When Mme. Chiang Kai-shek stayed here briefly very recently great fuss was made about accommodations for her. The First Lady of Formosa, whose regime is being subsidized by the Washington administration, came and left for San Francisco with a coterie of servants and attendants.
This is a normal and accepted way of living for the lady from Formosa. Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt writes in her autobiography that when FDR was alive and President of this country, the madame asked her how it was possible for her to travel alone when she herself, had forty to help her and still needed more. Who answered her telephone? Who packed her bags? Who looked after the mail? Where were her bodyguards? the madame had asked.
As the wife of the ruler of Formosa, a small island where the people are poor and taxed highly, one would expect that she would exercise frugality. The big show she puts on whenever she travels to this country rankles numerous U. S. taxpayers who foot Chiang Kai-shek's bills.
There was a time when the madame was regarded as a heroine and also as a democratic-minded person. This illusion has generally vanished. Ralf Sues, who worked closely with the madame and later wrote her book, "Sharks' Fins and Millet," described Mme. Chiang in a very understandable manner:
". . . Madame Chiang knew as much of democracy as she could see by looking out of windows of Wellesley College. On her return home, the young graduate had been shocked by the 'backwardness' of her countrymen as compared with Western civilization symbolized by flush toilets, clean fingernails decent table manners and careful grooming. She shrank from the poverty and filth of the Chinese populace then, and she never overcame that feeling."
Mme. Chiang Peddled Fiction About Chiang's Regime
It was during the last war that Mme. Chiang rose as the high priestess of Kuomintang propaganda. She was assisted by Lin Yutang. They created the fiction of Kuomintang resistance against the Japanese when Chiang's forces were lying down, waiting for the U. S. to defeat the Japanese aggressors, and begging for money and support from Washington to train an army for a civil war to crush all opposition after the Pacific war.
I remember picking up a New York Times' magazine section at Chabua, India prior to flying over the "hump" into China during June, 1944. In an April 1942 edition, Mme. Chiang had written an article that said:
"During the past five years there has been no instance of Chinese troops surrendering to the enemy ... To the Chinese soldier, resistance to the last cartridge and the last man is no mere pretty figure of speech. When our men go to the battlefield they are prepared to die ... Their patriotism is fully shared by their families . . . the word 'surrender' is not to be found in the present-day Chinese vocabulary."
American Gullibility Surprises a Young Chinese
I tucked this paper into my duffle bag and carried the article with me for many months. One day in Chungking, I showed it to a young Chinese intellectual who worked for the OWI. He was surprised that the Americans believed the madame's propaganda utterances.
A few days later he came up to me with a bit of information which he thought might interest me. He said that back in 1942, during the same month Mme. Chiang's article appeared in the Times, Kuomintang General Sun Liang-ch'eng had surrendered to the Japanese in West Shantung with his 69th Army. The Japanese designated General Sun's unit the puppet Second Front Army and made him commander.
I learned also that from 1941 to the summer of 1944, more than 70 high-ranking Kuomintang generals had gone over to the Japanese with columns, divisions or brigades. These units were not disorganized by the enemy but renamed and placed on Japan's anti-Yenan fronts. This fitted Chiang's plans. Chiangs Isolated Mme. Sun Yat-sen
I saw more of the qualities of Mme. Chiang when I saw how her own sister, Mme. Sun Yat-sen, the widow of the founder of the Chinese Republic, was kept practically a prisoner, with Kuomintang guards stationed at her gate. I saw this in Chungking and also in Shanghai. Mme. Sun carried on the unfinished work of Dr. Sun who put forth the slogan: "Land to the tillers."
Mme. Sun is an inspiration to the common people of China and for that reason she was isolated by the Chiangs and other relatives, who sat on the peasants like parasites, squeezing them and leaving them poor, illiterate, sick and unhappy.
Under the repressive Kuomintang regime, Mme. Sun carried on civil liberties struggles and relief work. For 20 years she was persecuted by her own sisters and in-laws who lived as parasites on the people.
Today she is the head of the China Welfare Institute, the largest organization of its kind in People's China. The principles of Dr. Sun become realized and grow further in her work.