Trim and attractive, her eyes sparkling, her face wreathed in a homecoming smile, the Republic of China's First Lady walked down the ramp of a Chinese Air Force plane at Taipei's Sungshan airport the afternoon of October 26. Madame Chiang Kai-shek was home from a 14-month American tour of "speech and persuasion", home in time to extend 80th birthday greetings to a statesman-husband who has led the nation for half a century.
President Chiang was at the airport waiting for her, happy in the reunion, proud of his wife's record of patriotic accomplishment during her long absence. He waved from the apron in front of the terminal as Madame Chiang came through the door of the plane to be greeted by their elder son, Defense Minister Chiang Ching-kuo. She waved back, then descended the ramp as some 500 Chinese dignitaries and foreign diplomats applauded.
At the head of the welcoming line were Vice President-Premier and Mrs. C. K. Yen. Madame Chiang shook hands with them, and then extended a personal greeting to each of the diplomats and their wives. "I'm fine," she said, and "Thank you." A little girl from the Huahsing orphanage, one of the many good works she sponsors, presented her with a Mei-ling orchid which is named after her. Mei-ling is her given name. She greeted representatives of the women of the Republic of China, the presidents of the five Yuan, cabinet ministers, top commanders of the armed forces, and many others who had come to show their appreciation of a "mission well done". She shook hands, too, with Presidential Secretary-General Chang Chun, one of the men closest to her husband.
President Chiang looked on, smiling and nodding his approval. He wore his blue Chinese gown in her honor. In the VIP room husband and wife greeted each other with warm reserve. They walked to their car hand in hand. One of Madame Chiang's finest addresses in the United States had been a tribute to her husband as a great Chinese patriot and one of the first world leaders to recognize the menace of Communism.
It remained for the press of free China to express the appreciation of the people for Madame Chiang's statesmanship and her great contribution to the mutual cause of the Republic and the United States. The China Daily News said: "Madame Chiang has done her nation an invaluable service by refuting the advocacies of appeasement advanced by a handful of American old China hands and publicizing the anti-Communist policy of our government." The Hsing Sheng Daily News asserted that her speeches in the United States had "far-reaching influence on the American people." The Youth Warrior Daily News said: "Madame Chiang has laid a solid foundation for Sino-American cooperation in the anti-Communist struggle just as she did during World War II when the two nations were fighting shoulder to shoulder against aggression."
Correct Diagnosis
The China News said: "Thirteen million people in Taiwan join their voices in a warm 'Welcome Home!' to Madame Chiang Kai-shek upon her return from the United States.
"She spoke from coast to coast, and from North to South, during her extended tour of America. Tens of thousands heard her in person. Tens of millions saw and heard her on television and read her cogent addresses in newspapers and periodicals.
"China's First Lady is American-educated. The United States has respected, admired, and listened to her for more than two decades. During her recent stay in Washington, most of the members of the 89th Congress joined in honoring her and in giving attention to her views on the international situation.
"Madame Chiang's U.S. visit coincided with the raging 'great proletariat cultural revolution' and the rabid Red Guard movement on the Chinese mainland.
"In speech after speech, she correctly diagnosed these symptoms as presaging the early collapse and imminent demise of Mao Tse-tung tyranny. She dramatized for Americans—as has no one else in recent years—the certainty that in trying to destroy the Chinese cultural tradition, the Chinese Communists are destroying themselves.
"The results of Madame Chiang's pervasive influence already are clearly visible in the United States. Intellectuals have largely desisted from advocacy of two Chinas. The U.S. government has quietly given consideration to a strategy of Vietnam victory that would involve a stronger stand against the war instigators of Peiping. Never has the prestige of the Republic of China been higher in the policy councils and among the rank and file of the American people.
"This represents a remarkable triumph for a woman armed only with her eloquence, the truth, and her obvious deep sincerity in enunciating it. She has served her country well. But more than that, she has made a great contribution to the democratic cause.
"Madame Chiang has clearly stipulated the challenges of our time and awakened the conscience of the free world to meet them here and now."
New York Comment
Wherever she went in the United States, Madame Chiang was warmly received and attentively listened to. Many American newspapers commented favorably on both her visit and her points of view. On August 22, the New York Daily News supported her suggestion that Chinese Communist nuclear installations should be eliminated.
"Some months ago," said the News, "Madame Chiang Kai-shek, distinguished wife of President Chiang Kai-shek of free China, made an important proposition.
"Taiwan and the U.S.A. know where Red China's main facilities for making nuclear weapons are located. Taiwan has skilled airplane pilots; the U.S.A. has long-range bombers and plenty of bombs, conventional or nuclear.
"Why not mesh these facts, suggested Mme. Chiang, and let Taiwan pilots go into Red China aboard U.S. bombers and take out those principal nuke sites? Conventional bombs would be used, and people in the area would be given several hours' warning to get out of the way.
"Such action quite conceivably could trigger a counterrevolution in mainland China and put friends of the free world, such as President Chiang Kai-shek, in power at Peiping. What single development could be healthier for the free world?"
As Madame Chiang reached San Francisco for her last speaking engagement, the China Times commented: "In her 14-month speaking tour, Madame Chiang has succeeded in awakening the American people to Red China's aggressive schemes and designs, which are imperiling world security and which have destroyed peace in Asia. Her penetrating views may not be popular with the doves, but the effect of what she has had to say already is evident." And the China World said: "We fervently hope that the Madame will take back to Taipei the 'voice of the heart' of a majority of the Chinese residents in this country. The voice of the heart has this to say: the government of the Republic of China should launch a counterattack against the Chinese mainland at the earliest possible time."
Madame Chiang left Taipei August 22, 1965, aboard a Chinese Air Force plane and arrived in Honolulu that evening. At a planeside press conference, she said the Chinese Communists would not intervene openly in the Vietnam conflict as a result of U.S. air attacks on North Vietnam. More than a year later, her prediction still stands.
Two days later, she reached the continental United States and received the keys to San Francisco. She told interviewers that the forces of the Republic of China will retake the mainland with the assistance of all the Chinese people, who are united by their hatred of Mao Tse-tung. She also pointed to the strategic importance of the offshore islands of Kinmen and Matsu, which are tying down a million Red troops on the mainland. That evening she addressed leaders of the San Francisco Chinese community.
White House Limousine
On August 27 Madame Chiang appeared on television in a CBS interview. She told of the anti-Communist movements spreading through such Chinese border areas as Sinkiang, Tibet, and Mongolia. By August 29 she was in New York to receive a rousing welcome and to warn that to prevent nuclear war, Peiping's atomic installations should be destroyed at the earliest possible moment. On September 5, she was warmly greeted at a rally of New York Chinese.
Proceeding to Washington by train the afternoon of September 7, she found Mrs. Dean Rusk, the wife of the U.S. Secretary of State, and other dignitaries at the station to greet her. She received red roses from Mrs. Rusk. President Lyndon B. Johnson placed a limousine at her disposal.
Representative L. Mendel Rivers, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, gave a luncheon in honor of China's First Lady on September 9. Attending were leading members of the U.S. House, including Speaker John W. McCormack, majority and minority leaders, and the chairmen of other committees.
Honored by Lady Bird
Madame Chiang was honored by Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson at a White House tea September 15. The other guests included Mrs. Dean Dusk and Mrs. John Foster Dulles. President and Mrs. Johnson showed Madame Chiang through the historic rooms on the second floor of the U.S. presidential mansion.
On September 17 Madame Chiang was guest of honor at a reception given by the National Federation of Business and Professional Women's Clubs.
Meeting an old friend: former Pres. Eisenhower. (File photo)
Former President and Mrs. Dwight D. Eisenhower, old friends, called on Madame Chiang in Washington on September 20. The First Lady was the guest of the Eisenhowers during her 1958-59 trip to the United States, and she was the hostess when President Eisenhower came to Taipei in 1960.
That evening Madame Chiang entertained for Mrs. George C. Marshall, another old friend.
On September 21, Secretary of State Dean Rusk gave a party for Madame Chiang. He later told the press they had discussed Asian problems, including Peiping's nuclear threat and China representation at the United Nations.
The next day Madame Chiang was the guest of honor at a luncheon given jointly by Senators John J. Sparkman, Everett M. Dirksen, Thomas J. Dodd, and Leverett Saltonstall. Also attending were Vice President Hubert Humphrey and 64 other Senators. Vice President Humphrey praised Madame Chiang for her love of freedom and for the great courage with which she has defended it. Minority leader Dirksen said President and Madame Chiang had rendered meritorious service to the world in "defending the frontiers of freedom". In her response, Madame Chiang cited the French, American, and Chinese Revolutions as attesting that freedom cannot be bought cheaply.
On October 7 Madame Chiang was honored at a luncheon given by Representative Otto E. Passman of Louisiana.
Back at Wesleyan
October 10—China's Double Tenth National Day—was proclaimed Free China Day by Mayor Robert F. Wagner. Madame Chiang attended the Double Tenth celebration in New York and received the key to the city.
At Armed Forces Industrial College in Washington. (File photo)
Two hundred U.S. Representatives and their wives attended a House Foreign Affairs Committee reception for Madame Chiang in Washington October 19.
The next day, she addressed a convocation at Wesleyan College in Macon, Ga., which she had attended as a young girl. Accompanying her to the campus was Senator Richard B. Russell of Georgia. She spoke of "my childhood spent in happy environs, my nostalgia, my gratitude to Wesleyan, and to my preceptors". She advised her young listeners, "at the risk of being labeled obdurate and 'a square', to abide by the principle and cardinal rule of mine which has disciplined my life: 'Work, yet work harder, and despair never'."
On October 31 she "Met the Press" on an NBC television program viewed by some 10 million persons. She urged the destruction of Red Chinese nuclear capability so as to prevent an atomic holocaust, and said that if given the tools, the Chinese Air Force could carry out the mission. Two days later the New York Daily News asked "What Are We Waiting For?" in an editorial supporting her views.
She told of Peiping's Latin American infiltration and subversion in a November 16 interview for Mexican television. The next day she was the luncheon guest of Henry R. Luce, the founder of Time and Life and a long-time friend of China and the Chiangs.
Series of Addresses
She gave the first in a series of important addresses on China and international affairs at her alma mater, Wellesley College at Wellesley, Mass., on December 7, the 24th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. She briefly reviewed the history of modern China, and then contrasted the colossal failure of the Communists on the mainland with the development of Taiwan as a model province of stability and prosperity. She said:
"The government of the Republic of China now on Taiwan, as one of the founding members of the United Nations, dedicated itself to upholding world peace with freedom and justice for all peoples. It believes that peace in Asia and the world can be possible only with a free and united China. Its avowed policy is to free the Chinese people on the mainland from Communist serfdom. And in this task it has the support of all Chinese, wherever they may be, who desire a free and happy China."
She warned against the appeasers and others who "are the victims of their own web of duplicity and perdition". She urged her listeners to be "true daughters of Wellesley with far ranging resourcefulness and robust minds" and to "reserve always the right to think for yourselves and exercise the faculty to discern the ingenuous from the specious ... "
Madame Chiang made other press conference appearances and speeches in December. Then, on January 20, 1966, she analyzed Peiping's strategy and Mao's blueprint of world conquest for the U.S. War College. On March 15, she told the Armed Forces Industrial College in Washington that Chinese Communist army forces will defect to the Republic of China when they have the opportunity.
On March 18, she made a warmly received address before a luncheon of the National Press Club in Washington. She recalled that she had spoken to the NPC seven and a half years before, and went on to describe some of the changes in the international situation since that time.
"This day and age will be a decisive epoch," she told America's top reporters and columnists, "as to whether humanity will survive-survive with damaged genes or survive at all-and civilization per se as we know it shall or shall not perish from the earth."
Appeasement Hit
First Lady met Detroit press on April 18, 1966. (File photo)
On April 11, she was guest of honor at a tea given by the Women's National Republican Club in New York City. A week later, she was in Detroit to address the Economic Club on the war in Vietnam.
She told the Middle Western economists that the appeasers of the United States are playing into the hands of the Communists, and warned:
"With the present increase in the United States Vietnam effort, the Chinese Communists with Hanoi will intensify their armed adventurism on two fronts. One, the stepping up of sabotage by terrorist acts in Saigon and other more urgent measures to topple the Saigon government be it headed by Ky or Thi. Two, bold assaults on United States troops and bases at whatever cost in human lives so as to give ammunition to their fifth columns all over the world to clamor for withdrawal without honor by the United States."
And she asked: "Is it the evil of myopia or is it the evil of supinity or is it out and out scurrility that afflicts the appeasers who collectively sprawl like a strangling octopus on the body politic of an erstwhile strong and beautiful America?"
The next day Madame Chiang spoke in the Silver Anniversary Lecture Series sponsored by the School of Government at Grosse Pointe, Michigan, on the progress of Taiwan: "A Profile in Facts and Figures".
Taiwan as Example
After reviewing the dramatic economic gains in the two decades since Japan's retrocession of the island province to the Republic of China, she said:
"Taiwan's political stability is especially significant in Southeast Asia where there has been so much turmoil and unrest. Its economic success is meaningful not only because its growth came about in spite of the island's limited natural resources but also because it is in such marked contrast to the economic turmoil of the Red-enslaved mainland. Taiwan stands out as a constant reminder in Southeast Asia of planned free enterprise. It stands out as a shining example of American aid put to good use. It stands out in an ominous sea of darkness and peril as a beacon of bright comforting light to encourage and sustain all Asians who desire freedom. It stands out to confute those who say that Asia can live only with a semblance of order, under imperialist colonialism or Chinese Communism. And finally Taiwan stands out as living proof in refutation of the great lie—Chinese Communism."
On April 26 Madame Chiang exposed the "Myth of Communist Guerrilla Invincibility" in an address to the Army War College at Carlisle, Pa. She had spoken before the same institution seven years before.
She pointed out that guerrilla victories are won by the psychological intimidation of the enemy and not by decisive military actions. Recent American successes against the Viet Cong are proof of this, she said. She maintained that France's defeat in Vietnam was not also a guerrilla triumph, and she cited Malaya and the Philippines as "examples where substantial victories were gained over planned and organized guerrilla takeover".
In May, the First Lady returned to the Middle West, this time to appear before the Executive Club of Chicago on the 13th. Her topic concerned the fallacies involved in attempting to accommodate Peiping. She said the Chinese Communists have no wish to be accommodated, and that they are confident of eventual victory over the United States in a protracted war of attrition.
Mainland Madness
It was in this speech, also, that Madame Chiang took note of the early stages of the Chinese Communist "cultural revolution" and said: "Perhaps in the light of the persecution of intellectuals we can well see why the United States government invitation to exchange scholars and newspapermen strikes the Chinese Communists as a huge joke. They simply cannot believe that after all these years, the United States still does not comprehend their single-mindedness in 'world liberation' and their stance of intractability."
Addressing the ladies of U.S. Congressmen in Washington May 20, Madame Chiang became a wife first and one of the great personages of the world second. She took as her theme "A Tribute to A Patriot Husband": Chiang Kai-shek. It was, she said at the outset, a subject of her own choosing.
She quoted at length from the Congressional testimony of an old friend, Walter Robertson, on China's postwar ordeal and the heroic behavior of Chiang Kai-shek, and then took note of the poison spread by "detractors, calumniators, and agents of the Chinese Reds". In the final analysis, she said. "History and men of conscience will record and say of him that not only is he a great patriot with a singular singleness of purpose but also a man endowed with perspicacity—insight that transcends parochial nationalism as seen in his early warnings and profound recognition of the nature and metier of Marxism-Leninism as practiced by Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, and their likes. He laid to light before the world, Communism for what it was when Communism was still very much of an intellectual exercise with an aura of dialectical brilliance played as a parlor game in the living rooms and salons of the genteel and the rich who feigned intellectuality, while the violent and dark aspects of Communism were quickly transported to association with nihilism and anarchism. He recognized Communism for what it was—the central issue of this century—and its beguiling effects on politically indehiscent minds long before the 'isms' became today's prevalent and pervasive bane and source of so much pain, anguish, misery, strife and despair in the world."
Issues and Answers
Madame Chiang made another nationwide television appearance on the ABC program "Issues and Answers" broadcast May 22. She made these points:
1. That the Chinese Communists intend to start world nuclear war, and that the Republic of China would take action to prevent this, "if given the tools". She said the Soviet Union would not intervene.
2. That Russia would probably remain neutral in any clash between the United States and Peiping.
3. That the Republic of China would consider sending troops to South Vietnam, if asked.
4. That the Chinese Communists can be pacified only by getting "rid of the men who are at the top of the Red regime" and that there is no chance that the successor to Mao Tse-tung will be more reasonable. She suggested Lin Piao as the most likely successor.
5. That if the Chinese Communists ever get in the United Nations, the United States will have to get out.
On May 23, Madame Chiang spoke to the Cosmos Club of Washington on some of the truths about Chinese Communism. She said the Peiping regime seeks Southeast Asia's riches and 325 million people for purposes of aggression against the United States. The Chinese Reds do not want and would not accept accommodation with the United States, she added.
In a further explanation of the mainland "cultural revolution", she noted that "Mao and the top hierarchy know that the Chinese people and even their trusted cadres have become long disenchanted and silently disillusioned with the knout-lash rule".
On the last day of August, she addressed members of the Bull Elephants, who are assistants to members of Congress. She told them of Red China's threat not only to the United States and the other democracies, but also to the Soviet Union.
She said: "It is the choice of the free world either to be recreant, to quail and be cowed into inaction and permit the pusillanimity to spread, or to go straight to the source of all evil to employ overwhelming force to bash in the door, or to use the key to deftly open the repository of the well-head of our present international woes and fears which ironically plague with equal potency the United States and the U.S.S.R."
Receiving honorary degree at Nebraska Wesleyan. (File photo)
On September 28, she received an honorary degree of doctor of humane letters from Nebraska Wesleyan University, and spoke on the Red Guards movement on the Chinese mainland.
Homeward Bound
With the 80th birthday (by Chinese reckoning) of her husband approaching, Madame Chiang decided to return home. On the way she stopped off in Los Angeles to address the World Affairs Council and Town Hall, and in San Francisco to speak before the Commonwealth Club. These were two of the farthest-ranging, hardest-hitting addresses of her year's odyssey.
To Angelenos, she spoke of the excesses of the Red Guards, and remarked: "This planned syndrome of lunacy has within it rudiments which would tax the ingenuity of scenario writers, and would be comic bouffe were it not for the underlying tragic cruelty."
She said that in mainland convulsions, three pronunciamentos of Mao-think have emerged: (1) That Peiping and not Moscow has become the center of world revolution; (2) that the use of "tender captive minds in the form of the young irresponsible
Red Guards to do the dirty work of excising Maoist enemies and deviationists is now the order of the day;" (3) that the cultural revolution also seeks to avenge the humiliation of the Boxer uprising, thus allying Mao with the defunct imperial Ching dynasty.
Treason of Mao, Lin
She recalled, too, the treason of Mao and Lin Piao (the latter a graduate of the Whampoa Military Academy founded by Dr. Sun Yat-sen and first commanded by Chiang Kai-shek). Both swore their allegiance to a free China and expressed loyalty to Chiang, then descended to the perfidy of stab-in-the-back treachery.
Madame Chiang suggested that the United States has been too patient with Peiping, and emphasized that the Soviet Union is not only out of patience but actively hostile to the Chinese Communists. On the latter score, she said:
"The existence of a Red China has and always will be an ideological hairshirt to Russia ... For as long as there exists a Communist regime in China which instinctively, methodologically, and operationally knows the Kremlin mentality so well, Moscow will never be safe from Peiping's scheming miasmal malevolence."
She concluded with a quotation from Winston Churchill about the possible destiny of the free world. Churchill said that the great democracies had triumphed in World War II and "so were able to resume the follies which has so nearly cost them their life." To which she added: "It is this resumption of follies that the Chinese Communists is counting upon in the decline and fall of the free world."
Shams of Peiping
To San Franciscans she spoke of the shams to which the Chinese Communists have resorted in continuing attempts—of which the Red Guards is only the latest—to deceive the free world.
In the 1930s, the Chinese Reds sang the song of "unity" against Japanese aggression, all the while plotting with the Japanese and bidding for power. Then the Communists took the Japanese weapons that Stalin handed them in Manchuria, fought the legitimate government of the Republic of China, and seized the mainland.
The shams continued: torture and execution of tens of hundreds of thousands on the mainland, pretense of a response to aggression in the Korean War, struggles against the Chinese people, shellings of the offshore islands, the rise and fall of the Great Leap Forward, attacks upon India, nuclear tests, and now the Red Guards and cultural revolution.
"Despite the commissions of Red Chinese policies," she said, "the Chinese Communist apologists throughout the years have continued to resort to becloudments and prevarications of facts with essential variations, that China with her Sheng patriarchal tradition, family ties, customs, and mores can never go Communist. The inference is that Mao's Communism is really socialism and not dangerous at all, since it is an internal revampment and change."
Madame Chiang again warned against appeasement and urged upon the United States a policy of strength and action. She said:
"Had it not been for the determined stance taken by the United States in Vietnam, the anti-Communist Indonesian forces could not have possibly acted with so much vim and vigor ... It is this kind of firmness—which is also in this case the killing of two birds with one stone—this kind of language, that the Chinese Communists understand. From these events and results the anti-Communist countries in Southeast Asia have begun to take heart, for they have been encouraged by the change of balance to the hindrance of Chinese Communist threat and power."
Madame Chiang stopped briefly in Honolulu. Then it was straight home—and into the arms of a waiting President and husband, and into the hearts of a grateful nation. She was, as she observed on one occasion, no diplomat in any official sense. But in the real sense of influence, clarity, and sincerity, she once more was the Republic of China's finest representative.
Whether Americans agreed or disagreed, when Madame Chiang Kai-shek had finished speaking, they knew exactly where the Republic of China stood—and what for.