The American Consul now advised all American families in Nanking to send their women and children away, and, mindful of the ever-rising anti-foreign feeling, I took my little younger daughter and went to Peking. I had always wanted to stay there for a time and I hoped, too, to do some research into ancient editions of Shui Hu Chüan, with the hope of finding old illustrations of which I had heard. Those months seem, at this distance, only an incident, one of the pleasant interludes which somehow always seemed possible for me to find in the vastness of Chinese life, and I was entirely happy for the time being, absorbed in history and sight-seeing and meeting men and women of many nations. Peking has been written about so much and described so often that it is idle to repeat here what may be found elsewhere. For me, however, the experience was recreative, focusing my mind again upon the deep roots of China’s past and giving me perspective upon the rapidly changing present. It was in Peking, too, that I became convinced that sooner or later I must leave China and return permanently to my own country, for such wars and upheavals lay ahead that no white people would be allowed to remain. It was becoming obvious that Chiang Kai-shek’s policy of “internal unification before external attack” was doomed to failure, for while Japan continued her aggressions with all the strength of her army, led by officers trained in Germany, Chiang Kai-shek was still fighting against the Communists, who had simply retreated strategically to the Northwest where he could not reach them. He was right of course in believing that Communism was the basic enemy to the Chinese way of life, but what he did not understand was that by ignoring the terrifying growth of Japanese domination he was alienating his own people, who did not yet gauge the dangers of Communism, especially when the Communists in this case were themselves Chinese, but who did very well perceive the danger of their own weakness and Japan’s increasing strength. Chiang thus was losing even more of his people’s support, and years later when he needed them very much to rally to his side against the Communists, they were already lost.
As for the Communists whom he was pursuing at all costs, they, too, behaved stupidly while under Russian advice. The Russian Communists, before they left China, had advised the Chinese Communists and especially their military leader, Chu Teh, to capture the cities where, they said, the factory workers or “true proletariat” would gather to their aid. But few Chinese cities had factories, there was no proletariat in the orthodox Communist sense, and moreover the Chinese people, still under their doughty old war lords, had no intention of being captured by Chu Teh, whom they did not know. When he attacked Changsha and Canton and then Amoy, the people helped their local armies and destroyed huge numbers of the Communists, who in the end were completely routed so that they were compelled to hide in inaccessible mountains. There in a famous meeting place, Chingkangshan, Chu Teh, the militarist, much depressed at his losses, met Mao Tse-tung, the civilian and son of a well-to-do peasant, and together they reorganized the Chinese Communist party, this time without help and advice from Soviet Russia, who indeed had by now withdrawn from the scene, dismayed by Chu’s defeats after Chiang Kai-shek’s repudiation. The reorganized Chinese Communist party under Mao and Chu proceeded then to entrench itself in the peasantry, for as Chu said, “The people are the sea, we are the fish, and as long as we can swim in that sea, we can survive.”
All this was contradictory to orthodox Communism as defined by Soviet Russians, and it is interesting now to remember that they for a long time repudiated Mao Tse-tung wholeheartedly. The rejection, however, was only gain for the Chinese Communists who were thus thrown upon the knowledge and experience of their own people, and they determined to do all they could to win the favor of the peasants. This they did by announcing as their enemies those whom the peasants traditionally considered their enemies, namely, landlords, tax gatherers, moneylenders and middlemen. The peasants were won by such a policy and they helped the Communists in every way they could, telling them when the Nationalist soldiers were coming and generally defeating the purposes of Chiang Kai-shek, without really knowing what they did. The peasant anywhere is a direct and literal-minded human being and he helps those who help him, an axiom the young intellectuals who guided the affairs of the Nationalist government never did understand. By now I saw what everybody could see, that neither Nationalist nor Communist could win at present, since neither had the necessary support of both peasant and scholar in the ancient and invincible combination, and therefore that a long struggle lay ahead, especially as at the same time Japan was bent upon conquest while China was thus divided.
Whether Communist or Nationalist would finally win, I believed, depended upon which one first recognized the menace of Japan. Unfortunately it was the Communists who were the first to do this and who virtually compelled Chiang to fight Japan, although their own declaration of war upon Japan was ridiculous in its weakness and was obviously only propaganda. Nevertheless in forcing Chiang to realize the danger with Japan they had an immense advantage, which after the Second World War remained with them in the renewed struggle with the Nationalists, still under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek. Against this advantage no Western influence could prevail, or could have prevailed, unless Chiang Kai-shek could have changed his habits and his policies completely. This of course was too much to ask of him. He had grown old in his ways, and no one could reach his mind any more, not only because it was fixed, but because it was his fatal weakness to surround himself with people who dared not tell him the truth. A Chinese friend told me that he had heard it said in Nanking, after the Second World War, when the inflation was at its absurd and dangerous height, that Chiang Kai-shek even then did not know the reality of the situation and when he was told cautiously by some visitor in secret about the rise of inflation he declared that he would go out and see for himself, whereupon he ordered a meal at a public restaurant. But his coterie were terrified and sent word ahead that the prices were to be the same as before the war and that the restaurant keeper would be reimbursed. The great man therefore dined complacently at prewar prices, convinced that what he had been told was false. Whether this is a true story or not, it was believed by Chinese and the effect was the same upon the people. This is not to accuse Chiang alone of wilful ignorance. It is impossible for any man in so high a place to know the truth about anything. There are always those about him whose interest it is to hide the facts since, when a regime falls, many fall with it.
The Chinese Communists now, therefore, had cleverly made full use of Chiang’s internal policy, and as they had capitalized upon the peasants’ hatred of landlords they next proceeded to capitalize upon the hatred of the Chinese people for the Japanese aggressors. They adopted as their new watchword, “Chinese do not fight Chinese,” meaning that they were willing to be unified with the Nationalists in order to fight the common enemy and knowing, I am sure, all the while that the Nationalists would not yield to them.
It was tragic in those days to watch the decay of the new government, but it was impossible not to see it, for while the nation was torn in dissension and struggle, the people bewildered and angry at what was going on, the intellectuals and party members were still only quarreling among themselves over such paper work as a constitution and new laws and what form labor unions should take, all good concerns but irrelevant in the face of immediate and tragic danger. It was, in its way, a manner of fiddling while Rome burned, and yet our young men were not Neros, but very earnest and well-meaning ignoramuses. Meanwhile Chiang Kai-shek, also irritated and desperate, was trying to establish some sort of order, not only among his own government officials, but among rebellious war lords whom he could not actually conquer and with whom therefore he had to bargain, and they were not men of honor, for as they saw his position weakening they demanded new bargains. Dissidence had risen to such a point that the wild and wilful man, Feng Yü-hsiang, still the most spectacular among the war lords, had in 1930 withdrawn from all bargaining, and had set up a rival government in Peking, further to confound the agitated President.