CALLIGRAPHY 1
PAINTING 1
Edited and published by the Chung Hwa Tsung-Su Committee,
11 South Chung Shan Road, Taipei, Taiwan, China.
October, 1955, NT$100 and NT$150,respectively.
Art of China is the title of a collection of photogravures of Chinese art. The first series will contain six volumes, of which two, "Calligraphy 1" and “Painting 1," have appeared at the time of writing. As explained in a short prefatory note by the Chung Hwa Tsung-Su Committee which is undertaking the editing and publishing of this series, the work contains the choicest art products of the Chinese genius, which are selected from among the art treasures of the Palace Museum and the Central Museum of Peiping.
The fact that so many objets d'art have been preserved intact through millenniums of worldly vicissitudes must be accounted one of the wonders of Chinese history. While innumerable pieces of Chinese art have found their way into foreign museums and homes, large numbers still remain on Chinese soil. Aside from those in the hands of individual Chinese collectors, the largest and best-known collections are those of the Palace Museum and the Central Museum of Peiping. Most of these were hauled over thousands of miles into the interior provinces of China for safekeeping during the Sino-Japanese War. But hardly had they been taken out of the mountain caves of Szechuen at the end of World War II when the Chinese Reds started a nation-wide rebellion. To prevent any possible damage by Communist gunfire, the Chinese Government decided to have all the rare treasures transported to Taiwan. Now carefully preserved at Taichung, where many distinguished visitor from all corners of the earth repair to take a look at China's priceless artistic heritage, these works of Chinese artists of various ages are the source from which the present work under review is drawn.
Calligraphy being an exclusively Chinese art form, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for uninitiated foreign students to appreciate the beauties of Chinese characters which sometimes look so queer and seem to be such a jumble of incoherent strokes. But if one remembers that there is good and poor penmanship even in English, one will at least concede the infinite possibilities of the Chinese brush the Chinese calligraphers use to express themselves with. "Calligraphy 1," the first volume of the series under review, contains works by artists of the Tsin (265-420 A.D.) and Tang (618-907 A.D.) Dynasties, namely, Wang Hsi-chih (321-379 A.D.) Chu Sui-liang (596-658 A.D.), Emperor Hsuan Tsung (685-762 A.D.), Hsu Hao (703-782 A.D.), and a few others whose identity is unfortunately lost. Wang Hsi-chih was not only the greatest calligrapher China has ever produced, but also the earliest one whose works are still extant. Emperor Hsuan Tsung is more celebrated in Chinese history as the husband of one of China's most enchanting beauties, Yang Kwei-fei, than as a calligrapher. Nevertheless, students of Chinese history would certainly be curious to see the handwriting of a Chinese monarch who was in his fifty-seventh year when Charlemagne was born.
"Painting 1," the second volume of the Art of China series, not only contains more entries and represents a larger number of artists, but is also more easily appreciated by both connoisseurs and the layman. Flowers, birds, animals, mountain scenes, cataracts, children at play, and court ceremonies make up the themes of the scores of paintings by artists of the Tang and Sung Dynasties (618-1279 A.D.) contained in this volume. Emperor Hui Tsung (1083-1135 A.D.) of the Sung Dynasty is represented here by two entries entitled "Red Polygonum and White Goose" and "Chimonanthus Fragrans and Birds." No one could remotely suspect that the creator of those lovely pictures was the wearer of an unhappy crown and had to suffer the humiliations of capture by the barbarians from the north.
As the originals from which these photogravures have been made were once palace treasures, and as they had passed through many hands before they became imperial possessions, they are accompanied with numerous annotations and running commentaries by their quondam possessors and connoisseurs. One of the most diligent commentators was Emperor Chien Lung (1736-1796) of the Tsing Dynasty, who was himself a fairly good calligrapher and a patron of the arts.
Art of China is being published by the Chung Hwa Tsung-Su Committee of the Ministry of Education in celebration of President Chiang Kai-shek's 69th birthday anniversary on October 31, 1955. Nothing can be a finer tribute to the President, who has been fighting all his life to preserve the best elements of Chinese culture and civilization, than this monumental work on the Art of China which, when completed, will make a significant contribution to a better appreciation of the Chinese genius as expressed through the media of the fine arts.—DURHAM S. F. CHEN
SOVIET ESPIONAGE
By David J. Dallin
Yale University Press, New Haven
1955, 558 pp. US$4.50
Soviet espionage is an important thing to know but a very difficult subject to write about. For this reason, David J. Dallin is to be congratulated for having treated this difficult subject so admirably well. A work like this should be place in the hands of every public man partly to enable him to tell what Russian espionage is like when he sees it and partly to guard him from being used as a dupe by Russian agents. However, there is little likelihood that this is going to happen, as the size of the tome is likely to scare many a prospective reader away; though this need never be, for the book is intensely interesting.
One reason why Russian espionage is such a difficult subject is that so few people, including" the Russians themselves, know anything about it. As a result of this ignorance, information for this book has to be obtained from former leaders of the Comintern and the Communist parties in Europe and America.
Dallin traces the techniques, methods and personnel of the Soviet secret intelligence service to the underground experience and apparatus of the Russian revolutionary parties during the Tsarist days. Two generations of pre-1917 revolutionists developed underground techniques to an unprecedented degree. "Conspiracy," which in its Russian meaning refers to the totality of rules of clandestine political activity, was habit and hobby to these revolutionists. The leading personnel of the intelligence agencies abroad were recruited from among the ranks of old Communists. It was a full decade before young officers graduated from the new intelligence schools could be dispatched abroad.
From the very beginning down to the present time, two agencies have performed the bulk of the Russian espionage work. They are the Foreign Department of the secret police (which has, through its many changes. been known as the GPU, OGPU, NKVD, MGB, MVD and so on. but which the author refers in this work as GB) and the main intelligence department of the General Staff of the Army (GRU).
In addition to the two agencies, the People's Commissariat for Foreign Trade and the Central Committee of the Communist party in Moscow also send agents abroad to collect the information they desire. But at the very top it has always been centered in the Central Committee of the Communist party. From the GRU of the Army's General Staff, from the GB's Foreign Department, from the Ministry of Trade, from its own agents in foreign countries, the huge Central Information Department of the Politburo-Presidium has been obtaining a wealth of information which since the mid-20's has without doubt exceeded that obtained by any other government, and which has continued to increase. During Stalin's reign this Central Information Department was part of Stalin's own chancellery; his aide, Georgi Malenkov, was its guiding force for many years.
Dallin then goes on to describe the Soviet intelligence organs abroad, which consist of the officially recognized Soviet embassies and legations and a large number of clandestine groups and individual agents. According to Dallin, a Soviet embassy is a four-in-one, sometimes a five-in-one organization. Both Soviet intelligence agencies have their representatives within it: the military GRU, whose agent is the military attaché, and the GB, whose representative is one of the embassy's 'secretaries,' counselors, or attaches.
Usually other Soviet agencies, such as the Ministry of Foreign Trade and. of course, the Communist party, have their representatives among the personnel of an embassy; they, too, often perform clandestine tasks. Although the agents are theoretically members of the embassy and often have diplomatic immunity, they are subordinate to their Moscow superiors' and are actually independent of the ambassador; each has his own staff, code, budget, and secrets which he is forbidden to share with any of his colleagues. Official titles, assumed for the benefit of the counterespionage agencies, are often misleading: humble "doormen" are sometimes important representatives of the party's Committee; "secretaries" serve as go-betweens in contacts with less exposed agents; diplomatic couriers are, without exception, members of the GB. The military attaché and the intelligence officers of the embassies and consulates carry on their activity through a network of secret agents of local origin.
These are not all. There are other Soviet agents with their own networks and resources, subagents, funds, and channels out of Moscow. Their reports enable Moscow to verify information coming from other sources; in case of war or the breaking off of diplomatic relations, they continue their work and serve as nuclei of an underground network; in addition, they are better hidden from the police, since shadowing of diplomatic personnel by the police, as practiced in many countries, would not lead to these individuals and groups.
In discussing the dual essence of the Soviet intelligence, the author says that the network of Soviet intelligence agencies abroad constitutes an arm of foreign and military policy, and as such it is comparable to analogous agencies of other powers. It is, however, also part and parcel of the international Communist movement, and in this it is a unique intelligence system.
Its uniqueness lies in the fact that the Russians require the local Communists to engage in spying in the interest of the Soviet Union. Herein lies the main difference between Stalin and Trotsky. The latter was reluctant to involve the foreign Communist underground in espionage operations for the Soviet Union; but Stalin insisted that it should.
"A main tenet of Stalinism," says Dallin, "—if there has been a distinct Communist trend that can be called Stalinism—was priority of Soviet Russian interests and subordination of personalities and parties to the needs of the Soviet Union. After his assumption of full power in 1926-27, Stalin stressed more than once the serious obligation of the proletarians of other countries toward the dictatorship of the proletariat in the USSR, and in particular their duty to propagandize for direct defection of the armies of imperialism to the side of the Soviet Union, which imply, of course, intelligence services to Russia.”
The Russian espionage system employs a large number of aliens to do its work. Not, all of these aliens know what they are doing; nor do they all spy against their own governments for the Soviet Union for monetary gain. Some of them are malcontents, while others are idealists who think they can serve the cause of world Communism by doing what they do. Whatever they are, their Russian masters would insist that they be paid. If their position or financial status makes it impossible for them to receive money, then some way must be sought to make them receive gifts. Once an agent receives pay or receives gifts, he has compromised himself and is likely to be more obedient to their Russian masters.
In giving a historical account of the Russian spy activities in various important countries, Dallin starts with France which engaged the main attention of the Russian intelligence apparatus after the first world war because of France's dominant position in Europe, her alliance with Poland and the strong stand she took against Russia.
One of the most important phases of Russian espionage in France was the transplanting and development of the rabeor (Russian abbreviation for "workers-correspondents") system. The system had its origin in the time of Lenin who appealed to the workers to write reports to the newspapers on local economic and cultural affairs, criticisms of local Soviet officials, and so forth. The response was so enthusiastic that the newspapers had to set up special departments for sorting and editing the material received. As denunciation of personal or political enemies was the main characteristic of these letters, they were used by the GB, the public prosecutor, or the party's Control Commission for investigation of the complaints and for purposes of their own. This system was later transplanted to other countries to work for the GU. It is so typically a Russian way of espionage that it will be worthwhile to quote the author's original words for it:
"Outside Russia, too, the by-product proved more essential than the declared aim-except that in the West the rabeors, instead of serving the needs of the GB, could be made to work for other important institutions: Soviet intelligence departments. Thousands of Western rabeors were employed in strategic places-munitions plants, aviation depots, the army and navy, postal and telegraph offices. The reports they sent to their party newspapers could be considered merely journalistic efforts, and correspondents would be unaware precisely who would be the ultimate link in the chain of readers of their reports. The great advantage of the rabeors as a cover for espionage was their appearance of legality: there could be no objection to a worker writing to his newspaper about happenings in an industrial plant. Even a rabeor who broke the rule of secrecy and sent reports from a military establishment could honestly deny any link to foreign intelligence. In fact the rabeors were unaware that in a number of instances a Soviet intelligence agency was the recipient of their reports.”
The system was introduced to every important country. In Germany it went under the name of BB and on the eve of the Nazi accession to power it numbered thousands of members. According to the Small Soviet Encyclopedia, the Daily Worker in New York had 800 rabeors in 1934, the British Daily Worker, 600. L'humanite' had 1,200 rabeors in 1928 and 4,000 in 1934
In Germany Russian espionage was at first directed toward industrial targets under the cover of Handelsvertretung (trade legation) and later toward military objectives.
Another way of engaging 'industrial spies' was, according to Dallin, to make use of the contingent of "Russia-goers"—engineers and workers who tried to find employment in Soviet industry. At the beginning of the "industrialization" era the high salaries offered to top engineers and workers appeared very attractive; later, during the depression, thousands of unemployed Germans wanted to go to Russia. Their written applications were processed by the GB agent's office, but only a small number were found acceptable. One of GB agents, pretending to represent a private employment agency, used to insert advertisements in the newspapers urging persons looking for employment in the Soviet Union to communicate with him via a given box number. Letters received in reply to these advertisements were turned over to Erich Steffen, a German agent of Soviet military intelligence, who sent them to the GB agents office. Out of the mass of responses the GB agents selected those of person s employed in plants of particular interest to Russia. These applications were processed, the political views of the applicants were checked, and if the findings were satisfactory the applicant was told by the "employment agency". "If you can connect us with a man from your industrial unit willing to collaborate with us after your departure, you will be hired to go to Russia." The success achieved by this method was considerable.
It was in Germany that a number of valuable agents were recruited. Among them were Richard Sorge, whose report on the disinclination of the Japanese militarists to come to aid Hitler by attacking Russia from the rear made it possible for Stalin to transfer large contingents of Mongolian and Russian forces stationed in Siberia to the West to save Moscow at the nick of time, and Wilhelm Zaisser, until recently police chief of East Germany.
Russian espionage in the United States began to assume importance during and after World War II and culminated in the revelations of the Coplon-Gubichev affair, No useful purpose is served by recapitulating in this short review of something that has received so much publicity in the newspapers. However, the author's opinion about the future trend of espionage activities in the United States is worth quoting.
"For Moscow," says he, "the United States must remain an exception to the world-wide adverse climate. All the Soviet intelligence sources available (and they are indeed great), all the skill and talent at the disposal of GRU and GB, and all the funds required will be thrown against this country. All preparations for a potential war that can be made on the enemy's soil are being made in the United States underground. As long as the international situation remains in general what it is today, the United States will constitute the greatest obstacle to the expansion of Communist power and the main object of Soviet hatred. It is still firmly in the number one position on the roster of targets of Soviet intelligence. We may be certain that an extensive reorganization of the Soviet intelligence machine in the United States has taken place in the last few years and that this reorganization was one of those radical sweeping actions of which the Soviet government is capable in a time of emergency.”— EDWARD Y. K. KWONG
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Complimentary words are not spoken behind people's backs; spoken behind people's backs are not complimentary words.—Translated by Edward Y. K. Kwong