Year

1996

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Type

Publication

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Chronology Entries (6)

#	Year	Text	Linked Data
1	1941.03.08	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."	Person: Hemingway, Ernest
2	1941.07.02	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.	Person: Hemingway, Ernest
3	1941.07.04	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.	Person: Hemingway, Ernest
4	1941.07.05	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.	Person: Hemingway, Ernest
5	1941.07.08	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.	Person: Hemingway, Ernest
6	1941.07.08	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.	Person: Hemingway, Ernest