the Peanut thought that military and political functions could not be separated, so he combined the authority under the military commanders. Now he finds that it makes the boys too powerful, and he’s been trying for a year to shake them loose, without success in Hupeh … Hunan … Honan … Kansu … Shansi … Chekiang … Yunnan … Why doesn’t the little dummy realize that his only hope is the 30-division plan, and the creation of a separate, efficient, well-equipped, and well-trained force?”
The “little dummy” had never seen such a force, much less observed how it worked, but Stilwell in his enthusiasm didn’t think of that. However, by dint of push and pull and getting at the Generalissimo in any way he could, whether through Madame or Washington, he made headway with his plan. He would take Chinese soldiers from the thirty divisions under direct control of the Kuomintang, not from the war-lord troops. He would train them in India, where most of them still remained after the flight from Burma; he would do this training on strictly American lines, so that they would not only be properly paid and fed for the first time in their experience, but would be in good shape for the Western type of offensive warfare.
Chiang did not enthuse about the project; neither did he turn it down. It was a new idea and needed digesting. He bargained: America must send a combat division of American men to help in the campaign; Washington must also increase his air force and air transport. The British must attack by sea at the same time the campaign was launched in North Burma, coming ashore in order to neutralize the Japanese at Rangoon. If these conditions were agreed to, said Chiang, he would consent to use not only that part of his army that was still in India. He would also send in other troops, the “Yoke Force” based in Yunnan.
His conditions entailed much arguing with Washington and the British. The solution never did satisfy either Britain or China. One would back out, and by the time that partner was reconvinced, the other would slide back. Driving these ill-matched allies in harness, Stilwell had his work cut out for him. His plans were realized after a fashion, before the end, but he had to wait and wait again for his revenge in Burma.