by Emily Hahn
The Generalissimo is a man to whom discipline is one of the first laws of the universe. “I explained to them my views . . . . ” No doubt the Commanders felt exasperated at the stoniness of that wall. The first extract from Chiang’s Diary shows the same frame of mind:
December 11. This morning, while I was walking in the compound, I noticed two men on the Lishan Mountain, standing looking at me for about ten minutes. The incident struck me as singular. . . . Li Tien-tsai (head of intelligence work under Chang Hsueh-liang) suddenly called and requested an interview. As he had made no appointment, I was rather surprised at his unexpected call. During the interview Li expressed his doubt as to the wisdom of the bandit suppression policy. His views were the same as those of Han-ching (Chang Hsueh-liang) which were expressed to me the day before. Finding that his mind had been very much poisoned, I reprimanded him severely.
That evening the Generalissimo invited the Young Marshal with Yu Hu-cheng and Yu Hsueh-chung to dinner and discussion. Chang Hsueh-liang came alone, making excuses for the other two, and Chiang noticed that his single guest seemed uneasy and distracted. However, since the Generalissimo had spent several days scolding the Young Marshal and his friends, he put this behavior down to a natural sulkiness, and was not surprised.
Chiang Kai-shek went to bed that night in a quiet mood, thinking of what he had done, perhaps, in preparation for his morning’s entry in the diary. He got up at his usual time — five o’clock. It was five-thirty when he heard gunfire, first thinking that the troops had, after all, revolted. He sent to find out what it all was, and the chief of his personal bodyguard and the twenty soldiers he had brought with him reported that there seemed to be a mutiny. The guard suggested hastily that Chiang take to the mountain back of the house.
Clad only in his nightshirt and without his false teeth, the Generalissimo with two of his men, a guard officer and an A.D.C., tried to leave by one of the side doors. It was locked, and there was nothing for them to do but to climb the wall, “only about ten feet high and not difficult to get over.” Doing this, the Generalissimo slipped at the top of the wall and fell into the moat outside, a drop of thirty feet. He wrenched his back badly and for three minutes was unable to walk at all. Helped by his men he managed to climb part of the way up the mountain. As he explains, he thought the mutiny was local, and that when the men had discovered his escape they would be quieted down before daylight. The party gathered a few more of his bodyguards who were stationed at a little temple, and together they all reached the top of the hill.
Guns were fired close to the heads of the fugitives as they sat there resting. “I then realized that I was surrounded, that the mutiny was not local and that the whole of the Northeastern troops took part in it. So I decided not to take shelter, but to go back to my headquarters and see what could be done. I walked down the mountain as quickly as I could. Halfway down the mountain I fell into a cave that was overgrown with thorny shrubs and in which there was barely enough space to admit me. I felt exhausted. Twice I struggled to my feet but fell down again. I was compelled to remain there for a rest and to wait further developments.”
As it grew lighter the Generalissimo could see that the mountain was surrounded with troops, and he heard the firing of machine guns and grenades at the house. Then a search party came near to his cave, and he was discovered.
I heard one of the mutinous soldiers above the cave saying: “Here is a man in civilian dress; probably he is the Generalissimo.” Another soldier said: “Let us first fire a shot.” Still another said: “Don’t do that.” I then raised my voice and said: “I am the Generalissimo. Don’t be disrespectful. If you regard me as your prisoner, kill me, but don’t subject me to indignities.” The mutineers said: “We don’t dare.”
Having found him, Chang Hsueh-liang’s battalion commander seemed overcome. He knelt before the Generalissimo with tears in his eyes and asked him to come back to headquarters. It was after nine o’clock by this time. At the house the Generalissimo was enraged to hear that he must go to Sian to see the Young Marshal, but he had a lot to say to that young man and so he consented to enter the car. He was still under the impression that it was only Chang Hsueh-liang’s troops that had mutinied, and when he was taken to the building that was occupied by Yang Hu-cheng and saw the guards wearing the armlet that marked them as Yang’s men he could only suppose that the Shensi commander had been overpowered in his defense, and that the men had been looted even of their arm bands. He did not see Yang. As soon as he had arrived he demanded angrily that Chang Hsueh-liang come to him.
CHAPTER XXI
The Generalissimo Refuses to Discuss Terms
It was a strange moment when the two men confronted each other. Chang, the kidnaper, was pale and exceedingly respectful: he “stood with his hands at his sides.” Chiang, the kidnaped, was furious, outraged and as peremptory as if the bodyguards and soldiers who lay dead at Lintung were still at his back. He was completely transported with anger; all his instincts as a soldier, his religion of discipline, were affronted. Already he had twice commanded his captors to kill him rather than treat him disrespectfully, and to the marrow of his bones he meant it.
The interview is set forth in the Diary. Chang denied having known beforehand of the revolt and tried soothingly to argue with his chief. “I did not know anything of the actual developments, but I wish to lay my views before Your Excellency, the Generalissimo.”
“Do you still call me the Generalissimo?” snapped Chiang. “If you still recognize me as your superior, you should send me to Loyang; otherwise you are a rebel. Since I am in the hands of a rebel you had better shoot me dead. There is nothing else to say . . . . Which are you, my subordinate or my enemy? If you are my subordinate, you should obey my orders. If you are my enemy you should kill me without delay. You should choose either of these two steps, but say nothing more for I will not listen to you.”
That statement is the basis of the Generalissimo’s attitude throughout the Sian affair. His is a sturdily logical mind and he resented the faulty reasoning that had led the Northwest commanders to attempt a forced compromise. A leader is a leader, he said, and if he can be intimidated into taking an action opposed to his beliefs he is a leader no longer. Either these men would obey him or they were his enemies and as such should behave as logical enemies and kill him. A deposed leader was no good to anybody anyway. He must lead or he must die — that was discipline. There were no halfway measures for the Generalissimo. His was no suicide complex, as some people have believed; he was merely living up to his idea of himself. It was not even heroic of him to demand death, in his own estimation; it was right.
Chang could do nothing with him. He tried to talk about “the common will of the people” and the Generalissimo’s duty to them, but his chief went into paroxysms of rage at this and denied that the mutiny was popular. “Since you are a rebel, how can you even expect to command the obedience of your men who surround this house? . . . How can you be sure that your men will not follow your example and do as you are doing to me?”
The captive Generalissimo then grew kinder and urged the Young Marshal, in a purely friendly spirit, to realize his predicament — the Young Marshal’s, that is. “I am really afraid for you,” he said sincerely, without realizing for a moment the paradox of the statement. He proceeded to elaborate his earlier speeches and to explain his duty as he sees it. “I must preserve the honor of the Chinese race, and must uphold law and order. I am now in the hands of you rebels. If I allow the honor of the 400,000,000 people whom I represent to be degraded by accepting any demands in order to save my own life we should lose our national existence.”
Chang Hsueh-liang at last abandoned the argument and suggested that the Generalissimo come to his home to live where it would be safer; Chiang Kai-shek proudly refused his protection. He also refused to eat anything. In the course of the day he interviewed other people, and steadfastly rejected all offers of clothing and food. He fell asleep that night without having eat
en.
In the meantime, in Shanghai, the news had reached H. H. Kung first by way of Nanking, whither the kidnapers had telegraphed a message as to the Generalissimo’s capture, setting forth their demands for a future program of the government as the conditions of his release. They wanted eight things: reorganization in Nanking, an end to the civil war, release of all political prisoners, release of the members of the National Salvation Association who had been imprisoned in Shanghai (where Madame Sun had been a protest picketer before the prison), free speech, no restrictions on patriotic movements, a National Salvation Congress and, as usual, “execution of the will of Sun Yat-sen.” This, in short, was the ransom demanded for the return of China’s leader.
Kung went straight to Madame Chiang, who was interviewing various officials in the course of her work as Secretary-General of the Commission of Aeronautical Affairs, and broke the stupendous news. After the first shock, “I was troubled,” she writes, “because this was the only time in years that I had not gone with the Generalissimo on his trip, having been prevented from doing so by illness. I had the feeling constantly with me that if I had been in Sian this situation would not have developed.” Doubtless her feeling was correct; in all the Generalissimo’s dealings with life since his marriage she has been the softening influence. Mayling does not subscribe wholeheartedly to her husband’s worship of discipline: she has faith in freedom of thought and rational discussion. Had she been in Sian, Chiang might not have been so abrupt and censorious with his doubting commanders; feeling would not have run so high and so desperate. But it was too late to regret or to speculate on what might have been avoided: “There has been a mutiny,” was the way her brother-in-law told her, “and there is no news of the Generalissimo.”
It was not long that evening before the world heard of it. Shanghai even more than Nanking is a factory of gossip, and Shanghai ran wild. The Soongs gathered together — with the exception of Madame Sun, who though personally sympathetic was definitely on the side of the Northwesterners and could not be included in this council of war. Madame Chiang, Dr Kung, Donald and others of their immediate group went to Nanking by the midnight train, which arrives early in the morning. There was not much sleeping that night; they had too much to discuss.
Things were graver even than they appeared. It was far from certain that the Generalissimo was still alive; they had only the assurance of the mutineers for that. If he had been killed . . . but Madame Chiang refused to admit that possibility, though she was to have a tussle with many of the leading minds of the Government about it. They arrived early in the morning to find Nanking in a hubbub, and the Government people divided into two camps. One, of slightly larger number, was in favor of quick and stern retaliatory action. They wanted to make war on Sian immediately; to send bombers over the city and then to march against the Northwest. Already the Standing Committee had taken his appointments from the Young Marshal and denounced him. Madame Chiang was strongly against both actions.
I pleaded for calmness of judgment pending the receipt of definite news; for the avoidance of precipitate action, and for confidence in the spiritual resources of our people. I urged that the leaders in Sian, until proved otherwise, should be taken at their word, but every effort should be speedily made to get at the truth.
“Perhaps they have a reasonable grievance,” I hazarded.
This attitude met with few sympathizers. It was not the sort of reasoning the Chinese officials were fond of. Those who were loyal to Chiang were in a frenzy of revengeful rage, and it is rumored that those who were against him were eager to oppose his wife once and for all. If bombing Sian were to prove the fate of the Generalissimo, where would they find a better chance of getting rid of him honorably and painlessly? Only Mayling with her little coterie of supporters stood in the way. In France, Wang Ching-wei heard the news and immediately started for China.
It was decided that Donald should go to Sian immediately. He was confident of his influence with the Young Marshal; he knew him through and through, and was certain that he could counteract the effects of the other commanders’ arguments. Madame Chiang wired Chang that he was coming and waited for the reply, during which time she had “stormy conferences” with officials. By lunchtime there had been no answer from Sian, and Donald left for Loyang in order that he would be nearer Sian when the time came to go. Colonel J. L. Huang, the General Secretary of the Officers’ Moral Endeavor Association, went along as interpreter, for Donald would not be able to talk directly with Chiang Kai-shek. They carried letters from Madame to Chiang and to Chang Hsueh-liang, in the latter of which she pointed out to the Young Marshal “the disastrous effects his action would have upon the unity of the nation, and expressing my belief that he meant no harm to the country or to the Generalissimo by his imprudent and impetuous action; but that he should retrieve himself before it was too late.” The party reached Loyang to find that this city was still loyal to Nanking; later a wire arrived from Chang Hsueh-liang inviting Donald to come.
It is interesting to reflect that by the evening of December thirteenth everyone in Nanking knew that the Northwest leaders had all a hand in the mutiny, while the Generalissimo himself, lying cold and hungry and in pain on his bed, was still unaware of the part played by Yang Hu-cheng and the others. He had had a strenuous day, still refusing to eat although the battalion commander, a former Whampoa cadet, by arrangement with the servants had bought him food with their own money in order that he need not eat the bread of his captors.
“On this day,” he writes sturdily, “I did not take any food.”
The attendants served tea every hour and were very attentive to me. They showed great anxiety when they saw me take no food. Their sincerity moved me, because it was a spontaneous expression of their feelings.
At 11 o’clock Shao (Shao Li-tzu) again called. I felt a pain in my loins and my legs, and I could scarcely sit up.
Shao wanted Chiang to move from the Pacification Commissioner’s Headquarters to a more comfortable house; Chiang retorted that the place where he was, being an organization under the Executive Yuan, was the proper place for him as Chief. He added that if he were not sent back to Loyang he would die right there. Then he sent a long admonition to Chang, reminding him of Chen Chiung-ming’s rebellion when the young Chiang Kai-shek had stayed with Sun Yat-sen. He also inquired after Yang Hu-cheng, who had not made an appearance: he could not understand.
The day ended with another visit from Sun, one of the generals, who was evidently in a truculent mood, as he brought a pistol with him. He insisted upon the Generalissimo’s moving to the other house, and he stayed until two o’clock, when Chiang grew angry and ordered him to go. “I am your superior. When I order you to go, you should go at once.”
Sun went, and Chiang noted in his Diary:
I know that these rebels are very dangerous people. I am determined to fight them with moral character and spiritual strength and with the principles of righteousness. When I was young, I studied the Classics of our sages. After I attained manhood, I devoted myself to the revolutionary cause. There are many heroic deeds in our history. The martyrs of the former ages always defied death. In the pages of our history we find vivid descriptions of the circumstances under which they met their death. Being a great admirer of these heroes, I prefer to follow in their footsteps instead of disgracing myself . . . . At this moment, examining my own mind I find it clear and calm. My mental comfort is that I shall be able to carry out my life-long conviction.
Madame Chiang in Nanking carried on with her own fight next day. She continued with the Aeronautical Affairs Commission work and in the meantime went on explaining to and exhorting her opponents at conference after conference. The veil was slipping; criticisms of the Generalissimo were spoken openly in her presence, and wherever it was possible certain officials began to curtail her powers. When they demanded force, saying that the Government’s prestige would suffer if they waited for action against Sian, she asked them who was willing to take charg
e. This was too straightforward for the most pushing of the aspirants, and they held back.
“‘Anyway, the Generalissimo is already dead,’ said some.
“‘What is the life of one man compared with that of the State?’ asked another.
“‘She is a woman pleading for the life of her husband,’ was one taunt repeated to me . . . . ”
Madame Chiang kept hammering away at the military and Party officials, trying to convince them that hers was not merely a wife’s plea but an argument based on her certainty that Chiang was necessary to the State. “Place the armies in position if you so desire, but do not fire a single shot . . . . Meanwhile let us use every effort to secure his release. If peaceful means fail, then it is not too late to use force.” She proposed to fly to Sian herself, and the idea at first terrified everyone. “I was told that my going would be futile; that I would risk my life unnecessarily; that I would be captured, and tortured to make my husband submit to demands; that I would be held as a hostage, and, at the very least, that I would complicate matters.”
Later, when Madame Chiang had proved to be far stronger in her opposition to their plans than they had expected, some of those leaders were delighted that she should go. With both Chiangs out of the way, they hoped, things would move faster in their direction. For the time, however, the matter suddenly took a turn in her favor; Donald wired on the evening of Monday, the fourteenth, that the Generalissimo was alive and well. Further, Chang Hsueh-liang urged Dr Kung and Madame Chiang to come to Sian and see for themselves.