China and the West

Gellhorn, Martha. The face of war [D30443]. [Betr. auch Ernest Hemingway].
I wanted to see the Orient before I died ; and the Orient was across the world from what I loved and feared for. Journalism now turned into an escape route. My assignment was to report on the defenses of Hong Kong, Singapore and the Dutch East Indies, take a look at the Burma Road, and find out how the Sino-Japanese War was getting on. There was a severe censorship in China, but I was more troubled by an interior censorship, which made it possible for me to write properly. I had been included, twice, in luncheon parties given by the Chiangs [Chiang Kai-shek, Soong May-ling]. They struck me as the two most determined people I had met in my life.
The Army is constantly studying from experience and making profit out of mistakes. The building and grounds of the Army are the cleanest and best cared for we have seen in China. What this Army lacks in equ9ipment, it tries to make up in training and organization. The discipline is Prussian in its sternness and efficiency and the result is an Army of five million men which has no shoes but has a sound knowledge of how to fight.
When we dismounted at the first divisional headquarters, we were greeted by posters in English : "Welcome to the Representatives of Righteousness and Peace, Consolidate All Democracy Nations We Will Resist until Final Victory, Democracy Only survives Civilization". The General said, was that if America would send planes, arms and money, China could defeat Japan alone. By a persistent campaign of frightfulness in captures villages and cities, the Japanese have roused this almost too long-suffering, reasonable, pacific ract to fierce hate. There is no talk of compromise or peace among the Chinese fighting forces. A Chinese soldier gets one thousand national dollars for any Japanese prisoner captured alive. Despite this huge sum of money, the soldiers shoot any Japanese troops they can lay hands on, as an immediate personal vengeance for the misery of people like themselves in villages like their own homes.
After nine hours riding, and no food or water, I was fairly tired, but not so the Chinese. They accept calmly anything that happens : hunger, fatigue, cold, thirst, pain or danger. They are the toughest people imaginable, as no doubt the Japanese realize. The Japanese can never conquer China by force. And time does not matter in China. Four years of war is a long time. But perhaps if your history goes back four thousand years it does not seem so long. The Chinese are born patient, and they learn endurance when they start to breathe.