China and the West

Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn had dinner with Lauchlin Currie.

Letter from Martha Gellhorn to Charles Colebaugh.
There is a very good story here. The city [Hong Kong] is jammed, half a million extra Chinese refugees. It is rich and rare and startling and complicated.

Hahn, Emily. [Besuch bei Ernest Hemingway in Hong Kong]. [Interview with Arthur Gomes ; Oct. 4 (1995).]
"When the Hemingways were in Hong Kong I was very pregnant indeed with Charles' [Boxer] daughter [Carola Militia Boxer]. We were not married, as he had a wife sitting out the war in Singapore… I was pretty much of a scandal in the community, walking down Des Voeux Road, and Ernest was sitting in front of the Hong Kong Hotel, now deceased, drinking a Bloody Mary (which he introduced to the colony). He asked me to join him. They had been at may place the evening before. I joined him, and in the middle of a sentence he suddenly said, "What's going to happen to Charles about this baby ? Won't they kick him out of the army ? " "No", I said. "They daren't, because he's the only man they have who can speak Japanese". He looked doubtful. "Tell you what", he said. "You can tell 'em it's mine"."

Hemingway may fly here from the East. In : The Mail ; 8 March (1941).
From a Honolulu correspondent.
Ernest Hemingway, famed American author and war correspondent, has left here by clipper to cover developments in the Orient for "PM," New York's tabloid newspaper.
HEMINGWAY intends to cover China and then to swing down through Indo-China, Burma, Thailand, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies. Asked if he planned a visit to Australia, and told about air connections from the Indies to Australia, he said: "It might be a swell idea if I go to Australia. I hear the Aussies are going to town about the war." Perhaps Australian sources may be able to arrange facilities for Hemingway to visit Australia: he is about the widest read American reporter. The famous author is accompanied by his new wife, Martha Gellhorn, who also is a reporter. She works for "Collier's Magazine," and covered the Norway campaign, also Spain. Australians would enjoy the Hemingways. She is a lively blonde and shares every outdoor activity with her husband. He is a tall 200-pounder, with a heavy face and black moustache, a crack all-round athlete. He is pains-taking in his writing, enormously patient— as his latest book, "For Whom the Bell Tolls," proves. Hemingway is going to the Far East on the hunch, as he put it, that there may be serious trouble between Chungking and the Communist forces, which hitherto have been co-operating against Japan's aggression in China. Sold 600,000 Copies Japanese agents, he has been in formed, are spending large sums in fomenting the trouble. Japan warns to split the China forces. But there are British, American, and Russian agents at work behind the scenes, too. These agents want to use China to keep Japan's hands full. They have promised China that aid will not only be continued, but increased. Hemingway spent years in Spain, and the despatches he sent from there, and the books he wrote, are world-famous. "For Whom the Bell Tolls," set in Spain, already has sold more than 600,000 copies in U.S.A. Commenting on the Italian as a fighter—and this opinion will interest Australians—Hemingway said: "The Italian soldier is a good fighter if he is well officered—but he's never well officered."

Letter from Martha Gellhorn to Alexander Woollcott.
Hong Kong is 'awful jolly'. Ernest [Hemingway] goes about really learning something about the country and I go about dazed and open mouthed.

James, Rex. Incidentally… In : Hong Kong Sunday Herald ; March 9 (1941).
After "years of slick, slight novels and brilliant pointless short stories", Ernest Hemingway discovered politics while in Spain and finally has something to believe in. Since that time Hemingway's writing has been on the rise. "For politics has given his writing the intellectuality he had deliberately excluded and his plot the necessary objective interest which studies of punch drunk boxers and stoic matadors failed to provide. He may become a really great writer."

[Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn travel in China].
Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn leave Hong Kong by plane into the Guangdong province. They had flown over Japanese lines, made a landing in Nanxiong (Guangdong) and arrive in Shaoguan (Guangdong). They had worked with Guomingdang officials in Hong Kong in planning the voyage, and the government made sure they were escorted and provided with hospitality. Two Guomindang officers were Mr. Ma [Xia Jixong], a political officer and translater and Mr. Ho, the transport officer.
March 26 they had an appointment to meet Guomingdang General Yu Hanmou (1896–1981) and several officers from his staff. He gave them a permission to visit the front as soon as transportation could be arranged.
On March 28 they travel south down the North River [Bei jiang] to Shaoguan (Guangdong), by boat, then ride horses to the front, where they were to witness Chinese troops fighting the Japanese. A group of soaked soldiers was awaiting them. This was their first glimpse of rural China. The group spent the night at the divisional headquarters. They visited a local monastery and dined with the governor of the province.
March 28, Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn leave Shaoguan (Guangdong) and arrive on April 4 in Guilin, where they booked into the Palace Hotel. Hemingway visited the caves in the mountains. He said that one day he hoped to visit the Great Wall of China.

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.

Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn fly to Chongqing. They live in Song Ziwen's house Whatchumcallit .
Hemingway met Theodore H. White, had a meeting with Chinese generals and a session with He Yingqing and Zhou Enlai. He met William Lederer.
Hemingway later admit to Harry Dexter White and Henry Morgenthau that life in Chongqing was extremely difficult and unpleasant.
April 9, Hemingway and Gellhorn meet Ambassador Nelson Trusler Johnson in Chongqing.
April 10, Hemingway flies to Chengdu (Sichuan), Martha Gellhorn remained in Chongqing.
April 11, Hemingway sees the construction of the airfield of Chengdu (Sichuan). He visited a Chinese military academy, watched workers who build an airfield and met professors at Chengdu University.
April 12, Hemingway returns to Chongqing.
April 14, Hemingway and Gellhorn have lunch with Chiang Kaishek and Soong May-ling and a banquet at Jialin Hotel. They discussed military, political and economic affairs and the relations with the Communists.
April 15, Hemingway and Gellhorn have their second interview with Soong May-ling.

Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn left Chongqing, flew to Kunming and over the Burma Road to Lashio (Burma). Tey spend the night in the CNAC Inn in Lashio. From Lashio they drove by car to Mandalay and for a week by train to Rangoon.

Ernest Hemingway flies to Hong Kong. He stayed at the Peninsula Hotel. He met Charles Boxer, Ramon Lavalle and James Roosevelt..
Martha Gellhorn went to Singapore, the Dutch East Indies, Batavia and Bandoeng.

Letter from Ernest Hemingway to Maxwell Perkins ; Hong Kong, 29 April.
I was glad to get your letters of April 4th and April 11th when flew in here from Rangoon last night. The last leg of the trip from Kunming (Yunnanfu) to here was pretty bad and when we got over Hongkong the statig was so bad the telefunken would not work and with a 200 foot ceiling we circled for nearly an hour before we could get down through. Have flown 18,000 some miles since I saw you last and have about 12,000 more to fly before see you again. Wish I was paid by the mile instead of by the word.
I had a wire from Charley, two in fact, in answer to one I sent him from Chungking asking about the sale and another I sent saying I was not happy of having no word from any of you nor not too happy about the sale or lack of it.

Ernest Hemingway leaves Hong Kong and fly to Manila, where he spent five nights. He attended a banquet by the Philippines Writers Association.

Ernest Hemingway fly from Manila to Guam.

Zhou Enlai telegraphed Liao Chengzhi and Mao Zedong in Yanan from Chongqing. Chou said : "According to our conversation with Ernest Hemingway, we still have a lot of room to maneuver diplomatically. We suggest adding several people in Hong Kong to coordinate our activities, and the objectives and guidelines in Hong Kong have to be the same as in Chongqing."

Ernest Hemingway returns to San Francisco.

Martha Gellhorn returns to San Francisco.

Hemingway interviewed by Ralph Ingersoll. In : PM ; June 9 (1941).
This interview with Ernest Hemingway was recorded in his hotel apartment a few days after he returned to New York from the Far East in 1941. Mr. Ingersoll, the editor of the now defunct newspaper PM, had commissioned Hemingway to go to the Far East to see for himself whether or not war with Japan was inevitable. This interview served as an introduction to Hemingway's series of articles. It was corrected and revised by Hemingway after having been transcribed and hence might be called an authenticated interview.

Ernest Hemingway left for China in January. He had never been in the Orient before. He went to see for himself—how Chiang Kai-shek's war against Japan was going; how much truth there was to the reports that the Chinese position was menaced by threat of civil war; what would be the effect of the then imminent Russo-Japanese pact and—most important of all—what was our own position in the Orient. What was our position both as a leading anti-Fascist power and as a nation of 130,000,000 people with vital trade interests in other parts of the world—or were they vital?—and if they were vital, were they menaced?
Hemingway wanted to find out for himself, and for you and for me, what pattern of events might lead us into war with Japan—what alternate sequence of circumstances might possibly keep Japan in her place in the Pacific without us having to fight her.
Most people know Ernest Hemingway as America's No. 1 novelist. His reputation as a novelist is so great in fact that it
overshadows two other reputations, either one of which gives him international recognition.
Long before he was a novelist, Ernest Hemingway was a noted war correspondent. He covered the fighting in the Mediterranean in the last war, the whole of the Spanish war—in which the present war was fought in miniature.
Of sufficient stature to be distinct from his reputation as a war correspondent is his reputation as a military expert. He is a student of war in its totality—everything about war, from machine gun emplacements to tactics and maneuvers to civilian morale and industrial organization for war. These things he has studied for 20 years.
So when Ernest Hemingway went to China he went as no casual visitor but as a student and an expert—he went with a reputation which made it possible for him to visit fronts that had not been visited by foreign journalists until now, and to talk with people who are running the war in the Orient on a unique basis.
When Ernest Hemingway went to the Orient, PM made this agreement with him: that if action broke out he was to remain there and cover the war by cable, but if no action broke out, he was to make notes as he went but not to write until he finished his study—until all the returns were in and he had time and the perspective to analyze everything he had seen and heard, and render a report of more lasting value than day-to-day correspondence.
This is the report that will be published here beginning tomorrow.
In the meantime, I have talked with Mr. Hemingway about his trip. Here is where he went and what he did and what he saw—the background from which his report is drawn:
Ernest Hemingway went to China with his wife, Martha Gellhorn. Mrs. Hemingway carried credentials as correspondent for Collier's, where her articles have already begun appearing. The two flew to Hong Kong by Pan American Clipper.
Hemingway stayed a month in Hong Kong, where he could talk not only with the Chinese but with their opposition. The Japanese come in and out of Hong Kong quite freely—in fact, they celebrated the Emperor's birthday in their frock coats and with a formal toast. The British naval and military intelligence is there—and our own naval and military intelligence. The local Communist opposition is there and so are the Chinese pacifists who play Japan's game.
We asked Hemingway what it was like in Hong Kong. He said that danger had hung over the place so long it had become absolutely commonplace. People had completely adjusted them¬selves to the tension. He said that the city was very gay. The stabilizing element in any British colony are the British womenfolk, who keep life on a formal basis. But they had been evacuated and in general morale was high and morals low.
"There are at least 500 Chinese millionaires living in Hong Kong—too much war in the interior, too much terrorism in Shanghai to suit a millionaire. The presence of the 500 millionaires has brought about another concentration—of beautiful girls from all parts of China. The 500 millionaires own them all. The situation among the less beautiful girls is very bad because it is the British position that prostitution does not exist there, and therefore its control is no problem. This leaves about 50,0 prostitutes in Hong Kong. Their swarming over the streets at night is a war-time characteristic.
How many troops there are in Hong Kong is, of course, a military secret. Hemingway knows the exact number. That is the type of censorship PM does not try to beat. But Hemingway reports Hong Kong is "excellently defended." "In case of attack Hong Kong's problem would-be food. There are 1,500,000 people there now and they would have to be fed."
He continued: "Even more serious would be the sewage disposal problem—for in Hong Kong there are neither flush toilets nor drains. Sewage is disposed of by night soil coolies who collect and sell it to farmers. In case of a blackout sewage will be dumped in the streets and a cholera epidemic would be inevitable. This is known because two nights of practice blackout did produce a cholera epidemic.
"At present, however," Hemingway continued, "the food is plentiful and good, and there are some of the finest restaurants in the world in Hong Kong—both European and Chinese. There's also horse racing, cricket, rugby, association football." After Hemingway had been in Hong Kong a month, he and Mrs. Hemingway flew to NamYung by Chinese air line. This flight took him over the Japanese lines. From NamYung, the Hemingways drove to Shaikwan, headquarters of the 7th War Zone.
The Chinese front is divided into eight war zones. Hemingway chose the 7th because he "wanted to make an intensive study of what a typical Chinese war zone was like, and the 7th has, ultimately, the greatest offensive potentiality."
Here he studied the complete organization of a Chinese war zone from headquarters through the army corps, divisions, brigades, regiments and down to the forward echelons.
The army Hemingway visited is a Kuomintang army. That is, it is part of the regular Chinese Army and not part of the Chinese Communist Army. The Chinese Communist armies have welcomed journalists and there has been much written about them. But this is the first time an American journalist has done extensive work at the front with the regular Chinese Army.
We asked Hemingway about this situation. He said:
"There are 300 divisions in the Chinese Army, 200 of which are first-class divisions and 100 secondary divisions. There are
10,0 regular troops in each division. Out of these 300 divisions three are Communist divisions. The area that the Communist divisions hold is an extremely important one and they have done marvelous fighting. But the 297 other divisions, occupying about the same amount of terrain per division, have not been visited at all before. Whereas the Communists have welcomed correspondents, there has been very strict censorship on the regular Chinese Army. Passes have been impossible to get, and correspondents have not been allowed into the forward echelons at all."
Hemingway said he went to see the regular Chinese Army because the Communist troops have already been excellently described by people like Edgar Snow, Agnes Smedley and others.
News of the Kuomintang army is important not simply because it has received no publicity but because the Kuomintang comprises the bulk of the troops on which we, in America, must depend to keep the Japanese divisions occupied in China while we are preparing to defend the Pacific.
Hemingway spent a month at the front, living with the troops, going everywhere with them. He traveled down the river by sampan first, then on horseback, and finally on foot. There were 12 days during a wet spell when he and Mrs. Hemingway never had dry clothes to put on.
They also discovered such delicacies as snake wine and bird wine. Hemingway described snake wine as "a special rice wine with a number of small snakes coiled up at the bottom of the bottle. The snakes are dead," he said. "They are there for medicinal purposes. Bird wine is also rice wine, but at the bottom of its bottle there are several dead cuckoos."
Hemingway liked the snake wine better. He says it cures falling hair and he is going to have some bottled for his friends.
After a month at the front, the Hemingways went back overland by sampan, car and train to Kweilin. This trip had not been planned, but everywhere they had gone for two months they had been told Kweilin was the most beautiful place in China. And they reported that it is the most beautiful place they saw. "There are thousands of miniature mountains there which look like a huge mountain range but are only 300 feet high. Many of the lovely imaginative scenes you see in Chinese prints and paintings, and think are made up out of an artist's imagination, are really almost photographic likenesses of Kweilin. There is also a famous cave there which is now used for an air raid shelter. It holds 30,000 people."
To get from there to Chungking they arranged to be picked up by a freight plane which was carrying bank notes to the capital. The plane was a Douglas DC-3—kind that flies on most of our air lines here—-and all the other seats were occupied by shipments of bank notes.
All the air lines in China are owned by a company called the CNAC, or China National Aviation Corp. The Chinese Government owns 51 per cent and our own Pan American Airways owns 49 per cent and does the operating. Hemingway said: "They used DC-i's and 3's and old Condor biplanes which can only fly on short hauls where the mountains are under 7000 feet high. There are passenger flights from Hong Kong to Chungking three times a week, for instance. But the idea of buying tickets on them is an academic one—for the waiting list is months long and only priority counts."
When it did not look as if the priority was coming through in time, Hemingway chartered a Vultee single-motored low-wing monoplane. But then the priority came through.
By the time the Hemingways got to Chungking they had learned a good deal about China. They spent some time with Chiang Kai-shek and in an all-afternoon interview, Mme. Chiang Kai-shek did the interpreting. But Hemingway reports that when the talk was on military subjects the Generalissimo understood military terms in English. He saw and got to know China's Minister of Finance, Dr. Kung, the Minister of Education, the Minister of Communications, the Minister of War, as well as various generals and the General Staff.
"Chungking," he reports, "had not been bombed seriously from August 25 until May 3—there is no bombing in Chungking during the winter because of low visibility."
He found the hotels in Chungking excellent—the food plentiful and the water hot. Everywhere he went in China, in fact, he found food sold without restrictions—even in the villages. At no time, he reports, did he see any of the signs you see when the war is being lost for lack of food. At no time did he see anything like the conditions he saw in Spain.
"But," he said, "the food in China is expensive. Moreover, China is such a huge country that there are sections where the food situation gets bad locally—when due to a local drought a crop has failed. And communications are so bad that it is difficult to ship in food from other parts of the country. Such a condition prevails at present in South Shansi province and in other parts of the northern provinces. On the whole, the food situation this year is very good."
We asked Hemingway what people meant when they came back and said the economic situation in China was "very bad." He said: "When people come into China from America and see signs of a monetary inflation there, they think everything is going to pot, whereas the situation is actually very good, considering China is in the fourth year of war. The inflation there is no worse than occurs in any other country that fights for four years. In the fourth year of the last war no European country was in better shape."
He felt that "China has to make some radical currency reforms—but principally to prevent the Japanese from buying up their money. The Japanese sell their own money short and buy Chinese money—now that America is backing China's money," he said. "I don't think this will be hard to control. My personal opinion is that eventually China will have to adjust its currency on a rice standard. Rice is the gold of China and only a currency based on a rice standard will prevent the kind of inflation in which people are not able to buy food."
The first time the Hemingways were in Chungking they stayed about eight days, constantly talking with people. Hemingway dined, lunched and breakfasted with Government people.
At the end of the eight days he flew up to Chengtu to visit the Chinese military academy—where Chiang Kai-shek trains his officers and cadets. And he inspected the flying schools and the new airdromes that are being constructed in this district. Here again, as a guest of the military academy, he had an opportunity to study the whole Chinese military system.
"The military academy," he said, "is in full swing. It was set up by the German General Alexander Von Faulkenhausen, and its professors are German-trained Chinese."
Hemingway flew back from the Chinese West Point to Chungking and then took another plane south over the Burma Road. He saw the trucks passing up and down the road.
We asked him whether reports that the Road was all banged up were true. He said: "Some of the bridges were out, but the Chinese have a very efficient ferry system to replace them. The Road is being bombed regularly—Kunming practically every day—but the bombing of bridges is not effective, partly because of the ferries and partly because they rebuild the bridges so quickly."
Hemingway said: "The control organization of the China section of the Burma Road is now in the charge of a committee which includes Dr. Harry Baker, formerly head of the American Red Cross in China. If Dr. Baker is not hamstrung by his fellow committee members he will be able to put through many traffic reforms."
From Lashio, which, you will see by the map, is far up on the Burma Road route, Hemingway went to Mandalay by car and then down to Rangoon by train. All along this route he studied the Burma Road problem, and gave us this picture of it:
"The first part of the problem is getting materials from the coast up to the beginning of the Road. Here there are two methods of transportation available. One is via the Burma railway, the other is via the river. So far most of the material has gone up over the railway which is Burmese owned and very jealous of river traffic. The river traffic is transported by an organization called the Irrawaddy Flotilla, which belongs to a Scottish-owned company.
"The Irrawaddy is navigable as far as Bhamo. You should look at the map here because Bhamo is becoming very important. At Bhamo a connecting road is being completed through to the Burma Road. You will see that not only does it cut off a good part of the Burma Road—and a difficult and mountainous part—but it permits goods to be transported up from the
coast all the way by river. In effect this new route—from Rangoon to Bhamo by water and from Bhamo by short cut to well up on the Burma Road—constitutes a cut-off which is almost impossible for the Japanese to damage.
"The old route," he continued, "by rail from Lashio to Kun¬ming, remains available, and shippers can also use the river up from Rangoon to Mandalay to Lashio.
"This makes two ways in.
"A third way," he went on, "is now being developed. This way uses first water and then rail to a place called Myitkyina— pronounced Michina—which, if you are interested in the Burma Road problem, you should locate for yourself on the map. Because you will see that by using Myitkyina as a railhead, a 200- mile air shuttle service from Myitkyina to Tali cuts off 509 miles of the Burma Road and leaves only 197 miles to travel to Kunming.
"This 197 miles—from Tali to Kunming—is downhill and there are no bridges and gorges which the Japanese can turn into bottlenecks by bombing. On a 200-mile hop the freight planes will not have to refuel in China at all.
"Thus," Hemingway explained, "the Chinese have what amounts to three alternate routes of supply from the south, not counting the constant bootlegging of supplies in from the whole China Coast."
Hemingway studied this traffic and says it is of enormous extent. He does not write about it in detail because he does not want to give information to the Japanese.
Now, remembering that the overland route into Russia is still open and that the Chinese are still getting supplies from Russia—as Hemingway explains in one of his articles—one realizes for the first time just what an enormous problem the Japanese have in interrupting Chinese communications.
"If the Japanese interruptions on the Road were as one, the interruptions due to inefficiency, graft and red tape would be as five. That is, take the whole route from Rangoon into Chungking—inefficiency, graft and red tape cause five times as much trouble as Japanese bombings. This is the problem which Dr. Baker has to solve."
We were startled by this figure and asked Hemingway to tell us more about it. He said:
"All projects in China move very quickly until money is involved. The Chinese have been doing business for many centuries and when things are a business matter to them they move very slowly. The Generalissimo can order something done— something in which money doesn't enter—and it is done practically, immediately. But the minute it becomes a financial thing it slows right up. No one person is responsible for this. It is the age-old Chinese custom of squeeze.
"There have been cases of truck drivers selling their gasoline, which they were hauling over the Burma Road, to private concerns. There have been cases of dumping whole loads to carry passengers. I saw with my own eyes tires being thrown off trucks loaded with them—evidently to be picked up by confederates later.
"There's no efficient policing of the Road. Of course every load should be checked as it goes in, and all the way through, and as it comes out. That is what Dr. Baker's Commission has to fix. After they opened the Road things ran wild for a while. Some people, operating transportation companies from outside of China, had no efficient control of their organizations on the Road. Now the Generalissimo realizes the importance of this. Something is being done about it."
Hemingway told us that the situation in Burma doesn't make things any better. He said: "Burma is a land of complete and utter red tape. Everything there is slowed up as much as it can be. If a military attaché comes to Rangoon to get a load of food to take back up to Kunming, it takes him two days in Rangoon just to clear through red tape. It is worse than France was before the fall. It is entirely administered by the Burmese, who combine the worst features of the Hindu Babu and the French prefall functionary. On the other hand, the British in Burma, not the Burmese, were efficient and uniformly helpful. Censorship was realistic and intelligent."
We asked Hemingway what it was like visiting romantic-sounding places like Mandalay and Rangoon. He said Rangoon was an English colonial city, "96 degrees at night and 103 degrees in the day, in the hot months when we were there. The flying fish were not playing. Kipling was talking about a place further down—Moulmein, below Rangoon, near the mouth of the river."
Hemingway went all the way down to Rangoon and stayed there for about a week. Then he flew back via Lashio and Kunming to Hong Kong and stayed there again for a week before leaving for America. Mrs. Hemingway continued on to Batavia and the Dutch East Indies while Hemingway worked between Clippers in Manila. She rejoined him on the next Clipper.
As this is being written Mr. Hemingway is completing his last piece for PM. We asked him a few final questions: What about the Chinese arsenals? If, by any mischance, the supply routes were cut, could they go on fighting?
He said: "I visited arsenals near Chungking and saw that they were manufacturing small arms and small arms ammunition, and were very self-sufficient. Moreover, much material can come right through Japanese lines. The guerrillas had been running trucks through the Japanese lines by completely dismantling them—into the smallest possible pieces—and carrying them by hand. An American motor company representative in Hong Kong was delivering trucks through the Japanese lines to Free China making a $450 service charge for delivery." Hemingway has more news of the latest developments in guerrilla fighting.
News from the Orient has been confusing and contradictory to most people. Russia supposedly offers the hand of friendship to Japan—and at the same time continues to ship supplies to China.
America gives China a $100,000,000 credit—and at the same time sells oil to China's enemy. What's it all about?
Hemingway told us. He traced for us the probable consequences of each move we were making, and each Japanese move.
He showed us how Russia was playing a devious hand in this gigantic game of Chinese checkers which anybody might win.
Must America fight Japan? Hemingway told us why it's a matter of timing. As far as America is concerned, time itself is fighting on our side. As for Japan, time is running out on her —and no one, not even the Japanese, knows when the last strategic moment will have come. Or whether she should extricate herself from China at any price before challenging us. If Britain should fall it would be the signal for Japan aggressively to pursue her conquests in new directions. And this may well mean war with the U.S.A.
If England grows stronger and America is able to keep the fleet in the Pacific, war between the United States and Japan may never occur. And further, Hemingway tells us, we may thus beat Japan without ever firing a gun.
No one interview such as this, however—no one article—can give you the full impact, can piece together the complete pattern of this tremendously significant picture.
SM

Hemingway, Ernest. Russo-Japanese pact. In : PM ; June 10 (1941).
HONG KONG.—On the day the Japanese-Soviet neutrality pact was signed in Moscow, Dr. H. H. Kung, who is both Prime Minister and Minister of Finance for his brother-in-law, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, was dining with Soviet Ambassador Paniushkin in Chungking.
"We hear that a pact is going to be signed," the Chinese statesman said.
"Yes," the Soviet Ambassador answered. "That is true."
"What will be the effect of such a pact on Russian aid to China?"
"None," answered the Soviet Ambassador.
"Will you withdraw any troops from the Manchukuo frontier?"
"We will reinforce our divisions there," the Soviet Ambassador said, and the head of the Soviet military advisers in China, a Lieutenant General, nodded agreement.
At the time that incident happened I did not care to write it because diplomats rarely impart bad news over the dinner table and it was possible that very different news might come out of Moscow. But since then I have heard directly from both Dr. Kung and Mme. Chiang Kai-shek that Russian aid is continuing to arrive and that no Soviet staff officers, aviation instructors, or military advisers have been withdrawn from the Generalissimo's army.
My wife and I had lunched with Mme. Chiang Kai-shek the day the pact was announced and during the conversation she
said, "But how will we know whether they will really withdraw aid or not?"
"If they are going to withdraw aid," I told her, remembering how it had happened in Spain, "the first move will be to withdraw the military advisers, the instructors and the staff officers. As long as they stay on, it means the aid will continue."
Last week a letter from Mme. Chiang Kai-shek contained these three paragraphs:
"I am fulfilling my promise to inform you of the Generalissimo's reaction to the neutrality pact between the USSR and Japan.
"The Generalissimo declares that this pact will not have the slightest effect on China's determination to continue national resistance. We began it single-handedly and if necessary, we shall end it the same way. What other nations, friendly or otherwise, may or may not do, will not influence. We will fight on until victory is won. Outer Mongolia and Manchuria are parts of China and the people of these regions themselves feel that they are indissolubly linked with the National Government, which recognizes no alienation of territory, and does not intend to, whatever happens.
"So far there is no indication that the USSR will withdraw its advisers from China, or will cease supplying us with war materials."
Soviet Russia has given China more aid than any other country has supplied. She has provided planes, pilots, trucks, some artillery, gasoline, military instructors and staff officers who act as military advisers. She has lent Chiang Kai-shek's government something over the equivalent of 200,000,000 U.S. dollars.
Most of this huge loan was attained on a barter basis and has been repaid in tea, wolfram (tungsten ore) and other products. The Russians drove a hard bargain when the barter terms were made and at present the Chinese have a difficult time buying the tea at prices agreed on with Russia. But they are still making deliveries.
Feeling between Chinese Communists and the Central Government is so bitter on both sides that I was amazed at first to find Soviet staff officers still serving in an advisory capacity with Chiang Kai-shek's armies and Soviet aid to China still coming in steadily. While I was at the front with Chinese Central Army troops I encountered Soviet staff officers and I saw new Russian planes which had come in; both bombardment and pursuit. In the officers’ club where I lived at Chengtu in Northern Szechwan Province the room numbers on all the rooms were in Russian and various delicacies we had for breakfasts, including cocoa and tinned butter, had come by way of Vladivostok and Chita.
This Vladivostok route was using the Trans-Siberian Railroad to haul freight to Chita. From Chita to Urga, all transport was by truck and bus. From Urga to Ninghsia, camel caravans carried the freight to the Chinese roadhead where it was loaded onto trucks again for the haul to Chungking and Chengtu.
No visitors are allowed to see the Russian military advisers, instructors and pilot instructors, but I had run into three Russian staff officers out at the front on an impassable muddy road where all transport was stalled. So I greeted one of them whom I knew with, "How are you doing, Tovarich?" It was evidently decided after that encounter that there was very little point in concealing from me the Russians' presence and from then on the subject was always discussed very frankly. Consequently, I had a good chance to compare the Chinese field staff and general officers' opinions on the various foreign military advisers they had fought under.
Almost unanimously they ranked the Germans first as soldiers and staff officers and the Russians second. Their complaint against the Russians was that they rarely worked out any offen¬sive action on a large or small scale in sufficient force.
To simplify the explanation to the utmost, using men in terms of money: if a position was purchasable for 50 cents, the Russians would try to take it for a dime. They would fail at that and finally have to pay $1.15 for it because there no longer was any element of surprise. On the other hand, if a position was worth 50 cents, the Germans would smack it with $1.50. After it was taken you would often find that only a quarter out of the $1.50 had been spent.
Chinese generals, if they are convinced that you know what you are talking about, are extraordinarily frank, straight talking, intelligent and articulate. I have spent some time on various British maneuvers. The atmosphere at the Chinese front with the men who had fought the war lords for five years, the Com- mupists for 10 and the Japanese for nearly four was as different from that of a Britisfi staff as the locker room of the Green Bay Packers professional football team would be from even such a good prep school as Choate.
One Chinese general asked me what the British in Hong Kong thought of them. We were a couple of days riding together after the opening formal politenesses. We had drunk numerous cups of rice wine and worked late over the map.
"Does the General really want to know what they said?"
"Yes, truly."
"The General will not be offended?"
"Of course not."
"Well, we don't think very much of the Chinese, you know." I tried to reproduce it. "Johnny's all right and a very good fellow and all that. But he's absolutely hopeless on the offensive, you know. We have absolutely no confidence in him ever taking the offensive. Truly none. No. Too bad. We can't count on Johnny."
"Johnny?" asked the General.
"John Chinaman," I said.
"Very interesting," the General said. "Very interesting."
Then he went on, "We have no artillery to speak of, you know. No planes. Or very few. You know that, of course. Do you think the British would go on the offensive without artillery or aerial support anywhere? Any time?
"No," he interrupted me. "Let me tell you a Chinese story. A new Chinese story. Not an old Chinese story. Do you know why the British staff officer wears a single glass in his eye?"
"No," I said.
"Ho," he said. "It is a very new Chinese story. He wears a single glass in his eye so he will not see more than he can understand.
"I will tell that officer when I see him," I said.
"Very good," he said. "Tell him it is a little message from Johnny."

Hemingway, Ernest. Japan must conquer China. In : PM ; June 13 (1941).
Rangoon.—The U.S.A. and Great Britain, if they are to protect their rubber, tungsten, tin, and other war essentials, must first decide at what point they will oppose Japan's southern move.
Already Japan has moved bodily into Indo-China and penetrated politically into Thailand on her way to Singapore. But there is no oil in those countries.
The first oil that Japan can reach by sea, without attacking the main British and Dutch defenses in Singapore, Sumatra and Java, is in Borneo. It is likely that she will try everything short of war to get this oil at Tarakan and Balikpapan from the Dutch. No one knows yet what she will offer. But when Japan goes south for oil is the moment the U.S.A. and Great Britain will have to oppose her if they are to avoid another Munich where Germany was given everything in Czechoslovakia she needed to overrun the Low Countries and France.
Japan without iron and oil—her only oil supply of her own is from Sakhalin Island which she shares with Russia—is as vulnerable, economically, as Italy. Deprived of oil she cannot fight longer than a year. But if she reaches oil in Borneo and controls the iron of the Philippines she will be reinforced to a much greater degree than Germany was by the gift of Czechoslovakia.
The longer the U.S.A. is allowed to rearm, to fortify Dutch Harbor in Alaska, to fortify Midway, Wake and Guam Islands to provide air bases for the great bombers that will then be able to fly the Clipper routes to objectives in the Pacific, the more does Japan’s southern move become increasingly perilous.
Last year it was perfectly possible for Japan to move to oil and to control of the world's rubber supply. Last year was when Japan had her great chance to become a world power by attacking Malaya before its defenses were organized. This year, with the Empire and Dutch defenses organized, it would be gravely dangerous for Japan to try to go south. In another two years when our own preparations are completed Japan can be absolutely destroyed if she tries it.
Japan could not move southward when it was easy, because out of the 52 divisions of her Army 37 were engaged in China, nine were in Manchuria and Korea, and only six available in Japan, Formosa, Hainan Island, and Hanoi in French Indo-China.
Japan had her opportunity to move south against the unprepared British and Dutch, but her good troops were tied up in her invasion of China and her very best troops were facing the Russians in Manchuria.
Now Japan has made a neutrality pact with Soviet Russia which presumably should free her divisions in Manchuria for a southern move. But does it?
It is to the interest of Russia to see Japan move south and get smacked. Soviet Russia knows, though, that the longer Japan puts off that move the more certain she is to get smacked. . . . It does not look as though she would send Japan south now in a hurry.
The only way for Japan to move south now is to conquer China, make a peace with China or have a true working agreement with Russia. Without one of these Japan must wait and prepare in order to be able to take advantage of the confused situation that might arise if Germany ever successfully invaded England.
Japan is making definite preparations for a southern move. Which of the things that are necessary for her to move south does she count on? Can she count on any of them?