SPRING BOOKS

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Chiang Kai-shek (Sir Frederick Whyte)

524

British Democracy (G. M. Young) .. .. 526 The Unknown in Man (Dame Edith Lyttelton) 528 Back to Marx (Honor Croome) . . 530 The Concept of Morals (C. E. M. Joad) .. .. 530 The Writings of E. M, Forster (Forrest Reid) .. 532 Lord Strafford (Christopher Hobhouse) 534 An Economic Heretic (C. Delisle Burns) 536

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How Germany Obtained Colonies (E. L. Woodward)

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537 Lions and Shadows (Evelyn Waugh) ..

538

In Letters of Red (H. W. J. Edwards)

538 If War Comes (W. T. Wells) . .

540 Search for Tomorrow (Christopher Sykes)

542 Detective Novels (Rupert Hart-Davis)

544 Fiction (Kate O'Brien) .. . .

546 Current Literature . .

549

CHIANG KA1-SHEK

By SIR FREDERICK WHYTE

LEGENDS cluster round the man of destiny, till his character itself becomes a legend. And round this man of destiny— Chiang Kai-shek—the legends that have gathered thick prove his pre-eminence without telling us much about the man him- self. When, in Canton in 1925, Borodin said : " We can get to Peking with Chiang, but not with the Kuo Min-tang," he paid a tribute of shrewd foresight to the character of the Young President of the Whampoa Cadet School, but left the riddle of the Whampoa Commandant's personality still unread. And now, after reading Mr. Hollington K. Tong's interesting biography, much of the essence of Chiang Kai-shek still remains unrevealed. Yet I am not sure that Chiang himself really is a riddle. Common men do not easily read him, be- cause he is no common man ; but the root of the obscurity lies in what Mr. Tong calls his " diffidence " (a curious yet not inapt word), in his taciturnity, in his lack of self-revelation except in action. True, the Sian-fu diary, written in captivity, appears to lift more than a corner of the veil, but even in its pages the reader will find no more than the reflection of Chiang's mind, and not its essential reality. Mr. Tong says himself that the biographer of this Chinese leader must write " the story of China " for the past fifteen years, if not indeed from 1911 itself. And he is right. The story of Chiang Kai-shek's fifty years is the story of China ; and in these two volumes Mr. Tong has told it more fully, and with a better perspective, than any . previous writer. Historians to come will find in this biography their authentic material, and they will see that, though the author was writing in the midst of moving events, he retained his balance and resisted the temptation to play sycophant to the great man. Mainly, this narrative shows Chiang in action, the chief actor in the later scenes of the Chinese Revolution, without disclosing the inner springs of his character. The last three chapters do, indeed, give us some of the psychological components of his mind and purpose, and Mr. Tong's emphasis on the simplicity, the clarity and directness, and the impressive force embodied in the Generalissimo, is well laid. None the less, while this biography is timely and important because it is authentic and well-composed, the complete portrait of Chiang Kai-shek has still to be painted.

Chiang Kai-shek's career began in the hilly country of Chekiang. His family were of farming stock ; and both his grandfather and his father gained repute in Chikow as men of character, though by all the evidence it was to his mother that he owed most, both by heredity and by example. After early schooling in his native place, he passed to the High School at Fenghua. At the age of nineteen (he was born in 1887) he surprised his mother by saying that he wanted to go to Japan " to learn to be a soldier." This was in 1906 ; and thirty years ago the army was held in , low repute in China. Chiang's mother demurred, put pressure on him, but when she saw that he was in earnest, she backed his purpose, both in sending him to the Paoting Military Academy and thereafter to Tokyo. Thus early Chiang showed that he had a mind of his own. Whatever he may have learned of soldiering in Japan, the hour of destiny struck when he there met Sun Yat-sen, the father of Chinese Nationalism and joined the Tung Men-hui, the forerunner of the National Party of today. This decided Chiang Kai-shek : An Authorised Biography. By Hollington K. Tong. Two vols. (Hurst and Blackett. 3os.)

the course of his career. He was henceforth a revolutionary nationalist, and from the moment of the outbreak of 1911 down to the present hour, with only a brief interlude here and there, he lived and worked in the political ferment of Sun Yat-sen's movement. Two things are reported of him in. japan. The divisional General under whom Chiang served as a cadet in the Takada Regiment described him as " a commonplace cadet," and his battalion commander afterwards confessed that " he never thought that Chiang would become a great historical figure." On the other hand, Chen Chi-mei, the early Chinese nationalist leader who actually first introduced Chiang to Sun himself, reported that. Sun Yat-sen said, after talking to Chiang, " That young man is the kind we need in the movement, he may yet be the hero of the Revolution " ! The story of how Sun's prophecy came true is told by Mr. Tong in these two volumes which everyone interested in China must have on his bookshelf.

But, why did it come true ? The answer lies in the combina- tion of body, mind and spirit which- is found in this striking Chinese figure. Chiang is spare of body, lean and sinewy, and indulging in none of the relaxations. He neither smokes nor drinks, eats frugally, and sleeps no more than Henry VIII's allowance for a man. He has always been hardy, and we may be sure that no man of fifty, who had not trained his body to meet every call of endurance, would have survived the fall into the ditch at Sian-fu in 1936 with so little damage. His body was the servant of a mind as hardy as itself. The dominant qualities were, and are, clarity, realism and the power of decision. Chiang thinks quickly, and acts quicker than any other Chinese leader. The strategist's instinct tells him what is in the opponent's mind, and his very un-Chinese rapidity of deci- sion nearly always gives him the priceless advantage of surprise. He knows when " to live to fight again another day " and when to give battle. He has given battle to Japan because he knev, that the very existence of China demanded it. He fights tht, campaign, not in the hope of miraculous victory, but in order that the spirit of China may be forged anew in the fiery ordeal.

So much for Chiang in action. But what of his constructive capacity in peace and reconstruction ? He was late in realising that the Revolution must be something more than the over- throw of the Manchus, or the subsequent and gradual suppression of the " War Lords." I doubt whether, until quite recently, he grasped the meaning of the third of Sun Yat-sen's San Min Chu I, the Principle of the People's Liveli- hood. In his first campaigns against the Communists he knew but vaguely the economic source oft the Red movement. During preceding years his active mind had been loo constant!, concerned with the day-to-day moves on the politico-military chess-board to leave time for the full appreciation of the socia' and economic needs of the people. But, even then, his horizor gradually grew wider. He began to lend an ear to the ple for a constructive policy ; and it was evident to those nearer him that his mind was steadily growing up to the measure his responsibilities. Behind that impassive face, lit 'now and then by his flitting, winning smile, with intense vitality in his keen eyes, an unusual brain was at work. His mind was and is daily stimulated by the imaginative touch of his wife, whose quality is equal to his own, and to whose devotion he owe more than he knows.