CHINA: Willkie and the Torches

Wendell Willkie’s last days in China were, in every way, the climax of his world-circling trip. They were a climax in the warmth that had everywhere been shown him as a man and as a symbol of the U.S. And he returned this lavish Oriental affection with the most statesmanlike and moving appeal for global understanding and effort, in war and in peace, that had yet come from an Occidental leader (see p. 16).

For four furious days the Chinese Government poured a mass of statistics in the ears of Willkie and his party. The Chinese case, however, was best presented, not by statistics, banquets and banners in the streets, but by 4,000,000 troops fanned out in a 2,000-and-more-mile protective arc against 500,000 well-equipped Japanese. Therefore Willkie was taken to the front.

Toward the Front. He flew northward 275 miles to Sian. In the drizzling rain at the airport he was met by the most important person in North China, Major General Hu Tsung-nan. It is the crucial job of stocky, 42-year-old General Hu, with China’s finest troops, to prevent the Japanese from crossing the Yellow River bend near Sian. The front has been stationary there for three years. If the Japanese ever got bridgeheads, they might then find it easy to conquer Chungking from the north.

That evening, after a festive duck dinner, Willkie drove through rainy streets strung with orange & red Chinese lanterns to the railway station. There one of the luxury trains of pre-war North China, shunted four years ago to this tiny railway, had been polished, clean-sheeted and made ready for the party. The train chugged as far toward the front as was safe. At midnight it stopped on a siding.

At 6 in the morning seven handcars were ready, equipped with benches holding three each and warm, brown lap blankets. Four men were assigned to each handcar as a pumping crew. A few miles from the front, at 6:30, the Japanese fired three or four shots at the tracks and officials decided not to risk Willkie’s life. The party left the handcars and boarded automobiles —the Chinese had cut roads below the surface so that troops could evade Japanese eyes.

Toward the Foe. It was still early morning when Willkie walked through the streets of deserted Tungkwan toward the river’s edge. He ducked through a hole and entered the labyrinth of dugouts and trenches which are the strongest Chinese fortification in North China. Communication trenches were cut deep in the yellow ground and covered with logs and earth. They led to a point overlooking the river bend. The trenches fed into concrete rifle and machine-gun emplacements, from which a screen of fire could be dropped on any attempted river crossing. Willkie’s burly shoulders did not fit some of the narrow trenches, and his clothes were soon dirtied and stained with yellow sand. He paced three or four miles of trenches, winding up at an artillery observation post. Through telescopic sights he peered at a Japanese position where two lazy Japanese artillerymen stood in the mouth of their emplacement.

Willkie’s personal guide was Captain Chiang Wei-kuo, younger son of Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. He occupies a relatively insignificant post at the front under General Hu Tsung-nan’s command. “How old are you?” asked Willkie. “Twenty-seven,” said Captain Chiang. “Well,” said Willkie, “I was almost 27 myself when the last war ended, and I was just like you—a captain in the artillery.”

Willkie returned to his special train for lunch. On the table were glasses of beer, which is not procurable in Free China—it was “Five Star” and had been brewed in Peiping. Excellent Bordeaux wine was also on one table. Chiang Wei-kuo explained that all the beer and wine had been captured from the Japanese in raids.

Toward the Friends. When Willkie got back to Sian, a band was at the city gate to greet him. For five miles Sian’s main street was one solid mass of people. Fully 200,000 of the city’s 300,000 were there. Fat shopkeepers, uniformed schoolboys, soldiers, girls, grey-bearded patriarchs, nursing mothers, pregnant women, government officials, babes in arms, little boys and girls jammed the streets. They smiled, yelled and waved Chinese and American flags. The demonstration far exceeded that in Chungking.

At the airport Chinese Army officers gave Willkie six captured Japanese swords —one each for himself and his aides, one for President Roosevelt. Willkie turned to enter the plane, then suddenly halted. The band blared The Star-Spangled Banner. The Chinese trumpeter reached two high Gs in the final strain.

Toward the Future. Willkie flew from Sian to Chengtu in centre 1 Szechwan Province. On the following dawn he took off for the U.S. (arriving home via Alaska this week). Hardly had he gone than China got the news that the U.S. and Britain intended to abolish extraterritorial rights in China (see p. 16) and the friendly emotions that Willkie had stimulated surged to new heights.

Diplomatically timed, the news arrived during China’s celebration of the Double Tenth (tenth day of the tenth month), the 31st anniversary of the founding of the Republic. In Chungking 80,000 of the people who a few days before had clamorously cheered Wendell Willkie gathered among brilliant red & blue Chinese banners in the downtown square. Through the crowd, unexpectedly, came cars carrying Generalissimo Chiang and his guards. The Gissimo was smiling as he climbed up to a microphone and read the U.S.-British statement to his people. The Gissimo told them they must prove themselves worthy of the friendship of their western allies, exhorted them to yet greater efforts. There was a great cheer and another when a resolution of thanks to America was proposed.

The buoyant, affectionate hope with which the Chinese had greeted Willkie had received a great stimulus. The decades of artificial relations between the West and China were perhaps tending toward a close. China’s Double Tenth celebration ended that night with a vast torchlight procession. No one had shown better than Wendell Willkie, in his statement last week, why the United Nations had every reason to keep China’s torches alight.