“The Irrawaddy is navigable as far as Bhamo. You should look at the map here because Bhamo is becoming very important. At Bhamo a connecting road is being completed through to the Burma Road. You will see that not only does it cut off a good part of the Burma Road—and a difficult and mountainous part—but it permits goods to be transported up from the coast all the way by river. In effect this new route—from Rangoon to Bhamo by water and from Bhamo by short cut to well up on the Burma Road—constitutes a cut-off which is almost impossible for the Japanese to damage.
“The old route,” he continued, “by rail from Lashio to Kunming, remains available, and shippers can also use the river up from Rangoon to Mandalay to Lashio.
“This makes two ways in.
“A third way,” he went on, “is now being developed. This way uses first water and then rail to a place called Myitkyina—pronounced Michina—which, if you are interested in the Burma Road problem, you should locate for yourself on the map. Because you will see that by using Myitkyina as a railhead, a 200-mile air shuttle service from Myitkyina to Tali cuts off 509 miles of the Burma Road and leaves only 197 miles to travel to Kunming.
“This 197 miles—from Tali to Kunming—is downhill and there are no bridges and gorges which the Japanese can turn into bottlenecks by bombing. On a 200-mile hop the freight planes will not have to refuel in China at all.
“Thus,” Hemingway explained, “the Chinese have what amounts to three alternate routes of supply from the south, not counting the constant bootlegging of supplies in from the whole China Coast.”
Hemingway studied this traffic and says it is of enormous extent. He does not write about it in detail because he does not want to give information to the Japanese.
Now, remembering that the overland route into Russia is still open and that the Chinese are still getting supplies from Russia—as Hemingway explains in one of his articles—one realizes for the first time just what an enormous problem the Japanese have in interrupting Chinese communications.
“If the Japanese interruptions on the Road were as one, the interruptions due to inefficiency, graft and red tape would be as five. That is, take the whole route from Rangoon into Chungking—inefficiency, graft and red tape cause five times as much trouble as Japanese bombings. This is the problem which Dr. Baker has to solve.”
We were startled by this figure and asked Hemingway to tell us more about it. He said:
“All projects in China move very quickly until money is involved. The Chinese have been doing business for many centuries and when things are a business matter to them they move very slowly. The Generalissimo can order something done—something in which money doesn’t enter—and it is done practically, immediately. But the minute it becomes a financial thing it slows right up. No one person is responsible for this. It is the age-old Chinese custom of squeeze.
“There have been cases of truck drivers selling their gasoline, which they were hauling over the Burma Road, to private concerns. There have been cases of dumping whole loads to carry passengers. I saw with my own eyes tires being thrown off trucks loaded with them—evidently to be picked up by confederates later.
“There’s no efficient policing of the Road. Of course every load should be checked as it goes in, and all the way through, and as it comes out. That is what Dr. Baker’s Commission has to fix. After they opened the Road things ran wild for a while. Some people, operating transportation companies from outside of China, had no efficient control of their organizations on the Road. Now the Generalissimo realizes the importance of this. Something is being done about it.”
Hemingway told us that the situation in Burma doesn’t make things any better. He said: “Burma is a land of complete and utter red tape. Everything there is slowed up as much as it can be. If a military attaché comes to Rangoon to get a load of food to take back up to Kunming, it takes him two days in Rangoon just to clear through red tape. It is worse than France was before the fall. It is entirely administered by the Burmese, who combine the worst features of the Hindu Babu and the French prefall functionary. On the other hand, the British in Burma, not the Burmese, were efficient and uniformly helpful. Censorship was realistic and intelligent.”
We asked Hemingway what it was like visiting romantic-sounding places like Mandalay and Rangoon. He said Rangoon was an English colonial city, “96 degrees at night and 103 degrees in the day, in the hot months when we were there. The flying fish were not playing. Kipling was talking about a place further down—Moulmein, below Rangoon, near the mouth of the river.”
Hemingway went all the way down to Rangoon and stayed there for about a week. Then he flew back via Lashio and Kunming to Hong Kong and stayed there again for a week before leaving for America. Mrs. Hemingway continued on to Batavia and the Dutch East Indies while Hemingway worked between Clippers in Manila. She rejoined him on the next Clipper.
As this is being written Mr. Hemingway is completing his last piece for PM. We asked him a few final questions: What about the Chinese arsenals? If, by any mischance, the supply routes were cut, could they go on fighting?
He said: “I visited arsenals near Chungking and saw that they were manufacturing small arms and small arms ammunition, and were very self-sufficient. Moreover, much material can come right through Japanese lines. The guerrillas had been running trucks through the Japanese lines by completely dismantling them—into the smallest possible pieces—and carrying them by hand. An American motor company representative in Hong Kong was delivering trucks through the Japanese lines to Free China making a $450 service charge for delivery.” Hemingway has more news of the latest developments in guerrilla fighting.
News from the Orient has been confusing and contradictory to most people. Russia supposedly offers the hand of friendship to Japan—and at the same time continues to ship supplies to China.
America gives China a $100,000,000 credit—and at the same time sells oil to China’s enemy. What’s it all about?
Hemingway told us. He traced for us the probable consequences of each move we were making, and each Japanese move.
He showed us how Russia was playing a devious hand in this gigantic game of Chinese checkers which anybody might win.
Must America fight Japan? Hemingway told us why it’s a matter of timing. As far as America is concerned, time itself is fighting on our side. As for Japan, time is running out on her—and no one, not even the Japanese, knows when the last strategic moment will have come. Or whether she should extricate herself from China at any price before challenging us. If Britain should fall it would be the signal for Japan aggressively to pursue her conquests in new directions. And this may well mean war with the U.S.A.
If England grows stronger and America is able to keep the fleet in the Pacific, war between the United States and Japan may never occur. And further, Hemingway tells us, we may thus beat Japan without ever firing a gun.
No one interview such as this, however—no one article—can give you the full impact, can piece together the complete pattern of this tremendously significant picture.
Russo-Japanese Pact
PM • JUNE 10, 1941
HONG KONG.—On the day the Japanese-Soviet neutrality pact was signed in Moscow, Dr. H. H. Kung, who is both Prime Minister and Minister of Finance for his brother-in-law, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, was dining with Soviet Ambassador Paniushkin in Chungking.
“We hear that a pact is going to be signed,” the Chinese statesman said.
“Yes,” the Soviet Ambassador answered. “That is true.”
“What will be the effect of such a pact on Russian aid to China?”
“None,” answered the Soviet Ambassador.
“Will you withdraw any troops from the Manchukuo frontier?”
“We will reinforce our divisions there,” the Soviet Ambassador said, and the head of the Soviet military advisers in China, a Lieutenant General, nodded agreement.
At the time that incident happened I did not care to write it because diplomats r
arely impart bad news over the dinner table and it was possible that very different news might come out of Moscow. But since then I have heard directly from both Dr. Kung and Mme. Chiang Kai-shek that Russian aid is continuing to arrive and that no Soviet staff officers, aviation instructors, or military advisers have been withdrawn from the Generalissimo’s army.
My wife and I had lunched with Mme. Chiang Kai-shek the day the pact was announced and during the conversation she said, “But how will we know whether they will really withdraw aid or not?”
“If they are going to withdraw aid,” I told her, remembering how it had happened in Spain, “the first move will be to withdraw the military advisers, the instructors and the staff officers. As long as they stay on, it means the aid will continue.”
Last week a letter from Mme. Chiang Kai-shek contained these three paragraphs:
“I am fulfilling my promise to inform you of the Generalissimo’s reaction to the neutrality pact between the USSR and Japan.
“The Generalissimo declares that this pact will not have the slightest effect on China’s determination to continue national resistance. We began it single-handedly and if necessary, we shall end it the same way. What other nations, friendly or otherwise, may or may not do, will not influence. We will fight on until victory is won. Outer Mongolia and Manchuria are parts of China and the people of these regions themselves feel that they are indissolubly linked with the National Government, which recognizes no alienation of territory, and does not intend to, whatever happens.
“So far there is no indication that the USSR will withdraw its advisers from China, or will cease supplying us with war materials.”
Soviet Russia has given China more aid than any other country has supplied. She has provided planes, pilots, trucks, some artillery, gasoline, military instructors and staff officers who act as military advisers. She has lent Chiang Kai-shek’s government something over the equivalent of 200,000,000 U.S. dollars.
Most of this huge loan was attained on a barter basis and has been repaid in tea, wolfram (tungsten ore) and other products. The Russians drove a hard bargain when the barter terms were made and at present the Chinese have a difficult time buying the tea at prices agreed on with Russia. But they are still making deliveries.
Feeling between Chinese Communists and the Central Government is so bitter on both sides that I was amazed at first to find Soviet staff officers still serving in an advisory capacity with Chiang Kai-shek’s armies and Soviet aid to China still coming in steadily. While I was at the front with Chinese Central Army troops I encountered Soviet staff officers and I saw new Russian planes which had come in; both bombardment and pursuit. In the officers’ club where I lived at Chengtu in Northern Szechwan Province the room numbers on all the rooms were in Russian and various delicacies we had for breakfasts, including cocoa and tinned butter, had come by way of Vladivostok and Chita.
This Vladivostok route was using the Trans-Siberian Railroad to haul freight to Chita. From Chita to Urga, all transport was by truck and bus. From Urga to Ninghsia, camel caravans carried the freight to the Chinese roadhead where it was loaded onto trucks again for the haul to Chungking and Chengtu.
No visitors are allowed to see the Russian military advisers, instructors and pilot instructors, but I had run into three Russian staff officers out at the front on an impassable muddy road where all transport was stalled. So I greeted one of them whom I knew with, “How are you doing, Tovarich?” It was evidently decided after that encounter that there was very little point in concealing from me the Russians’ presence and from then on the subject was always discussed very frankly. Consequently, I had a good chance to compare the Chinese field staff and general officers’ opinions on the various foreign military advisers they had fought under.
Almost unanimously they ranked the Germans first as soldiers and staff officers and the Russians second. Their complaint against the Russians was that they rarely worked out any offensive action on a large or small scale in sufficient force.
To simplify the explanation to the utmost, using men in terms of money: if a position was purchasable for 50 cents, the Russians would try to take it for a dime. They would fail at that and finally have to pay $1.15 for it because there no longer was any element of surprise. On the other hand, if a position was worth 50 cents, the Germans would smack it with $1.50. After it was taken you would often find that only a quarter out of the $1.50 had been spent.
Chinese generals, if they are convinced that you know what you are talking about, are extraordinarily frank, straight talking, intelligent and articulate. I have spent some time on various British maneuvers. The atmosphere at the Chinese front with the men who had fought the war lords for five years, the Communists for 10 and the Japanese for nearly four was as different from that of a British staff as the locker room of the Green Bay Packers professional football team would be from even such a good prep school as Choate.
One Chinese general asked me what the British in Hong Kong thought of them. We were a couple of days riding together after the opening formal politenesses. We had drunk numerous cups of rice wine and worked late over the map.
“Does the General really want to know what they said?”
“Yes, truly.”
“The General will not be offended?”
“Of course not.”
“ ‘Well, we don’t think very much of the Chinese, you know.’ ” I tried to reproduce it. “ ‘Johnny’s all right and a very good fellow and all that. But he’s absolutely hopeless on the offensive, you know. We have absolutely no confidence in him ever taking the offensive. Truly none. No. Too bad. We can’t count on Johnny.’ ”
“Johnny?” asked the General.
“John Chinaman,” I said.
“Very interesting,” the General said. “Very interesting.”
Then he went on, “We have no artillery to speak of, you know. No planes. Or very few. You know that, of course. Do you think the British would go on the offensive without artillery or aerial support anywhere? Any time?
“No,” he interrupted me. “Let me tell you a Chinese story. A new Chinese story. Not an old Chinese story. Do you know why the British staff officer wears a single glass in his eye?”
“No,” I said.
“Ho,” he said. “It is a very new Chinese story. He wears a single glass in his eye so he will not see more than he can understand.”
“I will tell that officer when I see him,” I said.
“Very good,” he said. “Tell him it is a little message from Johnny.”
Rubber Supplies in Dutch East Indies
PM • JUNE 11, 1941
RANGOON.—One thing is as plain in the present Far Eastern situation as the rusty corrugated iron roof chat bakes under the heavy metallic Burmese sun outside the hotel window as I write this. That is that an American traveling in the East studying the strategical, economic and political situation must distinguish between the pretexts for the war we are arming for out here and the basic causes of this possible war.
If we fight Japan the pretext for fighting will be that Japan has attacked the Philippines, or the Dutch East Indies or British Malaya.
But the real reason for fighting Japan will be that if she moves south in the Pacific she will be attacking the control of the world supply of rubber. Four-fifths of the world’s rubber supply comes from the area Japan would be moving into and it would take at least seven years to build up rubber production anywhere else to replace the area Japan would control if she could take Singapore.
No American who drives a car, talks on a telephone, plays golf, or rides in a plane, or a train, or a bus can continue to do these things for long if our supply of rubber is cut off.
Another basic reason for opposing a southern move by Japan is that by going south Japan would gain control of necessities the U.S.A. needs to carry on industry and defend herself in war. Almost all the quinine in the world comes from Java in the Dutch East Indies. Quinine, in the area where U.S. military and naval
forces will have to operate to defend the Western Hemisphere from Nazi aggression in the event of a Nazi victory over England, is as important as ammunition.
Tin, tungsten for machine tools, antimony for babbitt metal, tung oil with its myriad uses, manila hemp for rope for the Navy and merchant marine, chromium and manganese, necessities for rearmament, all of these are strategic materials necessary for the U.S.A. to conduct a war with, which Japan would control if she moved south successfully.
If the U.S.A. fights Japan it will be to keep her from depriving us of those necessities. But the principal reason it would be necessary to oppose her would be to keep our supply of rubber. Deprived of rubber the U.S.A. could never build or maintain the mechanized army that it is the first necessity to construct for national defense.
Military strategy is inseparable from economic strategy and since it is to Germany’s interest that America and England both be deprived of the necessities they get from the South China Sea area, Germany has steadily urged and pushed Japan toward that area. Germany also wishes to divert every possible American and British naval unit from the Atlantic to the Pacific to oppose Japan while Germany makes her effort against England. Germany wishes to keep the bulk of the U.S. Fleet in the Pacific and to contain as many Empire divisions, ships and planes, in the Pacific area as she can. The Japanese threat against Singapore, periodically emphasized, accomplishes this.
But Japan has to move south, whether Germany wants her to or not, for another reason. Japan has not enough iron to manufacture armament and munitions. She has not enough oil to refine gasoline for her planes or to fuel her battleships. At this moment Japan is dependent on the U.S.A., Great Britain and the Dutch East Indies for the gasoline and oil that is vital for her to make war, and a great part of her iron ore comes from the Philippines.
By-Line Ernest Hemingway Page 31