The Soong Sisters

by Emily Hahn

  Though Donald had been cheerful in his wire, Chiang was not really very healthy just then. He had spent the day with the Young Marshal, during which time they had an interesting conversation on the subject of his Diary, which the commanders had seized and read. Among other items that caught Chang’s eye was a remark pertaining to himself, in which the Generalissimo had said “It is a pity that Han-ching has not more character.” The Young Marshal’s reaction was typical; he bowed to the impeachment, examined himself, and went straight to Chiang to confess that the accusation was correct: “Your great fault,” he allowed himself to retort, however, “is that you have always spoken too little of your mind to your subordinates. If I had known one tenth of what is recorded in your diary, I would certainly not have done this rash act.” For Chang and the others had been very much impressed by the Generalissimo’s personal record, his “loyalty to the revolutionary cause” and his determination to bear responsibility for the country. Besides, there had been another argument as to Chiang’s removal from Headquarters; Chang said he wanted to send his chief secretly back to Nanking and it would be impossible from that place, but Chiang said he wouldn’t leave Sian at all unless he could depart openly and “in a dignified manner.” Then he was told that Donald had arrived.

  He saw the foreigner at five o’clock that afternoon. “I was very much moved by his loyal friendship,” he said. Tears came to his eyes at this first proof that he was not indeed lost. Donald gave him Madame Chiang’s letter and persuaded him, with the additional urging of the Young Marshal, who promised to send him to Nanking soon, to move into the other house . . . .

  Why had there been so much difficulty and insistence upon this moving? The Generalissimo at that time, at least until four o’clock that afternoon — he saw Donald at five — had not realized that Yang Hu-cheng was deep in the conspiracy, and so it had seemed proper that he stay in the Executive Yuan building, Chang Hsueh-liang, however, knew that he himself was a better and a safer friend to Chiang Kai-shek than was Yang. J. L. Huang, who was waiting outside in hopes of getting a glimpse of his leader, caught a few words spoken by Chang to a subordinate: “If we can’t move him today I’m afraid they will change guards tonight,” The guards at that moment were Chang’s own; had they been changed to Yang’s men it is likely that Chiang would never have come out of Sian alive.

  Having changed both his quarters and the tone of his relations with the Young Marshal, the Generalissimo as one might suppose felt a little better about things. Chang now dared to tell him of the eight proposals that had been sent to Nanking and at the same time confessed that he was not going to find it as simple as he had pretended it would be to get the Generalissimo out of Sian and safe to Nanking. Chiang repeated that he would not consider any proposals so long as he was a prisoner, and there followed more arguments both from Chang as radical and Chiang as disciplinarian. They ended on the same note: the Generalissimo would not be forced to do anything. The Young Marshal departed at last, probably controlling his temper with difficulty. What was one to do with the man now that one had him?

  Left with Donald, Chiang had time for a little rapid discussion as to ways and means. Madame, he said, must not come to Sian until after his death, but if it were possible he should like to see J. L. Huang . . . .

  Meantime that jovial and enormous man had not been permitted so much as a glimpse of his chief, and he was growing worried. Madame Chiang’s instructions had been to interpret for Donald and her husband, and above all to see him and to make sure of his state of health. The Young Marshal was obdurate; Huang couldn’t interview the Generalissimo.

  “But how am I to go back to Nanking in that case?” demanded the Colonel. “How do I know he is really alive? What am I to report to Madame? I could never admit that I haven’t even seen him.”

  Obviously the Young Marshal was not his own boss. Somebody else was objecting. However, he admitted the reasonableness of the argument and thought for a while; then at last he had an idea. Huang, he said, could see the Generalissimo, but the Generalissimo couldn’t see Huang. A peephole was arranged in the door to Chiang’s apartment by the simple expedient of rubbing a tiny space in the whitewash that covered the glass. With a gun jabbed into his capacious back and a stern-faced guard on either side, Huang gingerly bent and peered through this hole. He saw his Generalissimo lying in bed, propped up on pillows and evidently in deep conversation with Donald who sat by his side, while the interpreter stood at attention. Huang was allowed to stare at this tableau for a few seconds, and then was drawn back from the door. Anyway, he had seen the Generalissimo and he had seen him alive, though he looked thin and ill. The Colonel allowed himself to be taken back to his quarters nearby in a more cheerful frame of mind. Donald was to fly to Loyang next day to telephone Madame Chiang, and Huang might even go with him and return to Nanking with firsthand news.

  It was high time for Madame Chiang’s peace of mind that something like this be done. Nanking would not be convinced by Donald’s telegram that Chiang was really safe. It was a deep-laid plot, some people insisted, cooked up between the Australian and his old ward, the Young Marshal, to get yet more of the Soongs into their murderous clutches. Far better to send troops and planes, they cried, than to endanger any more people.

  The morning of the fifteenth the Generalissimo, who knew that Huang had arrived with Donald and had several times asked to see him, grew impatient when they put off his request. “I am very anxious,” he wrote in the Diary, “to have J. L. Huang come to see me in order that he might carry a letter back for me to my wife. For all I know, that telegram of the other day may never have been despatched.” Although Chang was unwilling and had to argue with his conspirators about it, Huang was at last permitted into the guarded room, not knowing what the Generalissimo had in mind. Neither, evidently, did the Young Marshal, for his orders to the Colonel at the threshold were very firm.

  “You must not talk to him at all,” said Chang.

  “But how can I help it? He’ll think I am mad if I stand there without a word,” expostulated Huang.

  “You may just give him greetings then, and polite talk like that,” said the Young Marshal. “But you can’t talk about any of his affairs, and he can’t talk to you either.”

  “And if he does?”

  “Then you won’t be permitted to leave Sian,” said Chang grimly. With that they both stepped inside the room, into Chiang’s presence.

  Whatever stipulation Chang Hsueh-liang had made to Huang, he had not dared give many orders to Chiang Kai-shek. The Generalissimo, who had at last been persuaded by Donald to take food, was brisk and chatty. He asked after his wife’s health and then demanded paper and pen and began to write, while Huang stood there respectfully and wondered what his fate was to be. The Generalissimo signed the letter.

  “This is to be given to Madame,” he said, but did not hold it out. “Letters sometimes get lost, and I am going to read this to you so that you can remember what was in it, in case you cannot deliver it.” With a clear voice he read:

  As I have made up my mind to sacrifice my life, if necessary, for my country, please do not worry about me. I will never allow myself to do anything to make my wife ashamed of me, or become unworthy of being a follower of Dr Sun Yat-sen. Since I was born for the Revolution, I will gladly die for the same cause. I will return my body unspotted to my parents. As to home affairs, I have nothing to say further than that I wish you would, to gladden my spirit, regard my two sons, Ching-kuo and Wei-kuo, as your own children. However, you must never come to Shensi.

  He read this letter aloud three times to impress it upon J. L.’s memory, and the Colonel’s heart, as he stood respectfully listening, sank into his military boots. He would never get out of Sian now, he knew.

  Outside the room, the Young Marshal flew at him in a fury and took the letter away. “How could I help it?” asked Huang reasonably. He went to his own quarters and awaited his fate, which arrived fairly promptly in the persons of two polite officers and
some soldiers.

  “We have been so much ashamed of putting you into this dreadful room,” said the leader. “You understand it was because you arrived unexpectedly that you have been so inconvenienced. We apologize.”

  “Don’t mention it,” said Colonel Huang. “The room is very comfortable. I am quite happy here.”

  “No politeness, please; it is a most unworthy room and you deserve a better one. We have been able to prepare one in a house a little way off from here, so if you don’t mind moving — ”

  “But I see no reason whatever to move,” said the Colonel graciously, trying to stave matters off as long as possible. “I cannot imagine a better place than this. I am near my chief; I am quite comfortable — ”

  “You are too kind,” said the officer. “No, you will be much better in the new place. Really, I insist.”

  Colonel Huang gave in. “Since you insist,” he murmured. “But I assure you that if I had the choice, I would remain here. I am used to campaigning; I have slept in far worse beds. I assure you — ”

  “No politeness, please,” said the officer, bowing.

  Then they took him to jail.

  CHAPTER XXII

  Chiang’s Release

  That letter’s message was to reach Madame anyway, through the agency of Chang Hsueh-liang’s old friend James Elder, who flew to Nanking. In the meantime Donald went without Huang to Loyang on that same day, as he had planned, and they had several long talks by telephone between Loyang and Nanking. Dr Kung could not go to Sian, but Madame Chiang suggested T.V. as a substitute escort for herself. Nanking was opposed to the whole plan; Nanking was acting up seriously, and she was fighting desperately to prevent open war on Sian. The Aeronautical Commission had been placed under direct control of the Ministry of War for fear she would prevent the bombing of the Northwest capital. She urged Donald on the telephone to come away, but he was confident he could avert the catastrophe.

  “There may be another way, but I cannot say more.”

  Elder’s arrival with the message from Chiang had given her both hope and fear. If the Generalissimo’s noble invitation to kill him regardless were to reach the ears of the hotbloods, nothing could prevent the war. Madame Chiang began to arrange for planes in case they could make a getaway from Sian; she had understood from Donald’s last words that Chang Hsueh-liang would probably have to quarrel with his friends in order to effect a rescue, and it would be a ticklish business at best.

  The days that followed were days of intense agony and activity for me. Military forces had been in action already east of Sian, and although snowstorms at Sian prevented planes from crossing the mountains, I never knew when some plane or other might get through and bomb the city as they were bombing points along the railway line between Loyang and the mountains.

  Shanghai reflected the turmoil of excitement and ignorance that prevailed at Nanking. The writer remembers those days vividly, when all the foreigners who had been favorable to the Nanking government groaned at what they thought was the utter failure of those years of reconstruction; it was like watching a well-loved convalescent who had been slowly and surely climbing out of the shadow of death suddenly fall into a relapse. There was one day when a high official of the Ministry of Finance burst into her house, his voice breaking with grief, his eyes filled.

  “They want my chief (T.V.) to go!” he cried. “He’ll never get out alive!”

  As a matter of fact, however, things were looking better for the Generalissimo. General Chiang Ting-wen, one of Chiang’s own men and bearer of the same surname, though he was no relation, had been in Sian all this time. Now he was coming down to Nanking, carrying the Generalissimo’s orders to the Government to stop bombing and fighting for three days. These commands were convincing, though many of the officials insisted that Chiang had been forced to write them; with this armistice Madame Chiang went to work as quickly as she could. She prepared the Chiangs’ private plane, the Boeing, with Julius Barr, and made plans to snatch Chiang out of Sinkiang if Chang Hsueh-liang should fly off with him there.

  T.V. flew up to Sian on the twentieth. Mayling had tried to go with him, but at the last minute she was forced to compromise and to stay in town a little longer, with the promise that nobody would attack Sian as long as her brother was there. Chang advised her, too, to wait until the fighting was stopped.

  Donald and T.V. returned together to Nanking on the twenty-first, a week after the kidnaping, and there was a council of war. The result was that Madame Chiang determined to go back with both of them on the following day. The worst corner had been turned; the most sensational newspapermen still shouted that the Generalissimo had been killed and the rest of it was all a big plot, but it seemed fairly obvious that all the Soong faction would not continue to go back and forth freely between Nanking and Shensi if that were the case. Madame Chiang was certain, too, that it was the moment for her to step in and help the embattled parties to arbitrate. There was a good deal, no doubt, to be said for both sides, but without her influence it is questionable if any one would have been in a mood to listen.

  “It was interesting to me,” she writes, “to hear from Mr Donald that Han-ching had definite plans to fly out with the Generalissimo in the event of an attack. I felt then that I understood Han-ching’s mentality, and that gave me more confidence, not only in my intuition, but also in my belief that I could reason with him when I had the opportunity to talk with him. The situation at Sian was, I reflected, that Mr Donald had laid the foundations, T.V. had built the walls, and it would be I who would have to put on the roof.”

  During these days Mayling had undergone terrific strain, which in her waking hours she never admitted. She lived in the Kungs’ house with Eling, who had hurried to Nanking as soon as she realized she would be needed, and the older sister was a great comfort because she believed firmly that Chiang was not dead. Mayling was tremendously busy every second; she never even wept. There was no time, and she does not cry easily. As long as there was hope that Chiang lived — and she never lost hope during those days of waiting — she had a heavy responsibility and she could not shirk it. There were many different undercurrents with which she had to battle: the extremists — among them her own husband — who were sincerely sure that it would be best for the country to take firm measures with the rebels; the plotters who hoped to advance themselves by a complete debacle; the many old-style Chinese whose minds could not see beyond a tangle of petty intrigues, whatever their intentions may have been, and who cluttered up the time to an extent that must have been maddening for Mayling’s sharp, Western-trained mind. Above all this was the fact that they were all against her as a weak woman who could not help but rationalize her own behavior. Many of them could not conceive of any woman’s taking action for other than personal, sentimental reasons, and this idea colored their opinion of Madame Chiang’s attitude and went far to nullify her speeches. It was small wonder that those very natural feelings that they felt they must guard against were stifled in Mayling’s heart until she herself could not guard against them, during the few hours when she slept. Then and only then, Madame Kung told her later, did she weep. In her sleep she cried out and wet the pillow with tears.

  Those first moments of flight must have been sheer bliss to her after the hectic days and hours of worry and self-control. Even at Loyang, where she saw and noted “bombers fully loaded for action,” she was buoyed up with excitement and hope, though now she began to reflect upon the danger she was running. “As I boarded the plane I took the precaution to impress upon the officer in command of the Loyang air force that no planes were to approach Sian till ordered to do so by the Generalissimo.” But would they obey that command?

  They reached the Sian air field. As they circled about to land, she gave her revolver to Donald and told him to shoot her if she should be seized by the troops. Donald promised: “But I wouldn’t have done it,” he said later, grinning. He for one had no doubt of his Young Marshal.

  Chang met them at the p
lane, “looking very tired, very embarrassed, and somewhat ashamed.” In her usual manner, Madame Chiang greeted him and stepped out into Shensi, pausing only to ask superbly that the customs people should not go through her luggage, “as I disliked having my things messed up.” She shook hands politely with Yang Hu-cheng. They had a sociable drive to Chang’s house, and Mayling asked for tea before she went to see her husband, wondering meanwhile if they intended to let her see him at all. There seemed to be no trouble in that respect, so she begged that Chiang should not be told of her arrival until she could see him for herself and assure him that she was safe.

  Chiang tells of her arrival in a paragraph that shows how much in the dark he was as to developments, and how he was waiting for the end.

  December 22. All day today I hoped to hear the noise of airplanes and guns, as from the agitated appearance of Chang, when he came to see me last night, the troops of the rebels must have been badly defeated and those of the Central Government must be pushing forward very quickly. All day there was no sound of planes. My wife arrived at 4 p.m.

  I was so surprised to see her that I felt as if I were in a dream. I had told T.V. more than once the day before that my wife must not come to Sian, and when she braved all danger to come to the lion’s den, I was very much moved and almost wanted to cry.

  “Why have you come?” he demanded as she walked in. Madame Chiang had to exert herself to keep from exclaiming in shocked anger at his appearance. She managed to do so, however; she has learned to control the temper that used to be such a problem to her teachers at school.

  “I’ve come to see you,” she said, almost lightly.