The Soong Sisters

by Emily Hahn

  Dr Kung pledged five million dollars of Government money to start the Co-operatives, and assumed the Presidency. Madame Chiang became an adviser, and T.V. Soong was on the Committee. Madame Sun in Hongkong entered wholeheartedly into the scheme and did all she could to show her approval and good will. Madame Kung was asked by her youngest sister to be a director, for the project of the Co-operatives reminded her of an old idea of her own, but prospect of such a responsibility with its attendant publicity did not appeal to her, and she would consent only to be an adviser, a position she holds today. Her interest in “Indusco,” however, goes very deep.

  When Rewi Alley was first requested to join. Sir Archibald Clark Kerr, wishing to make certain that the project would not die from neglect, spoke to Madame Kung and asked her if she would be willing to back it up. Madame Chiang at the same time urged her to lend her special support and interest, since Mayling foresaw that she herself would be too busy with the Women’s Advisory Committee and the work attached to it to do the Co-operatives justice. All these people realized the potential importance of the Co-ops, and Eling, talking it over with Kerr and her sister, remembered her reflections in Hankow during the time of the split between Chiang and Borodin. In those days she had first dreamed of some way to reconcile the battle between Capital and Labor. She had been brought up as the daughter of a revolutionary; she had married the heir to generations of capitalists. In her family the struggle was always the biggest bone of contention. She had seen the Chinese rally around Borodin, though to her own mind his promises were vague; they had not a chance, she decided, of ever coming true. Hers is not a political mind: she ignored slogans and war cries, and looked to the economics of the problem. Like many capitalists of other nations she asked herself, why could not Capital and Labor be friends? She did not waste time supposing that the differences between them would ever disappear; she hoped instead for a happy-family relationship in which Capital would be the big brother and Labor the little one. This state of affairs, she said to herself, could never be achieved through legislation. In her experience legislation in such matters has always led to more trouble, even to social upheaval. Madame Kung quite frankly has a horror of bloody strife between social classes: she has seen plenty of it: she thinks it wasteful and unnecessary — she maintains that such wars are the result of misunderstanding, deliberately cultivated by certain self-seeking factions. She considers any war save one of self-defense a heinous crime.

  Some years ago the concept of an experimental factory formed in her mind. Why not try out her ideas in the laboratory? An engineer can make his plans and communicate them to his contemporaries by means of blueprints, but only other engineers will be able to understand what he is showing. The conflict between the “Haves” and the “Have-nots” is universal, and Eling wanted to do something in support of her theories that would be plain to the entire world. A little laboratory-factory in a model village, a cotton plant and mill, schools, training centers for mothers, community enterprises — a community butcher, for example; a modern hospital; good bathrooms — why should it not be done? She resolved to interest some of her friends in this idea and carry it out if it were at all possible. Most of all she cherished the hope of lightening the household work of Chinese women with running water and mechanical appliances. What was the use of all that training in the care of children, what was the use of education if the women were to continue in slavery to their houses?

  “Unless Capital voluntarily helps Labor,” she argued, “there are always ways and means of getting around the legislative bodies, and that’s not only true of China. Our factory might show the men at the top that it’s better in the long run to play fair. Why, it might even put a stop to strikes!”

  She went further. The cotton mill shares, after the project began to pay, could be retired and used as bonuses for the workers, who would thus become part owners as they grew old . . . . “It may not work,” she said, “but it’s worth trying, even on a very small scale. We can try to settle other problems too, while we are doing this. Child labor in China — you can’t stamp it out just by saying it’s wrong to make children work. It may be wrong, but if it’s a choice between working and dying most parents will set their children to work. We can make their work lighter and lighter until they are set free.”

  These thoughts recurred to her when she conversed with Rewi Alley, and in the hopes of putting some of her theories into practice she began to study the “Indusco.” She has always interested herself especially in textiles and their manufacture, perhaps because Charlie Soong when she was a child had been fascinated for a time by a venture to make silk out of straw. He had invested some money in the development of this process, which undertaking came to an inglorious end when the chemist died and his son could not make the formula work. For thirty years, however, the memory of her father’s interest in artificial silk stayed in Madame Kung’s mind and led her into a similar venture in 1939.

  The Co-operatives suffer somewhat from an excess of advertising; they have been overpuffed by zealous foreign workers, and the public has been led to expect more than it is getting in quick results. In actuality, however, the development is proceeding very satisfactorily and a host of transplanted workers are again occupied, while the Chinese armies are being supplied with necessary material which until now has been imported from foreign factories, often Japanese! Carefully planned to meet the peculiar problems of an agricultural country, the strength of the Co-operatives lies not in size or extent of each center of industry, but in its very limitations. Each co-operative is small and works on an economical basis; the machinery is primitive and light and can easily be moved inland and further inland when necessary.

  In Hankow during this period of transit and transition other economic projects were absorbing the time and energy of the Government. While the Ministries were working on moving factories bodily to the interior, Madame Chiang was concentrating on the women workers. The frightful state of affairs that existed in Nanking after the Japanese occupation must not be duplicated in Hankow after the exodus. They knew now what to expect. Factory girls were drilled and taught how to travel when in flight from the Japanese; everything was planned and when the time came the plans worked out admirably.

  Madame Chiang called a conference of women in May, at Kuling, for ten days, from the twentieth to the thirtieth of the month. The fifty leading women who fairly represented all groups in China attended, and a standing committee, thereafter called the Women’s Advisory Committee, was elected, composed of Mesdames H. H. Kung, Feng Yu-hsiang, Ma Tso-tsi, Cang Hsiao-mu, Chen Cheng, Chang Chih-chang, Chiang Kai-shek and others. There are nine departments: the General Affairs Board, the Training Department, the Publicity Department, the Livelihood Department, Production, War Relief, War Area Service Corps, Refugee Children and Co-ordinating Committee.

  The most pressing problem at that time was that of the War Orphans, children lost or left without parents after the Japanese air raids. By the time the Chiangs arrived at Hankow the number of these children had swelled to thousands, and for as long as the Government was in the Hupeh capital Madame Chiang was busy with the work of housing, feeding and clothing them. Homes were made ready for them in Chungking, and the plan of “adoption” was evolved whereby any interested person anywhere in the world could pledge himself to supply at the cost of twenty U.S. dollars a year for each child the living and educational expenses of as many as he wishes to take under his wing — or, at any rate, into his pocket. The adopter receives a photograph of his child and a yearly report of his progress at school and in the orphan community.

  The training classes began in Hankow on a far smaller scale than they now exist. Two batches, the first of fifty girls and the second of one hundred and twenty, were sent out from there. These girls, selected in the main from small towns throughout China, traveled as they could to the capital and were trained as teachers, but teachers with a special mission. They were sent into the country in “teams” of thirty, and from their head
quarters there they established centers of instruction in schools, temples or any public buildings available, where they held classes in sanitation, rural economics, fundamental principles of reading, writing and arithmetic, and first and foremost, the war and its significance. Some of them have been doing hospital work.

  The plan has developed so that now there are new centers of training, but the nucleus of the work is Madame Chiang herself. It is her personality that has worked the miracle of turning these representatives of the middle class, women from what was formerly the most sheltered group of femininity in the world, into young Amazons of civilization. In Hankow she went every day to the classes and talked as only she can talk, nervously, burningly, eagerly, sincerely, until in a burst of young enthusiasm mixed inextricably with hero-worship the girls made themselves over into what they knew she would want them to be. As the classes have grown larger it becomes increasingly difficult for Mayling to give so much time to each individual group, and one of her greatest struggles with her doctor centers about the amount of energy she is allowed to give to public speaking in the classroom every day. This combination of governmental principles and teaching appeals naturally to her: she likes the theory and she likes the work itself. The smallest details of the training school reflect her personality — the fact, for example, that the food is served to the students in individual bowls instead of a communal grab bag; the highly sanitary arrangement for dishwashing (rinsing in three waters, just as Mother teaches us at home); the incredibly neat little barracks where the girls live when they are out in the fields; above all, the floors, Chinese floors, yet scrubbed and free of crumbs and fluff and debris — these are superficial evidences of Madame Chiang’s preoccupation with cleanliness and sanitation. Anyone who knows rural China would look at these establishments in amazed disbelief.

  What goes deeper is the appearance of the girls themselves and the manner in which the classes are conducted. These teachers are not the delicate, pallid little flowers who walk along the streets of the bigger cities. They are of sturdier stock; taller, ruddy of face, with a freer stride. It is not that they have developed in this way since Madame started her training classes, but that she has released for service this class of women which before lived in a prison of family self-sufficiency. It is impossible to listen to one of them at work without feeling a deep admiration for the manner in which the old methods of teaching are here utilized to impart new ideas. In the mud-floored rooms of a rural middle school or the great three-walled chambers of some old Chinese house anywhere in Free China, a class of small children and worn farmer women who have been working in the fields all day and can spare only the twilight hour chant after the teacher simple truths about hygiene, moral philosophy and nine divided by three.

  After Madame Kung went to Hongkong and settled into a small house on the Bay, while there was still communication between Hankow and Hongkong, Madame Chiang managed to make a visit to her sister. She usually gets away from work once a year for a few weeks, though she does not like to leave the Generalissimo, who has not been to Hongkong since the beginning of hostilities. Madame’s departure, though it was kept as secret as possible and was for no more heinous purpose than a short rest and a session with the dentist, gave a chance to the Japanese press to announce that the Soongs were running away from war-torn China in order to live at peace in some neutral country where, of course, they had already salted away their ill-gotten gains in nice safe foreign currency. At this time the Chiangs still had their own plane and pilot; later, in Chungking, when the plane was bombed on the field, it was decided that the expense of a private plane was no longer justified. The area over which the Generalissimo traveled was not so wide that he could not use the army planes when necessary.

  The foreign volunteers were still an important element in the Chinese air force at the beginning of 1938. According to the figures supplied by the Eastern Daily News, there were one hundred and fifty-two American fliers, one hundred and twenty-four French, one hundred and fifteen Soviet Russian, and fifty-five British. Later, when the American law made it impossible for U.S. citizens to fight for other governments, this part of the force melted away, and the European war took yet more pilots out of action. The Russians continued to give help, however, in trained pilots and teachers and also, which was more important, in equipment.

  June brought a fresh blow in the recall not only of the German Ambassador (though Herr Trautmann’s departure was not admitted to be of any political significance) but in the departure of the German military advisers who had been at Chiang’s elbow since the beginning of the war. It was generally accepted that Germany must retain friendly relations with Japan. However, one or two of the Germans refused to leave: for example, Captain Stennes, whose decision not to return to Hitlerian Germany was dictated as much by prudence as by his friendship for China. Ho Ying-chin, Minister of War, saw the others off at the station, and everything was as friendly as could be. General von Falkenhausen in a press interview later went so far as to say that Japan was wearing herself out.

  There was a mass meeting in Hankow on the first anniversary of the Lukuochiao battle. In Shanghai there were many incidents and clashes between Chinese and Japanese. Mass meetings were also held in Canton, Changsha (where some of the Government had rested en route), and Chungking. Japanese planes gave South China a good hearty bombing; in Tokyo too there were mass meetings and speeches.

  Madame Sun from Hongkong observed that the past year had been a significant year, forming as it does another chapter in the glorious history of the Chinese nation. . . . We cannot deny that in China today there are a number of politicians who are cowardly in facing the aggressors but “brave” in dealing with matters internally. These have been defeatists ever since the war began. These politicians have never failed to exert their utmost, scurrying hither and thither like carrion-crows whenever there is the least whisper or hint of “peace.” In sharp contrast to their lip-service “support the leader,” these hypocrites cherish entirely different aims in their hearts and repudiate what Comrade Chiang Kai-shek has repeatedly declared, that compromise midway would be enslavement . . . . That our political mobilization is far behind military mobilization accounts for the existence of such people and such phenomena as mentioned above, although it is within everyone’s knowledge that all comrades-in-arms and all our people prefer to perish as broken jades rather than exist as intact tiles, and that the illusion of achieving a compromise through intrigues is unrealizable . . . . Following the National Congress of the Party, the National Reconstruction Programme for wartime political mobilization was issued. There should no longer be any dispute about its contents and only the practical execution and prompt realization of the various measures proposed by it should claim attention.

  Three months have elapsed since the Congress ended. One cannot but feel anxious about the rate at which this programme is being carried out. I wish to mention a few points in the hope that the joint efforts of all responsible political and party comrades and all comrades working at the national salvation front will exert themselves.

  The Programme says: “Mobilize the masses of the nation, organize peasants, workers, merchants and students into professional bodies, improve them and consolidate them so that the rich will contribute their money and the able-bodied their manpower to support the war of resistance for national existence.” But the work of organizing the masses, particularly the peasant masses in the provinces, is unaccomplished for lack of concrete Organization. The Pao China system, a rural political structure of no positive value, is inadequate to encourage the broad masses of the peasantry to play an active part in the war. Indeed, since the practice involves “assigning and dictation” seen in the imposition of bonds and the conscription of the able-bodied men for training (which are characteristic of their compulsory nature) misgovernment and corruption in all forms predominate. Why not mobilize the peasant masses so that they voluntarily organize themselves democratically into strong bodies like the peasant unions dur
ing the Northern Expedition (1925–27)? That would most effectively achieve political mobilization in the villages and enlarge and consolidate the forces supporting our military campaign . . . .

  “To improve the political structure, simplify it, rationalize it and increase its administrative efficiency so as to meet the needs of war time,” according to the Programme, I think we have to start first of all in the highest administrative offices with the elimination of unnecessary positions and sinecures. Up to the present on the salary list of the Central Government there are still a number of idle officials. All who receive money without doing any real work should be removed. . . . It is more important to do away with the official practice of men hunting after lucrative positions in the same manner as speculators seek after wealth . . . .

  The People’s Political Council is convening now. Though not all are elected democratically, many members understand well the general suffering of the people and can therefore represent their interests . . . .

  It is undeniably Madame Sun’s voice that speaks, but that voice has undergone a change. She has softened it, and her admonitions are delivered in a spirit that might almost be described as co-operative. Her penultimate paragraph leaves us in no doubt of this new development in her attitude toward the National Government:

  Finally I want solemnly to call attention to the “Maintenance of Discipline.” The entire nation should support and abide by the order of the Generalissimo. Some even suggest obedience to the leader unconditionally. But in my opinion if discipline is not strictly maintained all voices for support will remain useless . . . .

  Who speaks there, Madame Sun alone, or Madame Sun at the behest of her old friends and advisers? The little coterie of foreign journalists who sat in the Y.M.C.A. through the Hankow evenings knew what they thought. There was a large percentage of “Pinks” among the newspapermen in China, just as there was in any similar gathering anywhere in the world. “We looked on Madame Sun as a guiding star, not so much a guide as a star,” one of them explained. “She was very remote, of course, but we all felt that we understood her ideas, and we had faith in her activities whatever they were. No, she wasn’t considered Orthodox, but still . . . . ”