Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45

by Barbara W. Tuchman

  Ambassador Johnson (who as chief of mission was officially Stilwell’s superior), though he had lost his original faith in the Kuomintang, still believed in Chiang Kai-shek as the only ruler who could hold China together. A stout middle-class man of forty-eight with a large, plump face, thinning hair and a rather Germanic if good-natured appearance, he had begun his career in China as a language student in 1907, and had served as Consul in cities from Hankow to Chungking. From the consular service he had risen to become chief of the Far East division of the State Department in 1925–29 and as such had opposed the urging of Minister MacMurray for intervention against the Nationalists in 1927. Succeeded at the Far East desk by Stanley Hornbeck who was to be autocrat of the Far East desk for the next 15 years, Johnson returned to China as Minister in 1929, the first Chinese-speaking envoy to occupy the post in many years. He possessed a wide if not profound knowledge of China, was not pretentious and did not give white-tie dinners nor frequent the social fleshpots of Peiping. Johnson had adopted as his motto the Taoist saying Wu Wei Erh Wu Pu Wei, meaning “Through not doing, all things are done.” In fine calligraphy adorning the wall of whatever office he occupied, it suited his temperament.

  As a result of the “panic and fear” instilled by the Kwantung Army in Chinese leaders, Johnson reported, “every bit of leadership that was openly hostile to Japan has been eliminated from north China,” and according to all reports “the Government at Nanking has been reduced to a jelly.” Japan’s smuggling campaign, aimed at destroying China’s economy and cutting off her revenue from customs, was intensifying. Bales and shiploads of cotton goods, rayon, sugar, kerosene, cigarets and other manufactures were smuggled in by armed truck from Manchuria and the seaports. Local officials were bought or bullied into connivance. An enormous business in heroin and morphine was conducted through the Japanese Concession in Tientsin. The attack upon the Chinese Customs, Johnson wrote in 1936, “has been as cold-blooded an act by one country against another as any I have read of and I have no doubt that it will succeed.” From Embassy Counselor Willys Peck in Nanking, who had been in China since 1907, came equally gloomy reports. In the midst of a routine report on the difficulties of reconstruction in China, he suddenly erupted, “ ‘Too late, too late, the Captain cried!’ ” Washington was hearing little to encourage a policy of active support for China.

  When in November 1935 the Japanese issued their ultimatum for the separation of north China, Johnson predicted they could succeed, unless China by gathering resistance “forces them to use force,” thus presenting the world, especially the League and the United States, with a very “embarrassing” situation.

  The Roosevelt Administration was doing its best to avoid being thus embarrassed. The President in his first term was absorbed in domestic struggle with no mind to challenge his country’s strong distaste for entanglement in other people’s troubles. What concern for foreign affairs could be spared was concentrated on the Good Neighbor policy with Latin America. Stimson’s effort had produced only a negative result; without helping China it had antagonized Japan, and his successors felt no disposition to repeat the exercise. The new Administration’s policy concentrated less on curbing Japan than on keeping out of conflict with her. The British, too, favored discretion. Facing enough trouble in Europe, they did not want another area of conflict in the Far East.

  Yet there were hostages: the Philippines, Hong Kong, commercial interests—and the moral issue, both as regards traditional support for China and collective security against aggression. The Western powers were not ready to be pushed out of the Far East nor to make up their minds to abandon China. Up to this time it had been a principle that China’s independence was essential to the Open Door. But various efforts made by the powers to shore up her independence by loans and credits and other forms of collective aid provoked such Japanese roars that they were abandoned. Persistent efforts of the American Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau, to arrange financial help also came to nothing. Motivated by a certain degree of American guilt because of the Senate’s unfortunate silver purchase policy which had disrupted China’s silver-standard currency, Morgenthau’s crusade foundered in the soggy ground of China’s unmanageable finances.

  To keep China independent, much less strong, was becoming difficult, and in view of the Japanese hostility it provoked, dangerous. Under the influence of the growing pessimism about China’s capacity to control her own destiny, some policy-makers were beginning to wonder whether the effort was worth it, whether China’s integrity was really necessary to foreign commerce on the mainland, whether one might not, after all, do business with Japan. Why activate Japan’s enmity by helping China if China could not or would not help herself? Now that evidence for the negative was desirable, it was discovered that the original rationale for the Open Door—the supposed enormous opportunity for American commerce—had proved a mirage. Neither the Far East as a whole, nor China in particular, had fulfilled the exuberant predictions of the imperialists of 1900. Of America’s total foreign investments in 1935, the Far East represented 6 percent and China 1 percent. Of America’s total foreign trade in the years 1931–35, China’s share was under 4 percent of the total. With her famed 400,000,000 customers, China took a share of American trade and investments ranging from a third to a half of the share that Japan took with a population of 70,000,000.

  Britain with a large and real stake in the Far East was beginning to question whether Chinese weakness did not pose a greater threat to her interests than Japanese expansion. Failing a China strong enough to maintain sovereignty, the vacuum would have to be filled by some authority for the sake of peace in the Far East. Considering the dangers of the present situation, suggested Sir Alexander Cadogan, the British Ambassador, to Ambassador Johnson, “perhaps the only solution lay in allowing Japan a free hand in Asia.” But it was difficult, he admitted, “to prepare to retreat before this advance.”

  In Washington the dominant factor determining policy was fear of provoking Japan to war which, in the fanatical state of Japanese nationalism, as Ambassador Joseph Grew repeatedly warned, was entirely possible. Inaction became the guiding principle. When Japanese penetration of north China continued without overt military act, the United States kept quiet in the hope, constantly nourished by the Japanese moderates, that the Japanese militarists if not antagonized would gradually recede. Throughout the 1930s, wrote Secretary Hull, “Japanese diplomats always took care to represent to us that there were two elements in Japan: one liberal, peaceful and civilian; the other military and expansionist….If we did not irritate the military by denying them the right to expand in the Far East, the peaceful element could eventually gain control of the Government and ensure peace. It was therefore up to us to prevent the worst from happening in Japan.”

  Alarmed at American quiescence, China made anxious inquiries, even suggesting that she might be forced into alliance with Japan. Her hint evoked no reaction. Secretary Hull was determined to nudge relations with Japan onto a less dangerous footing. In a statement to the press on Far Eastern policy in December 1935, he tiptoed around the issues in a manner so exceedingly nonprovocative as almost to assure Japan of noninterference.

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  The act that twisted the course of events came from the people of China, or a vocal segment of them in Peiping. The arrogant Japanese presence in north China had brought into being the one thing that could frustrate the Japanese plan—an active nationalism. Nanking’s effort to censor and repress its overt expression only increased the seething beneath the lid. When the Japanese ultimatum demanding the declaration of an “autonomous” north China by December 10 was made public by desperate Chinese officials, the demand for resistance broke into the open, given voice by a massive student protest on December 7 in Peiping. Watching crowds applauded, then joined the march, defying the police; even rickshaw coolies shouted the forbidden patriotic slogans. The demonstrations spread to other cities; a second and third were held in Peiping and Tientsin with
tens of thousands of participants. Petitions poured in on Nanking. Students commandeered trains on the Shanghai-Nanking run and exhorted people along the way to compel the Government to stand firm against Japan. A National Salvation League was organized and over the next months 30 groups and associations for patriotic defense and a “people’s front” or “united front” against Japan were formed.

  Communist agents and propaganda helped the growth of the movement. A “united front” against Fascism was by now official policy of the Comintern, proclaimed at its 7th Congress in July-August 1935. For Russia the revival of a militant Germany on her western front combined with a militant Japan at her back on the mainland of Asia had become the dominant fact of life. A Russo-Japanese conflict was widely expected.

  Throughout all the adventuring of the Kwantung Army on the northern mainland, from the Manchurian crisis on, observers were never sure whether Japan intended to pursue a course leading to a clash with Russia or continue the effort to swallow China. Since the Kwantung Army and militarists of Tokyo were themselves of two minds, either was always a possibility. It was in Russia’s interest to deflect the Japanese southward where they would be absorbed in the quicksand of endless struggle with the Chinese. Arousing anti-Japanese sentiment and stimulating China’s will to resist thus became a Communist interest. The Chinese Communists advocated resistance not simply as tools of the Comintern but in their own interest because if Chiang Kai-shek were forced to take up arms against Japan, he would be required to leave off his relentless campaign against themselves. Besides, they recognized, as an axiom of history if not of Marx, that national war has a wider appeal than class war and that the patriotic cause gave them a channel to the people of the north.

  As Johnson had predicted, the development of national resistance was the factor that would force the Japanese to use force, again “embarrassing” the world. After the December demonstrations the clamor could not be ignored and a Japanese-prompted declaration of “independence” by north China could hardly appear to be self-determination. It was called off and the Japanese had to content themselves momentarily with establishing a Hopei-Chahar Political Council as their base of control. Hereafter all anti-Japanese activity was denounced as Communist; Japan became the champion of anti-Communism in Asia and endeavored to press Chiang Kai-shek into an anti-Communist alliance. This had its attractions for many Chinese no less than coming to terms with Hitler had its charms for the right wing in England and France. But Chiang Kai-shek could not come to terms with Japan, as he well knew, without risking national leadership. To do so would give the Communists and his many other rivals a rallying cry against him. Already the Li-Pai group in the south was using the demand for action against Japan as cover for another attempt to oust him.

  Chiang kept his balance by continuing privately to talk of armed resistance without actually undertaking action except against the Communists. Not to be diverted from pursuing their annihilation, he arrested and imprisoned the leaders of anti-Japanese sentiment and suppressed the National Salvation League. As against the invaders his policy was to postpone the problem as long as possible. Though afraid of the Japanese, he and his countrymen never ceased to think of them as a temporary curse whom the Chinese by virtue of superior wisdom, not to mention numbers, would outlast. Chiang had no thought of giving into them but on the contrary was already promoting development in Szechwan with the intention, if too strongly pressed, to entrench his Government in its remote city, Chungking.

  In the hope that America could be prodded into assistance sooner rather than later, Chiang sent word to Ambassador Johnson that his policy was to “continue” armed resistance to Japan. It was important for the United States to know how realistic was this intention and what was the likelihood of being “embarrassed” by active Chinese resistance. In so far as military preparedness would supply a clue, it was the military attaché’s function to find the answer.

  As in the past, Stilwell undertook to see for himself on a series of journeys that ranged from south China to Manchuria. The first one in April 1936 to Canton and the Kwangsi-Kwangtung region where the rebellion of Generals Li and Pai was simmering was not definitive. He traveled not by the direct rail route but through the interior by bus, car, riverboat, ferry and foot. After a 30-mile hike from one remote country town to the next on the way to Kweilin, an acquaintance wrote, “You are probably the only one in the American Embassy who ever travelled over that part of the country.” In a third-class train with 125 people in one car he not surprisingly concluded that “the people of South China are terrible and there are too many of them.” From Canton, where he inspected the officers’ training school, he went on by riverboat to Wuchow and from there by local bus to Nanning where he visited Li Tsung-jen, co-leader of the separatist faction. On the way north, in Hankow, he made the acquaintance of the American Consul Robert Jarvis who “seems to have brains, thus standing out in Hankow.”

  From Hankow he took the train back to Peiping. The taste of coffee at breakfast in the dining car, like Proust’s madeleine, took him back in memory to his first arrival in Peking in 1920—“the cool crisp days of fall with a breeze in the trees and the sun still strong, good breathing air, the newness of everything. The kids were little and we had a lot yet in front of us. Not so good now….What made up that feeling? The newness of things?…No worries; promise of strange and interesting things to come. The kids were little. Plenty of TIME in front….” When he wrote this passage with its poignant phrase, “Not so good now” and its curious premonition of too little time, Stilwell was fifty-three with but ten years to live.

  It was on his second trip in June that he found the evidence to answer the question whether the Government was preparing for serious military resistance. The answer was no. Setting out to estimate Chiang Kai-shek’s plan from the disposition of his forces north of the Yangtze, Stilwell traveled over the east-west Lunghai line from Hsuchow, which he found “booming” in contrast to 1927. He went west to Kaifeng and Loyang through northern Honan—“flat, dirty, dusty, sandy”—and after returning to Hsuchow traveled north by freighter on the Grand Canal. After locating and identifying army units he was able to report, “No evidence of planned defense against further Japanese encroachment. No troop increase or even thought of it. No drilling or maneuvering.” Either the Chinese had made military preparations and “concealed them more skilfully than any other military power has yet learned to do or they have made none at all.” A copy of his report, in addition to its regular routing to MID, was sent by Johnson to the Secretary of State.

  From the deployment of troops Stilwell formed a low opinion (expressed in his private notes) of Chiang Kai-shek’s generalship. “He can have no intention of doing a thing or else he is utterly ignorant of what it means to get ready for a fight with a first class power….If he intends to fight along the Lunghai line he’s either a goddamned fool for not getting ready or else he’s a g-d fool to think he can jump in and hold off after the show starts.” Judging from the inactivity, “it looks as if the Japs had told him they wouldn’t go any further just now.” But for the future, if Chiang hoped to hold the Lunghai line, he should be improving his line of communications: “Do something to the railroads. Build feeders to the south. A motor road net back of the railroad. Nothing is being done.”

  Instead, he noted disgustedly, “Chiang goes around getting up new clubs for this and that. ‘Don’t spit on the floor. Don’t squeeze.’ ” Like most Westerners, Stilwell was exasperated by the slogans of the New Life movement launched by Chiang Kai-shek in 1934 to take people’s minds off Japan. Directed toward the improvement of behavior, manners, social service, cleanliness, honesty and the elimination of opium smoking and graft, it represented the Confucian pursuit of “right conduct,” and as such it had meaning for some Chinese. To the Western mind not native to the phenomenon, admonitions against spitting and noisy eating and exhortations to “Be prompt,” “Correct your posture,” “Kill rats and flies” seemed frivolous at a time when
something more was needed to meet the national peril.

  According to Stilwell’s estimates of China’s military forces, listed by province and broken down into corps and divisions with names of commanders, places of headquarters, and varying numerical strengths of the units, the Central Government had under arms in August 1936 a total of 1,300,000 troops plus another 360,000 under provincial control, exclusive of irregulars. Under the guidance of General Alexander von Falkenhausen, who had replaced General Hans von Seeckt as his military adviser, Chiang was working hard to train and equip an effective army. Thirty German instructors now staffed Whampoa Academy in place of the one-time Russians, and the purchase of German arms was arranged through their connections. Yet without a real change in the political system, there was no way of welding the Chinese forces into a national army. Chiang Kai-shek’s authority, like that of Europe’s medieval kings, rested on the more or less voluntary fealty of provincial barons. As to reform at the base, in the conditions of life from which the common soldier came and would be asked to fight for, little was attempted. Chiang was not an activist possessed of compelling energy to overturn the old. He changed nothing. He was a holder with no goal but to hold.

  “Unfortunately for China,” as Stilwell had written in a G-2 report the year before, “there is no other influential leader in sight…who can take his place and carry on with anything like the prestige he has gained.” The lack of alternative leadership was a weakness, he noted, “common to all dictatorships.”

  Stilwell continued his researches on two trips to Nanking in July and September where he inspected the Infantry and Artillery Schools and made the acquaintance of various Chinese officials including General Ho Ying-chin who was to be his bane in later years. He began collecting information on the Communist Fourth Army and on Chang Hsueh-liang’s Tungpei Army of Manchurian divisions now based at Sian. According to informants, the Young Marshal had cut out opium but “does nothing with his troops. Just flies around in his private plane.”*1