By-Line Ernest Hemingway

by Ernest Hemingway

  Up the river were the two peaks of Pilot and Index, where we would hunt mountain-sheep later in the month, and you sat in the sun and marvelled at the formal, clean-lined shape mountains can have at a distance, so that you remember them in the shapes they show from far away, and not as the broken rockslides you crossed, the jagged edges you pulled up by, and the narrow shelves you sweated along, afraid to look down, to round that peak that looked so smooth and geometrical. You climbed around it to come out on a clear space to look down to where an old ram and three young rams were feeding in the juniper bushes in a high, grassy pocket cupped against the broken rock of the peak.

  The old ram was purple-grey, his rump was white, and when he raised his head you saw the great heavy curl of his horns. It was the white of his rump that had betrayed him to you in the green of the junipers when you had lain in the lee of a rock, out of the wind, three miles away, looking carefully at every yard of the high country through a pair of good Zeiss glasses.

  Now as you sat in front of the cabin, you remembered that down-hill shot and the young rams standing, their heads turned, staring at him, waiting for him to get up. They could not see you on that high ledge, nor wind you, and the shot made no more impression on them than a boulder falling.

  You remembered the year we had built a cabin at the head of Timber Creek, and the big grizzly that tore it open every time we were away. The snow came late that year, and this bear would not hibernate, but spent his autumn tearing open cabins and ruining a trap-line. But he was so smart you never saw him in the day. Then you remembered coming on the three grizzlies in the high country at the head of Crandall Creek. You heard a crash of timber and thought it was a cow elk bolting, and then there they were, in the broken shadow, running with an easy, lurching smoothness, the afternoon sun making their coats a soft, bristling silver.

  You remembered elk bugling in the fall, the bull so close you could see his chest muscles swell as he lifted his head, and still not see his head in the thick timber; but hear that deep, high mounting whistle and the answer from across another valley. You thought of all the heads you had turned down and refused to shoot, and you were pleased about every one of them.

  You remembered the children learning to ride; how they did with different horses; and how they loved the country. You remembered how this country had looked when you first came into it, and the year you had to stay four months after you had brought the first car ever to come in for the swamp roads to freeze solid enough to get the car out. You could remember all the hunting and all the fishing and the riding in the summer sun and the dust of the pack-train, the silent riding in the hills in the sharp cold of fall going up after the cattle on the high range, finding them wild as deer and as quiet, only bawling noisily when they were all herded together being forced along down into the lower country.

  Then there was the winter; the trees bare now, the snow blowing so you could not see, the saddle wet, then frozen as you came down-hill, breaking a trail through the snow, trying to keep your legs moving, and the sharp, warming taste of whiskey when you hit the ranch and changed your clothes in front of the big open fireplace. It’s a good country.

  F O U R

  World War II

  Hemingway Interviewed by Ralph Ingersoll

  PM • JUNE 9, 1941

  THIS interview with Ernest Hemingway was recorded in his hotel apartment a few days after he returned to New York from the Far East in 1941. Mr. Ingersoll, the editor of the now defunct newspaper PM, had commissioned Hemingway to go to the Far East to see for himself whether or not war with Japan was inevitable. This interview served as an introduction to Hemingway’s series of articles. It was corrected and revised by Hemingway after having been transcribed and hence might be called an authenticated interview.

  ERNEST Hemingway left for China in January. He had never been in the Orient before. He went to see for himself—how Chiang Kai-shek’s war against Japan was going; how much truth there was to the reports that the Chinese position was menaced by threat of civil war; what would be the effect of the then imminent Russo-Japanese pact and—most important of all—what was our own position in the Orient. What was our position both as a leading anti-Fascist power and as a nation of 130,000,000 people with vital trade interests in other parts of the world—or were they vital?—and if they were vital, were they menaced?

  Hemingway wanted to find out for himself, and for you and for me, what pattern of events might lead us into war with Japan—what alternate sequence of circumstances might possibly keep Japan in her place in the Pacific without us having to fight her.

  Most people know Ernest Hemingway as America’s No. 1 novelist. His reputation as a novelist is so great in fact that it overshadows two other reputations, either one of which gives him international recognition.

  Long before he was a novelist, Ernest Hemingway was a noted war correspondent. He covered the fighting in the Mediterranean in the last war, the whole of the Spanish war—in which the present war was fought in miniature.

  Of sufficient stature to be distinct from his reputation as a war correspondent is his reputation as a military expert. He is a student of war in its totality—everything about war, from machine gun emplacements to tactics and maneuvers to civilian morale and industrial organization for war. These things he has studied for 20 years.

  So when Ernest Hemingway went to China he went as no casual visitor but as a student and an expert—he went with a reputation which made it possible for him to visit fronts that had not been visited by foreign journalists until now, and to talk with people who are running the war in the Orient on a unique basis.

  When Ernest Hemingway went to the Orient, PM made this agreement with him: that if action broke out he was to remain there and cover the war by cable, but if no action broke out, he was to make notes as he went but not to write until he finished his study—until all the returns were in and he had time and the perspective to analyze everything he had seen and heard, and render a report of more lasting value than day-to-day correspondence.

  This is the report that will be published here beginning tomorrow.

  In the meantime, I have talked with Mr. Hemingway about his trip. Here is where he went and what he did and what he saw—the background from which his report is drawn:

  Ernest Hemingway went to China with his wife, Martha Gellhorn. Mrs. Hemingway carried credentials as correspondent for Collier’s, where her articles have already begun appearing. The two flew to Hong Kong by Pan American Clipper.

  Hemingway stayed a month in Hong Kong, where he could talk not only with the Chinese but with their opposition. The Japanese come in and out of Hong Kong quite freely—in fact, they celebrated the Emperor’s birthday in their frock coats and with a formal toast. The British naval and military intelligence is there—and our own naval and military intelligence. The local Communist opposition is there and so are the Chinese pacifists who play Japan’s game.

  We asked Hemingway what it was like in Hong Kong. He said that danger had hung over the place so long it had become absolutely commonplace. People had completely adjusted themselves to the tension. He said that the city was very gay. The stabilizing element in any British colony are the British womenfolk, who keep life on a formal basis. But they had been evacuated and in general morale was high and morals low.

  “There are at least 500 Chinese millionaires living in Hong Kong—too much war in the interior, too much terrorism in Shanghai to suit a millionaire. The presence of the 500 millionaires has brought about another concentration—of beautiful girls from all parts of China. The 500 millionaires own them all. The situation among the less beautiful girls is very bad because it is the British position that prostitution does not exist there, and therefore its control is no problem. This leaves about 50,000 prostitutes in Hong Kong. Their swarming over the streets at night is a war-time characteristic.

  How many troops there are in Hong Kong is, of course, a military secret. Hemingway knows the exact number. That is the type of ce
nsorship PM does not try to beat. But Hemingway reports Hong Kong is “excellently defended.

  “In case of attack Hong Kong’s problem would be food. There are 1,500,000 people there now and they would have to be fed.”

  He continued: “Even more serious would be the sewage disposal problem—for in Hong Kong there are neither flush toilets nor drains. Sewage is disposed of by night soil coolies who collect and sell it to farmers. In case of a blackout sewage will be dumped in the streets and a cholera epidemic would be inevitable. This is known because two nights of practice blackout did produce a cholera epidemic.

  “At present, however,” Hemingway continued, “the food is plentiful and good, and there are some of the finest restaurants in the world in Hong Kong—both European and Chinese. There’s also horse racing, cricket, rugby, association football.”

  After Hemingway had been in Hong Kong a month, he and Mrs. Hemingway flew to NamYung by Chinese air line. This flight took him over the Japanese lines. From NamYung, the Hemingways drove to Shaikwan, headquarters of the 7th War Zone.

  The Chinese front is divided into eight war zones. Hemingway chose the 7th because he “wanted to make an intensive study of what a typical Chinese war zone was like, and the 7th has, ultimately, the greatest offensive potentiality.”

  Here he studied the complete organization of a Chinese war zone from headquarters through the army corps, divisions, brigades, regiments and down to the forward echelons.

  The army Hemingway visited is a Kuomintang army. That is, it is part of the regular Chinese Army and not part of the Chinese Communist Army. The Chinese Communist armies have welcomed journalists and there has been much written about them. But this is the first time an American journalist has done extensive work at the front with the regular Chinese Army.

  We asked Hemingway about this situation. He said:

  “There are 300 divisions in the Chinese Army, 200 of which are first-class divisions and 100 secondary divisions. There are 10,000 regular troops in each division. Out of these 300 divisions three are Communist divisions. The area that the Communist divisions hold is an extremely important one and they have done marvelous fighting. But the 297 other divisions, occupying about the same amount of terrain per division, have not been visited at all before. Whereas the Communists have welcomed correspondents, there has been very strict censorship on the regular Chinese Army. Passes have been impossible to get, and correspondents have not been allowed into the forward echelons at all.”

  Hemingway said he went to see the regular Chinese Army because the Communist troops have already been excellently described by people like Edgar Snow, Agnes Smedley and others.

  News of the Kuomintang army is important not simply because it has received no publicity but because the Kuomintang comprises the bulk of the troops on which we, in America, must depend to keep the Japanese divisions occupied in China while we are preparing to defend the Pacific.

  Hemingway spent a month at the front, living with the troops, going everywhere with them. He traveled down the river by sampan first, then on horseback, and finally on foot. There were 12 days during a wet spell when he and Mrs. Hemingway never had dry clothes to put on.

  They also discovered such delicacies as snake wine and bird wine. Hemingway described snake wine as “a special rice wine with a number of small snakes coiled up at the bottom of the bottle. The snakes are dead,” he said. “They are there for medicinal purposes. Bird wine is also rice wine, but at the bottom of its bottle there are several dead cuckoos.”

  Hemingway liked the snake wine better. He says it cures falling hair and he is going to have some bottled for his friends.

  After a month at the front, the Hemingways went back overland by sampan, car and train to Kweilin. This trip had not been planned, but everywhere they had gone for two months they had been told Kweilin was the most beautiful place in China. And they reported that it is the most beautiful place they saw. “There are thousands of miniature mountains there which look like a huge mountain range but are only 300 feet high. Many of the lovely imaginative scenes you see in Chinese prints and paintings, and think are made up out of an artist’s imagination, are really almost photographic likenesses of Kweilin. There is also a famous cave there which is now used for an air raid shelter. It holds 30,000 people.”

  To get from there to Chungking they arranged to be picked up by a freight plane which was carrying bank notes to the capital. The plane was a Douglas DC-3—the kind that flies on most of our air lines here—and all the other seats were occupied by shipments of bank notes.

  All the air lines in China are owned by a company called the CNAC, or China National Aviation Corp. The Chinese Government owns 51 per cent and our own Pan American Airways owns 49 per cent and does the operating. Hemingway said:

  “They used DC-2’s and 3’s and old Condor biplanes which can only fly on short hauls where the mountains are under 7000 feet high. There are passenger flights from Hong Kong to Chungking three times a week, for instance. But the idea of buying tickets on them is an academic one—for the waiting list is months long and only priority counts.”

  When it did not look as if the priority was coming through in time, Hemingway chartered a Vultee single-motored lowwing monoplane. But then the priority came through.

  By the time the Hemingways got to Chungking they had learned a good deal about China. They spent some time with Chiang Kai-shek and in an all-afternoon interview, Mme. Chiang Kai-shek did the interpreting. But Hemingway reports that when the talk was on military subjects the Generalissimo understood military terms in English. He saw and got to know China’s Minister of Finance, Dr. Kung, the Minister of Education, the Minister of Communications, the Minister of War, as well as various generals and the General Staff.

  “Chungking,” he reports, “had not been bombed seriously from August 25 until May 3—there is no bombing in Chungking during the winter because of low visibility.”

  He found the hotels in Chungking excellent—the food plentiful and the water hot. Everywhere he went in China, in fact, he found food sold without restrictions—even in the villages. At no time, he reports, did he see any of the signs you see when the war is being lost for lack of food. At no time did he see anything like the conditions he saw in Spain.

  “But,” he said, “the food in China is expensive. Moreover, China is such a huge country that there are sections where the food situation gets bad locally—when due to a local drought a crop has failed. And communications are so bad that it is difficult to ship in food from other parts of the country. Such a condition prevails at present in South Shansi province and in other parts of the northern provinces. On the whole, the food situation this year is very good.”

  We asked Hemingway what people meant when they came back and said the economic situation in China was “very bad.”

  He said: “When people come into China from America and see signs of a monetary inflation there, they think everything is going to pot, whereas the situation is actually very good, considering China is in the fourth year of war. The inflation there is no worse than occurs in any other country that fights for four years. In the fourth year of the last war no European country was in better shape.”

  He felt that “China has to make some radical currency reforms—but principally to prevent the Japanese from buying up their money. The Japanese sell their own money short and buy Chinese money—now that America is backing China’s money,” he said. “I don’t think this will be hard to control. My personal opinion is that eventually China will have to adjust its currency on a rice standard. Rice is the gold of China and only a currency based on a rice standard will prevent the kind of inflation in which people are not able to buy food.”

  The first time the Hemingways were in Chungking they stayed about eight days, constantly talking with people. Hemingway dined, lunched and breakfasted with Government people.

  At the end of the eight days he flew up to Chengtu to visit the Chinese military academy—where Chiang Kai-shek
trains his officers and cadets. And he inspected the flying schools and the new airdromes that are being constructed in this district. Here again, as a guest of the military academy, he had an opportunity to study the whole Chinese military system.

  “The military academy,” he said, “is in full swing. It was set up by the German General Alexander Von Faulkenhausen, and its professors are German-trained Chinese.”

  Hemingway flew back from the Chinese West Point to Chungking and then took another plane south over the Burma Road. He saw the trucks passing up and down the road.

  We asked him whether reports that the Road was all banged up were true. He said: “Some of the bridges were out, but the Chinese have a very efficient ferry system to replace them. The Road is being bombed regularly—Kunming practically every day—but the bombing of bridges is not effective, partly because of the ferries and partly because they rebuild the bridges so quickly.”

  Hemingway said: “The control organization of the China section of the Burma Road is now in the charge of a committee which includes Dr. Harry Baker, formerly head of the American Red Cross in China. If Dr. Baker is not hamstrung by his fellow committee members he will be able to put through many traffic reforms.”

  From Lashio, which, you will see by the map, is far up on the Burma Road route, Hemingway went to Mandalay by car and then down to Rangoon by train. All along this route he studied the Burma Road problem, and gave us this picture of it:

  “The first part of the problem is getting materials from the coast up to the beginning of the Road. Here there are two methods of transportation available. One is via the Burma railway, the other is via the river. So far most of the material has gone up over the railway which is Burmese owned and very jealous of river traffic. The river traffic is transported by an organization called the Irrawaddy Flotilla, which belongs to a Scottish-owned company.