Madame Chiang's recall of history and her assessment of Chou En-lai differ from those in the new book by Theodore H. White
History is sometimes controversial. This was well expressed by Pan Ku (32-92 A.D.), co-author with his father Pan Piao (3-34 A.D.) of the History of the Former Han Dynasty. At the end of his biography of Szema Ch'ien, Pan Ku summed up the work of the great historian who preceded him as follows:
"When it comes to the way in which he has extracted from the Classics, selected from the commentaries and assessed and disposed of material from the various schools of philosophy, Ch'ien is often careless and sketchy and takes improper liberties with his sources. With his diligence he has browsed very widely in books, threaded his way through the Classics and commentaries and galloped up and down from the past to the present, covering a period of several thousand years. His judgments stray rather often from those of the sage. Yet Liu Hsiang, Yang Hsiung and other men of wide learning all praise Ch'ien as a man of excellent ability as an historian and testify to his skill in setting forth events and their causes. He discourses without sounding wordy; he is simple without being rustic. His writing is direct and his facts sound. He does not falsify what is beautiful, nor does he conceal what is evil. Therefore his may be termed a true record."
Madame Chiang Kai-shek is not a professional historian, but she has lived a lot of history. Recently she set the record straight with regard to some of the statements made by Theodore H. White in his book In Search of History. Madame Chiang wrote:
Having lived many decades, I have been trained by events to acclimate myself to wild rumors, distortions, half-truths, innuendoes and criticisms leveled at me and those who are somewhat conspicuous on the world stage. I am the first to admit that being inured to unjustified or baseless allegations is not the most pleasant thing to accustom one's self to. Yet I, too, am among the first to understand the motives for the imprecations.
According to a letter from the publisher in Time July 3, Mr. Theodore White some two years ago at the age of 61 began to have "nagging doubts" of his previous years of work and has embarked on a magnum opus "In Search of History: A Personal Adventure." I am a little surprised at Mr. White for having doubts of his previous writings if they were previously accurate and truthful.
On my part, I have no doubts as to what I said or did not say in reference to what was attributed to me. I feel I should help to keep the record straight with facts that I alone know better at first hand than anyone else, to wit: Mr. White writes melodramatically, "Madame Chiang Kai-shek was then in the U.S. and the story infuriated her. She asked my publisher, Harry Luce, to "fire" me, but he refused." I can say categorically that there is not a vestige of truth in my ever speaking to Mr. Luce to "fire" Mr. White. I know I am as aware of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution as anyone can be aware. Freedom of speech is most jealously and watchfully guarded not only by all journalists but, in fact, by all and sundry who need its broad embracing protection. Only this week, the TV media is employing it in defense of the use of four letter words by George Carlin on WBAI that any restriction on obscene language is an abridgement of the First Amendment.
Journalistic reporting is always involate and sacrosanct. Woe to any editor who would be so foolish as to "fire" a journalist for journalistic reportage, however inaccurate. Besides, such action could be giving a very welcome cause celebre for the "victim" it can immediately be alleged that reportorial integrity has been tampered with by his boss. In many ways, it is the owner or the chief executive of a publication who is very much the captive of his own collective editorial and journalistic staff. Having been educated in the U.S., common sense as well as experience and instinct tell me where the sacred cows reside.
During the Sino-Japanese War years, censorship in Chungking was based upon the philosophy of suasion and explanation of difficulties and the sorting out of dysinformation rather than censorship as understood by the word and as practiced in the U.S.S.R.
Most people would, I think, agree with me after reading Mr. White's excerpts that they, too, cannot quite reconcile to what Mr. White really meant when he described Chou En-lai as: " ... a man as brilliant and ruthless as any the Communist movement has thrown up in this century, yet one capable of warm kindness, irrepressible humanity and silent courtesy." In the Chinese Communist party, Chou was known as "pu tao oong," the Dairuma of the internal Chinese Communist party politics. Brilliant he was since he was not only able to survive by jumping onto the correct side just in the nick of time but to be helping mightly on the winning side with the judicious amount of muscle and wiles. It was Chou whose endorsement of Mao Tse-tung won U.S. liberal sympathy. It was Chou who helped in and approved of Mao's "human wave" battle tactic which meant sending into battle untrained civilians with only a few hand grenades.
"Kindness and irrepressible humanity" Chou was not. Should Mr. White not have known, or if he but chose to, he could have read in his research the material he needs to write his book with adjectival accuracy in surmising Chou. If he would only read in a sister publication, Life magazine, an article of June 28, 1954, in which it is documented by the Shanghai French Concession policy dossier of the brutal murders of the entire eleven members of the Koo family, burned at Nos. 33 and 37, Rue Prosper, Paris, and the Shanghai Municipal Council Police Report dated January 22, 1932, of bodies buried at No. 6 Wuting Road and at 91A, Sinza Road. They were murders committed by Chou by his own hands, "Vouched for by sources Life considers absolutely trustworthy ... " The documents named Chou as the man responsible for the spectacularly gruesome mass murders. Mr. White should also continue on to read Life's report by Godfrey Blunden of Chou's sybaritic and more than luxurious life style that could be gleaned during his Geneva visit. We now know only top Communists in mainland China enjoy special perquisites and privileges — a very, very special class indeed! With all the proof that is arrayed, Mr. White cannot even equate Chou with a dictum attributed to Stalin: one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic! Chou is guilty on both counts.
With regard to Mr. White's interview with my husband, as I was not in Chungking at the time, I do not know what transpired, and the Generalissimo is no longer with us to tell his version of what was said or said to agree or to controvert Mr. White. Suffice it to say that Chiang Kai-shek was not an insensitive or callous person. His record as a man has been under public international scrutiny for many years. History will judge him, no doubt, with impartiality and detachment. I shall rest content on this note. One thing I do know is that he often commented on the great callousness of the Communists to ward human life.
"I know we're all agreed that there is nothing more deplorable and revolting than cannibalism. Yet we would be hypocritical to the nth degree were we to assume that no such ugly possibilities as cannibalism ever existed in famine areas. Only as recently as in Time June 19 edition there is the report of Famine and Starvation in Ethiopia and Somaliland. Again, in the article on the Barter Boom, Newsweek of June 26 reported that Mr. Armand Earmmer, now chairman of Occidental Petroleum Corporation, as a young physician in 1921, fully three years after the Communist Revolution, in helping out famine-plagued Russia, saw: " ... dead bodies piling up along railroad sidings." In an article on the Siege of Leningrad in World War II in the Reader's Digest of March and April, 1969, issues, a hair-raising reporting of luring people to be slaughtered for the sale of human flesh was described. And we now know how those who survived in the Andes plane crash survived. Brezhnev only a few days ago on July 3 admitted there is again a shortfall of grain in the U.S.S.R. some 60 years after the Communist Revolution. Indochina, the reputed granary and perennial rice exporter to China, is now also short of rice to the tune of two million tons, as reported in Time. July 3, 1978, issue. With famine setting in, I would be less than sanguine not to know what some people would or would not do. And remember the period Mr. White is speaking of we were blockaded by the Japanese during the 1940s, with no outside source of supply, such as is possible today for Russia and Indochina to seek aid from other countries.
For Mr. White to say that there was food aplenty elsewhere is a very vague general statement. (A) He does not tell us where. (B) Transportation and communications during wartime at best are extremely difficult and parlous, as he himself inadvertently admits in part because of Japanese shelling, he had to be transported by a handlebar car. The Wall Street Journal of July 5 reports ICC fined Southern Pacific a record $4.4 million for not being able to move freight cars expeditiously where they were needed. This happened in 1978 when there is no war in the U.S. from the way Mr. White tells it. General Tang En-po's troops behaved very much like Sherman's march through Georgia. As a young girl, I had heard how some of my Southern friends' grandparents suffered from the avaricious Yankee carpetbaggers as well as from the pillaging, burning and raping soldiers of the North throughout much of Dixieland.
To conclude, I am sure it has occurred to a keen reader that Mr. White was able to visit the areas he wrote about only because he was provided with facilities by the Chinese government, thus enabling him to go by train to Loyang and have at his disposal the use of a "handlebar car," which was scarce during the war years. In short, without Chinese government cooperation and willingness for him to visit the areas it would have been impossible for him to visit Honan province, much less write his scoop. And to "assume" that heads would roll at the hapless telegraph office at Loyang for having permitted him to circumvent Chungking's Censor Bureau is curious journalism, since journalists are not supposed to assume. They are to report facts. Writers have enough latitude in interpreting facts. Writers have enough latitude in interpreting impressions riot to need to rely on guesswork. And lastly, if anyone knows anything about the Chinese "brush pen," he would know it cannot be kept in one's pocket and used readily to write because it does not retain ink such as in a fountain pen. For Mr. White's information, the Generalissimo always had a fountain pen and/or a lead pencil in the breast pocket of his military or Sun Yat-sen tunic.
That is the end of Madame Chiang's remarks on the excerpts from Theodore White's book.
But since she has spoken of White's misplaced admiration for Chou En-lai, it is impossible to avoid the temptation of remarking on Mr. White's description of the roast pig that became a duck for the benefit of the guest of honor's Jewish ancestors.
After Mr. White's stipulation that his religion did not allow him to eat pork, Chou En-lai said: "Teddy, this is China. Look again. See. Look. It looks to you like pig. Bu t in China, this is not a pig - this is a duck."
Teddy White ate the pig and says he has been eating pork ever since with the hope that his ancestors will forgive him.
The point, which Mr. White seems to have missed, is that he was led into a deliberate deception by Chou En-lai, the great Chinese Communist deceiver.
As Madame Chiang would attest, Chou's charm was undeniable. So was his genius for misrepresentation and treachery.
Madame Chiang and her husband, President and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, could never bring themselves to eat Chou En-lai's pig masquerading as a duck.