by Emily Hahn
It was in 1938 that the Government publishing office collected and produced Madame Chiang’s Messages in War and Peace. Hastily gathered together, printed without adequate proofreading, almost completely unedited, it is today the despair of Madame, who shares with other writers a nervous dislike of most of her work when it has appeared inalterably in print. It is just this formlessness, however, which gives the book a particular fascination for the student of history and biography. A jumble of broadcasts, excerpts from letters, newspaper articles and short stories, it is better than the most formalized guide to Soong Mayling’s character and its development under stress.
The early days of the war are here represented by a series of speeches and broadcasts that are full of indignation with the democracies for their failure to come to China’s aid. She could not believe her eyes. They had pledged their word and they were breaking that pledge; she could not accept it at first, and when at last she was convinced she rebelled, in scathing words. Until the moment of crisis arrived she had been working too hard for her ideals and had been hoping too ardently for the reform of China to give much thought to the shortcomings of other places than China. For years she had remembered America as the yardstick by which she measured her own country. She had pointed to the Western democracies while she exhorted Chinese students to build themselves up for their country’s sake. And now! . . .
She did not give up her dream all at once. For a long time she explained to these strangely obtuse people, feeling certain that they needed only a little knowledge of the true state of affairs to awaken to their obligations and to the danger which lay in wait for themselves as well as for China. “You can see,” she said:
You can see by what Japan is now doing in China that she is sinister, ruthless, well armed, well organized and acting on a preconceived plan. For years she has been preparing for this very attempt to conquer China even if she has to annihilate the Chinese to do so. Curiously no other nation seems to care to stop it. Is it because the flood of calculated falsehoods that Japan broadcasts daily is believed? Or is it that she has been able to hypnotize the statesmen of the world? She seems to have secured their spellbound silence by uttering the simple magical formula: “This is not a war but merely an incident.” Even the declaration by the Japanese Premier, Prince Konoye, on August 28 that Japan intends to “beat China to her knees so that she may no longer have the spirit to fight” does not seem to have had any effect in awakening the world to a realization of the catastrophe which is now being developed.
It was to avert such a catastrophe that the great Powers signed the Nine-Power Treaty, which was specially created to safeguard China from invasion by Japan. They signed the Kellogg Peace Pact to prevent war, and they organized the League of Nations to make doubly certain that aggressive nations would be quickly prevented from inflicting unjustified harm upon their weaker fellows. But strange to say all these treaties appear to have crumbled to dust in a way that has not hitherto been equaled in history. Worse than that, all complex structure under International Law which was gradually built up to regulate the conduct of war and protect noncombatants seems to have crashed with the treaties. So we have a reversion to the day of the savages when the stronger tried to exterminate the weaker, not only to kill their warriors but their very families, their women and their children. That is what Japan is now trying to do in China. But it is the civilized nations who have really permitted this collapse of treaties and this twentieth century revival of the wholesale brutal murder of innocent civilians. They allowed it to begin in China, in 1931, when Japan seized Manchuria. They permitted it to be continued in 1932 at Shanghai when Japan bombed the sleeping population at Chapei and they now acquiesce in its resumption all over China on a gigantic scale . . . .
And we wonder, does this indicate the fall of civilization? Look at the mass murders of Chinese in various places by bombs, by the naval guns mounted on miles of men-of-war anchored in the sheltered harbor of Shanghai, by machine guns and by rifles. Look at the homes and businesses that have been swept up in savage flames or been blasted into dust. Look at the square miles of bloodstained debris heaped with dead. Look at the fleeing thousands of Chinese and foreigners, screaming, panic-stricken, running for their lives — indeed hundreds of thousands of Chinese mothers and children, homeless, foodless, bereft of everything, leaving their homes shattered and burning behind them when they tried to flee from the horrors of Shanghai. Look what terrible tragedy overtook them. Thousands of them a few days ago were crowded on the South Station to get into a train when Japanese bombers came overhead, dropped bombs upon them and blew three hundreds of them to ghastly fragments, while over four hundred were wounded. No soldier was anywhere near the station so there was no justification for the terrible massacre. The editor of the North-China Daily News, the leading British paper in the Far East, described the barbarous act “as wanton a crime against humanity as can well be conceived.” Only a few days later when hundreds of refugees who had managed to escape Shanghai were sitting in their train at Sungkiang Station, some miles out, they were similarly attacked, and another three hundred were blown into eternity by being reduced to torn fragments of flesh while hundreds more were seriously wounded. Not a soldier was on the train . . . .
Tell me, is the silence of Western nations in the face of such massacres, such demolition of homes and dislocation of businesses, a sign of the triumph of civilization with its humanitarianism, its codes of conduct, its chivalry, and its claims of Christian influence? Or is the spectacle of the first-class Powers, all standing silently in a row as if so stupefied by Japan that they do not utter a reproach, the forerunner of the collapse of international ethics, of Christian guidance and conduct, and the death knell of the supposed moral superiority of the Occidental? . . .
Perhaps you can hear over the radio the noise of the cannonade, but hidden from your hearing (though I hope ringing in your hearts) are the cries of the dying, the pain of the masses of wounded, and the tumult of the crashing buildings. And from your sight is hidden the suffering and starvation of the great army of wandering, terrified, innocent homeless ones; the falling tears of the mothers and smoke and the flames of their burning houses.
Good-bye everybody.
In her “Message to the Women of America,” printed in the New York Herald Tribune March twenty-first, 1940:
If the millions of women in China, who are already victims of the horrors of undeclared warfare, could make their voice heard through their grief, their tears, and the smoke of their burnt homes, it is certain that American womanhood would be shocked into acute realization of the far-reaching consequences of the calamities now threatening civilization. . . . If ever there was menace in the throbbing of distant drums, it is now . . . . Only by collective action, economic, if nothing else, will it be possible to arrest the collapse of democratic ideas of liberty and justice, and prevent America, and particularly smaller, weaker, and less fortunate democratic countries, from being laid open to what are described as “unpredictable hazards,” but which are really definitely predictable if eyes are not deliberately closed to the infamies that are now being perpetrated in China . . . . After all, respect for the territorial and administrative integrity of our country was solemnly agreed upon by a congeries of nations. If that agreement were not to be upheld in case of violation what good was served by having the treaty in the first place? . . . It seems to our simple minds, if I may be pardoned for saying so, that if a nation is a signatory to those principles, then surely that nation is both morally and legally obligated to act with other signatories in restraining, by some means or other, not necessarily force, any nation that dares to violate those principles. Or, again, it is puzzling to the Chinese mind why anyone should bother subscribing to something that seems to mean a lot, but, in reality, when the test comes, resolves itself into meaning nothing . . . . We, in China, are thankful that the policy of America has been clarified in general terms. Something specific, however, must be done immediately to compel Japa
n to understand that her violation of treaties, and her revolting inhumanities and destruction in China, can neither be condoned nor be excused. Above all Japan must be given unequivocally to understand that no so-called peace will be connived at or be tolerated which will in any way sacrifice, or infringe upon, the sovereignty or territorial integrity of China . . . . Japanese propaganda has probably led American people to believe that Japanese troops have conquered great areas of our country. They have not. We are fighting them everywhere. Where flesh and blood, backed only by inferior arms, could not endure against great expenditure of explosives by the enemy, we have withdrawn, but we have not been defeated. Nor shall we be defeated if we are able to procure the means with which to equip ourselves. We are fighting and dying in defence of our soil, and for the principles that other nations profess to espouse; we only ask that those nations demonstrate clearly that there can be no fruits for the aggressor from this barbarous invasion and its monstrous inhumanities, and that the Powers friendly to China and the Chinese people will take collective economic action to compel Japan to abandon her atrocious attempt to conquer our country.
Messages to missionaries, assuring them of the Chiangs* appreciation, letters of thanks for contributions, newspaper articles, speeches — in nervous, incredibly energetic words she poured out her indignation and astonishment and impatience. The following years were to dull the edge of that astonishment; she was to learn the complexities that lurk within the simple declarations of statesmen. “After all, each for himself,” she said one later day, with scarcely the suspicion of bitterness, in a Chungking dugout. Those hours of siege in the intermediate stage of Hankow government, however, did not contribute the necessary quiet and repose that were to give Madame Chiang her present-day philosophy. “Japan’s Smoke-screen of Falsehoods,” “War Progress: News From the Fronts,” “America’s Disappointing Attitude,” “Japan’s Campaign of Frightfulness,” “Demolition Threat to Nanking,” “Hasegawa’s Insolent Order,” “The Possibilities of Undeclared Warfare” — these titles are merely taken as they come in the collection, and though there has been no attempt to arrange them in chronological order and very small attempt to catalogue them according to subject matter, the very manner of presentation is eloquent of Madame’s clear, cold fury and the feelings that set her to making declaration after declaration. She has never been good at appealing; in the name of what she considers right she demands. Often she has decided, after long wrestling with recalcitrant words, to say nothing rather than sound too much like a whining propagandizer.
I am writing this, [she says in an article first published in the Forum in December 1937] while I sit waiting for the Japanese air raiders to come. The alarm sounded fifteen minutes ago. I came outside as I always do, to watch the raid and more particularly to observe how our defense is conducted. When the planes arrive, I will write down in order what I see.
It is now two months since Japan started pounding us at Shanghai. During all this time the sufferings of our people have been indescribable . . . .
In the World War the air bases were hundreds of miles from the front. Bombers could manage perhaps two trips a day, if not intercepted by a strong force of defense planes. But at Shanghai we now have no planes to oppose the Japanese, and they have to travel only, at the most, five miles back to their base to reload . . . . Perhaps you wonder why we now have no air force to oppose the 400-odd planes which the Japanese have based at Shanghai alone (altogether they have over 3,000). You must remember that China’s air force is less than five years old, and several of those years were wasted through lack of experience in handling the new type of weapon.
This caused us to be without adequate air defenses when the invasion came and compelled us to place large orders in America and elsewhere and hope to have them filled as quickly as possible. We know what to expect from Japan but we never, in our most pessimistic moods, imagined that America . . . .
Now I see the Japanese bombers coming — “three-six-nine,” cries little Jimmie, who is taken with me because he has eyes like gimlets.
It is now 2:42 p.m. It is a bright afternoon. Above there are cumulus clouds. High above them, orderly mackerel. Three heavy Japanese bombers come through a blue cleft between the piles of cumulus, heading from the north due south. Three more follow. Anti-aircraft guns put clusters of black smoke puffs around the first three. Now they are bobbing about the second three. Here comes three more — so there are nine altogether. High above the clouds I hear pursuit planes. The detonations of anti-aircraft guns are away in front of me, near the military airfield, which the bombers are heading for. Some of our pursuit planes appear. They have flown behind clouds. The sound of machine-gun fire is now high above me. Above the clouds the pilots are fighting. The nine bombers proceed in steady progress across the city. They have to keep their line if they wish to hit their objectives. The first three are now over the south city wall.
2:46 p.m. Great spouts of flame; columns of smoke and dust ascend. They have dropped several bombs. Then they scatter. Some of our pursuit planes are attacking. North of me a vicious dogfight is going on. It started at 2:34 p.m. All the bombers now are out of sight, in the clouds, but some Japanese pursuits are still being harassed by our fighters.
2:50 p.m. There is a dogfight in the northwest. An enemy plane, with a Hawk pursuit close on his tail, dives fast. He is out of sight behind Purple Mountain. The combatants are sweeping in and out of the clouds. . . .
2:51 p.m. Suddenly to the southwest of the city smoke and flame and dust in great columns appear. Some more bombers have completed their mission . . . .
Surely, surely, if everyone understood what she was telling them there would be a great movement on the part of the world, particularly America, to save China! She was positive of it. She knew that the great democracies move slowly; nobody knew that better than herself, practiced now in waiting for weary months before the simplest, smallest reform went into the country’s program. But America, even from the most selfish viewpoint, would certainly see that all her duty and her common sense put her on China’s side; an economic embargo, refusal to sell war materials to Japan — what else could one possibly expect? What else, above all, could an American-trained student expect? Mayling had spent her childhood and adolescent years in the United States, studying American history from the glowing pages of partisan textbooks, and she had first gone to America because of the high ideals her father entertained for that land of promise and glory. Her best foreign friends until now had been American missionaries. The chilly good manners of the colonial British had kept her, perhaps, from appreciating to the full their grim but superior sense of reality in regard to international politics. In other words, those of a British diplomat in the Far East who has naturally developed a defensive attitude:
“The United States can still afford idealism: we can’t.” Now, suddenly the United States discovered that idealism can cost too much, and in Washington if not in the press that expensive item was given up . . . . Madame Chiang, after the first shock of disillusionment, pointed out that it was more than idealism that was at stake, but still nobody listened.
In the China Weekly Review of August thirteenth, 1938, a year after the “trouble” hit the cozy little world of Shanghai, she began an article with these words:
“Many friends in America have asked me for my views about China’s future. Generally speaking, my views are unpalatable — sometimes unprintable.”
CHAPTER XXVIII
Industrial Co-operatives
Edgar snow, in an article entitled “The Dragon Licks His Wounds” (the Saturday Evening Post, April 13, 1940), gives an admirable summary of the work of the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives, but he fails to recount the beginnings of the idea, of which the writer has a vivid memory. It was at a small dinner party in Shanghai at the house of John Alexander, then Secretary to the new British Ambassador, Sir Archibald Clark Kerr. Edgar Snow and his wife, Nym Wales, were present, and Alexander asked Snow what he knew of the co-opera
tive movement in England. Snow said he knew very little, and the Alexanders began to tell him, in the face of vigorous adverse comment from Nym Wales. “I don’t even like the words you’re using,” she said to Alexander. “Commonwealth! Why must you always speak of ‘wealth’? That sort of thing is no good here!”
A compromise was effected and for the rest of the evening Alexander spoke of “the commonweal.” That was the beginning. Snow himself tells of the continuation:
Right after the Shanghai war a New Zealander named Rewi Alley and two Americans [the Snows themselves] worked out a plan which they called the Chinese Industrial Co-operatives. They argued that it was pointless to attempt to feed nonproducing refugees for a few months, after which they would starve or be used as slave labor or rice soldiers by the Japanese. They advocated “productive relief” by mobilizing China’s refugees and unemployed to start thousands of small “semimobile” co-operative industries, located in the hinterland close to unexploited raw materials, using salvaged tools and machinery to begin with. Financed by relief funds and government loans, and assisted by a staff of organizers and technicians, the refugees could buy over their own plants while learning how to operate them democratically.
Probably the “Indusco plan,” as it is now called, would have been interred along with other amateur advice, had it not been ardently sponsored by the dynamic British ambassador. Sir Archibald Clark Kerr. First principle of most career diplomats is actively to avoid action; Clark Kerr succeeds by breaking the tradition at least once a day. He broke it, for example, when he personally presented the Indusco scheme to Generalissimo and Mme Chiang Kai-shek, and Dr H. H. Kung. They agreed to try it out.
