by Edgar Snow
* See BN.
* The Shanghai War, or “Incident,” occurred in January, 1932. Display of photographs of these non-Communist but anti-Japanese generals reflected the united-front policy of the CCP adopted in 1935.
* Here Wang Shuo-tao, chief of the political department of the Fifteenth Army Corps, told me something of his personal history. See BN.
* It is an interesting character, written , and deriving from an ancient form , in which one clearly sees its evolution from the original ideograph.
* Ma Chung-ying was the fifth Ma, but had now been eliminated from an active role by tribal politics and international intrigue. Sven Hedin gives an interesting account of him in The Flight of “Big Horse” (New York, 1936).
† These are the Han (Chinese), Man (Manchu), Meng (Mongol), Hui (Mohammedan), and Tsang (Tibetan).
* Hsin-hsin chiao, literally, “new-new faith.”
* Ninghsia Kung Pao (Ninghsia city, December, 1934).
† Liu Hsiao, “A Survey of Yu Wang Hsien,” Tang-ti Kung-Tso (Pao An), August 3, 1936. This was a Communist and certainly not disinterested source, but the picture in general was supported by studies included in the Stampar report for the League of Nations, to which earlier reference was made.
‡ The Japanese were later forced to abandon both their mission and their airfield. In 1937 the Mas pledged their loyalty to the Central Government.
† Company Discussion Materials: “The Mohammedan Problem,” p. 2, First Army Corps, Pol. Dept., June 2, 1936.
* Traditionally, Chinese age count begins at conception, and everyone becomes one year older on New Year’s Day.
* Child slavery had been abolished by Kuomintang law, but the mandate was seldom enforced even in areas where the law was known; elsewhere child slavery was still common.
* Teng Hsiao-p’ing was his deputy political commissar. For both, see BN.
* Chou En-lai.
* Li Hsien-nien was then also with Chu Teh.
* Literally, “Sunday Temple.”
* See BN.
* See BN.
* Here I do not speak of the peasant masses as a whole, but of a Communist vanguard. But even among the sovietized peasantry, attitudes were in striking contrast with those described, for example, in Arthur H. Smith’s Chinese Characteristics (N.Y., 1894).
* See BN.
† “International Press Correspondence,” organ of the Third, or Communist, International (Comintern), published in Moscow.
* Foreign Minister Hirota’s “Three-Point” demands, served on the Nanking Government.
* The full text of this interview appeared in The China Weekly Review (Shanghai), November 14 and 21, 1936.
* See especially Part One, Chapter 3.
* Written for the New York Sun, circa October 25, 1936.
* Published in Sianfu, January 2, 1937, by the Northwest Military Council.
† A speech reported by the Hsiking Min Pao (Sianfu), December 17, 1936.
‡ Warlords who had capitulated to Japanese demands two decades earlier.
* According to a letter reporting details of the battle written to me by Dr. Ma Hai-teh. He was then with the Red Army. See BN.
* See BN.
* Part of an interview with Sun Ming-chiu by James Bertram, who was acting for me as correspondent in Sianfu for the London Daily Herald.
* See Chiang’s diary.
* Seven of the above eight points corresponded exactly to the program of “national salvation” advocated in a circular telegram issued by the Communist Party and the Soviet Government on December 1, 1936.
* Mme. Chiang Kai-shek, deploring such rumors, wrote that “no question of money or increased power or position was at any time brought up.”
† The two “C’s” were Ch’en Li-fu and Ch’en Kuo-fu, brothers who controlled the Kuomintang Party apparatus.
* In his interview with me at Pao An. Italics mine.
† “Proposal for the Convention of a Peace Conference,” Pao An, December 19, 1936.
* In his own account Chiang does not mention having talked to Chou En-lai.
† An Australian confidant of both Chiang Kai-shek and Chang Hsueh-liang, W. H. Donald was Nanking’s first envoy to Sian (sent at Mme. Chiang’s insistence).
* This telegram was sent from Sianfu on December 19, addressed to Frazer, London Times correspondent in Shanghai, with the request that it be given to other correspondents. Nanking censors suppressed it. A copy was also given to Mr. Donald, who is the source of this quotation.
* See New China, a Communist publication (Yenan), March 15, 1937.
* For full text of these important resolutions see The China Year Book (Shanghai, 1938).
* New land-rent policies were, however, to penalize the landlords, and in practice the bias in “democratic” political organizations favored the poor peasants. At no time, not even in the early months of the brief lived two-party cooperation, did the Communists cease propagandizing for their cause or repudiate their ultimate Marxist program.
* The essence of Japan’s proposals was to make of China a kind of satellite partner in the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo alliance.
* V. I. Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder (London, 1934).
* Mao Tse-tung et al.
† Red China: President Mao Tse-tung Reports …
* Londen, 1929.
* Red China: President Mao Tse-tung Reports …, p. 11.
* Condensed from RSOC (Modern Library edition, 1944).
* See Edgar Snow, The Battle for Asia (New York, 1941), for an account of the reorganization of the Red Army and growth of partisan warfare from 1937 to 1941.
* New York, March 31 and April 14, 1944.
* For a vivid and almost painfully realistic eyewitness account of these sufferings of growth in the midst of war, see Agnes Smedley’s powerful book, Battle Hymn of China.
* Not until late in 1944 did Chiang Kai-shek grant permission for an American observer team to be stationed in Yenan, where they were welcomed, although they brought no military or economic assistance.
* “Present” in the above text meant 1936, when these notes were compiled for but not used in RSOC. It may be of academic interest to add that my guess of “30,000 to 50,000” regulars, with no more than 30,000 rifles, was close to the 40,000 Communist “effectives” recognized and paid by the National Government of Nanking, as the Eighth Route Army, when the old Red Army was incorporated into the National Army of China after the KMT-CP agreement, reached after the Sian Incident.
* The Second All-China Soviet Congress was held in Juichin, Kiangsi, in January, 1934. See Mao Tse-tung, Red China: President Mao Tse-tung Reports...
* The Other Side of the River, pp. 331ff.
* On a recent (1973) visit to China I was told by Mme. Teng Ying Ch’ao that my husband’s memory of this incident differed from her own: they had traveled together, and she knew he would have helped her had it been necessary; but her recollection was that it had not been.—Lois Wheeler Snow