The Soong Sisters

by Emily Hahn

  Chiang nevertheless prepared for a real campaign against Feng, and Yen then joined forces openly with the Christian General. Chiang called on the Young Marshal for aid, but the Manchurian leader hesitated for a time. The rebellion had become the most serious war since the beginning of the Nationalist government.

  Chang Hsueh-liang hesitated to bring his troops south of the Great Wall and involve himself in such a melee. One of the reasons for Feng’s and Yen’s confidence in their prospects was Wang Ching-wei, who had become their ally. Wang since his retirement in favor of the Generalissimo had made quite a name for himself as the “true heir to Sun Yat-sen,” and there was a good deal of sympathy for him, while Feng had been associated enough with the Communists (though this association was occasionally interrupted, as for instance in regard to Hankow) to play politics as a common man for the common people. As for Yen, he was deservedly one of the most popular governors in China: Shansi was famous for its prosperity. The three decided upon another Peking government with Wang at the head. They accused Chiang publicly of military dictatorship and of ignoring the rights of the democracy.

  By the first of April, their troops were moving south and Chiang was in the midst of preparations to meet them on the way. There was some fighting in Shantung and in Honan. Chiang’s army moved up the Lunghai railway and met Feng’s troops, the People’s Army, and was beaten back. Then in June another wing of the rebel troops captured Changsha in Hunan, though Chiang took it back later on. In the meantime Yen on behalf of the new government appropriated the customs revenue at Tientsin. In Peiping, the name the Nationalists had given the old city of Peking (Northern Capital), Wang Ching-wei duly instituted his government, which was of course to be the most truly democratic body yet seen in China.

  Chiang’s retort to this action was to open a large-scale offensive campaign. In a big battle on August fifteenth he took Tsinan, beating Yen’s troops back across the Yellow River. Until this moment Nanking and Wang Ching-wei had both been trying to tempt the Young Marshal to take sides with them; now he came out for the Generalissimo, and Yen gave up the game completely. He was confronted by the enemy and another enemy waited at his rear; there was no good in going further in any direction. Chang brought his troops into North China and Wang Ching-wei moved out of Peiping with his friends to Shihchiachuang. There was no fighting near Peiping, but Chiang Kai-shek in the meantime captured Kaifeng and Chengchow in Honan. The civil war, a severe and bloody struggle, ended on October sixth. Once more China was at peace and in a unified state — until the next spot of trouble.

  Only comparatively at peace, however. The Communists had begun a sort of guerilla warfare upon the breakup of the Hankow government. Those people who had been “converted” by Borodin’s men, and even by Chiang Kai-shek himself while he was working under Sun Yat-sen and learning the science of propaganda from the Soviet, had not been willing to abandon all these carefully nurtured ideas when the Generalissimo went to the Right. First they had been let down, they felt, by Chiang, and then the Kuomintang itself betrayed them by disagreeing with Borodin and compromising with Nanking. A number of them fled because they were in danger; others joined in the flight as protest and from principle. The massacre of Communists in the treaty ports did nothing to convince them that they had been wrong. They traveled in the wilder provinces of China, making war on Government troops and persuading country people to join them. After a time they constituted an important force, with concentrated armies of men who were trained in their particular kind of warfare, and set up a center of government too near Nanking for that city’s comfort. Chiang knew that as soon as he had settled the Feng-Yen combine he would have to deal with them.

  Nevertheless, during the breathing space that followed the Young Marshal’s entry into the quarrel, the Generalissimo took time off to do a very significant thing. He became a Christian. It was not quite three years since he had married Mayling, after promising her mother that he would study his Bible and do his best to understand and accept her religion. He had kept his promise faithfully. He had read the Scriptures and discussed them with his wife, he had found comfort in the Bible during his trials, he had come to depend more and more upon this new philosophy, and now he felt honestly ready to become a son of the Church. One of the reasons he gave when he was questioned by the pastor was typical; he had found, he said, that the best of his officers were Christians! Certainly a large number of the generals and officials of the Government were members of the Church. This marked a definite difference between the new Nanking and the old Canton; in the three years since the Generalissimo had introduced his bride to the capital there had been a vast change in the sentiment of the public towards Christianity. It was suffered and even approved, save by the die-hards. No longer need Colonel Huang dodge flying missiles when he walked in the street, and the O.M.E.A. and Y.M.C.A. buildings were now in no danger of being burned down.

  The Chiangs came to Shanghai quietly, without any advance publicity of the event, on October twenty-third. Chiang Kai-shek was baptized in the home of Mrs Soong, by the Reverend Z. T. Kaung. Everyone in the family was present save Chingling. Madame Sun was not in Shanghai, but even had she been there it is doubtful if she would willingly have attended this ceremony. She had taken on the ideas of her husband in regard to organized religions, though as a child she had been, of course, quite as much a Christian as had the rest of her family (Lyon Sharman, in her excellent book on Sun Yat-sen, has gone deeply into the matter of his Christianity. It seems to have fluctuated with his years and his political opinions. When he first returned to China as President he was sternly in favor of Christianity, to the detriment of the older religions of his countrymen; he called most Chinese forms of worship “superstition.” Some people hold that his father was a pastor in the Church, and his home environment may have bequeathed to him his earlier ideas on the subject. Later he seems to have added Christianity to his list of superstitions, though he was not definite about it, nor did he denounce it in any way. Madame Sun likewise has never made a public pronouncement as to her state of grace. Her sympathies, however, are not with the missionaries.)

  Since his baptism the Generalissimo has been as regular as his duties permit in his attendance at church. He finds comfort and guidance in prayer, taking refuge in a period of quiet on his knees whenever he has an important decision to make. Every day when he rises at five-thirty he says his prayers as unfailingly as he writes in his diary, and that is a part of his daily routine that he never forgets . . . .

  The anniversary of his wedding day was usually the occasion of a celebration of some kind, and in 1930 something happened which Madame Chiang still considers the most remarkable escape of their lives. They were living in Nanking, in a remodeled Chinese bungalow that Mayling had done her best to make habitable. She was not satisfied with the result, but she knew better than to expect too much comfort in those early days.

  The Generalissimo, several days before the anniversary, suggested to her that they cross the river and spend a little time in the country, for a holiday. Madame Chiang consented, but as the time drew near she felt uneasy, though she did not know why.

  “I really don’t want to go very much,” she confessed to her husband. “I promised, and I’ll go if it would disappoint you to stay here, but — I don’t know what it is, but I’d rather stay home.”

  “You’re tired,” said Chiang. “Of course we’ll stay at home.”

  On the evening of the day they had planned to leave, he had reason to regret his wife’s whim, for he had several long interviews to get through, and saw no signs of being free until late at night. Mayling went to bed early, but she could not sleep. It was very cold, as it can be in Nanking, and the builders had laid the floor directly on the earth beneath, so that there was always a clammy dampness in the house. She lay in bed wide awake, wondering why she felt so nervous. There was nobody near the bedroom; her amah had retired to her own quarters. Madame Chiang lay there in the darkness until she could not bear it any lon
ger, then she turned on all the lights in the room, in the bathroom and in her husband’s study near by. She got up and put on her dressing gown with the idea of asking Chiang to come in if only for a moment, but then she realized it would look silly and hysterical, and she contented herself with standing near the door, finding some comfort in the sound of voices from the other room.

  The first interview finished; she heard the Generalissimo say good night. Then to her dismay someone else was shown in. It was a General Hsi, who had come to protest, against rumors to the contrary, that he was loyal to his leader. Madame Chiang could not face the idea of another long wait; she knocked on the door and asked her husband to come in.

  “Something terrible is going to happen,” she insisted. “Please, please be careful. I know that something terrible is going to happen.”

  “But what could happen?” he said reasonably. “Everything’s perfectly peaceful. You’re nervous and overtired. I’ll call the amah to stay with you, and I’ll try to get rid of this man as soon as I can.”

  A little pacified, Mayling refused the company of the amah and went to bed again, and in a little while she fell asleep. But when at midnight Chiang came to bed, she sat up in terror.

  “I had a dream,” she said. “I dreamed there was a big stone or a boulder [Chiang’s name means “stone”] in the middle of a stream, and the moon lit up the water, and all of a sudden the water turned to blood. Rivers of blood!”

  Again her husband reassured her, and they went to sleep. At three in the morning someone knocked on the windowpane to report the troops of General Hsi, who had just paid a special visit to assure Chiang of his loyalty, had mutinied and were making trouble across the river, in the region where the Chiangs had planned their holiday. At the moment their General was at the bungalow, they were changing their armbands and announcing that they were breaking loose from Nanking.

  There was no more sleep for the Chiangs that night. For several hours Mayling was too busy to think, and then she remembered that her sister Eling was arriving by steamer from Shanghai that day.

  “She’s not due until the middle of the morning,” she thought with relief, “and by that time the ship’s company will probably have warned the captain; he’ll turn back.”

  At six that morning, however, Madame Kung walked into the bungalow, surprised to find everyone already up and about. Madame Chiang cried out when she saw her:

  “Go away! Don’t you know what’s happened? You’re in terrible danger!”

  Nobody on the boat had heard anything about the rebellion. When Madame Kung understood the situation, however, she refused to leave. Instead she telephoned her mother in Shanghai, on the new long-distance line. It was impossible to talk plainly over the phone, for the city had not yet heard of the crisis and the Generalissimo was trying to postpone the inevitable panic as long as possible. Madame Kung therefore said:

  “Mother, something very bad is happening. I can’t tell you what it is, but May and I want you to pray for us.”

  Two hours later they had a telegram from Mrs Soong, referring them to a verse in the Bible that said, “The enemy shall retire of its own accord.”

  It was late in the day before they heard that Hsi’s troops had thought better of their rebellion and had gone away.

  It was now time for the Generalissimo to turn his attention to the godless Communists, and he began work in December. The main concentration of the Red troops was very near to Nanking. Chiang first, following time-honored procedure, called upon them to give in; he promised freedom and protection to all those who would return to his fold. To those who refused he declared his willingness to fight to the end. At the beginning of the campaign, however, he was hampered by the fighting methods of the Communists, unusual at that time but familiar now to anyone who knows their technique. It has been used since in the Sino-Japanese engagements. The Communists, by means of signs and posters and persuasion and field work among the noncombatant farmers who communicated with both sides, managed to bring many of Chiang’s men over to their way of thinking.

  In the cities, too, especially those large ones under the control of Nanking, there were plenty of people who remembered wistfully the visions of Sun Yat-sen when he collaborated with Borodin. It had been only five years since those hopeful days, and not everyone was convinced, as was the Generalissimo through personal experience, that their Russian friends should have been cast out so completely. Centers of this dissatisfaction were the universities; both professors and students openly discussed their criticism of the Government at Nanking, and several periodicals demanded modification of Chiang’s “dictatorship.” Chiang declared his intention of dealing sternly with such people, going so far as to threaten to incarcerate students who might cause riots and disturbance.

  The campaign against the Communists did not go well until the Generalissimo himself led his forces into Kiangsi, where the enemy was strongest. He drove them out of the province; the Reds retreated to the South, out of Central China. At the same time trouble of a different kind was brewing in Canton.

  It was a different kind of trouble, but it bore relationship to the old trouble in that Wang Ching-wei was again mixed up in it. There were also Feng Yu-hsiang, Yen Hsi-shan and Hu Han-min, all of whom had come together, bound in a common cause — to defeat Chiang. Wang’s persistence inevitably reminds one of his name, or vice versa: the Ching-wei is a mythical bird that works its whole life endeavoring to fill up the ocean in order that he may walk across it. All day long, life long, it picks up pebble after pebble in its beak and drops it into the sea.

  CHAPTER XVII

  Eling Gets a Taste of Public Life

  In may 1931 the group of dissatisfied leaders in Canton interrupted the people’s convention that was being held at Nanking with a telegram of denunciation. Sun Fo showed that he was in sympathy with the critics by walking out. Kwangtung announced that its differences with Kwangsi were patched up, which meant that the South was united again, and against the Government. It looked very much like another civil war; but Chiang did his best to avert it.

  Before the month was out the Southerners had demanded his resignation, and when he paid no attention to their ultimatum they set up a Cantonese Central Executive Committee, and then a government of their own. Chiang still tried to avoid war. This time it would be more than a mere punitive expedition; so many of his erstwhile friends were on the other side, and the nation had been so weakened by the constant fighting of the past four years, that it would have been madness, considering China’s situation from an international standpoint, to embark on a serious civil war. The ugliest part of it was that Canton was flirting with Japan.

  Still, when on August fifth the Kwangsi troops actually began marching upon Nanking, there was nothing for it but to get ready to fight. It is difficult to suppose what might have been the outcome, since the strengths of the opponents were fairly equal, if Japan had not chosen that moment to move into Manchuria. The “Mukden Incident” on September eighteenth, 1931, was the first development.

  That night the railway near Mukden was blown up, and the Japanese, alleging that it was done by Chinese and that it was their duty to maintain order in Manchuria, as they had stated before, hurried to send troops in. It was a most obviously trumped-up excuse; many students of the matter have since shown with plenty of proof that the original explosion was arranged to give Japan this opportunity while Chiang was busy in the South. As such things go, however, it may be even more illuminating to see what a Japanese has to say about it; Mr S. Akimoto, in his Manchuria Scene, writes:

  Chang Tso-lin was a picturesque figure who was a mounted bandit, and he became overlord of Manchuria clearly through the sufferance, it not the actual co-operation, of Japan. As years passed, he began to forget his ties and obligations, and to act in a way inimical to Japanese interests. This was natural in a man who, when he had risen to a height, and imagined himself secure, would kick the ladder from under him. This was exactly what Chang did or was going to do. He
thought he was not only the nominal but the actual ruler of all Manchuria, and could do very well without Japan, and he began to pursue a policy founded upon this illusion. He made himself Marshal, and then Great Marshal, built an enormous arsenal within a stone’s throw of Japan’s economic center in Mukden, and laid other plans which could only be interpreted as acts of warlike preparation against Japan, till at last his megalomania ambition was stopped by his own tragic death. That this was the work of Japanese agents was perhaps a natural enough suspicion under the circumstances.

  Chang Hsueh-liang, instead of taking a hint from his father’s death, made himself Marshal Chang the Second, and continued to pursue the same anti-Japanese policy. Some observers allege that there were foreign wire pullers behind his back, just as there were Soviet wire pullers behind the anti-British Nationalist forces in 1927. Be that as it may. Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang refused to take Japan seriously; he went on thwarting, negatizing, and persecuting Japan at every turn, till at last, it is said, there were accumulated more than 300 “unsolved problems,” insults and grievances, such as debts repudiated, treaty rights broken, individual liberties violated, confiscatory levies imposed, commonest justice denied, strikes and boycotts stirred up against the Japanese, and finally, harmless citizens, including women and children, subjected to nameless acts of barbarity. In short, Chang Hsueh-liang’s policy of persecution reached such a pitch that even impartial observers feared that a single spark might inflame the pent-up rage of Japan and create a fearful conflagration.