After explaining that she herself had been educated in the United States and felt that she too had come home, she told another story about a young monk who went to a Buddhist temple, where he sat cross-legged day after day with his hands clasped in prayer, reciting “Amita-Buddha! Amita-Buddha!” Having noticed the father prior of the temple, who sat all day with a brick, rubbing it against a stone, he finally got up enough courage to ask the father what he was doing. “I am trying to make a mirror out of this brick.”
“But it is impossible to make a mirror out of a brick, Father Prior.”
“Yes,” the old man replied, “it is just as impossible for you to acquire grace by doing nothing except ‘Amita-Buddha’ all day long, day in and day out.”
“So, my friends,” she continued, “I feel that it is necessary for us not only to have ideals and to proclaim that we have them, it is necessary that we act to implement them. And so to you, gentlemen of the Senate, and to you, ladies and gentlemen in the galleries, I say that without the active help of all of us our leaders cannot implement these ideas. It is up to you and to me to take to heart the lesson of ‘Rub-the-Mirror’ pavilion. I thank you,” she said, concluding her “extemporaneous” speech, for which she was given a standing ovation.
Madame Chiang’s reception, according to Eleanor Roosevelt, who had accompanied her in the car from the White House and listened from the Senate gallery, “marked the recognition of a woman who through her own personality and her own service, has achieved a place in the world, not merely as a wife… but as a representative of her people.… When I saw her coming down the aisle, she seemed overshadowed by the men around her. I could not help a great feeling of pride in her achievements as a woman, but when she spoke it was no longer as a woman that one thought of her. She was a person, a great person, receiving the recognition due her as an individual valiantly fighting in the forefront of the world’s battle.”
The first of Madame Chiang’s American speeches—“extemporaneous” or preplanned—was a fitting prelude to the triumphs that were to follow. Speaking in slow, deliberate tones, not unlike the aristocratic cadences of Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, May-ling had a lovely voice, one that demanded both attention and respect. Moreover, she usually managed to pick the right parable or war story and deliver it with perfect timing. Her effects, which must have been carefully studied, sounded spontaneous. If one analyzes her speeches for style and content, it is clear that she spoke better than she wrote. As was obvious in her next speech—to the House of Representatives—she was far too smart to be caught trying to cater to her audience. She was a dignified public speaker and, according to Tuchman, “aroused a greater outpouring of admiration and welcome than anyone since Lindbergh flew the Atlantic.”
A few minutes later, accompanied by Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn and other distinguished escorts, she entered the House and walked to the speaker’s rostrum. “A little, slim figure in Chinese dress, she made a dramatic entrance as she walked down the aisle, surrounded by tall men. She knew it, for she had a keen sense of the dramatic,” commented Mrs. Roosevelt. “She wore a long, tight-fitting black gown, the skirt slit almost to the knee, which was, of course, as revealing of American orientalising fancies as of the garment that it praised,” said John Gittings of The Manchester Guardian. When Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn introduced her, the official book of her visit says, that “the chamber fairly shook with applause.”
A few days earlier, Chiang had sent his wife a list of five points* that she should emphasize during this all-important speech. “I have received all the wires you sent me,” she cabled him. “… I really admire and appreciate your thoughts. The speeches… will be made according to your indication, focusing on such principles as preserving our nation’s dignity, announcing the contributions of our nation to the whole world and clarifying China’s traditional friendship with America.” But unlike Chiang’s wooden pronouncements, in this, her formal address to the House of Representatives, May-ling managed to touch the important bases and appear idealistic at the same time. She spoke of a world in which “modern science has so annihilated distance that what affects one people must of necessity affect all other peoples.” Stretching the truth, she recalled 160 years of “traditional friendship between our two great peoples… which has never been marred by misunderstandings.” Looking ahead, she added in one of her more baroque phrases that the Chinese “have faith, that, at the writing of peace, America and our gallant Allies will not be obtunded by the mirage of contingent reasons of expediency.” She also appealed to the concept of America as the worldwide refuge for immigrants: “I met… first generation Germans, Italians, Frenchmen, Poles, Czechoslovakians and other nationals.… But there they were all Americans… united by the same high purpose.”
Her dominant theme was an appeal to national pride: “You, as representatives of the American people, have before you the glorious opportunity of carrying on the pioneer work of your ancestors.… Their brawn and thews braved undauntedly almost unbelievable hardships to open up a new continent.… You have today… the immeasurably greater opportunity to implement these same ideals and to help bring about the liberation of man’s spirit in every part of the world.” From there she finally segued into her real message: “The prevailing opinion seems to consider the defeat of the Japanese as of relative unimportance and that Hitler is our first concern.… Let us not forget that Japan in her occupied areas today has greater resources at her command than Germany.… Let us not forget that during the first four and a half years of total aggression, China has borne Japan’s sadistic fury unaided and alone.”
According to the official record of May-ling’s visit, “a veritable storm of cheering and handclapping” followed the end of her address, which was carried live on radio. “Goddam it,” said one congressman, “I never saw anything like it. Mme. Chiang had me on the verge of bursting into tears.” It was a brilliant presentation, carefully thought out, engagingly presented. If the Chinese are known for face, the substitution of the correct appearance for the reality, the hint for the demand, the effects of Madame Chiang’s two appearances before Congress have probably seldom been equaled.
One of the best descriptions of her came from Allene Talmey of Vogue magazine: “There is a communicable greatness about Madame Chiang, a tight-rope tension, a living control. Standing beside ripened politicians on platforms, she looked like a steel sword, thinned, beautiful, purposeful.… Her mind sees the target, figures the attack, and dives.”
There were many other comments on the lady’s looks. “In just a few short minutes, Mme. Chiang had Congress in the palm of her hand,” noted one lady reporter. “Petite as an ivory figurine, Mme. Chiang stands barely five feet tall in her high-heeled American slippers.… Her poise is perfect, and she used to good advantage her small, expressive hands. Her movement, like her mind, is quick and graceful.” Less enthused were the journalist for The Des Moines Register, who remarked on Madame’s “tight-fitting” dress, and a patronizing reporter from Missoula, who dubbed her a “lovely oriental person.” Nevertheless, she had used her small size and feminine wiles to great advantage—appealing, if ever so subtly, to those big, mostly male American congressmen who could help her and her country, and she had done it in a language and mind-set with which she, who had grown up in the United States, was fully conversant.
There were numerous commentaries on Madame Chiang’s use of esoteric historical references and unusual words. “Mrs. Chiang Puzzles Newsmen with ‘Gobineau’ and ‘Obtunded,’ ” read one headline. Turning to Webster’s the reporter discovered that to “obtund” means to “dull,” “blunt,” or “quell.” In discussing Japan after Pearl Harbor, Madame had said that “the world began to think that the Japanese were Nietzschean supermen, superior in intellect and physical prowess—a belief which the Gobineaus and the Houston Chamberlains and their apt pupils, the Nazi racists, had propounded about the Nordics.” This sentence sent reporters running to their encyclopedias to
identify Count Joseph Arthur de Gobineau, a nineteenth-century French diplomat who claimed that only the white race is capable of creating a culture, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, who had written a book about the Germans as the master race.
Of the many favorable reports published throughout the country, the editorial in the New York Herald Tribune was typical: “The extraordinary ovation which greeted Mme. Chiang in the House of Representatives at her entrance and for sentence after sentence of her moving speech—was, after all, a personal tribute to a great individual. The gallantry of her long journey in war time, her wisdom, her dignity, her loveliness have won admiration throughout America.… It will be noted that with characteristic dignity Mme. Chiang complained of nothing and asked for nothing—except a better world and a safer future for all of us.”
Among the multitudes looking for that “better world” were May-ling’s countrymen who wanted to immigrate to the United States. She had no sooner finished her speech than the Democratic representative from Manhattan introduced a bill to repeal the Chinese exclusion laws. “We welcome you also, as a daughter is welcomed by her foster-mother, to the land where you received an American education,” he gushed. “… I take this auspicious occasion, in your gracious presence, as an indication of my unbounded admiration of a nation’s courage which has amazed the world, to introduce this day a bill to grant to the Chinese rights of entry to the United States and rights of citizenship.” The bill was passed before the end of the year.
But as far as May-ling was concerned, the cheering and compliments were secondary to the comments by many senators and congressmen that the United States must immediately try to furnish as much aid to China as possible. “There can be little denying that China has thus far been the poor relation at the United Nations table,” said The New Republic. According to Clare Boothe Luce, currently a Republican representative from Connecticut, Madame Chiang was “too proud to beg us for what is China’s right and too gracious to reproach us for what we have failed to do.” Her references to American soldiers stuck on isolated islands in the Pacific were, in the words of Luce, a “brilliant parable,” reminding Congress of China’s lonely fight and long wait for armaments.
This message was brought home with more clarity at a joint press conference at the White House the next day—an appearance throughout which Madame sat on the edge of President Roosevelt’s large swivel chair at his desk between the president, lounging in an oversized armchair with his cigarette holder in hand, and his wife, sitting ramrod straight but with a gentle hand on the visitor’s arm. “It was high state drama played by real characters,” Washington journalist Raymond Clapper wrote. “Someday they may put Helen Hayes* in the part, but she will never do it better than Madame Chiang acted it in real life. It was the delicate, feminine, shrewd, quick First Lady of the East against the Great Master himself.” To prove his point, Clapper reported that when the president began the conference, he asked the reporters not to “put any catch questions to Madame,” and May-ling returned the favor by playing “up to the President as a big strong man who could work miracles. Madame Chiang, tiny, with feet dangling from the high-seated Roosevelt chair, was working smoothly while toying with her compact to coax a promise from the president for China. Roosevelt, a master of press conference technique, was trying with equal smoothness not to melt overmuch under Madame’s technique.” When a reporter said that he had heard criticism that China was not making use of its vast manpower in the war effort, May-ling replied rather crisply that China’s soldiers were fighting “to the extent of the munitions available for them. When more munitions are sent to China,” she said, “more men will fight.” President Roosevelt explained that the United States would send more war material “as soon as the Lord will let us.” Flashing a ready-made smile at the chief executive, May-ling reminded him in front of 172 eager journalists that “the Lord helps those who help themselves.”
THE REMAINDER OF Madame Chiang’s visit to Washington was filled with the usual VIP duties: laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, a journey to Mount Vernon, a gala reception held by the Chinese at the Shore-ham hotel, and a presidential tea. But her presence in the capital soon began to wear thin, particularly on the chief players. In spite of the fact that she was a guest in the Roosevelt White House, Dr. Wellington Koo, the premier Chinese diplomat of the world,† noted in his diary that the G-mo’s wife did not hesitate to entertain a parade of Republican politicians: “Joe Kennedy,* Mr. J. Farley, Wendell Willkie had seen her several times.… They are all opposed to the Pres. politically.… The Pres. had been evidently uneasy and Mrs. R. had suggested that it might be more comfortable for her to live in Hyde Park.” In another breach of etiquette, Madame told Koo that she had taken pains not to show her speeches to her hosts, in spite of the fact that “they intimated their wish to go over them before delivery.” Worse, she had neglected to mention the president in them. The more Roosevelt saw of May-ling, the less he trusted her, finding her quite different from the image she presented to the world, and although his wife seemed to like their guest at first, her attitude changed once their guest was released from the hospital.
It is not difficult to trace the pro-China line in the American press that had led the first lady, no fool where people were concerned, to react to Madame Chiang with such openhearted acceptance. No less a personage than her husband’s rival for president of the United States, Wendell Willkie, had just returned from China with a report that “the wife of China’s Generalissimo is the only international celebrity whose personal attractiveness far exceeds her advance notices.” Beyond the political types there were popular columnists like Bob Considine, who wrote in the summer of 1942 that “five years ago” Madame Chiang’s husband “was prepared to give China constitutional democracy as the final step in uniting its countless millions”—a fanciful invention that could only have led another (unnamed) reporter to claim, “Today unconquered China has the framework of democracy” as well as “a modern civil service.” And if Clare Boothe Luce could write that “Madame Chiang Kai-shek is the greatest living woman,” Washington hostess Elsa Maxwell felt free to say that Madame Chiang was “one of the greatest women in the world,” who “will go down in history as the mother of modern China.”
But, according to Eleanor Roosevelt,
I saw another side of Madame Chiang while she was in the White House, and I was much amused by the reactions of the men with whom she talked. They found her charming, intelligent, and fascinating, but they were all a little afraid of her, because she could be a coolheaded statesman when she was fighting for something she deemed necessary to China and to her husband’s regime; the little velvet hand and the low, gentle voice disguised a determination that could be as hard as steel. A certain casualness about cruelty emerged sometimes in her conversations with the men, though never with me. I had painted for Franklin such a sweet, gentle, and pathetic figure that, as he came to recognize the other side of the lady, it gave him keen pleasure to tease me about my lack of perception. I remember an incident at a dinner party… which gave him particular entertainment. John L. Lewis was acting up at the time and Franklin turned to Madame Chiang and asked: “What would you do in China with a labor leader like John Lewis?” She never said a word, but the beautiful, small hand came up and slid across her throat.… Franklin looked across at me to make sure I had seen.… He enjoyed being able to say to me afterwards: “Well, how about your gentle and sweet character?”
It was May-ling’s imperious behavior, however, that distressed the White House staff. Although her room at the White House was equipped with bells and telephones, when she needed something, she went to her doorway and clapped her hands to summon the White House servants. This was the custom in her home in China when calling coolies but considered very bad form in the White House. It was not only May-ling who expected royal treatment but her niece and nephew as well, and Jeanette apparently made a scene complaining about the poor service at the White House. The Kung children,
according to Eleanor Roosevelt, gave “the impression that they felt we… thought all Chinese were laundrymen and looked down on them, and they were anxious to dispell that idea. It seemed at times that they had chips on their shoulders.” Not everyone was so generous. Referring to Madame’s nephew and niece as the “Kung brats,” the Chinese minister claimed that they “seriously damaged China’s prestige among the elite American circles.” In that regard, one old-time journalist told how the famous Dr. Wellington Koo “was kept waiting three days before David Kung let him into the Presence.”
Koo was an experienced diplomat, long inured to the peculiarities of the powerful. This was, however, not necessarily the case with the White House staff. One day the president’s secretary, Grace Tully, ran into Wilson Searles, one of the White House ushers on the second floor, where the guest quarters were located. When Tully heard “an imperative clapping of hands from Madame’s room,” she was amazed.
“Wilson, what goes on here?” she asked.
“This goes on all day,” he answered. “That Chinese crowd has run us ragged. They think they’re in China calling the coolies.”
“What do you do?” the secretary asked.
“I keep going, but in the opposite direction.”
More than two years later, Eleanor Roosevelt said that Madame could “talk beautifully about democracy, but she does not know how to live democracy.” Treasury Secretary Morgenthau told his staff that Roosevelt was “just crazy to get her out of the country.” This, according to Tuchman, had less to do with Roosevelt’s personal annoyance than with his concern that her private persona might garner enough publicity to spoil her image and his China policy. According to one observer, “of all the notables who visited the Roosevelts during their 12-year tenure, Madame posed the most problems.” Another complained that “Madame regarded virtually everybody below Cabinet rank as coolies.” Having moved from college directly into a home where, at the age of twenty, she was put in charge of twelve servants, May-ling had no idea how Americans lived inside their homes. “How do you manage when you go so many places alone?” she asked Mrs. Roosevelt. “Who packs for you? Who buys your tickets? What do you do about telegrams? How can you do it alone?”
The Last Empress Page 55
