The President couldn’t very well inform him of British intentions because he wasn’t yet certain of them himself.
Supplies were definitely stepped up that summer and Chennault at first thought everything would go according to schedule, but there were numerous disappointments. Because of these delays he too was behindhand. Stilwell was smarting under a sense of grievance and this made him more than ever inclined to fall out with Chiang.
“Nobody was interested in the humdrum work of building a ground force but me,” he said bitterly. “Chennault promised to drive the Japs right out of China in six months, so why not give him the stuff to do it? It was the short cut to victory.”
In June he thought he was to be proved right in his contention that China’s ground forces were no good. The Japanese started on the long-feared push inland toward Szechuan, before Chennault had built up anything like the air force that he claimed would be necessary to hold them. They were halted at last, at Ichang on the Yangtze, just the other side of the gorges from Chungking. And then, in July, Chiang finally signed the three-power agreement to go ahead with the Burma plan. It began to look as if both Stilwell and Chennault were to get their way, after all. Even Chiang Kai-shek felt that better times were coming.
A pause seemed to hover over Chungking. Italy had surrendered. The world’s tide was turning. At the beginning of August, Lin Sen, the gentle, harmless old President of China, died, and Chiang for the second time was named President, with the inauguration date for the autumn.
Stilwell was plodding away at the routine of his preparations, spending an occasional few days in India, checking up at Ramgarh. He had got quite used to quarreling with the Generalissimo. The take-off for Burma was not three months off, when a new influence suddenly came into his life, the Soong sisters, or at least two of them—Mesdames Chiang and Kung. They invited the general to tea and sounded him out. They talked things over, and expressed horror at his trials, and were generally much more “simpatica” than he had expected of any Soong sister but Chingling. Under their gentle treatment and the friendly noise of their twittering, Vinegar Joe in spite of himself felt his heart softening. He was still suspicious of anyone close to Chiang; he still snarled to himself when he got home. But he felt himself softening just the same. He recorded bits of conversation:
“Gave them the low-down on conditions in the Army and they were appalled. Told them about blocks and delays and who was responsible.
“Remedy? Make May [Mayling] minister of war.… Suggested northwest as source of drafts.
“May craves action.… Sis [Madame Kung] said she didn’t know how I had the patience to carry on. We signed an offensive and defensive alliance.”
Then, in the kindest way, the ladies warned him that he was reputed to be anti-Chinese. Poor Stilwell’s feelings were so hurt at this piece of unreason that he lost his last grasp of Anglo-Saxon common sense. He did not see how firmly he was now enmeshed in Chinese intrigue. There is nothing so effective as someone who cuddles up to you and murmurs, “I think you ought to know the horrid things people are saying about you.”
Doubtless the ladies only wanted to keep him happy while he fought. They saw that cat-and-dog relations between the Generalissimo and his U. S. chief of staff were doing China harm, and they knew, too, what Stilwell didn’t, that Chiang wanted to be rid of him. This wasn’t good, because no matter how much Roosevelt might discount his general’s angry reports, Stilwell had the support of American Army commanders such as Marshall; they wouldn’t forgive this insult. Day after day, then, the ladies gave Stilwell lunch or tea, and talked and told him things, and listened while he told them things. Sometimes “Ella,” as he called Eling Kung, confided in him. (“It seems that Ella made Peanut fight at Ichang.… May says that without her insistence the Great Man would have kept on pulling out and God knows where we’d be now.”) Sometimes May was the confiding one. It was May who admitted that Chiang Wei-kuo, the G-mo’s adopted son, was opposed to Stilwell and reported stories against him. Both ladies disliked certain of the officers intensely; by a coincidence, the same ones Stilwell disliked. They called Ho Ying-chin “the unmentionable.” The friendship flourished; confidences grew even more intimate.
“May let out that she has a hell of a life with the Peanut; no one else will tell him the truth so she is constantly at him with the disagreeable news. It can’t be easy to live with the crabbed little bastard and see everything balled up.”
This alliance continued for a month, and then one day, not long before the great Burma venture was scheduled to start, Stilwell got a shock. It should not have been much of a surprise, primed as he was with the Soong sisters’ recent lessons, but it was. That day Mountbatten arrived with Somervell. They all had lunch together, and a long talk, and then “back to the house with Somervell, where he gave me the news: THE G-MO SAYS I MUST BE RELIEVED. The reason is that I have ‘lost the confidence of the troops.’… (Somervell says that President Roosevelt has asked George [Marshall] to relieve me more than once, because I ‘can’t get along.’ Nice backing.)
“The real reason is hard to guess. It may be with me out, nobody else will push the campaign.… Or it may be just the suspicious, jealous Oriental mind, listening to lies and thinking that it won’t do to let a damned foreigner gain any more influence.”
It should not have been so hard to guess the real reason. It has been summed up succinctly for the writer by a Chinese official who was on the scene at the time: “You see, Chiang is domineering. Stilwell evidently thought the way to deal with that was to out-domineer. He was supposed to be chief of staff to Chiang, but he acted more like commander-in-chief.”
Anyway Stilwell seems to have thought until that moment that he was the only partner in the relationship who had been getting exasperated. Now he fired up: he would not be eased out so ignobly. He would go, oh, he would go. But somebody would suffer for this.
Once more the sisters took a hand. While Stilwell was still staggering and fuming and coping with a number of absolutely fascinated Chinese friends and well-wishers, who hurried in as soon as they heard the news and spilled more poison in his ears, he received a summons.
“May called me over at 8:00. Ella was there. They are a pair of fighters, all right, and Ella said there was still a chance to pull the fat out of the fire. I was non-committal and calm and told them I did not want to stay where I was not wanted. They talked ‘China’ and duty, etc., and asked me to be big enough to stick it out.… What they wanted was for me to see Peanut and tell him that I had only one aim, the good of China, that if I made mistakes it was from misunderstanding and not intent, and that I was ready to cooperate fully.”
Stilwell was persuaded. Followed an interview at which Chiang was surprisingly mild. He administered a little patronizing advice, Stilwell listened politely and agreed, and there it was, all fixed up again. The unfortunate American, back again at his desk, scratched his head and wondered what had been done to him.
“Now, why was Ella so sure it would come out O.K.?” …
A few days later the ladies told him triumphantly that they knew now who was the troublemaker. It was none other than their brother T.V.… “Ella … said she had to choose between ‘her own flesh and blood’ and the good of China.”
But the truth of the matter was not to be summed up in one person or one situation. T.V. had worked against Stilwell, though not to the extent Madame Kung implied—there was still little love being lost between this sister and her brother. Officers had accused the American of being anti-Chinese. What else were they to think when he criticized their methods as freely as he did? The Generalissimo did have a grudge against him, partly in reaction to his own grudge against the Generalissimo. But what had tipped the scales in Chiang’s mind was Stilwell’s proposal in September, during a long drawn out correspondence on the subject of using ground forces to oppose a possible new push by the Japanese. Stilwell suggested that they use the Reds, the Eighteenth Group Army in the Northwest, side by side with the
Kuomintang troops. “At the worst it costs nothing in troops and little in supplies,” he wrote to Chiang, “it makes use of units that are otherwise idle, and it will make plain the degree of reliability of the forces in the Northwest. If we do not move, the Japs will.”
That had been his slip; that was the unforgivable sin. In Washington, where minds were being more and more made up on the subject of Chinese Communists by indirect methods, they had no way of knowing what a raw place their representative had touched. Stilwell himself didn’t know.
(Surely it was an oversight or something similar that led the editor of The Stilwell Papers, Theodore White, to put the footnote he did on page 214? Stilwell, as already quoted, September 13, reported on a meeting with Madame: “Suggested northwest as source of drafts [for more men].” White’s footnote carefully adds, “General Stilwell here refers to the approximately twenty divisions of government troops, stationed in the northwest, blockading the Communists.” It is clear from the record that Stilwell was not referring to government troops.)
The Reds did not now confine themselves, as they had done previously, to locally aired grievances, nor did they trust their foreign friends to spread the word. They began to get very busy on their own account. Since early summer discussions had been going on between Chiang and Chou En-lai, and now a few cards were on the table. Chiang repeated his standing offer to allow the Communists a place in Chungking, like that held by other Chinese, if they would give up their separate government and hand over their armies to Kuomintang command. The Reds refused, saying that this would mean the end for them. This was a flat contradiction of their protests of unity made in 1937, but Chiang had long since gone past the capacity for pointing this out or for getting indignant about it, and the American commentators seem not to have noticed it. The Generalissimo demanded agreement by the end of August. Chou alleged that Chiang followed up his ultimatum by dispatching seven more divisions to the Northwest. Chiang denied that he had done so.
Russia now stirred herself and exhibited an overt interest in these proceedings that was very disturbing to Washington and London. In Chungking the Russian Ambassador complained to the American Embassy that the Kuomintang were trying to coerce the Communists, and that their troops on several occasions had actually fired on the Reds. In case of civil war, he asked, would the United States continue to send aid to Chiang?
And Russian newspapers began to show a marked change in their references to the Generalissimo’s highest officers. They also spoke with significant emphasis of the superiority of Communist resistance to Japan compared with Nationalist prowess. In the States, Mao’s admirers took up the cry. The Communists were the only people doing any fighting in China, they said. Chiang’s troops were too busy threatening the Communists to attend to their proper business.
Once more, puzzled Americans asked themselves and each other what we were doing in China. Whose side were we on? Whose side should we be on?
American officials asked Chiang if he thought civil war was impending. Chiang denied it, and issued a statement: “I am of the opinion that first of all we should clearly recognize that the Chinese Communist problem is a purely political problem and should be solved by political means.”
Washington was reassured, but left wondering. Who had been lying? On the whole it was simpler to believe that everyone had. But there remained more suspicion of Chiang than of the Reds. American Embassy officials thought that civil war still threatened. Our policy should be, they said, to watch out for it and try to avert it by urging on the Generalissimo a political combination in which the Reds could share. More democracy, said the Americans. More self-improvement: clean yourselves up. Keep the people happy, treat the Reds fair and square, keep your noses clean, and educate the masses. That way you can maintain peace.
In August, when Roosevelt and Churchill met at Quebec, the Chinese dropped the dignified silence in which they had been resenting Chiang’s absence from Casablanca: this time they made a frank request that they be included. With some embarrassment, Britain and America again refused. If Chiang were permitted to attend they could not very well leave out Russia, and then they wouldn’t have been able to make any headway, especially as the most important questions to be decided dealt with the Japanese aspect of the war, in which Russia was not a partner. However, Britain would have been against China’s inclusion even with the Russian part of the matter discounted: Britain and her non-American allies were all against it. Nobody but America was in favor of China’s having a voice in postwar settlements.
It is difficult to assess how bitterly the Generalissimo reacted to these high-level snubs because he maintained a smooth front. Motives and attitudes probably didn’t interest him except insofar as they affected China’s welfare. And it looked as if China didn’t come badly out of the Quebec Conference. Though Molotov opposed her inclusion in the Moscow Declaration, Hull carried the day.
As far as the other United Nations were concerned, the high point of the conference was unrehearsed: a message from Stalin arrived just before they broke up. As soon as the Germans were beaten, he announced, the Soviet Union would enter the Pacific War against Japan. It was the first time he had definitely committed himself on this point and there was great rejoicing. But one sobering afterthought did occur to Roosevelt. When Japan lay supine, if Russia was to be in on the kill, where did that leave Russia’s pets, the Chinese Reds? Obviously, in a very comfortable position. For himself Roosevelt had confidence in the Reds, but he realized that the situation was fraught with unpleasant possibilities for Chiang. On the whole, he decided, it would be as well not to reveal the news just yet to Chungking.
So Chiang was not notified.
On the surface Stilwell’s relations with the Generalissimo had never been so cordial as when Chiang and a retinue of fifteen, including Madame, Hollington Tong, and the American, set out in November 1943 for the Generalissimo’s trip to Cairo. They were going to attend what Roosevelt jovially referred to as “Chiang Kai-shek’s Conference” with Churchill and the American President. There was a growing tendency on the part of these gentlemen to treat Chiang, whom neither had as yet actually met, as a being with a streak of childishness in his make-up. But Churchill complained, in his book Closing the Ring, that Roosevelt still persisted in taking these people seriously. Churchill had wanted to postpone the conference until after he and Roosevelt had met with Stalin in Teheran.
“… The President, who took an exaggerated view of the Indian-Chinese sphere, was soon closeted in long conferences with the Generalissimo. All hope of persuading Chiang and his wife to go and see the pyramids and enjoy themselves until we returned from Teheran fell to the ground.”
No, most decidedly, Churchill didn’t understand. Chiang and his wife would not have enjoyed themselves at the pyramids, not in those circumstances.
Unfortunately for Hollington Tong and the rest of the retinue the Generalissimo was once again caught short without an interpreter when his old friend Lord Killearn called to pay his compliments. Killearn was that same Sir Miles Lampson with whom Chiang had vainly endeavored to talk English, years before, in Nanking. The two men were left staring at each other without means of communication; again poor Chiang was embarrassed.
Churchill and the Chiangs were introduced. The burly Briton looked down at Madame and boomed, “Well, Madame, I suppose you think I am a scoundrel, a blackguard, an imperialist, out to grab more colonies and unwilling to part with what we have got?”
It was a pretty accurate summary. But Madame is bien elévée. She replied only, “Why are you so sure what I think of you?”
The conference went more smoothly than anyone had hoped; more smoothly, indeed, than later events warranted. Probably Churchill did not put up more objections to the proceedings than he did because he simply could not take the talks seriously. He was holding his fire for what he considered the real conference, with Stalin in Teheran. Pending possible upsets there, Chiang understood that the others agreed to the Burma campaign’s star
ting immediately. Britain was to supply that amphibious force in the Bay of Bengal. Chiang would contribute not only the Chinese at Ramgarh who were to attack from India, but the Yoke Force in Yunnan, which was to march in from the east. He also believed that American troops would be supplied.
This agreement was contingent, naturally, upon what might take place at Teheran, and Chiang must have been shrewd enough to realize that Churchill, though he said little, was making reservations in his mind. But once again these Westerners were emphasizing what he considered the less important aspect of the problem. Burma was all very well, but he wanted quicker action to help his country, beset as it was by currency inflation, shortages, and great weariness. The Reds were a mounting worry. The Japanese stood threateningly at the gate of the Yangtze Gorges, though the United Nations were advancing against them in the Pacific.
However, it was pleasant and more to the point to be told that Roosevelt was in favor of returning to China all the territories wrested from her by Japan.
Chiang Kai-shek’s Conference was soon over. Churchill thought that the Chiangs would remain in Cairo in order to hear the outcome of Teheran, but dignity, of course, forbade such a thing. The Generalissimo and Madame departed immediately for Chungking, leaving Stilwell to hold the fort and send them word.
As Churchill had foreseen, a lot of Roosevelt’s glowing promises to China had to be taken back when Stalin came into the picture. “Overlord,” the all-important invasion of the European continent, was discussed and it pushed everything else into second place. Roosevelt struggled for Chiang’s interests, but the best he could get from the British was a half promise to help out with amphibious action in South Burma in the autumn of 1944, when the big doings in Europe should have been finished. Chiang was to be given his choice: he could let the campaign continue immediately but without British support; or he could postpone the whole thing yet again.