The Soong Sisters

by Emily Hahn

  No private fortune is sufficient to carry the entire burden of a modern war’s relief, but at the beginning of those summer days of bombing, Shanghai and the surrounding country was almost entirely unprepared for anything save actual fighting. The beginning of the sale of Liberty Bonds on September first brought an end to this state of affairs. The leading women of the town and of Nanking took “divisions” under their control and a competitive system was arranged. Madame Kung’s division set as its quota a million-dollar sale of bonds. In a short period, however, her canvassers had collected half as much again. For the first time this quiet, retiring woman had found scope for her special talents in organization and finance; she had inherited her mother’s aptitude for business affairs. She began to take a keen interest in the economic side of the war. Dr Kung had that year gone to England as China’s representative at the Coronation, and during this trip he negotiated a loan from England that sent China into frenzies of joy and irritated and increased Japan’s anti-British sentiment. Madame Kung was interested in the complexities of loans and currency and she began to study these matters and to learn how much science there is in banking. Her wartime activities, however, she still kept to herself as much as possible, seeing no necessity for publicity. In her opinion as well as that of other people, too many society women were taking tremendous credit for public work that they were not really doing. They lent their names to committees and organizations, they allowed their photographs to be published in connection with these activities, they appeared at meetings and bazaars, smiling prettily, but when the time came to make an effort and to fulfill all their promises they always managed to hand their duties over to obscure underlings. This behavior scandalized and disgusted the vigorous Eling, who decided that she had been correct in staying out of the public eye all her life. The old-fashioned Chinese virtues of modesty and anonymity for women, she said to herself, were best after all. Nevertheless her American training and the teachings of her father caused her to make a reservation to the effect that women should and must be financially independent. She must somehow reconcile these two ideas . . . .

  In the meantime all this activity and mental stimulation brought her out of her shell to such an extent that she consented, though still protesting that it was Mayling’s line of country and not hers at all to make a speech to the women of Shanghai at a meeting at the Park Hotel. She was very nervous about it, but it developed that she need not have feared comparison with her sisters in the matter of public speaking. Her voice was clear and far-carrying, her bearing impressive. Later she was persuaded to send a radio broadcast to America.

  In Nanking Madame Chiang was working in such a whirl of activity that she seldom found the time to come to Shanghai to see her sisters. The opening of hostilities in North China had been the occasion for an interesting development of the Chiangs’ pet project, the New Life Movement. This platform, as has already been mentioned, was on the way to becoming nothing more than a mild if nationwide joke. The missionary influence had brought into being unpopular strictures upon clothing and such dissipations as smoking and wine drinking and particularly dancing, until the public both inside and outside of China had decided that New Life was nothing but a code of petty rules for behavior. Madame Chiang and the Generalissimo in 1935 had begun to prove that this was not true, but it remained for the war to show how useful such a ready-made organization can be when quick action is necessary. On August first, in Nanking, Madame Chiang rallied to her side these leaders’ wives and daughters and proposed to them that the women of China make a concerted effort to help win the war.

  Women’s work, as Madame Chiang pointed out at the conference, lay not only in the field of munitions manufacturing and hospitalization, but also in the education of China’s masses. This war was going to be a long, wearing affair. The bulk of their people were still ignorant of the scale of the coming struggle and its significance. While the country’s leaders were directing the battle, these women could teach their sisters the principles of patriotism and the importance of hygiene and proper farming. Many peasant women worked in the fields; it was necessary that China’s country-people reduce the disease and ignorance that hampered her production of food supply. At the same time that they were learning these fundamentals they could learn other things — to read, to write, to think. Thus the New Life Movement would be carrying on with a constructive program even though the war had turned it for the time being into a machine for defense.

  She herself was far too much occupied with her work as Secretary General of the Aeronautical Commission and as general purveyor of information about China to the world outside Asia to give more than a few moments daily to this latest project. She was snowed under with demands from the press of Europe and America for articles and statements. For as long as possible and as often as she felt she had something to say she complied with these requests. In America and in England the public read over and over again Mayling’s indignant words on the subject of the war. China, she warned the world, was only the first of the democracies to be attacked by fascism. Shortsightedness on the part of the powers had allowed matters to become a menace ever since the first breach of faith in Manchuria, and those same powers would endure to see the grievous results to themselves of their “mental myopia.”

  Then there was the matter of relief for the refugees and the wounded. Madame Chiang spoke on the radio, granted interviews to the dozens of war correspondents who flocked to Nanking, and wrote more and more and more in an effort to put her appeals before the public eye. This was not easy for her; she hates asking for anything. It is not so difficult, however, to request aid for somebody else, and she forced herself to do it. For as long as her time and energy held out she did what she could to collect money. She even agreed to write a series of news reports for an English newspaper, but the editor’s constant demands for more sensational material disheartened her. She could not manufacture horrors at will, even for propaganda purposes; the horrors she was witnessing, day by day, were quite sufficient for her imagination. She gave up that commission very willingly.

  Her sisters, too, were being besieged by publications. Madame Sun, who had lived in the obscurity she preferred for many years, had always turned off all requests with the ease born of long practice. Only now and then for a paper of whose policy she approved would she break silence; sometimes a Chinese magazine would obtain an article from Chingling. Madame Kung had never made any attempt whatever to write for publication, and her extreme shyness made any press interviews impossible. She was convinced for a while that an article about her for an American “Sunday Supplement” would be practically painless, and so she consented up to the moment of publication, though there was a long and difficult time during which she had to be convinced all over again in the matter of photographs. Just before the article went to press her spirit failed her and the piece was withdrawn. American editors were effectively discouraged for months by this behavior.

  Thick and fast the problems of war were pouring in to Shanghai, and none of the Soong sisters had time to think of the lighter aspects of publicity. Several refugee camps in the Settlement were provided by Madame Kung with rice. In Hongkong, refugees from Canton were given rice, a most welcome contribution by Madame Kung to that crowded and suffering island. She was of one mind with Madame Chiang on the subject of education during wartime, and set up two schools in Shanghai and a hundred more in the interior. One of the most fruitful of her activities was the establishment, through the agency of the Y.W.C.A., of two social centers for workers in the interior, for which she donated largely during the first year. Her idea was to help refugees who were looking for work after they had been torn from their own jobs. With the same idea in mind she sent looms to the interior.

  Looms as well as rice, working centers as well as refugee camps, reconstruction as well as relief — it was an idea that fascinated her, an idea that was not new to her. Madame Kung had not yet met Rewi Alley nor had the Chinese Industrial Co-operatives been started, bu
t five years before this she had become interested in the working conditions of the Chinese farmers, and after conferring with Shephard, the New Life Movement adviser, had begun a Rural Reconstruction Movement. She was instrumental in sending out a group of university students to go into the interior during their vacations and to teach the farmers scientific ways of crop raising and marketing. The students had helped to organize schools; they had given lectures on food values and sanitation, had done research work in nutrition, and had begun various “health campaigns.” She had also begun to think of a new sort of factory adapted to the peculiarities of the Chinese system, an adaptation of the old relationship between owner and worker (a feudal sort of arrangement which in small factories still works fairly well) and a new system of profit-sharing. It was an idea that had in it the germ of co-operative industry. In those days she had a notion, still very vague, of trying out her theories in some small Shansi town. Just now, however, routine war work kept her too busy to do more than think about it.

  The war continued. The Chinese were putting up much more of a fight at Shanghai than anybody, themselves included, had thought possible. For weeks the Japanese fought and bombed and burned and looted; for weeks the Chinese resisted in spite of lack of equipment and in several cases of gross inefficiency. They had still to learn the secrets of management and discipline against organized attack, but their bravery was unquestionable and it made up for many discrepancies in the struggle.

  Nanking still appealed for help from the other democracies; actual help as well as munitions and supplies. Probably nobody was naive enough to believe that America would actually enter the war — naivete is not a characteristic of the Chinese statesman — but the Government did hope for an embargo on exports to Japan of iron, oil and war material. Still the days went on, and though America and England expressed lively horror of the Japanese invasion and full sympathy with China, nothing was done that could injure trade relations between the Island Empire and the democracies. Even when the Japanese fired on the British Ambassador and wounded him, even when incident after incident showed that Japan was determined to shove Great Britain, it not America, out of the Far East, trading continued and war material poured into Japanese ports and then into China. The foreign settlement of Shanghai was swayed by small panics. Women and children were evacuated, spent uncomfortable days in Hongkong or Manila, and then came back or gave up the struggle and retired to their own countries. People observed the fluctuations of the food supply and wailed about rising prices, and continued politely to cheer for the brave Chinese.

  “You foreigners are watching this war as if it were a football game,” said an official with delicate bitterness. “You clap very kindly.”

  However, it may have been some comfort to the Chinese army that the foreigners did more than clap; they worried; they took their own volunteer corps duties very seriously, and in many cases had to close down their firms and retire. Old-timers who had been wont to mutter, “Be a damn good thing for this country if the Japs would take over,” now had occasion to regret their words. A Japanese China, it became more and more obvious, would be exclusively Asiatic, and all the bright go-ahead methods and efficiency of the “Nips” would be devoted to edging themselves and their businesses out of China. They did more than clap kindly for the Chinese soldiers; they cheered loudly, and indulged in dreams whereby their brave defenders would beat off the invader once and for all. Chiang’s stock went up with the foreigners; Madame Chiang was compared not only to Eleanor Roosevelt but to Joan of Arc, to Boadicea, to any military heroine of olden days whose name could be remembered.

  The creation in the foreign public eye of a new idol, or rather a pair of idols, was nearly interrupted on October twenty-third by a careless chauffeur. On that day Madame Chiang, with Donald and an aide-de-camp started out for Shanghai in order to inspect the wounded soldiers and to attend to various matters in town. Dressed as usual in her working clothes — a pair of blue woolen slacks and a shirt — there was nothing about Madame’s appearance to advertise her identity, save that the car in which she rode was a powerful and swift one, and another one came close behind with a second A.D.C.

  They entered the “danger zone” in the afternoon, and began to keep their eyes on the sky, watching for Japanese bombing planes.

  It happened at about four-thirty. The car was rolling over a highly banked part of the road when some bombers flew overhead. The chauffeur speeded up: the front wheel hit a bump that sent the car off at a tangent. In the ordinary way the vehicle would have recovered its direction, but it so happened that another bump was lying in wait for that same front wheel, and as a result the car slid off the road entirely, with a great jolt that threw the passengers completely out of the tonneau. Donald felt himself going and even had time to see Madame Chiang’s body go hurtling through the air before he, like the A.D.C., landed unharmed, if shaken, near the overturned car.

  He stood up and hurried to her where she lay in a mud puddle, unconscious. Her face was streaked with mud and her limbs were limp, but nothing seemed to be broken, though she was as white as paper. Donald dragged her out of the mud and bent to listen to her breathing. She was still alive, at any rate, though she still lay motionless . . . .

  “Madame!” said Donald. “Madame?”

  A crowd of countrypeople had gathered. The A.D.C. in the second car had hurried to the scene. Donald gave the limp form a little shake.

  “Come on, wake up,” he said gruffly. “You’d better wake up and take a look around.” Then he started to sing, “She flew through the air with the greatest of ease, The dashing young girl on a flying trapeze . . . . Come on, Madame, wake up! I wish you could see yourself now; you’re sure a beauty!”

  There was no reply; Madame remained unconscious. A horrid doubt assailed him . . . . “You’re covered with MUD!” roared Donald. “Your face and your pants and . . . . Oh Lord, she’s a goner,” he said to himself.

  Just then she stirred and moaned. Quickly Donald stood up and, with his hands under her armpits, pulled her to her feet. “There you are,” he said, as loudly as if he had never had a misgiving. “‘You’re all right. You can walk. Come on, let’s go and find a house.”

  Mayling stood swaying, looking bewildered. “I don’t think I can walk,” she protested. But Donald gave her no time to think; he made her go to the nearest farmhouse, and when they had arrived, still telling her what a muddy beauty she looked, he gave her her handbag with extra clothing and advised her to change her slacks. Alone, she might have fainted again except that he pounded on the door and told her to hurry.

  She was still pale when she sat again in the car and tried to make plans. “We’re right here,” said Donald, brandishing a map. “Now, if you want to go back to Nanking, I’m game. But if you want to go on we can still inspect the wounded soldiers before we go into town; there’s time enough. What do you say?”

  Madame Chiang considered for a moment. “We’ll go on to Shanghai,” she decided. The car started forward, slowly this time. She sat quietly, listening to her own body, trying now that she had leisure to see what had happened to her. “I can’t breathe,” she said suddenly, in alarmed tones. “It hurts me to breathe.”

  “Then don’t breathe,” said Donald callously. “(Broken rib),” he thought.

  “But I can’t live if I don’t breathe . . . . ”

  Madame lived, however agonizedly. She inspected the wounded soldiers at ten that night, and was safe in her own house by morning. The doctor discovered that the rib was indeed broken, and forced her to lie in bed quietly. Once she was comfortable, Donald was her most sympathetic caller.

  “But why were you so cruel out at the wreck?” she demanded.

  “Because,” said Donald grandly, “once you let a woman lie down and think she’s hurt, she never gets up.”

  Mayling got up, however, and was back in Nanking within six days, hard at work as ever.

  CHAPTER XXVI

  Attitudes toward War

  The war,
spread as it was over at least four fronts, became increasingly difficult for the Japanese to prosecute, but their chief efforts were naturally concentrated upon Government centers. Until November twelfth their main attack against Nanking was held up at Shanghai, and though many air raids were made on the capital, it was not until then that the Government began to move inland, to Hankow, Changsha and Chungking. Chiang had not the common Chinese failing of over-optimism. From the beginning he had visualized the necessity of ultimate resistance in the rocky Szechwan city.

  During this period various leaders took the opportunity again and again to emphasize to foreign interviewers their determination to resist. Kwangtung and Kwangsi promised to support Chiang to the end, if need be, but most of all did Wang Ching-wei express his horror and indignation at the actions of the Japanese, and on November twelfth he explained that “China’s foreign policy should be to ally with all those states opposed to aggression.” All of this protestation was to be expected; the unexpected and most significant development was that among the ex-Communist guerillas of the North. Though Japan went into Shansi without much apprehension of resistance from these peaceful and wealthy people, the Chinese both as soldiers and guerillas put up a good fight. It is amusing to compare two articles which appeared in American periodicals about this time; one in the Forum (August 1937) by Madame Sun, and the other in Liberty (August 7, 1937), an interview with Madame Chiang.

  The latter, “China’s Strong Woman Talks,” was obviously written before many of the recent events had taken place between China and Japan. The author, Fulton Oursler, had visited Madame Chiang at her Shanghai home in Route Francis Gamier and describes her thus:

  . . . . she was a slight princess in a native frock of black silk and embroidered flowers, the skirt slit on either side halfway to the knee. Her walk was graceful and quick, the positive stride of one who ever thrived on opposition. My first look into her winning black eyes told of the great and contradictory passions of peace and action. Her gaze spoke of some kind of personal access to peace within her own spirit — and yet I thought I read frustration, too, as if all her life she had wanted to play and knew just how to do it, too, but never quite found the time. She was short and her hair was dark satin and plentiful and arranged so that it fell softly over one side of her lovely and intelligent face. The skin was of an exquisitely fine texture . . . .