CHIANG KAI-SHEK HAS hardly ever been known to give an interview to a foreign journalist, and in the end it was the sheerest luck that got me mine. All our cherished and convergent lines of approach – the telegram from Wang Ching Wei, the secretary’s recommendation, the German military adviser who was to have put in a word for us – all came to nothing. The first that Chiang Kai-shek heard of us was our appearance on his threshold.
We made this appearance at ten o’clock the next morning, blissfully supposing that we were expected. We were not. Chiang Kai-shek was living in a small bungalow belonging to a foreign missionary. We strode confidently up to the garden gate, which was guarded without formality by half a dozen of the bodyguard armed with automatic pistols. We gave our cards to the officer in charge and Li explained who we were; but the atmosphere remained chilly and inauspicious, and we should, I think, have been denied admission had not Mme Chiang Kai-shek at that moment come out of the bungalow. Mme Chiang Kai-shek is the gifted and influential sister of Mr. T. V. Soong. Another sister is the wife of Dr. H. H. Kung, the President of the Bank of China, and it is in great part due to these ladies that the balance of power within the Nanking Government lies with what has been nicknamed the Soong Dynasty.
Seeing two foreigners in difficulties with her guard, Mme Chiang Kai-shek sent an aide-de-camp to deal with the situation. The aide was impressed by our references, as rehearsed by Li, and five minutes later we found ourselves sitting on the edge of cane chairs in a small, bare room furnished in the European style. On the wall hung cheap reproductions of inordinately religious pictures. The furniture was plain, unattractive, and old. The Generalissimo of the Armies of the Chinese Republic was somewhat incongruously housed.
Li was being cross-questioned elsewhere (servants are one of the principal sources of information in China). The young aide remained as our interpreter. We were told that Chiang Kai-shek was holding an important conference, but would leave it for a few minutes to see us.
He came into the room quietly, and stood quite still, looking at us. He wore a dark blue gown and carried in one hand a scroll, evidently part of the agenda of his conference. He was of rather more than average height, and unexpectedly slim. His complexion was dark, his cheek bones high and prominent, and he had a jutting, forceful lower lip like a Habsburg’s. His eyes were the most remarkable thing about him. They were large, handsome, and very keen – almost aggressive. His glances had a thrusting and compelling quality which is very rare in China, where eyes are mostly negative and non-committal, if not actually evasive.
We stood up and bowed. Chiang Kai-shek motioned us to sit down. I was conscious of his eyes. The interview began.
I got through the essential courtesies as quickly as possible. The Marshal replied to them with business-like and un-Oriental brevity. Then I came to our purpose. I said that China was the only country whose armies were actively and continuously engaging the forces of Bolshevism in the field, and that the world’s interest in, and sympathy for, China would be stimulated by first-hand information, hitherto lacking, about what was happening on the spot. Would the Marshal allow my friend and myself to go up into Kiangsi and get that information?
The Marshal, after disconcerting me with a piercing stare, said that he would. He would wire that morning to the Governor of Kiangsi at Nanchang and instruct him to grant us every facility.
This was splendid. This was what we wanted. I thanked him warmly. And how soon did he expect to see the Red areas cleared up and the problem of Communism in China solved? Chiang Kai-shek replied, rather perfunctorily, that the Red Armies at present in the field would be wiped out by that winter; after that would come the rehabilitation of the Communist areas, for which he had already drafted plans.1
It was obvious that Chiang Kai-shek enjoyed the sound of his own voice far less than most politicians, in China and elsewhere. He was not the usual type of glib and rather impressive propaganda-monger; he did not cultivate salesmanship. He was moreover a busy man in the middle of a busy morning. I decided that we should make a better impression if we emulated his laconic methods and anticipated his wishes by cutting our interview as short as possible. I therefore asked him only one more question: When might we expect a rapprochement between China and Japan?
‘On the Manchurian issue, never,’ said Chiang Kai-shek firmly.
We rose and took our leave, with many expressions of gratitude. As we parted I received once more one of those formidable glances, of the kind which prompts an involuntary self-accusation of some grave sartorial omission. We trooped down the garden path feeling very small.
As a rule, contact with the great brings out the worst in me. The more exalted a man’s position, the less impressionable I become. A man’s vulnerability increases in direct proportion to his eminence. The higher his place, the greater the incongruity between the real and the ideal – between the human material and the dignities it is supposed to uphold. And, by corollary, the bigger the bluff, the better worth calling. So I approach the eminent in a frame of mind in which, I regret to say, scepticism and disrespect are uppermost.
But before Chiang Kai-shek I retired abashed. Here was a man with a presence, with that something incalculable to him to which the herd instinctively defers. He was strong and silent by nature, not by artifice (for there are those who play this rôle because it pays, having found out, like the people who arrange shop-windows, that the minimum of display is effective by contrast with the vulgar maximum). He may not be a great statesmen, or a very great soldier; events may prove that the best that can be said of him is that he has been the effective head of the best government China has had since the Revolution – a government, incidentally, which is older by several years than any now holding office in the West. But at any rate Chiang Kai-shek has something to him. He is a personality in his own right. He is not only not a mediocrity or a windbag, but he could never look like one. That, I think, entitles him to a certain singularity among modern political leaders.
1 Those plans, alas, remain in draft. In the late autumn of 1933 the elaborately prepared campaign of the Nationalist Armies against the Communists in Kiangsi had already fizzled out ingloriously before the separatist revolt in the adjoining province of Fukien provided at once a distraction and an excuse for failure.