China and the West

Hemingway, Ernest. U.S. aid to China. In : PM ; June 15 (1941).
Rangoon.—1 here are two things you tan count on in the present Far East setup. By the present I mean as of this spring and early summer with England holding out.
First: Japan has temporarily lost her chance of making a peace with China. Last year there was a big peace drive on in Chungking. It reached its high point in December. But the aid China believes she will receive from America has put off the pro-peace movement temporarily.
Second: The U.S.A. can count on holding 37 of the 52 divisions of the Japanese Army in China for six to 10 months for a little less than the price of a battleship. That is to say that for $70,000,000 to $100,000,000 the Chinese Army will keep that many Japanese troops tied up.
At the end of six to 10 months, if past performances mean anything, the U.S.A. will have to provide about the price of another battleship to keep the Japanese tied up in China for another equal period. In the meantime the U.S.A. is arming. Insurance against having to fight in the Far East until the U.S.A. has built a two-ocean navy that can destroy any Eastern enemy, and thus probably never have to fight, is cheap at that price. Always remember that a powerful enough navy imposes its will without having to fight.
Meantime, the pro-peace groups in Chungking will undoubtedly bring all the pressure they can bear on Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek to have him attempt to disband all Chinese Communist troops. The mechanics of this would be to order the 8th Route Army troops disbanded for failure to obey military orders. If they refused to be disbanded, as they undoubtedly would, they would be attacked. Since these tactic's were successful against the other Communist army, the new Fourth Army, there is every chance the Generalissimo will be urged to repeat them.
Since the U.S.A. is interested in having all political factions in China united to fight against Japan we can counteract this move by the pro-peace groups by informing the Generalissimo that the U.S. is not interested in backing a civil war in China. Grave friction between the Communist troops and the Central Government has been present for close to two years, and for a year and a half the popular front has been little more than a fiction maintained for foreign consumption.
Since the Central Government receives its principal financial backing from two powers, the U.S.A. and Soviet Russia, if those two powers both say they will not finance a civil war there will be none.
The Generalissimo wants to beat the Japanese. No one has to advise him or urge him on that score. As long as he is alive and as long as he sees any human possibility of continuing the war there will be no peace. He can continue the war as long as he is adequately financed and communications are kept open so that supplies can be brought in.
There may be lack of food, there may be riots against the high cost of living due to the rise in prices under the effects of the natural inflation consequent on nearly four years of war. There will be innumerable stories of crookedness and graft in high places and there will be many proved stories of inefficiency. But the Generalissimo will continue to fight the Japanese under any difficulties that come up as long as he is financed and the war materials that he needs can reach him.
Anyone who tries to foment civil war in China or to spread scandal saying aid to China will only be misused plays Japan's game.
At present Germany can give China nothing. She has not the money to finance her and she cannot send her supplies. But she promises the Chinese the moon after the war.
The Generalissimo's army was trained by the Germans. Germany was a good friend to China and the Germans are liked and admired in China. If the U.S.A. finances and helps China the Generalissimo will fight on against the Japanese indefinitely. If U.S. aid should ever be relaxed or withdrawn, the temptation for the Generalissimo would be to make a temporary peace with Japan and rely on German aid to resume the fight when Germany would be in a position to give that aid.
The Generalissimo is a military leader who goes through the motions of being a statesman. This is important. Hitler is a statesman who employs military force. Mussolini is a statesman who is unable to employ military force. The Generalissimo's objectives are always military. For 10 years his objective was to destroy the Communists. He was kidnaped under Communist auspices and agreed to give up fighting the Communists and fight the Japanese. Since then his objective has been to defeat Japan. He has never given this up. I think that somewhere inside of him he has never given up the other objective either.
When you say a man is a military man and not a statesman there are all of his speeches to prove that you are wrong. But by now we know that statesmen's speeches are often not written by the statesmen.
There is much argument whether China is or is not a democracy. No country which is at war remains a democracy for long. War always brings on a temporary dictatorship. The fact that there are any vestiges of democracy in China after the length of time she has been at war proves that she is a country that we can admire very much.
The trouble between the Chinese Communists and the Central Government will be settled only when the Central Government and the Soviet Union agree on the exact boundaries and sphere of influence of what will then be Soviet China. In the meantime, the Chinese Communists will try to get as much territory as they can and the Central Government will always nurse the hope of never having to face the fact that a part of China will be Soviet. The Soviet Government backs the Generalissimo with money, planes, armament and military advisers. It backs him to fight Japan.
The Chinese Communists are more or less on their own. Russia has two horses running in China against the Japanese. Her main entry is the Generalissimo. But the Russians know that it is never a disadvantage to have two good horses in the race. At present Russia figures to win against the Japanese with the Generalissimo. She figures to place with the Chinese Communists. After this race is run it will be another and a very different race.

Hemingway, Ernest. Japan's position in China. In : PM ; June 16 (1941).
Rangoon.—Japan has temporarily lost her chance of making peace with China.
The second thing you can truly count on in the Far East is that Japan can never conquer China.
The simplest way to explain the present military stalemate is to point out that Japan has conquered all the flat country, where her superiority in planes, artillery and mechanized formations has given her a tremendous advantage, and she must now fight the Chinese in mountain country, much of it roadless, where the Chinese meet the Japanese on more equal terms.
The Chinese have an enormous army of 200 first-line divisions (over 2,000,000 men) who are exceedingly well armed for the type of war they are fighting now. They also have another million men in not so good divisions; they have three Communist divisions and, probably, 500,000 Communist irregulars who are trained in guerrilla warfare.
China has ample supplies of rifles, plenty of ammunition, excellent heavy and light machine guns and automatic rifles and ample supplies of ammunition manufactured in Chinese arsenals for all of these arms. Each Chinese battalion has a mortar company of six 81-millimeter mortars which are extremely accurate at 2000 yards and have an extreme range of 3000. This is not hearsay. I saw them used many times at the front and they were excellent weapons used with great skill.
This 81-millimeter mortar is the French Brandt. The Chinese can drop a shell with it on a set of diapers at 2000 yards, and in the mountains it makes up enormously for their lack of artillery.

Hemingway, Ernest. China's Air needs. In : PM ; June 17 (1941).
Rangoon.—There is much difference of opinion about the Chi¬nese air force. I have seen them fly, visited their training schools and talked with the Americans and Russians who have taught them. Some say they are fine. Some say they are terrible. No people on earth, except the Spaniards, are more conceited than the Chinese and conceit is a hard thing for a pilot. It keeps him from progressing.
Lately kids from the people are being trained as pilots instead of the gentry having a monopoly. The course of training is not adequate and there are no planes for them when they are graduated so nothing is really proved. But they are not as conceited as the type of airman who wishes to establish the fact that he is a superior being by flying and, once he can fly, wishes to go no further.
Recently the Japanese came up to one of the Chinese air fields in northern Szechwan Province with two seater long range fighters. Sixteen Chinese pursuit pilots flying the Russian E 15-3, a Russian conversion of our old Boeing Pi2 with a new gull wing and retractable landing gear, took off to meet them. A few days before these same Chinese pilots had impressed President Roosevelt's representative, Dr. Lauchlin Currie, with their formation flying. But when the heat was on it was a different story and the Japanese shot down 16 of 16 that went up. They broke formation and scattered and the Japanese, keeping their formation, just went around methodically accounting for the singles after the covey had been flushed.
Any real American aid to the Chinese in the air would have to include pilots. Sending them planes keeps them happy and keeps them fighting. It will not put them in condition to take the dffensive successfully.
China can resist indefinitely with the equipment it has if it is financed and the Generalissimo sees an ultimate chance of victory through Japan being involved in war with Great Britain and the U.S.A. China cannot face the Japanese in any offensive action.
There are about 4000 supposedly competent Chinese artillery officers. Most of them are holding staff commands because of the lack of guns. Many of them are German-trained and very good. Others are of doubtful ability. There are at least two Chinese offensive projects which could be undertaken successfully if they were supplied with artillery.
There is an excellent chance that Japan will not try to move south this year at all, but will try to defeat China by two great final drives. Having lost its chance to make peace with China it may realize it can never move south successfully with the bulk of its forces held in China, which cannot be crushed economically as long as it is receiving periodic financial injections from the U.S.A.
Japan's problem is to cut the main roads into China by which aid comes in from the U.S.A. and Russia. If it does not attempt a move to the south it will undoubtedly try to drive north toward Siam to cut the communications between Russia and China.
Japan's other drive must be from Laokai on the French Indo-China frontier, or somewhat east of there, north again to Kunming to cut the Burma Road. Cutting these two roads would sever the main lifelines into China from the two countries that are helping it most. They are the two moves to be expected this summer in case Japan does not move to the south. Both of them are exceedingly difficult and the Chinese have an adequate mobile reserve to oppose them.
At this moment it looks as though Japan would not move south unless there was a German move to invade England. It does not look as though a German attack on Suez would provide sufficient confusion for her to move. It looks as though Japan will not risk war with England and America until she sees a possibility of England and the U.S.A. being so occupied that they cannot oppose her adequately.

Hemingway, Ernest. Chinese build air field. In : PM ; June 18 (1941).
Manila.—Nelson Johnson, the last U.S. Ambassador to Chungking, who lived in China so long that he talked like an elder Chinese statesman and who never took a view shorter than 3000 years, told me as we stood looking out from the new spring green of the U.S. Embassy terrace across the fast running Yangtze River to the rising bulk of the terraced, gray, bomb-spattered, fire-gutted, grim stone island that is China's war-time capital:
"China can do anything that China wants to do."
At the time this remark irritated me profoundly. Unlike Mr. Johnson, I had never seen the Great Wall and I suppose I could not think of it as something that had been built just a few days or years before. I was thinking in immediate terms: how much money it would cost to tie up how many Japanese divisions in China; what were the offensive possibilities for the Chinese Army; could friction between the Communists and the Kuomintang be reduced so they found again a common basis for fighting against Japan; how many planes were needed before China could take the offensive and who would fly them; how many pieces of artillery were absolutely necessary and how were they to be got in; and how many gunner officers were fit to handle them when and if they were got in; and about several other things.
When Mr. Johnson brought that remark up out of the depth of his learning I was moderately appalled. It did not seem to help much on the immediate solution of many grave problems. Two days later I flew up to Chengtu in north Szechwan Province where the caravans come down from Tibet and you walk past yellow and red lamas in the dust-deep streets of the old high-walled city; the dust blowing gray in clouds with the cold wind down from the snowy mountains and you have to wear a handkerchief over your face and step into a silver-beater's shop as the caravans pass. Up there in the north I found out what Mr. Johnson meant, and I saw something that made me know what it would have been like to have ridden some early morning up from the south out of the desert and seen the great camp and the work that went on when men were building on the pyramids.
It started with the Generalissimo talking about Flying Fortresses. With some of those big four-motor Boeings the Chinese could fly over Japan at an altitude where neither Japanese antiaircraft nor pursuit could bother them and bring to Japan the horror that she had spread through China in the past four years. There were no Chinese who were qualified to be checked out on a Flying Fortress as pilots, but none of those present brought that up. That was a thing which could presumably be arranged later. Someone did point out, though, that there was not a single airfield in China which could handle a Boeing B17.
At this point in the conversation the Generalissimo made a note.
"What do they weigh?" he asked.
"Around 22 tons," someone told him with more or less accuracy.
"Not over that?" asked the Generalissimo.
"No. But I will check."
The next day the construction of the airfield began.
Chen Loh-kwan, 38-year-old engineering graduate of the University of Illinois and chief of the Engineering Department of the Aeronautical Commission, was ordered to complete an airfield ready to receive Flying Fortresses on March 30. There was an "or else" added to the order, but Chen Loh-kwan has built so many airfields in a hurry for the Generalissimo that if they ever "or elsed" him it would be probably much the simplest solution to the hundreds of thousands of problems he has solved and has to go on solving. He never worries about "or elses."
He had from January 8 to March 30 to build an airfield with a runway a mile and an eighth long by a little over 150 yards wide with a stone-filling and top dressing macadam runway five feet deep to support the giant bombers when they land or take off.
Chen Loh-kwan's task was to level a 1000-acre field without tools; first removing 1,050,000 cubic meters of earth by hand and transporting it in baskets an average distance of half a mile. He built his runway with a yard deep layer of stone, then a layer of watered earth, then another layer of stone. This stone was all hauled in baskets from the bed of a river which flowed along from half a mile to a mile away. This runway foundation was surfaced with three layers. One was a layer of boulders set in lime mortar. Above this was a layer of lime concrete. On top of it all, in a biiliard-table-rolled-smooth surface, was an inch and a half of broken stone clay bound covered with one inch of coarse sand.
There is blind drainage all around the edge of the runway which will support, when I saw it,.five tons of load per square foot and will handle bombers as big as the new B19.
Chen Loh-kwan built—that is he built moulds for rollers and poured them—150 three-and-a-half-to ten-ton concrete rollers to smooth off this job. They were all pulled by manpower. One of the finest things I ever saw was that manpower pulling.
He brought in water in two ditches from ten miles away to parallel the runway during the construction to save hauling water. The workers mixed all the concrete by puddling it with their feet.
Sixty thousand workers at one time were hauling the 220,000 cubic meters of gravel from eight miles along the river. Thirty-five thousand more workers were crushing stone with hand hammers. There were 5000 wheelbarrows in use at a time and 200,000 baskets slung on carrying sticks. Every carrying stick was bent to breaking point under a double load as the men worked 12-hour shifts.
The Governor of Szechwan Province provided Chen Loh-an with 100,000 workers. They came in bands of 800 from the 10 different counties of the province. Some had to march 15 days from their homes. They were paid on the basis that a man can cut up to a meter and a quarter of earth a day. This was adjudged to be worth 40 ounces of rice. The man working received three-fifths of this in rice and the balance in cash. It worked out to about $2.30 a day Chinese, or $1 a day Chinese and rice.
The first I saw of the workers was a cloud of dust coming down the road with a ragged, torn-clothed, horny-footed, pockfaced army marching in the blowing dust singing as they plodded with their torn flags snapping in the wind.
We passed another band that jammed a village as they sang, boasted, and bought food for the night and then we came up on a rise and saw the field.
Looking across the great, stretching earth-leveled expanse, it looked at first like some ancient battlefield with the banners waving and the clouds of dust rolling where 80,000 men were toiling. Then you could make out the long cement-whitening mile-and-an-eighth runway and the 100-man teams that were rolling it smooth as they dragged the lo-ton rollers back and forth.
Through all the dust, the clicking of breaking rock and the hammering, there was a steady undertone of singing as of surf breaking on a great barrier reef.
"What is that song?" I asked.
"It is only what they sing," the engineer told me. "It is a song they sing that makes them happy."
"What does it say?"
"It says that they work all day and all night to do this. They work all day and all night. The rock is big. They make it small. The earth was soft. They make it hard."
"Go on," I said.
"The field was uneven and they make it smooth. They make the runway smooth as metal and the rollers are light to their shoulders. The roller has no weight because all men pull it together." "What do they sing now?"
"Now we have done what we can do. Now come the Flying Fortresses. Now-we-have-done-what-we-can-do! Now-come-the- Flying-Fortresses!"
"You can send somebody who can fly them," an engineer said. He was a very practical man, used to building airfields without tools and with no false illusions.
"You see," he looked across at the wind-blowing glory of the field where the singing was beating like surf, "there are certain things that we can do ourselves."
It was close to the end of the deadline and the field would be ready on the date that had been set.

Hemingway, Ernest. U.S. aid will hold China to war front. In : The Examinger ; 2 July (1941). In : The Montreal gazette ; 14 June (1941).
Rangoon.—There are two things you can count on in the present Far East set-up. Firstly, Japan has temporarily lost her chance of making a peace with China. Last year there was a big peace drive on in Chungking, which reached its high point last December. But the aid that China believes she will receive from America has killed the pro-peace movement off temporarily. The U.S. can count on holding 37 of the 52 Japanese army divisions in China from six to ten months for a little less than the price of a battle-ship. That is to say, that for £21,000,000 to £31,000,000 this force will be immobilised. At the end of another six to 10 months, if past performances mean anything, the U.S. will have to furnish approximately the price of another battleship to keep Japanese tied up in China for another equal period. In the meantime the U.S. is arming. Insurance against having to fight in the Far East until the U.S. has built a two-ocean navy that can destroy any Eastern enemy, and thus probably never have to fight, is cheap at that price. Always remember that a powerful enough navy imposes its will without having to fight. Meantime, the pro-peace groups in Chungking will undoubtedly bring all the pressure they can on Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek to have him attempt to disband all Chinese Communist troops. The mechanics of this would be to order the 8th Route Army troops disbanded for failure to obey military orders. If they refused to be disbanded, as they undoubtedly would, they would be attacked. Since these tactics were successful against the other Communist army, the new Fourth Army, there is every chance the Generalissimo will be urged to repeat them. Since the U.S. is interested in having all political factions in China uni- ted to fight against Japan, she can counteract this move of the pro-peace groups by informing Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek that the U.S. is not interested in backing a civil war in China. Red Army Threat Grave friction between the Communist troops and the Central Government has been threatening for almost two years and for a year and a half the popular front has been little more than a fiction maintained for foreign consumption. Since the Central Government receives its principal financial backing from two Powers, the U.S. and Soviet Russia, if those two Powers both say they will not finance a civil war there will be none. The Generalissimo wants to beat the Japanese. No one has to advise him or urge him on that score. As long as he is alive there will be no peace with Japan as long as he sees any human possibility of continuing the war. He can continue the war as long as he is adequately financed and communications are kept open so that sup- plies can be brought in. There may be lack of food, there may be riots against the high cost of living due to the rise in prices under the effects of the natural inflation consequent on nearly four years of war. There will be innumerable stories of crookedness and graft in high places and there will be many proved stories of inefficiency. But the Generalissimo will continue to fight the Japanese under any difficulties that come up as long as he is financed and the war materials that he needs can reach him. Play Japan's Game. Anyone who tries to foment civil war in China or to spread scandal, saying aid to China will only be misused, plays Japan's game. At present Germany can give China nothing. She has not the money to finance her and she cannot send her supplies. But she promises the Chinese the moon after the war. The Generalissimo's army was trained by the Germans. Germany was a good friend to China and the Germans are liked and admired in China. If the U.S. finances and helps China the Generalissimo will fight on against the Japanese indefinitely. The Generalissimo is a military leader who goes through the motions of being a statesman. This is important. Hitler is a statesmen who employs military force. Mussolini is a statesman who is unable to employ military force. The Generalissimo's' objectives are always military. For 10 years his objective was to destroy the Communists. He was kid- napped under Communist auspices and agreed to give up fighting the Com- munists and fight the Japanese. Since then his objective has been to defeat Japan. He has never given this up. Dislikes Communists I think that somewhere inside him he has never given up the other objective either. When you say a man is a military man and not a statesman there are all of his speeches to prove that you are wrong. But by now we know that statesmen's speeches are often not written by the statesmen. There is much argument whether China is or is not a democracy. No country which is at war remains a democracy for long. War always brings on a temporary dictatorship. The fact that there are any vestiges of democracy in China after the length of time she has been at war proves that she is a country that we can admire very much. The trouble between the Chinese Communists and the Central Government will only be settled when the Central Government and the Soviet Union agree on the exact boundaries and sphere of influence of what will be Soviet China. In the meantime the Chinese Communists will try to get as much territory as they can and the Central Government will always nurse the hope of never having to face the fact that a part of China will be Soviet. The Soviet Government backs the Generalissimo with money, planes, armament and military advisers. They back him to fight Japan. The Chinese Communists are more or less on their own. Russia has two horses running in China against the Japanese. Her main entry is the Generalissimo. But the Russians know that it is never a dis- advantage to have two good horses in the same race. At present Russia figures to win against the Japanese with the Generalissimo. She figures to place with the Chinese Communists. After this race is run it will be an- other and a very different race.

Hemingway, Ernest. Japan cannot beat China's army Chiang's need of an Air Force 2. In : The Advertiser ; 4 July (1941).
JAPAN has lost, temporarily, her chance of making peace with China. The second thing you can count on in the Far East is that Japan can never conquer China. The simplest way to explain the present military stalemate is to point out that Japan has conquered all of the flat country where her superiority in planes, artillery, and mechanised formations has given her a tremendous advantage. She must now fight the Chinese in mountain country, much of it road- less, where the Chinese meet the Japanese on more equal terms. The Chinese have an enormous army of 200 first-line divisions (over 2,000,000 men), who are exceedingly well armed for the type of war they are fighting now. They also have another million men in not so good divisions, they have three Communist divisions, and probably half a million Communist irregulars. who are trained in guerilla warfare.
PLENTY OF RIFLES
CHINA has ample supplies of rifles, plenty of ammunition, excellent heavy and light machine- guns and automatic rifles, and ample supplies of ammunition manufactured in Chinese arsenals for all these arms. Each Chinese battalion has a mortar company of six 81-millimetre mortars, which are extremely accurate at 2,000 yards, and have an extreme range of 3,000 yards. This is not hearsay. I saw the mortars used many times at the front, and they were excellent weapons used with great skill. This 81-millimetre mortar is the French Brandt, and the Chinese can drop a shell with it on a set of diapers at 2.000 yards. In the mountains it makes up enormously for their lack of artillery. The Chinese are also building an 82- millimetre mortar of their own, copied almost exactly from the Brandt. It is practically as accurate, but a couple of hundred yards shorter in its extreme range. In the regular Chinese divisions the discipline is of the extremist Prussian model. The death penalty starts with stealing, interfering with the people, insubordination, and goes on through all the usual army crimes.
STRICT DISCIPLINE
THE Chinese have also a few innovations, such as an entire section being shot if the section leaders advance and the section cannot get its legs moving; and there are other advancements in the art of making a soldier know that death is certain from behind and only possible from in front. If we take the German idea of an army as an ideal, the best Chinese Central Government troops are very close to it. They know the trade of soldiering, they travel fast, they eat little compared to European troops, they are not afraid of death, and they have the best of the inhuman qualities that make a man a good soldier. The Chinese medical service is fairly lamentable. One of the greatest difficulties is caused by the doctors' dislike of being near the fighting. They say that, as it takes a long time and much money to produce a doctor, it is unjust and un-reasonable to expect such an expensive and rare product to be exposed to possible extermination by enemy projectiles. As a result, by the time Chinese wounded see a doctor, it would often have been kinder to have shot them where they fell. The head of the Chinese Red Cross unit in the field, Dr. Robert Lim, has done much to change this conception of the doctor's role in the war. But the Chinese medical service is still far from perfect. The troops of the Central Government have had no publicity. The Communists have welcomed good writers, and have been well written up. Three million other men have died to oppose Japan without getting adequate press cuttings. Anyone who says or writes that the troops of the Central Government armies are not a magnificently disciplined, well-trained, well-officered, and excellently-armed defensive force has never seen them at the front.
AIR FORCE WEAKNESS
THERE are many things needed before the troops can take the offensive on any large scale. They also face certain grave problems; but you can bet, no matter what you may hear, that, if the Central Government has money to pay, feed, and continue to arm them, they are not going to be defeated by the Japanese this year, nor next year, nor the year after. Nor, if you want my absolute opinion, having seen the terrain, the problems involved, and the troops who will do the fighting, will the Japanese ever defeat the Chinese Army unless it is sold out. As long as America is putting up the money to pay and arm them, and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek is in, command, the Chinese will not be sold out. But if America ceased to back them, or if anything ever happened to the Generalissimo, they would be sold out very quickly. The main drawback to the Chinese Army taking the offensive is its lack of a competent Air Force and of artillery.

China fights on after four years of War. Chiang Kai-shek's inspiring leadership. In : The Advertiser ; 5 July (1941).
This article by the Shanghai correspondent of "The Times" contains a tribute to General Chiang Kai-shek, the Chinese leader, which, with the high praise of Ernest Hemingway in his article yesterday, and that of Dr. T. Z. Koo, who is now in Adelaide, shows the quality of the Chinese Generalissimo.
THE war in China, which on Monday will enter its fifth year, has exposed many fallacies about the Chinese. The most tenacious of these was the view that they were incapable of resisting a mechanised modern army like the Japanese. Judged by Western military standards, the training, staff work, and equipment of the Chinese forces are still for the most part woefully inadequate. Although they have given the Japanese some hard knocks, their "strategic" retreats, since the epic days of Shanghai, have often been strategic in a different sense. Yet their will-o'-the-wisp tactics, deliberate as well as enforced, have kept over 1,000,000 Japanese troops in the field for nearly four years. The Japanese continue to claim victories in the fighting up and down the country—and it must be admitted that, with notable exceptions, the weight of metal usually tells —but such claims are, in fact, a confession of their own frustration. The war which was to have lasted only four weeks has, indeed, lasted four bitter years, and still shows no signs of ending. NATIONAL UNITY ANOTHER delusion of the Japanese was the conviction that national unity could never be attained by the Chinese, a view often put forward in the assertion that China was not a nation but a geographical term. After their spurious success in sowing political discord among rival factions in the period of civil strife, the Japanese were disconcerted by the solidarity of the military leaders in the face of invasion. It is true that they have induced Mr. Wang Ching-wei to set up a "central" Government at Nanking, under the protection of their bayonets. But, in spite of all his efforts, Mr. Wang Ching-wei has still failed to attract a single adherent of national repute. Nor is there the slightest prospect of the new regime fulfilling the Japanese hope of serving as a bridge between themselves and General Chiang Kai-shek. The leaders in Chungking and the masses of the people alike despise the "puppet" Government. Every one knows that it will vanish like the Yangtze mists the moment the Japanese troops are withdrawn. The Communists in China have also been the subject of much confused thinking. Since their first exploits against the Japanese in Shansi, they have been steadily losing favor, especially among the youth of the country which has been irked by so much talk and so little action that it no longer looks to them for the future. Moscow has sedulously refrained from using the Communists in China as a token in its relations with Chungking, taking the realistic view that the war of resistance can be continued only by giving undivided support to the Generalissimo. Numerically also the Communists are of diminishing importance, and the Government, with its vast new armies, is confident of its ability to cope with the Red divisions as well as the Japanese if compelled. Moderates on both sides, however, recognise that the dispute is harmful to China's prestige, and most foreign observers believe that it will not be allowed to get out of hand.
BLOCKADE OF CHINA. THE Japanese are learning bitter lessons in their efforts to blockade China. In theory the Chinese coast has been blockaded from the Gulf of Chihli in the north to the Bay of Tonkin in the south. Yet in fact as fast as the Japanese close up one gap another appears, like holes in a leaky hosepipe. There is no doubt that the recent raids, such as the descent on Pakhoi. are severe blows to the Chinese, causing the interruption of routes and the destruction of valuable supplies. Nor can the Burma road, especially since the unresisted attacks on the Mekong River bridges, wholly compensate for the loss of the Indo-China route. Yet again supplies have a way of finding their way into the interior by all sorts of devious routes which the Japanese cannot hope to block. To make the blockade "total" under existing conditions would require one soldier for every half-dozen yards of the coast from the Manchurian border to Indo-China. And even this would be ineffective in places where the smuggling of Japanese goods fetches high profits. Japanese hopes that the Chungking Government, isolated in the interior, would become little more than a provincial regime have also been falsified. With the "closing" of the Burma road to the transit of certain classes of war materials Chungking reached its lowest ebb. The reopening of the road, the Anglo-American credits, Mr. Laughlin Currie's visit to China, and President Roosevelt's promise of assistance have had a tonic effect in the war capital. The Chinese, who have maintained from the outset that they have been fighting for the Western democracies as well as themselves in the common war against aggression, feel now that this has at last been recognised. They look forward to receiving an increasing measure of support which will not only enable them to turn the tables on the invader but ensure their place in the world settlement upon which their future peace and security depend. Among the changes that have been brought about in four years of war in China is the frankness with which Chinese leaders will now discuss their difficulties and dangers. Thus the officials in Chungking make no secret of the serious problem of spiralling prices in the interior provinces, the anxiety over this season's food crops, the growing shortage of commodities in "Free" China, and the Japanese attacks on the national currency. They are less willing, perhaps, to speak of the confusion which still hampers much of the traffic over the Burma road. The appointment of Dr. John Earl Baker, director of the American Red Cross in China, as head of a commission to lake charge of the road is a big step in the right direction. Many of the problems which still confront the Chungking authorities would be considered hopeless in other countries on account of their magnitude and complexity. But the Chinese have proved over and over again in the past four years that they know how to contrive, hang on, and survive—qualities of race and character derived from centuries of coping with Nature in all her moods.
GENEBAL CHIANG KAI-SHEK. WHATEVER the Japanese may have felt about General Chiang Kai-shek at different times—at the moment they would desperately like to make a deal with him if they could—they have never withheld respect for his courage and tenacity. More than once they have nursed wistful hopes that his health was failing, that his followers might melt away, that he might be induced to take a holiday in the United States. Never have they expressed any of these things in any disparaging sense. They have, in short, recognised his greatness. It is this greatness which is China's chief mainstay today and her main hope for the future. It is her good fortune that the Generalissimo, in spite of the unceasing strain of his terrific burdens, continues to enjoy his usual good health and spirits. Nothing seems to daunt him nor shake his belief in China's destiny, and it is not the least of his qualities that he has inspired the whole country with his own faith. Mr. Quo Tai-chi in a recent speech in London said—"We have our Chiang Kai-shek, as you have your Winston Churchill and the Americans have their Franklin D. Roosevelt." There is no doubt that the future of human freedom depends in the first instance on these three leaders. General Chiang Kai-shek's part, though less spectacular in the eyes of the world, is in some ways more important, for he has no obvious successor, and there is no one else at the moment to whom 430,000,000 of his countrymen can look for their future. Even the renegades know that the Generalissimo will never give up the struggle until the Japanese with-draw from China. Every Chinese feels of the Japanese what Mr. Churchill said of our own chief enemy. "It was for Hitler to say when the war would begin, but it is not for him or his successors to say when it will end." The Japanese are discovering, in discarding the greatest fallacy of all about the Chinese, that one nation may start a war but it takes two or more to make a peace.

Hemingway, Ernest. The Chinese can do what they want to do. In : Examiner ; 8 July (1941).
Manila : The ex-U.S. Ambassador to China (Mr. Wilson T. Johnson)—he will soon take up duty as U.S. Ambassador to Australia—lived in China so long that he talks like an elder Chinese statesman.
He never takes a view shorter than three thousand years. Before he left China for America I met him in Chungking. As we stood looking out from the new spring green of the U.S. Embassy terrace, across the fast-running, yellow Yangtse River to the rising bulk of the terraced, grey, bomb-battered, fire-gutted, grim stone island that is China's wartime capital, he said to me: "China can do anything that China wants to do." At the time this remark irritated me profoundly. I was thinking in immediate terms; how much money it would cost to tie up how many Japanese army divisions in China; what were the offensive possibilities for the Chinese army; could friction between the Communists and the Kuomintang—the Chinese Nationalist Party—be reduced so that they could find again a common basis for fighting against Japan; how many 'planes were needed before China could take the offensive, and who would fly them; how many pieces of artillery were absolutely necessary, and how were they to be got into China; and how many gunnery officers were fit to handle them when and if they were got in; and about several other things. When Mr. Johnson brought that re-mark up out of the depth of his learning I was moderately appalled. It did not seem to help much on the immediate solution of many grave problems. WHAT HE MEANT Two days later I flew up to Chengtu, in north Szechuan Province, where the caravans come down from Tibet, and you walk past yellow and red Lamas in the dust-deep streets of the old high-walled city. Up there in the North I found out what Mr. Johnson meant. It started with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek talking about Flying Fortresses. With some of those big four-motor Boeing 'planes, the Chinese pilots could fly over Japan at an altitude where neither Japanese anti-aircraft guns nor pursuit 'planes could bother them, and bring to Japan the horror that she has spread through China in the past four years. There were no Chinese pilots who were qualified to be checked out on Flying Fortresses, but none of those present brought that up; it was a thing which, presumably, could be arranged later. Someone did point out, though, that there was not a single airfield in China which could handle a Boeing B.17. At this point in the conversation the Generalissimo made a note. "What do they weigh?" he asked. "Around twenty-two tons," someone told him with more or less accuracy. "Not over that?" asked the Generalissimo. "No. But I will check." The next day the construction of an airfield began. Engineer Chen Loh-Kwan, 38 years old, graduate of the University of Illinois, chief of the Engineering Department of the Chinese Aeronautical Commission, was ordered to complete an airfield ready to receive Flying Fortresses on March 13, 1941. There was an "or else" added to the order. He had from January 8 to March 30, 1941, to build an airfield with a runway a mile and an eighth long by a little over one hundred and fifty yards wide, with a stone- filled and topdressed macadam run-way. He built his runway with a yard deep layer of stone, then a layer of watered earth, then another layer of stone. 60,000 WORKERS This stone was all hauled in baskets from the bed of a river which flowed along from half a mile to a mile away. Engineer Chen Loh-Kwan built 150 three and a half to 10-ton concrete rollers to smooth off this job. They were all pulled by manpower. One of the finest things I ever saw was that manpower pulling. Sixty thousand workers at one time were hauling the 220,000 cubic metres of gravel from eight miles along the river. Thirty-five thousand and more workers were crushing stone with hand hammers. There were five thousand wheelbarrows in use at a time, and two hundred thousand baskets slung on carrying sticks. Each carrying slick was bent to breaking point under a double load as the men worked 12 hour shifts. The Governor of Szechuan Province provided Engineer Chen Loh-Kwan with 100,000 workers. They came in hands of eight hundred from the ten different counties of the province. Engineer Chen Loh-Kwan was a very practical man, used to building airfields without tools and with no false illusions. "You see," he said to me when I visited the airfield, "there are certain things that we Chinese can do ourselves." It was close to the end of the dead-line, and the field would be ready on the date that had been set.

Hemingway, Ernest. China badly in need of pilots, artillery. In : The Examiner ; 8 July (1941).
Rangoon.—There is much difference of opinion about the Chinese air force. I have seen Chinese pilots fly, visited their training schools, and talked with the Americans and the Russians who have taught them.
Some of the trainers say they are fine. Some say they are terrible. Lately kids from the ordinary Chinese people are being trained as pilots instead of the gentry having a mono- poly. The course of training is inadequate, and there are no planes for them when they graduate, so nothing is really proved. But they are not like the type of air-man who wishes to establish the fact that he is a superior being by flying, and, once he can fly, wishes to go no further. Scattered Recently some two-seater long-range Japanese fighters flew up to one of the Chinese airfields in the northern Szechwan province. Sixteen Chinese pursuit pilots, flying Russian E 15-3 planes. a conversion of America's old Boeing P12, with a new gull wing and re- tractable landing gear, took off to meet them. A few days before these same Chinese pilots had impressed President Roosevelt's representative, Dr. Laughlin Currie, with their formation flying. But when the heat was on it was a different story. The Japanese shot down 16 of 16 that went up. The Chinese broke formation and scattered, and the Japanese, keeping their formation, just went around methodically accounting for the singles after the covey had been flushed. Any real American aid to China in the air would have to include pilots. China can resist indefinitely with the equipment she has if she is financed, and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek sees an ultimate chance of victory through Japan being involved in war with Great Britain and America. But the Chinese cannot face the Japanese in any offensive action; in that flat country they must regain to recapture their seaports and restore their lines of communication with the outside world—without plenty of' artillery and a good air corps. There are about 4000 allegedly competent Chinese artillery officers. Most of them are holding staff commands, due to the lack of guns in artillery units. Many of the officers are German trained and very good. Others are of doubtful ability. There are at least two offensive projects which the Chinese could undertake successfully if they were furnished with artillery. No Move South? There is an excellent chance that Japan will not try to move south this year at all, but will try to defeat China by two great final drives. Having lost her chance to make peace with China, she may realise that she can never move south successfully while the bulk of her forces are held in a China which cannot be crushed economically as long as it is receiving periodic financial injections from America. Japan's problem is to cut the main roads into China, by which aid comes in from America and Russia. If she does not attempt a move to the south she will undoubtedly try to drive north toward Sian, the capital of Shensi province, to cut the communications between Russia and China. Japan's other drive must be from Laokai, on the French Indo-China frontier, or somewhat east of there, north again to Kunming, to cut the Burma-road. Cutting these two roads would sever the main lifelines into China from the two countries that are helping her most. At this moment it looks as though Japan would not move south unless there was a German move to invade Britain. It does not look as though a German attack on Suez would provide sufficient confusion for Japan to move. It looks as though Japan will not risk war with Britain and America until she sees a possibility of England and America being so occupied that they cannot oppose her adequately.

FINCA VIGIA SAN FRANCISCO DE PAULA CUBA
July 30, 1941
Mr. Henry Morgenthau,
Secretary of the Treasury
Washington, D.C.

Dear Mr. Morgenthau:
I was dreadfully sorry not to get to Washington again in June. One of my best friends became ill while we were on a trip down here and died on the day I had planned to go to New York, so I had to call the Washington trip off.
When I left for China Mr. White asked me to look into the Kuomingtang-Communist [sic] difficulties and try to find out any information which could possibly be of interest to you. When I was in Washington last this problem was comparatively dormant, so I left it more or less alone when we talked. It will recur as a serious problem quite frequently, so I thought perhaps it would be useful for me to write you a short summary of what I find at this date to be true, after studying the problem for some three months in China.
First, I believe there will be no permanent setdement of the Communist problem in China until an agreement between the Generalissimo's Government and the Soviet Union setdes definite limits to the territories the Communist forces are to occupy. Until then the Communists, as good Chinese, will fight against the Japanese but as good Communists they will attempt to extend their sphere of influence in China no matter what territorial limits they may accept on paper. It is to their territorial interests to try to make a geographically defensible frontier for whatever territory they are occupying and they have consistently tried to keep a corridor open between the spheres of influence they have behind Nanking and the territory they legally occupy in the northwest.
The bitterness between the Communists and most of the Kuomingtang [sic] leaders I talked to, including the Generalissimo, can not hardly be exaggerated. It is necessary to remember, always, that the Generalissimo fought the Communists for ten years and that his kidnapping and conversion to the fight against Japan was under Communist influence.
The extent of the Communists' part in the kidnapping has always been played down by Mme. Chiang in her writing and in all official accounts of the kidnapping. The Communists have also played it down as they sought to appear merely as mediators who were brought in and finally showed the Generalissimo the light but, as one Kuomintang official put it to me, they still regard Communism as the "HEART DISEASE" from which China suffers while the Japanese invasion is only a "SKIN DISEASE."
There are a certain amount of Communists kept in Chungking as window-dressing to prove the existence of Kuomingtang-Communist [sic] co-operation in the fight against Japan but aside from these showpieces some of whom seemed to me to be agents provocateurs, others to be sort of tourist traps, i.e., they were well watched and perhaps acting innocently in order that any visitors making contact with them would be signaled by their watchers to be local secret police, there is very little true Communist representation in Chungking with the exception of General Chou En-Lai. He is a man of enormous charm and great intelligence who keeps in close touch with all the Embassies and does a fine job of selling the Communist standpoint on anything that comes up to almost anyone in Chungking who comes into contact with him. I do not know whether you ever knew Christian Rakovsky who was a very able and also very charming Soviet diplomat before he was sent to Siberia. Chou En-Lai's ability, brilliance and charm reminded me very much of the early Rakovski, of the period of the Genoa conference and the negotiations of the first German-Soviet Pact. He is one of the few people of opposing views who can get to and talk with the Generalissimo. He was once, as you undoubtedly know, the Generalissimo's aide when Chaing [sic] Kai-Shek headed the Huang Pu (Whangpoo) [sic] academy. It was he who did the talking to Chiang Kai-Shek at the time of his kidnapping and they will see each other quite often. Chou En-Lai and his wife and Mme. Chaing [sic] Kai-Shek and the Generalissimo had dinner together in Chungking while I was there; but while Chou En-Lai and the window-dressing Communists move about freely in Chungking, under-cover Communists are hunted in Kuomingtang [sic] territory almost as relentlessly as they would be in Japan, and Liberals, when they are professors in the University, are extremely suspect and under close surveillance. Students suspected of liberal views, and by this I do not mean Communist but merely those who are at all to the left of political views of the gentry or land-holding class, are liable to arrest and imprisonment in concentration camps. I have seldom seen such an atmosphere of fear of betrayal by informers as at the great university at Chengtu. These were men that I knew were not Communists nor fellow-travelers nor Communist sympathizers, but at a tea party in the campus anyone who wished to tell you anything even remotely critical of the Kuomingtang [sic] would be careful to walk away into a clear open space before speaking.
You have probably noticed that each time reports of Kuomingtang-Communist [sic] friction come simultaneously with any aggressive move in the East by Japan. Undoubtedly, incidents are created between Kuomingtang [sic] and Communist troops by the Chinese in favour of the Wang Ching-Wei puppet government to create friction, always with the ultimate hope of civil war between the Communist and the Kuomingtang [sic] believe a part of these incidents are artificially forced by the propeace generals and politicians who surround the Generalissimo. Others are the natural product of the conflicting aims of the two parties, but the timing of the incidents over the past six months has too often been to Japan's advantage for them to be merely coincidences. I think it is very possible that Japan has agents working on both sides. But with the natural desire for peace of all those who are unable to enjoy their former privileges in wartime and whose one desire is to have the war with Japan over and the Communists destroyed, it is natural to suppose that they would try to produce any sort of incident which would lead to war with the Communists.
To keep the whole thing as simple as possible, I think we can be sure that war between the Kuomingtang [sic] and the Communists is inevitable unless the Soviet Union and the Chungking Government come to some mutual agreement which will make part of China really Soviet China with a defensible frontier which will be respected by both the Chungking Government and the Communists. I believe we can delay indefinitely any all-out civil war between the Chungking Government and the Communists if our representatives make it perfectly clear at all times that we will not finance civil war in any way. I am perfectly sure that many people in China will try to make it clear to any American representatives there, as they attempted to do to me, that China now has an army capable of crushing the Communists in a short time and that it would be advisable to complete the surgical interven¬tion to cure the "Heart Disease." Personally, I have known no disease of the heart which has ever been cured by such a violent means and I think that a major military campaign against the Communists in the northwest would be the most disastrous thing that could happen for China.
It is very easy to criticize the lack of true democracy in the area governed by the Kuomintang [sic] but we have to remember that they have been at war against Japan for five years now and it is a great credit to China that after five years of war, which almost invariably produces a form of dictatorship during its prosecution, any vestiges of democracy should remain at all. Life in Chungking is unbelievably difficult and unpleasant. Many of the wealthiest Chinese have fled to Shanghai or Hong Kong. Those who remain are heartily sick of the war although their public statements naturally say nothing of this. It is the wealthy people, the land-owners, and the banks who are most anxious for the war to end. They are naturally anxious to enjoy the fruits of their wealth and position. There is no enjoyment of any kind in Chungking but these people who want the war with Japan to end are equally anxious for the destruction of the Communists and their ideal of a solution would be for us to back China while she destroyed the Communists and made peace with Japan. They bring every form of pressure on the Generalissimo and his advisors to work toward this solution and naturally, as nothing is done clearly or openly in China, their aims seldom seem to be what they actually are.
I could outline the various peace groups to you, but you undoubtedly have had so much information on that from others better qualified than I am to analize [sic] them that I shall not bother you with that.
While we recognize the importance that there should be no civil war between the Communists and the Kuomingtang [sic], we should not accept completely the value that the Communists put on their own war effort. They have had much excellent publicity and have welcomed writers of the caliber of Edgar Snow to their territory that America has an exaggerated idea of the part they played in the war against Japan. Their part has been very considerable but that of the central government has been a hundred times greater. The Generalissimo, in conversations, is very bitter about this. He said to me in conversation,
"The Communists are skillful propagandists but without much fighting ability. As the Communists do not possess military strength, the government does not need to resort to force against them. If the Communists try to create trouble injurious to the prosecution of the war, the government will take minor measures to deal with them as disciplinary questions arise. I guarantee you that the government will undertake no major operations against the Communists.
"The Fourth Route Army Incident was very insignificant. It equaled one-tenth of one percent of the noise created about it in America.
"There has been intensive propaganda, so that Americans believe that Communists are necessary to the war of resistance. Actually, without the Communist Party, the armed resistance of China would be facilitated, not hindered. The Communists are
hampering the Chinese Army. There are Eight war zones without any Communist troops in them at all."
At this point Mme. Chiang-Kai-Shek said that she had received letters from Americans stating the Government Army fired at the backs of the Fourth Route Army while it was withdrawing according to orders. The Generalissimo interrupted her impatiendy to continue.
"The Communists give no assistance to the Government Army. They disarm Government troops whenever possible to get more material and more territory. It is not true about firing on withdrawing Communist armies. The Communists have refused to retire to the areas which have been assigned to them, and disciplinary measures were taken against them accordingly. Those are the type of disciplinary measures which will be taken in the future but there will be no major operations against the Communists and no measures against them if they obey the orders of the Central Government."
The Generalissimo went on, "The Communists made no contribution in the war against Japan but hampered the war effort. If there were no Communists in China the Government could have made greater achievements. The Government is not afraid of Communists, but they only delay the final victory. If the United States worries about the Communists they are simply falling into the Communist trap."
During this time the Generalissimo spoke with great passion and vehemence, and Mme. Chiang Kai-Shek interpreted for him. He sometimes interrupted her in his eagerness to proceed with the theme. He went on, "Large numbers of Government troops are diverted to guard against the Communists. Sixty divisions are held in the rear, in readiness against a possible Japanese southward push. They also serve to watch the Communists. I tell you this in confidence. Unless the Communists use force, the Government armies will not. I hope that the Communists will come into the framework of the Central Government. They will be treated as any other army unit if they do. If they do not, they must accept the disciplinary mea¬sures which they will incur."
Mme. Chiang Kai-Shek interrupted to say, "We are not trying to crush them. We want to treat them as good citizens of China." 
As these statements would have only served to inflame feeling between the Kuomingtang [sic] and the Communists and tend toward creating an atmosphere of civil war, I did not publish it. Dr. Laughlin Curie [sic, Currie] told me in Hong Kong, as he came out, that our policy was to discourage civil war between the Communists and the Central Government and I wrote nothing which would encourage a possible war between the two parties. Also the various statements of the Generalissimo were at variance with his own former statements and with the known facts of the Communist war effort. I write them to show you the passions and the disregard of the facts which enter when the Communist question is raised. Communists, however, in my experience in Spain, always try to give the impression that they are the only ones who really fight. This is part of their tactics and their enemies slander them with equal injustice.
You have probably had enough of this subject for one letter. There are a couple of other very interesting angles which I would like to write you about if it would be of any interest. Checking over all my material, certain things stand out as of more or less permanent importance, no matter what necessary changes in the manner in which the situation must be regarded due to develop¬ments in the past six weeks. If you would care to have me write a couple of more letters on these subjects, perhaps your secretary would let me know.
I have a report on various incidents in the difficulties between the Eighth Route Army and the Fourth Route Army (The two Communist units; the latter now disbanded) and the troops of the Central Government, written by Generals Ho Ying-Chin and Pai Chung-Hsi, Chief of Staff and Deputy Chief of Staff of the Chinese army, and the two answers to their thesis on the whole situation which General Chou En-Lai wrote for me. The attack on the Fourth Route Army was as long ago as last February but the basic attitudes of the two parties toward all of these incidents are set forth very clearly in these documents. They can, therefore, serve as a basis of study for sifting out the truth on future incidents which are bound to occur. In reading them each side makes an extremely strong case. Their respective case is that handled in the first para¬graph of this letter. I believe these dissimilar reports are valuable as background for judging the importance of future incidents which will arise. Could your secretary let me know if you want these and other documents? 
Another thing you might wish to have is a study of the wage scale of the Chinese army. A Lieutenant-Colonel in the Central Government Army with ten years of military service as a Commissioned officer having fought against the warlords, the Communists and the Japanese, at present makes 126 Chinese dollars per month. In 1937, before all officers took a voluntary pay cut as their sacrifice toward fighting the Japanese, the same officer received 180 dollars. In 1937 one dollar bought 14 pounds of rice. This Spring one dollar buys two pounds of rice. Officers have no food allowance. I believe that in the present wage scale of officers in the Kuomingtang [sic] Army there is a greater threat to Chinese continuance of the war—not this year, but for next year—than in any other single destructive possibility.
I have the notes for a report on this which I can write and send to you if you will be interested.
Please forgive me for bothering you with such a long letter. There was so much to say when I saw you last June, and I have tried to let time eliminate those things which did not seem essential.
With very best wishes to you in this most difficult time, I am
Very truly yours,
Ernest Hemingway.

Hans H. Frankel promoviert in Romanistik an der University of California, Berkeley. Er wird Amerikaner.

Hans H. Frankel arbeitet für das Office of War Information, das Office of Strategic Services und
den Foreign Broadcast Service.

Alfred Hoffmann macht Vortrags- und Konzertreisen in Nanjing, Shanghai und Japan.

Verbot einer Neuauflage des Jin ping mei von Franz Kuhn.

Ferdinand Lessing beginnt Mongolisch zu unterrichten.

Otto Maenchen-Helfen ist Professor für Far Eastern Art and Archaeology am Mills College, Oakland.

Wolfgang Mohr arbeitet freiberuflich als Künstler und Graphiker in Shanghai.

Hugo Munsterberg macht Zivildienst in der amerikanischen Armee.

Philipp Schaeffer wird verhaftet.

Xie Shoukang ist erster chinesischer Diplomat im Vatikan.