Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  Fear materialized in the person of an inspector, “a truculent coolie, dressed in a little brief authority,” who, on frisking Stilwell, triumphantly discovered and took away his pistol, flourishing it before the passengers as if to unmask a criminal, a spy, an assassin come to kill Chiang Kai-shek. Murmurs rose. “What shall be done with him? Take him off and shoot him.” Disarmed, alone except for Chao, Stilwell felt hostility closing in. At the next stop the inspector got off to report and the hostility became active. Umbrellas poked into him, tea was spilled on his leg, someone spat on his back. Suddenly the realization flooded over him: “They were trying to make me react. They wanted me to resist,” as an excuse for attack. It could end in murder. “Chao’s warning look proved it; he slowly turned his head back and forth to signal ‘No.’ He was deathly afraid, not for himself but for me.” The prodding and sly tricks and insults continued. With rage in his heart Stilwell contained himself. At a halt the crowd argued whether to “take us off now and shoot us or turn us over at P’u Kow,” the last stop. Catching at the straw, Chao demanded, “Yes, arrest us; turn us over to the authorities at P’u Kow. We demand it. The foreigner has great influence and there will be a great deal of trouble for anyone who harms him.” He was cursed for being a running dog for a foreigner but before the crowd could take action the train moved. Chao had found his cue. He demanded to be taken before Chiang Kai-shek himself. “We will make complaints; we will report everything.” The insults and the prodding stopped but the threat of arrest at P’u Kow abided.

  Stilwell decided to give the crowd no time to test its intentions. As the train pulled into P’u Kow, on the Yangtze opposite Nanking, he and Chao jumped off before it came to a stop, and pushing past astonished people, ran for the river feeling pursuit at their heels but not daring to look behind them. They scrambled aboard a ferry and on the other side walked slowly past suspicious glances in search of lodging. Money persuaded a fearful innkeeper to give them a room where, exhausted and dehydrated, they drank teapot after teapot. Stilwell was embarrassed to find his hand trembling when he held out his cup for more. Tension did not let down, for word of the foreign devil’s presence brought a crowd gathering in the street and Stilwell once more imagined capture or lynching. Worry, bedbugs and fleas allowed him little sleep. In the morning came another trial of the streets, but without interference they reached the station and boarded the train for Shanghai. The journey was hot and tense. On arriving, their eyes met a huge poster on the wall showing a fat and repulsive foreigner prone on the ground with Chinese soldiers sticking bayonets into him, blood spurting out and a caption exhorting all patriots to kill the foreign swine.

  Through the exit, past the sentries and across the square Stilwell could see the barbed-wire fence of the International Settlement and safety, 100 feet away, a matter of 30 seconds. “We crossed the square with 50 pound weights on our feet, passed through the wire…and stood at last on our own side.” A sampan rowed them out to the cruiser Pittsburgh where at the top of the gangway a Marine was standing guard, and “I, an Army officer, felt like throwing my arms around him and giving him a hug!”

  It says much for Stilwell’s military objectivity that the report he submitted on his return gave the southerners a favorable judgment. Their morale, discipline and confidence were high, he stated, they gave cheerful obedience, did not loot and were welcomed by the populace as shown by the reappearance of the women. Their company officers were students of eighteen to twenty-two, determined and convinced in contrast to the “trash” in the Tuchun’s army who at the company and battalion level were largely uneducated coolies. Although deficient in armament compared to the northerners, the southern army was capable of beating the Tuchun’s “rabble” in any clash but he predicted they would not be able to operate beyond Hsuchow for lack of rolling stock. They had brought none across the Yangtze, moving supplies by cart and pack animal, but as soon as they could use the railroad they would roll north with no likelihood of firm resistance. Chang Tsung-chang’s army had no fight in it, except for the Russians. “In my opinion a determined southern attack will mean Chang’s collapse.”

  At the Legation MacMurray welcomed the first authentic information on the situation. He listened to Stilwell’s narrative and read his report with “great admiration” for his “intrepid personal qualities.” General Castner gave his formal commendation for “the highest type of efficiency, military intelligence, splendid determination and courageous conduct”—and for something more. This man of troubled mind understood the true rarity of Stilwell’s exploit: that “courage in battle when accompanied by comrades is often seen but a much higher courage is required by any individual who attempts what Major Stilwell accomplished—the close contact alone and unaided, with hundreds of ignorant, hostile anti-foreign Chinese troops of two contending armies.” Stilwell was probably the only man with the necessary combination of military knowledge, Chinese knowledge and that “higher courage” who could have carried out the mission to Hsuchow and returned.

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  Stilwell’s second son and fifth child, Benjamin, on whom he doted thereafter, was born in July, a month after he returned. In September he took off on a three weeks’ vacation to Korea and Japan. In Korea, he climbed mountains, passed pool after pool of clear water, “took a plunge…sat on a rock naked eating lunch.” In Japan he enjoyed himself nosing around Kyoto, eating, talking, noticing, shopping and collecting. On his return he found, as he had predicted, that the Northern Expedition had come to a halt at Hsuchow. Suffering from more problems than lack of rolling stock, it went no farther in 1927 and almost foundered in factional strife before the end of the year. The adherence of Feng Yu-hsiang gave the upper hand to Chiang Kai-shek in June. The Hankow Government, already ravaged by doctrinal quarrels, was split by ill-conceived orders from the Comintern causing the left wing of the Kuomintang to break away from the Communists. When Hankow’s military arm, the renowned “Ironsides” Fourth Army of General Chang Fa-kwei, resumed independence and went back home to Kwangtung, the regime in ruined and terror-stricken Hankow disintegrated and the united front of the revolution came to an end. Not yet ready to give up, the Communists established a short-lived regime at Nanchang, capital of Kiangsi, attempted a coup that failed, retreated further south and made a last mad effort in the three bloody days of the Canton Commune. Hunted and decimated by Chiang Kai-shek’s forces, the remnant retreated into the countryside of Kiangsi and Hunan to gain what foothold they could for survival.

  Chiang Kai-shek had already begun to lose the first bloom of public welcome. He was trapped by his alliance with the capitalists into a campaign of Communist suppression that took on all aspects of a white terror. Searches, seizures, censorship, arbitrary arrests and executions frightened and disillusioned many who had believed in the Kuomintang promise of something better. Taxation was as heavy, armed force as pervasive as ever. The Nationalist movement, overtaken by the compromises and corruptions of the climb to power, began to seem no different from anything else since the days of Yuan Shih-kai.

  Facing a renewed challenge for control by Wang Ching-wei and the left wing, and suffering a military setback in August, Chiang resolved the problem by resigning and waiting in Japan to be called back as indispensable. Disunity and chaos rushed in to fill the vacuum. Wang Ching-wei and Mme. Sun’s brother, T. V. Soong, set up yet another separatist regime in Canton. But necessity drove and the call to Chiang came in November. While all parties thrashed out the deals and terms for unification during December, the leading figure perfected his position by marrying Miss Mayling Soong,*1 sister of T. V. and Mme. Sun, and a very remarkable person.

  The Soongs were a Shanghai Christian family of wealth, Western education and hallowed affiliations with Dr. Sun Yat-sen. The mother’s side had been Christian for 300 years dating back to the earliest conversions by Jesuits. The father, C.J. or Charlie Soong, a friend and supporter of Sun Yat-sen, had been brought up and educated in the United States. He returned to China to work for a
missionary but enlarged the family’s fortunes instead, built a handsome foreign-style home with formal gardens and a tennis court in the French Concession and fathered six children, all of whom were educated in mission schools and American colleges. The eldest daughter, Ei-ling, had married H. H. Kung, a banker and Oberlin alumnus, who came of a substantial Shansi family which claimed direct descent from Confucius. The second, Ch’ing-ling, became the second wife and widow of Dr. Sun. The youngest, Mayling, combined graduation from Wellesley College with the instinct for power of the Empress Dowager. All three were intelligent, beautiful and, like many Chinese women in contrast to Japanese, strong-willed.

  Chiang Kai-shek was sufficiently interested in these assets to have reportedly proposed marriage through a middleman to Mme. Sun after she became a widow. On rejection he transferred his attention to Mayling. To win her, he disposed of two earlier wives, and at her mother’s insistence, was converted to Christianity, acquiring as no small byproduct the permanent favor of the missionary establishment. A private Christian ceremony in the Soong home on December 1, 1927, was followed by a very public civil wedding in Western dress in the ballroom of the Majestic Hotel with 1,300 guests including Admiral Bristol of the American Asiatic Fleet and foreign consuls, a large portrait of Dr. Sun flanked by Kuomintang flags, scores of detectives and bodyguards, and a bell-shaped canopy of roses to shelter the ceremony performed by the Minister of Education in the Nanking Government. Attended by four bridesmaids in beaded peach charmeuse and two pages (the son and daughter of Mme. Kung) in black velvet with white satin vests, the bride was given away by her brother, T. V. Soong, while a tenor sang “O Promise Me” and motion-picture cameras recorded the scene. Chiang’s position was now impregnable. In January 1928 he was redesignated Generalissimo of the Nationalist Army, chairman of the Central Executive Committee and as such chief of the reorganized and reunited Nationalist Government at Nanking. The march to the north, assisted by revenues found by T. V. Soong through his financial connections, was resumed in April.

  In the north, with Wu Pei-fu having retired from the coalition, Chang Tso-lin was the reigning Generalissimo of the tuchuns’ forces gathered under the name Ankuochun, or Pacification Army. Having declared himself dictator in December, Chang Tso-lin became infected with the disease of Yuan Shih-kai and nourished the ambition to be Emperor. He held court seated on a throne-like chair flanked by two lifelike stuffed tigers. He appointed a Board of Rites and Ceremonies to prepare court procedures, commissioned artists to design a new set of Imperial porcelains and followed the traditional Imperial custom when moving through the city of causing streets to be closed, shop windows shuttered and pavements strewn with “golden sand.” For a brief glimmering moment hope revived in the breasts of surviving Manchu aristocrats and old conservatives but Chang’s fate, though momentous for China, was not to be the throne.

  In January 1928, as the result of feuds at 15th Infantry Headquarters, Stilwell was transferred at the request of General Castner from troop duty to General Staff duty as acting Chief of Staff to the Commanding General. The appointment became official in the following July. Castner’s quarrels with Colonel Newell and other officers including his Chief of Staff had grown sharper and for a while the General suffered, according to Stilwell’s diary, from a “nervous breakdown” with hallucinations. In the odd role of pacifier Stilwell was the only officer whom the disturbed and difficult commander trusted. His eccentric tyrannies continued to increase antagonism which came to a head over his insistence on training the men at a faster marching pace than the regulation two and one-half miles an hour. Twice a year, grimly setting the pace himself, he led out the entire regiment, with officers dismounted, on forced marches which, while never achieving his goal of 100 miles in three days, succeeded in reaching a rate of 35 miles in ten hours—at considerable cost. Exhausted men staggered to the finish, some dragging or carrying their comrades, determined not to give Castner the satisfaction of seeing a single soldier failing to complete the course. Many in the regiment thought the purpose of Castner’s marches was to try to make the suave Colonel Newell fall out, but he never did. Stilwell naturally went along without trouble.

  When Colonel Newell and others attempted to bring about the General’s removal on charges of mental incompetence, Castner turned to Stilwell for testimony in his behalf. Turmoil matching China’s continued to brew at USAFC Headquarters during the rest of Stilwell’s tour. Marshall was gone, having left in May 1927 to become Assistant Commandant and academic head of the Infantry School at Fort Benning where he embarked on an ambitious program to reform the course and teaching staff. He wanted Stilwell as head of the Tactical Section, the post next in importance after his own, and was holding the position open for him until he could return to take it.

  In May 1928 Stilwell was promoted to lieutenant colonel, receiving The Sentinel’s congratulations as “one of the most popular officers of the command.” Considered the Infantry’s expert on Chinese affairs, he was already functioning in the role of teacher. Besides serving as President of the Language School he gave a monthly briefing in the Recreation Hall on the situation in China, impressing one listener as a “brilliant and incisive” speaker with an awesome knowledge of the Chinese tangle. More important was his influence on The Sentinel, which in the midst of a country heaving in national agony at last undertook to recognize its surroundings in the form of a weekly front-page article by Stilwell on “Who’s Who in the Chinese Situation.” The series reflects events as seen in their own time by an American in China who had to deal with them. If it sometimes distorts history from being too close, it is innocent of the equal distortions of hindsight.

  Stilwell’s series opened in January 1928 with an article on Chang Tso-lin for whom the outlook, he concluded, was not bright. Writing from week to week through the fateful six months from January to June 1928 when the situation was in flux, Stilwell leaned to the Legations’ cynical view of the Nationalists and rejected the “sentimental” view of the home-based American who, he believed, knew nothing of China and misunderstood the Revolution.

  Adding his own concern for “Old Hundred Names” (the Chinese common man), he wrote of people taxed unmercifully, of life and property insecure, of railroads ruined, trade suffering, banditry universal, famine common and “not a single province…where the rights of man are respected.” The traditional man of destiny, always supposed to be produced by national emergency, “has not yet appeared.” Two months later in an article devoted to Chiang Kai-shek in April 1928, Stilwell described him as head of a faction rather than chief of a party but nevertheless a man who could prove to be the one to put China’s house in order. He accorded Chiang admiration for his “determination and energy” and offered the judgment that if he wins “it will be largely on account of resources he can find within himself.” His northward advance, however, was “more in the nature of a parade than a campaign,” making its progress against unpaid northern troops who “oozed out of town” ahead of it.

  From his observations Stilwell distilled a basic principle of Chinese warfare when he wrote that Chang Tsung-chang, the Tuchun of Shantung, was living up to his reputation as the greatest Chinese master of “the strategic retreat.” Strategic retreat was to be a major source of Stilwell’s own future frustration. As opposed to the offensive spirit in which he had been indoctrinated at the West Point formed by Mahan and in the AEF under Pershing, it represented a cultural clash that was fundamental.

  Suddenly in May 1928 a sharp intervention took place whose significance for the future Stilwell immediately recognized. The Nationalists had now resumed their advance northward. As they moved up the railroad from Hsuchow toward Tsinan, capital of Shantung, the Japanese accused them of attacks on Japanese nationals and despatched 2,000 troops out of 5,000 previously landed at Tsingtao to the “rescue.” In the course of several clashes, with deaths on both sides, the Japanese murdered the Nationalist Commissioner for Foreign Affairs of Shantung along with his wife and fourteen officer
s in an effort to provoke retaliation and an “incident” sufficient for open hostilities. The clash was followed by an ultimatum to the Nationalists to withdraw from Tsinan.

  The prospect of a unified China whose nationalism might extend to Manchuria had begun to worry Japan. Baron Tanaka, progenitor if not author of the famous plan of conquest called the “Tanaka Memorial” of 1927, was then Premier and Foreign Minister. The plan that bore his name expounded the military concept of Japan’s destiny which was to be mastery of Asia achieved through successive penetration of Manchuria, Mongolia, north China, all China, and Southeast Asia. Chiang Kai-shek had no desire to make a test of it. Six Japanese warships, eight troopships and eleven freighters crammed with munitions and supplies were at that moment anchored off Tsingtao. Whatever Chiang’s pretensions to great captainship, he did not delude himself that his troops were any match for the modern army of Japan. He held to his aim of Peking and unification and prudently saved his army by turning away from Shantung, crossing the Yellow River and moving on Peking from the west. But the incident was not so easily swallowed by the Chinese people. The “unbearable sting” of the Japanese insult to national pride revived all the anti-Japanese feeling of the earlier Shantung affair and was fanned by posters and slogans into another year-long boycott.

  In The Sentinel for May 11 Stilwell put his finger on Tsinan as a situation “probably as critical as any that has arisen for many years.” He had little sympathy for the anti-Japanese agitation which he saw as making ultimate settlement more difficult, for even if all Chinese factions should stand together, “they are no match for an organized power like Japan.” The Chinese, he wrote, “can contemplate with equanimity the most terrible injustice and cruelty inflicted by Chinese on Chinese” but as soon as there is trouble with a foreigner “a patriotic orator is found on every street corner ranting and roaring about foreign oppression and the rights of the native.” He pointed out that the Japanese, if provoked, could without serious hindrance occupy key points from Tientsin to Shanghai with control of railroads and the Yangtze—a program which ten years later they exactly carried out. “Events of far reaching consequences,” Stilwell believed, would ensue from Tsinan.