While I was in Peking, then, two years later, it became clear that unless I wanted to spend my life in a turmoil which I could neither prevent nor help, I would have to change my country, and with it my world. I dreaded the change, for I deeply loved China, and her people to me were as my own. I remember how long I pondered in those days of the Peking spring. The dust storms of the northern deserts blew down over the city, and the winds were cold and dry, and yet I spent my afternoons, when my morning’s work was done in the excellent National Library, in wandering about the city and renewing my knowledge of the past. It was a good place in which to make the decision of whether I should leave China, for nowhere is China greater and more manifest in beauty than in Peking. I felt the nobility of the wide streets, designed for a princely people, and the palaces and tombs remained as splendid monuments. Yet the monuments were falling into decay, and I remember my sadness one day when I visited the very palace where the Old Empress had liked best to live. It was under guard, for the new government, as we still called it, was conscious of its national treasures and the great imperial buildings of the past were all under military guard.
On this day I had lingered long in The Forbidden City, the idle soldiers staring at me curiously, and at last one of them beckoned me to follow him around the corner of a palace. Thinking that he wanted to show me something I had not yet seen, I followed. But when I reached the place where he stood, he put up his hand and pulled down a magnificent porcelain tile from the edge of a low roof, a tile of the old imperial yellow, stamped with a dragon.
“One silver dollar,” he said in Chinese.
I shook my head, trying to decide whether I would accuse him or be silent and go away. I went away. What use was it to make the accusation? He did not feel the idealism which alone would have made him perform his duty. Idealism? There was the weakness. The new government never gave its people an idealism to live by, and the Chinese, like all of us, cannot live on bread alone. Mere nationalism was not enough. There had to be something to live for. There had, above all, to be a leader whom they could reverence. The judgments of people are often cruel, and perhaps no man could have been strong enough or great enough to organize China in time to save her from her troubles. Be that as it may, Chiang Kai-shek was not strong enough nor great enough and now the people knew it. Others have pointed out that the Chinese do not object to a dictator, if he is strong enough as a man to command their respect. It is true that their conception of democracy is totally different from that of the Americans, for their conception of a nation is different. The head of the Chinese government, whether emperor or president or Communist dictator, stands in the position of the father of the people. As a father he must be worthy of their honor and obedience, a brave figure, wise, inflexible and yet reasonable, strong to command and to enforce his commands, yet just and free from pettiness of temper tantrums and hostilities. If in addition to all else he has also a sense of humor, then his hold is absolute, but always by the will of the people. If he fails in these qualities, they desert him and seek another. He must also be a good provider as the father of his people, for the Chinese proverb has it, “When the price of rice is beyond the ability of the common man to pay, then Heaven decrees a change of rulers.”
In short, the Chinese people do not at all mind the role of voluntary subject if their ruler is a man whose powers they respect and admire, but they will not follow a lesser man, and especially one who cannot keep order in his own party. Twenty years ago, alas, the Chinese people began to reject Chiang Kai-shek, not suddenly nor spectacularly, but none the less absolutely. The failure to recognize this fact was the primary failure of later American policy. Had we recognized it in time we might have prevented the appearance of a Communist leader who was able to seize power because he was comparatively unknown, or at least untried. The whole process was in accord with the tradition of Chinese history. A decaying dynasty fell with the inadequacy of the rulers and new rulers arose to whom the people gave allegiance until it was proved that they too were unworthy. Corruption and dissolution began when it was apparent that Chiang could not hold the people. This corruption was not the cause of the people’s defection nor even of the downfall of the Nationalists, although it has often been said that it was. The truth is that any declining government falls into corruption, and the very fact is a proof of its approaching end. There was no idealism left, no hope of a better life for the people, and this despair gave China to the Communists. All other causes were lesser and concomitant.
This became plain to me that spring in Peking, when the Japanese were threatening every major port in North and Central China, and yet never had I loved China so well. I moved among my friends with renewed pleasure, visiting some I had not known before, and others whom I had always known. Thus I remember a notable luncheon party in the home of Owen Lattimore, who had just returned from a long journey into Mongolia and Manchuria and from whom I earnestly wished to hear of the effects of Japanese conquest. He and his wife and small son were living in a charming Chinese house, where that day we dined with his Mongol friends upon Mongol meats, eaten from a low table while we sat on the floor. The Mongols and our host, too, smelled stoutly of goat’s meat and milk curds, and I remember finding the aroma difficult, in spite of my admiration for the tall Mongol men and my enjoyment of their rollicking hearty laughter and ready wit. Owen Lattimore spoke their language fluently but he translated as easily and I was able to share in the conversation through English, for the Mongols did not speak Chinese, either. My interest in Mongols has continued to this day, for they are a brave and handsome people, and I have come to understand something more of their nature through my friendship with the Dilowa Hutukhtu, or the Living Buddha, a man of high place in the Tibetan religion, whom Owen Lattimore saved a few years ago from being killed in his own country by the invading Communists. The Dilowa, being a man of his own mind and of invincible spirit, had refused to obey the Communists when they came, and he was thrown in prison. Only the devotion of his people compelled the Communists to free him, but on the threat that if he opposed them again they would kill him. Owen Lattimore helped him to come to the United States, and with him brought two young Mongol princes and their families, also endangered by the Communists as reactionaries. Here the three Mongols have lived safely if not always happily, for prejudice from Americans ignorant of their race has occasionally made them uncomfortable. They overlook this with characteristic grace, however, and are only grateful for hospitality.