Chiang Kai-shek Speaks

CHINA FIGHTS ON--WAR MESSAGES OF CHIANG KAI-SHEK--Chungking: China Publishing Co. ($3).

Fifteen months after the Japanese invaded China, Chiang Kai-shek told his nation: "Future historians will, I believe, regard our war of resistance as the most significant event in this period of world history, since by our enormous sacrifices we are contributing not only to the good of the Chinese nation but also to the welfare of all mankind. ... If we succeed, we shall not only be able to build a new China but we shall also contribute immeasurably to the peace of the world."

This ambitious remark is from one of Chiang Kai-shek's war messages (October 1938 to January 1940) published by Chungking's China Publishing Co. Though strictly official, this book tells more that needed to be known about China than a thousand travelers' tales. It includes Chiang's letters, broadcasts, telegrams:

>To the Chinese people after the westward retreat: "Our power of resistance grows stronger."

>To the central committee of the Kuomintang: "Japan has failed politically."

> To the Chinese Army and civilians on the second anniversary of the war: "Prepare for victory."

> To the Chinese in the occupied areas: "All occupied areas, large and small, will become so many bombs which will explode inside the enemy's lines."

> To the people of Japan: "Let me now deal with the crimes of your militarists."

> To Britain: "The best course for Britain is to cease negotiating with Japan."

> To a group of Oxford professors in reply to a tribute: "Not only are our energies revitalized by intervals of meditation in the midst of action, but we are thus also safeguarded from the ruinous error of headlong designs based on no sound principle."

> On Japanese Puppet Wang Ching-wei: "In my dealings with people, I have always followed the principle of not resorting to ugly words. . . . Now I cannot but denounce him as a traitor to his country."

There has been plenty to read about China and Chiang Kai-shek in the past. But much of it has come via leftist pipelines. Typical are books like Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China (TIME, Jan. 10, 1938) ; Agnes Smedley's China's Red Army Marches; Andpe Malraux's Man's Fate, in which Chiang's officers are shown parboiling live Communists in a locomotive boiler. Some of these writers have suggested that China's Red Army, by superior organization, popularity, and whirlwind guerrilla tactics, has been the major factor in keeping the Japanese at bay, while other writers have shown Chiang Kai-shek as gradually changing from the dictatorial leader of semi-fascist Blue Shirts to a fatuous boy scout pottering around in Chungking with that New Life Movement which caused W.H.Auden and Christopher Isherwood so many suppressed giggles (Journey to a War: TIME, Aug. 7, 1939).

The picture that emerges from Chiang's book is somewhat different. It is that of a man supremely busy fighting the world's battle, taking time out when necessary to clarify what he is doing in sensible and important words--words to which almost nobody outside China and Japan pays attention.

Britain at Japan's request closes China's vital Burma Road, later reopens it. The U.S. continues to ship oil and gasoline for Japanese bombers. But Chiang goes on holding his two-thousand-mile front, trusting that the democracies will get around to helping him while there is still time for him to help them.

Not without reason has Chiang a sense of destiny. Said Dr. Sun Yatsen, whom Chiang once called "Teacher" and succeeded as leader of the Chinese revolution: "To save our country is also to save the world." Said Napoleon: "When China moves, she will move the world."

Simply and frankly, Chiang discusses all phases of the national struggle with the Chinese people--without concealments, without false optimism, without a misplaced sense of humor. When the Chinese Armies evacuated Wuhan in 1938, Chiang immediately explained the reasons:

"I wish you, our people, to have a clear understanding of the latest change in the war situation and of the consequences attendant upon the fall of Wuhan. From the beginning, our plan has been to establish the bases of our resistance not along the coast or rivers, or at the centers of communication, but in the vast interior."

Chiang never admits the possibility of defeat. After 18 months of bombings and thousand-mile retreats, he told the central committee of the Kuomintang: "From what I have said you can clearly see how Japan has worked her own ruin and has sealed her own doom. If Japan should emerge victorious in the present hostilities, then all existing military theories and principles of military strategy would be disproved. . . . We must fight to the end not only to upset the enemy's plan of a quick victory but also to prevent him from gaining a premature peace. This is now our only strategy. . . ."

With disloyalists like Japanese Puppet Wang Ching-wei and other questionable elements, China faces the fifth-column problem in an acute form, and Chiang is acutely conscious of it. He refers his people not to the fall of France but to Chinese history: "You should instruct our people to take lessons from the annals of the Sung and Ming Dynasties. The fall of these two dynasties was not caused by outside enemies with a superior force, but by a dispirited and cowardly minority in the governing class and the society of the time. . . . If we do not destroy ourselves, no outside force can destroy us." He warns: "It is easier to defeat the bandits in the mountains than to destroy the bandits in our hearts."

One result of the Battle of Russia may well be millions of Russian workers to swell the Nazi labor battalions; new Slav divisions to swell the Nazi Armies. Where can Britain and the U.S. turn for man power to offset this menacing mass? If Britain is democracy's European bastion, the U.S. democracy's arsenal, China is its untapped source of vast potential fighting power. Chiang's war messages make it clear that he has long been waiting for the democracies to see this point. If they do not, they can be sure that Hitler will, and one of Germany's elastic frontiers may soon be Chinese Turkestan.

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