by Emily Hahn
Madame spoke of the missionaries of China:
Back in the United States it is the fashion to condemn them. China knows better. . . . As the Generalissimo and I have traveled from one end of the country to the other, we have been astonished again and again at the devotion of these missionaries and the hardships they endure. . . . I frankly do not believe we can save China without religion. Political force is not enough.
She went on to say that the regeneration of China was to be accomplished by economic reconstruction, by education, “and especially by the ideals embodied in the New Life Movement.”
“I could see,” says the writer, “from the sudden excited look on Madame’s face that in this movement . . . were all her mind and heart and soul.” They discussed the rules of the Movement, particularly the petty ones that had called forth so much criticism abroad. Madame Chiang said:
“Some politicians tried to seize the movement. They used the ideas of the puritan, not because they believed in them but on the theory that any discipline would mold the people to their will. My husband stopped that as soon as he heard about it.”
“Then there is nothing of Fascism in the movement?”
“No. China would never take Fascism or any form of the totalitarian state. We can’t ever be really regimented. Every Chinese is a personality. He will always think for himself. He has an ancient and magnificent culture, a sense of justice, a love of freedom. The New Life Movement has definitely rejected all forms of regimentation as being opposed to the principles of Dr Sun Yat-sen and so betraying the people.”
In that same month of August the American public saw what Madame Sun had to say in her article in the Forum, “China Unconquerable,”
The unfortunate policy of the Nanking government, which followed the course of internal pacification before resistance of external aggression, has even more played into the hands of the Japanese militarists. But during the past year the situation has changed. The anti-Japanese movement of the people reached a high level, and it became no longer possible for the Japanese to obtain their aims by threats and bluffs. The Chinese people have realized that it is possible for them to resist. They are no longer afraid of their “friendly neighbor.”
Mass opinion has made itself felt in China. In the growing demand of the people for resistance to the Japanese, all political differences have become of secondary importance. Military satrapy has given way to the rise of an intense patriotism, which gives hope for a genuine unification of the country.
From my viewpoint, the most important task before China is the realization of Dr Sun Yat-sen’s principle of democracy . . . . The democratic nations have witnessed how neglect of the first principle during the past ten years has brought great calamity to China. There have been endless civil warfares; the country has been devastated; millions of our people have perished and millions more been rendered destitute and desperate. The best minds of China have always demanded the cessation of civil warfare and conciliation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. Long ago public opinion condemned the insidious belief that before resisting Japan we must first crush the communists. Naturally, this policy was provoked by Japan. . . . far from being defeated, the communists have become the advance guard of the anti-Japanese resistance . . . .
It is a matter of congratulation that General Chiang Kai-shek has stopped further civil warfare and that the Kuomintang at last, in a recent plenary session, discussed the question of reconciliation with the Communist Party. But it is very regrettable that, in the manifesto of this plenary session, conditions for conciliation with the Communist Party have been laid down which will make a ready compromise difficult of achievement. There are such unreasonable demands as that the Communists cease propagandizing and abandon their political program of class struggle. How can the Communist Party renounce propaganda and the class struggle when those are the basic reasons for its existence? In France and elsewhere the communists have not renounced propaganda and the class struggle, and bourgeois parties are successfully cooperating with them. Chinese communists have repeatedly declared that they would not attack the government if the latter would really resist Japan. To work hand in hand to save the country is their only condition.
Therefore for reconciliation with the Communist Party it is necessary only to put into action Dr Sun’s principle of democracy, convoke the National Congress, change the electoral system so that the people could really participate and have a voice in the government, release the political prisoners, grant freedom of press, organization, and assembly, mobilize the masses for reconstruction of the country and resistance of Japanese militarists.
The sincerity of the communists in wishing to cooperate with the government was proved clearly through the Sian coup. They exerted every effort to maintain peace between the central government and the northeastern army. It was the communists who sponsored the release of General Chiang Kai-shek and the peaceful settlement of the Sian affair. They have done their utmost to preserve unity in China. Therefore if the Kuomintang desires to follow Dr Sun’s policy of alliance with workers and peasants, it must not reject the assistance of the communists in saving the country. Cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party is absolutely essential. All forces must be united.
Always remembering that both the interview and the article must have been written before the “United Front” developments took place in the Nanking-Communist relationship, that comparison is a good one from which to trace the subsequent evolution of Madame Sun’s and Madame Chiang’s attitudes. Madame Sun’s activities at this time were still unpublicized. She took a house in Hongkong but spent much of her time in Canton, the scene of her husband’s most significant triumphs, and her home was the Mecca of worshiping young radicals. As Nanking and her friends drew closer together she signified her willingness to come more and more into the open, and the year marked a progressive number of personal appearances and publications of her writings. Anything that she thought might help win the war, she did. Even so, she tried desperately to maintain the obscurity which the Russians have taught their Chinese disciples is the proper status of the individual, and her position was difficult, for she had been incorporated into the Sun Yat-sen legend; she was a heroine, a myth almost. To know Madame Sun was the highest ambition of many idealistic youngsters. Hero-worship and the submergence of the individual do not mingle. She was jealously guarded by her intimates, like royalty, and yet like royalty she preserved the paradoxical right to be simple, democratic, and to all appearances extremely easy to get on with. Politically, not personally, her relations with her family were still strained. Chiang Kai-shek was on sufferance with the Reds; they were watching him with a sort of grudging, cautious approval. The same attitude was maintained by Nanking in regard to Madame Sun and her friends. The net result of the situation was that Sun Chingling throughout almost three ensuing years remained in the region of Hongkong; she could not visit Canton after that city’s fall, so she was self-exiled from China. Madame Chiang and the Government traveled inland, working tirelessly for the war. Madame Kung went to Hankow; Madame Sun, the wife of Sun Yat-sen, Father of his Country, stayed in Hongkong in the strange position of refugee, a guest of the British government. She did what she could as a capable writer, an adviser, an example, head of the China Defense League, an inspiration to her group, but the fact remained that she was tied to the British island and forbidden by her own principles to go into China.
Madame Chiang’s attitude during the progress of the war swung toward the central point of the United Front at very much the same rate as did her sister’s. Certain writers have lately accused her of undying enmity toward the Communists, and it is generally believed among foreign Leftists that this unreasoning prejudice is connected in some way with her missionary friendships. Those who hold this opinion are, in the main, people who do not know China at all or who have been here on hasty trips, journalizing and listening to other journalists who make up a theory and stick to it forever after.
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nbsp; Whatever the former state of Mayling’s prejudices may have been, whatever the former state of the Communists’ prejudices, both have changed. The “ex-Communists” are represented in Madame’s group of workers to the same extent as are the other groups, and for this fairness she is always being accused by the conservative elements in the Government of Communist sympathies. One of her “warphanages” is established in Yenan, the Communist stronghold, and of course receives the same treatment and consideration as the others. The Leftists like working with her because she listens patiently to them and keeps an open mind in regard to all questions. She feels this to be her special duty in a world of extremists. She has managed so far to keep out of anyone’s camp.
She has no missionary advisers nor advisers of any sort; though there is no particular reason why she should not have, since she is not so malleable that advisers sway her in one direction or another, depending upon the latest interview. It is a difficult road she has taken. However, as long as the Communists call her Fascist, the Fascists call her Communist, the unregenerates call her missionary and the missionaries complain bitterly, as they do, that she will not listen to advice, she feels that she is probably being as fair to all sides as a human creature can possibly be.
(The Protestant missionary of today, in China at least, cannot be called an enemy of Communism by anyone save a characteristically touchy member of that movement. Whatever reprehensible economic processes originally produced this phenomenon and made him a part of the Chinese landscape, he is no longer a forerunner of Western trade. He takes his place in Chinese life. He keeps a watchful eye on the well-being of the poorest people, and in most cases his attempts to reform his world and to procure justice for the downtrodden, officious as they may be, are motivated by principles remarkably like those of Communism, and he knows it.)
During the siege of Nanking, Mayling’s chief work was still with aviation. The Chinese air force acquitted themselves well, and there is no doubt that one reason for this was that Madame Chiang took her duties so much to heart. She knew every plane and every pilot. Whenever they took off she was down at the field to watch; she climbed the hills to see the battles and was back on the field to tell them about it later when they returned — if they did return. At that time there was still an international group of aviators, chiefly Americans, flying for China, and they were loyal to Madame Chiang as they would never have been to the ordinary commander. One of them perpetrated a breach of the regulations one day when he wrote her directly stating a grievance; he was rebuked for this by his next in command and retorted, “I wrote to her direct because she’s the only man in the outfit who’ll show any action.” After that Madame made it possible for all of them to address their complaints and suggestions to her, and many difficulties were smoothed out in this manner, and the Air Force was better managed. The toll on her time and energy, however, was terrific. Many emergencies cropped up which she was untrained to meet: unexpected problems arose every day. She knew planes; in spite of her sensitivity to airsickness she has done more flying than anyone else in China who is not himself a pilot, but there is much more to air warfare than flying. There was one time when it was necessary to construct a new road near Purple Mountain in order to bring road-metal nearer the airfield; through the night Madame Chiang conferred with civil engineers making plans, and within a few days, according to her advice, the thing was done and done properly. Several months at this pace, however, tired her out. She could not attend to her other duties. Physically she has never been strong, though like so many small and wiry people her energy is amazing, and her health began to show the strain. One danger signal was a recurrence of the urticaria and sleeplessness that sometimes make life a burden to her. Then too she felt that she should concentrate on her work of organizing Chinese women. It became evident that she could no longer carry on, and she gave up the secretaryship.
For some weeks the exodus had been arranged, but not until November twentieth did the National government make an official announcement that they were removing to Chungking. For the time being, however, the chief officials were to remain at Hankow, nearer the scenes of fighting. Managers of factories, organizations of the Government and private enterprises went on ahead and began the gigantic task of making over the Szechwan capital into a city capable of holding the influx of people that was sure to be the result of this move. That same day Soochow was occupied by the Japanese, who were also advancing through Wusih and Hangchow. In Shanghai the native suburb of Nantao, which had already been partially destroyed by fire, flared up anew with twenty more fires. The next day the Japanese Embassy announced that Japan meant to take over the Customs in Shanghai, the Post Office, the Telegraph Office and the Courts. As the foreign Embassies departed from Nanking on the way to Hankow, Shanghai fell again into panic. The next ten days brought many tense moments to the international city.
Madame Kung was still occupying the house in Route de Sieyes. It was near the limits of the French Concession, and sometimes during the fighting shells fell near by, into the Chinese garden that had been the scene of so many official parties. Eling had decided not to accompany her sister to Hongkong, and though she has always been timid about small dangers she disclosed a new strength in the face of real peril. The woman who could not face a stray dog knelt quietly in her room during air raids, praying. One day a petty civil official brought word to her that a certain general then in charge of the Japanese forces that occupied Shanghai was requesting an interview with her. He had heard from a certain element in Chinese banking circles — and perhaps foreign circles too — that the Kungs as a family representing the banking interests of China would probably be willing to talk over peace terms with the enemy in return for a price. The Japanese general of course knew of the close relationship between the Kungs and the Chiangs, and he actually thought that he could thus bring the war to a speedy conclusion. He proposed to call upon Madame Kung in her own house.
Eling heard this remarkable suggestion calmly, and then reflected while the go-between waited for her reply. Her friends urged her not to consider it: she might be held as hostage: it was exceedingly dangerous. Finally, “Well,” she sighed, “I see all kinds of people; why shouldn’t I see this Japanese general? Perhaps, though, you should warn him that I have a very frank nature. Tell him he may come. If he doesn’t mind being insulted, he may come.”
The General did not pursue the matter further. Eling would never confirm or deny the story.
The day the Government started work officially in Chungking, December first, Mussolini made an official suggestion that China approach Japan for peace terms. Nobody took this hint, but it was not a surprise to anyone that on the following day the German Ambassador to China, Dr Oskar Trautmann, returned to Nanking from Hankow to see the Generalissimo and Madame Chiang, who were still in the capital overseeing the removal of the Government. The scene that took place, though it has never been officially confirmed, is now famous. Dr Trautmann was shown into Madame’s working-room where she sat at her desk. She greeted him cordially, having known him for many years. Somewhat ill at ease, he chatted with her for a while, and then placed the paper of German suggestions on her desk.
“This is not my personal message, you understand, Madame,” he said.
Madame Chiang quietly put the paper aside. “I should think not,” she said. “Tell me, how are your children?”
Three days later Dr Trautmann returned to Hankow with the Generalissimo’s uncompromising reply: no peace negotiations were possible so long as Japan continued to exert armed force against China. There were air raids on Nanking every day. On December seventh, just five months after the beginning of the war of resistance, the Chiangs left Nanking by plane. Whatever could be saved of the air force was removed; the ammunition, gasoline and hangars which could not be taken with the departing army were burned. Even iron gratings from the roads were taken up and carried along to Hankow. The fire raged long after the planes had winged their way upriver, but a week later, when the Ja
panese forces at last entered the city, nothing remained but charred ruins.
Ten years had elapsed since Chiang Kai-shek began his task of unifying China as the representative of a new, independent government in Nanking.
CHAPTER XXVII
Mayling Aroused
“A government in transit” was the self-imposed title of the Chinese organization during its stay in Hankow. Although the official capital for the duration of the war was now Chungking and most of the Ministers traveled back and forth between Hupeh and Szechwan, arranging and preparing and settling into the rocky city, the Chiangs and most of their supporters were to remain in Hankow for eleven months. Madame Chiang and the Generalissimo lived in a small house in Wuchang, across the river from the main city itself. Dr Kung and Madame Kung lived in a flat in the building of the Central Bank of China. T.V. Soong, now President of the Bank, was also in Hankow. The city was thoroughly modern and as comfortable as Shanghai itself; the life was urban and urbane until the last period, save for Japanese air raids and a shortage of certain materials, type among others.