lI

ANNA LOUISE STRONG Selected !7orks on China's Revolution I

CHINA'S MILLIONS Revolution in Central China, rgzT

ANNA LOUISE STRONG

CHINA'S MILLIONS

In Canton tn ry21 and in Han- kow in 1921, Anna Louise Strong witnessed the rise, followed by bctrayal and temporary defeat, of the rcvolutionary movement of the oppressed workers, peasants and women -in the period of the llrst I(uornintang-Communist- united front and its break-up. Such vicissitudes occur in all revolu- NE\r \rORLD PRE.SS tions on their way to victory. The author records the events as she PEKING 1965 saw them, and ringingly asserts her belief in the ultimate triumph of thc resurgent people, so well borne out by the history of our own day.

l S. SEIECTED A L. VORKS, First EditioD ry6,

CONTENTS This book is the first of a six-volume editioo comprising the bulk of Anna Louise Strong's wrir- Aatboy's Prelace to SelectedWorks on Cbina's Reoolution ings on China over lorty years. It deals with the Chinese revolution of ry25-27 and was written at thet Canton Prelude I time. The author again visited and wrote about Cbapter I. Stopping in Shanghai II China on two occasions during the !flar of Resistance to Japan in 1938 and rg4o-41. To the War of Lrbera- II. Up the Yangtze 2t tion period belongs her book "The Chinese Conquer III. Red Forces in Hankow 1a China" which records experience in Yenan and other liberated areas in ry46-47. In this edition it in- IV. Into the War Zone 44 corporates her "Thought of Mao Tse-tung", first V. The Generals Meet in Chengchow tt published as a pamphlet. The S7orkers Meet Hankow Later volumes belong to the post-liberation period. VI. in 7o They include "The Rise of the Chinese People's VII. Leaders of Chinese Labour 83 Communes", first written in 1959 and brought up \ff/omen's VIII. Fighters for Rights s6 to date h 1964, and "When Serfs Stood Up in Tibet,', Iil/ornen initially published in 196o, when the author was the IX. Problerns of China's New ro8 first American woman ever to see Lhasa. This edi- . X. Students and Peasants of Hupeh n6 tion concludes with a selection from Anna Louise Reaction r40 Strong's periodical "Letter from China", more than Xi. "R-ed" Hunan in thirty issues of which have appeared since 1962. XII. The Revolution in Yungfong rt, Xm. Fragments of Revolution r68

Printed in tbe Peoptds Repabtic ol Cbina Authot's Pteface to Selected \X/otks on China's Revolution

I have known in my lifetimc threc civilizations - the American, the Russian, the Chinese - the three that have shaped and are shaping our times. I have lived and worked in them all as social worker, exhibit expert, reportet, editor, lecturer and writer, first from my home in Seattle, then from a residence of nearly thirty years in Moscow, and now at the age of eighty from Peking. In Seattle we fought for more perfect forms of democracy in what we considered aheady "God's coufitry," the world's pioneer of democracy; we won many formal battles but saw our country change to the world's greatest, most destructive imperialism. Drawn trom afar by the October Revolution of ryry in Russia, which shook the world and inspired all progressives, I . werit to Moscow and for nearly three decades made it the center for all the middle years of my adult working life; the majority of my more than thirty books were written about the USSR. From Moscow I gradually became aware of a new revolution arising in the East, and began to visit China on my trips to America, beginning lust half my lifetime ago in r9z; when the Kuomintang-Communist coalition was rising in Canton. In six such visits my interest in China steadily grew. Even before the victory of China's Revolution in ry49 broke the long capitalist encirclement of thc USSR, changed the balance of world forces and began to stimulate anti-impcrialist rcvolutions around the world, I decided to come to China to stay. And now my Chinese friends are cclcbrating my eightieth birthday by publishing this edition of my Selected !7orks, tak- ing those that concero China's Revolution. These may well have CHINA'S MILLIONS AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO SELECTED 'WORKS ,u

the longest life expectancy of all that I have ever done. Not Our westward lands, still open to free settlers, were the "world's oniy because China, with nearly one-fourth of earth's population, last frontier." Of course we were often obiiged to fight "the is today full of eager, intelligent readers. But also, and especially, interests," i.e. the monopoly controls that pressed on us from because as the great anti-imperialist revolution of our century, New York. They tried to control even my exhibitions, but I China's Revolution, both in its defeats and its victories, best felt that I was independent still. gives the lessons that other anti-imperialist revolutions now wodd- It was in Kansas City in my third exhibition, the first in which wide witrl wish to learn. I was top administrator, that thc cxhibition's end made it I rnust therefore glance back at the road that I have travelled, necessary to fire the pcoplc who had workcd in it and for whom in America, in the USSR and in those visits to China which drew there were few chanccs of lobs. It worricd mc. After a slcepless me to Peking as my home and prodr-lced the six books now being night spent in thought I dccided that thcre was no way to correct republished. this under our capitalist system and that therefore the systern Born in the United States of America in r88;, my personal itself was "a11 wrong." The only proper system would put all career began well before the First World \)Var. After taking the iobs, and therefore all work and enterprises under public owner- degree Doctor of of Philosophy from the University of Chicago ship. This, I knew, was called socialism, so I must be a socialist. in r9o8, I went home to Seattle where my father had moved after It was years later before I saw how "class struggle" fitted in. my mother's death. I invented, with my father, a "Know Your \7hen the First \World !flar broke in Europe ir ryr4, it found City Institute," a combination of lectures, discussions and visits me in Dublin, Ireland, running a Child !fl'elfare Exhibition for by which Seattle citizens many of them newcomers from the - the V/omen's National Health Association, of which Lady Aber- eastern states became acquainted with the city's life. I was - deen, the viceroy's wife, was ptesident; I lived in the vice-regal invited to organize similar institutes in other western cities; their lodge as her guest. I came back to America in a 'fast ship popularity led to rny taking part in a gteat Child l7elfare Exhibi- through a blackout against German submarines to the post that tion in New York, after which I continued to organize Child alteady wsited for me as "exhibit expert" in the newly created !7elfare Exhibits from city to city for several years, becoming the Children's Bureau r'X,/ashington. under thirty years leading organizer in this field. Their aim was to arouse the city's U.S. in Just job consciousness to the conditions and needs of all the city's childreo, old, I seemed fixed in a federal civil service for life. in schools, health, playgrounds and wetrfare activities, and thus I quickly found that lTashington was a deadly btrearcracy to create new laws and institutions through popular demand. in which I was hardly able to breathe. So after orgarizing the As I felt the growth and explosion in each place of a city con- Children's Bureau Exhibition for the San Fran'cisco world's fair sciousness which rvas stimulated by correct organization of com- in r9r5, and another exhibition on "Children's Interests" in Port- mittees and exhibition techniques and which then created new land, Oregon, and writing a manual on how to organize Child institutions and local laws, I felt that I was improving our Welfare Exhibits rvhich was published by the federal government, American democracy. This was part of a positive faith that America I resigned. I went home to Seattle where the energetic life of was the pioneer in democracy for the world. Long ago we had the coast me; I was quickly elected to the Seattle City ^ttracted stated our stand in or.rr Declaration of Independence; then rnen School Board as the "progressive candidate," the first woman on of all races and nations had come to our shores seeking freedom. the board for years. CHINA,S MTLLToNS iO it/oRKs o

Seattle was a "progressive city": in any hard-fought election, "Our America" was lost, and forever! The militarists had raped the people always beat "the interests" i.e. the monopolies that her to their bidding. I could not delude myself, as many did, pressed on us from New York. Seattle owned its light and power that this vras a "war to make the world safe for democracy." system, and a municipal wharf, and finally we bought out the I had seen democracy violated in the very declaration of war. private street-car lines for city ownership. We saw this as a !(here and how to begin again I had no notion. widening of democratic control afld even as the beginnings of socialism. We hardly noticed that after every '.victory for peo- ple's ownership," the profits of the big private enterprises increased. If the First I7odd War broke for mc, and for many American lWhen "City Light" assumed the task of giving electricity to citi- progressives, the faith in our peaceful, dcmocratic uniqueness, we zens' homes far-flung over many square miles of hills, this freed had our recompensc; we also became joint heirs of the world rev- Seattle General Electric, the private company, to sell power at olution. Across the flaming battle lines of Europe, across two lower rates and higher profits to the downtown concentrated seas and continents, we also, in the far northwest of the U.S.A., got industties. !7hen we bought out the street-car lines, the former signals from Moscow when the thunder of the October Revolution stock-holders got higher, safer income on our city bonds than awakened the wodd. they might have earned by the car lines in a period when auto The world's fournalists rushed to the battlefields, to the Ver- tfansport was coming in. sailles Peace Conference, to Moscorxu if they could get a visa. I If we saw that these "victories of people's power', were not admired them and arcanged lectures for them in Seattle but it did ,.inevitabtre entirely victories, we clung to a taith in progress" not yet occur to me to go. This was a world revolution; it began which would bring whatever the people wanted some day. This in Moscow but was coming around the world and would take us was the deepest faith in the American democracy of my youth. in. My battle-post was Seattle. When my peace movemgnt broke Towards the end of ryr6 we became aware that strong forces up at the declaration of war and only "my pacifist father and the were pushing America into the war in Europe. This, we were left wing of the trade unions still spoke out against the war, I had convinced, rvas against the American's people's wil1. So I helped begun to write as a volunteer for a small new revolutionary organize one peace movement after another, to keep America ne\ilspaper. The Seattle Daily Call lived for nine months on out of the war. We thought we succeeded when we elected debts and contributions and was then smashed by hooligans wreck- $Toodrow V7ilson as president on the slogan:",'He kept us out ing the presses. It was followed by a stronger, more "respectable" of war." V7e rvent oo the streets and collected signatures by labor paper, the Seattle Union Record, the first daily in the United the hundreds of thousands - across the country the total ran into States to be owned by a local labor council. I became one of its millions - showing that the people were 90 to 9, percent against editors and a delegate from its news-writers' union to the Seattie rVe going into war. telegraphed the results to rff/ashington almost Central Labor Council, where we often sat till midnight hearing daily to "support the hands of the President,,. Similar illusions speakers who had visited Moscow or reports of other uprisings have persisted down the years into Lyodon Johnson,s day. around the wodd. !7e heard of factories seized in Germany, Then this America whose people wanted peace and whose Soviets arising in Hungary and Bavaria, a mutifly of French sailors capitalists wanted war, marched right into the war in Europe. in Odessa, Koreans who proclaimed independence in the streets Nothing in rny whole life so shook the foundations of my soul. in white robes without weapons. AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO SELECTED WORKS oii "*o.n.r, all ovet ,r. #^,::.a:,,r- to rule, in every kind the American Friends' Service, on leave fronn the Union Record; of way. This seemed to us quite proper, part ol the inevitable later the Seattle Labour Council sent me a ctedential as observer march of p(ogress that would come to us too. We had not the to the Red Trade U.nion International Congress in r9zz. Finally, slightest idea of the problems involved in the seizure of power. I made my home in Moscow for nearly Jo years. I wrote about It even seemed to us that the Bolshevik Revolution, the British the Russian Revolution, both for the bourgeois press and increas- Labour Party which hoped to vote itself into office and the unarmed ingly for the workers' press that was sprcading through the world. Koreans shot down in the streets were all going in much the same I also tried to help in other ways in thc USSR. Ll my few months general direction. under the Arnerican Friends' Scrvicc I took the first cars of foreign Out of this confused thinking came our Seattle General Strike, relief food to the Volga famine in Samara in rgzr; later I helped which the capitalists called the "seattle Revolution" and which organize a tarm colony for homeless children on the Vglga. Still books have since mentioned by that name. It was flo attempt at later in thc early Thirties, rvhen many American workers and revolution, though one disappointed newsboy said afterwards, "I enginecrs came to Russia to work in the constructions of the five- thought \re were going to get the industries," and others may have year plans, I organized the Moscow News* to serve their needs. had similar ideas. Basically it was a strike of solidarity with our It began as a weekly and gtew to a daily. At about this time I shipyard workers and a protest against l7ashington fot clandestinely married a Russian Communist who was also an editor and writer. interfering in their demands for better wages. It was so efiective He did not change the flature of my work but stimulated and as- that for three days Strike a Committee of Fifteen ran the city, sisted it. He died in the Urals in the Second I7orld War when I "permitting" the mayor to have "City protection Light as against was in the United States. hooliganism," giving perrnits garbage to wagons to collect "wet gar- Every year or two I went on lecture tour in Arnerica. At these bage only for health reasons" and supplying citizens with meals and tirnes I visited other revolutions on the way, in Germany, Mexico, milk for children through hastily organized voluntary agencies. Spain and China. During those years and under varied conditions When we called it off on the fourth day we thought it a victory. of war, I traversed the USSR by almost every possible toute, Then $Tashington closed our shipyards by cancelling contracts. through Finland, Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia and. direct by Our workers drifted to other cities for The young, the iobs. ship to Leningrad on the west, through the Black Sea on the south, daring, the revolutiooary went; the older rnen with homes and and by the Trans-Siberian or much more spectacular routes on the mortgages could not easily go. Our powerful labor mov€ment east. Thus once I went by plane from Alma Ata in Soviet Central withered from within. Our Labor Council became a place where Asia to Chungking when Hitler blocked all routes westward. After carpenters and plumbers fought for control of jobs. Our proud entered the Pacific lVar I flew by Lend-Lcase frcight plane Union R.ecord trirnmed its sails to suit advertisers. "Comrades" Japan from Fairbanks, Alaska, out over the Arctic and found that the were calling each other ttartors. What had become of our personally planted 1'worker's power?" American Vice-President Hcnry !flallace had selected vegetabtre seeds at thc first stop in the Soviet Arctic on a similar trip. Earlier I had gone with Borodin and the retiring That was why I went to Moscow, to find out how the Russians * Not the Moscow News that exists today but an earlier paper of which I did it. We had failed but they had succeeded. I went first for was one oI the editots. AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO SELECTED W'ORKS iX

O*rrrm from Hankow to Moscow by auto caravanl,ooo kilo- America have used sometimes one volume, sometimes both. In meters through northwest China and the deserts of Mongolia after these Selected Wotks we publish the first volume, and supplement the revolution in China collapsed in rgz7 in Wuhan. it with "Canton Prelude" from ry25; we omit the return trip to In all the years till after the Second .World rWar Moscow re- Moscow which had little connection with China's Revolution. mained my center, from which I wrote of the Russian revolution After the fall of revolutionary Wuhan I did not return'to China and of other revolutions around the wodd. for ten years. I had little interest in Chiang Kai-shek's regime in Nanking, which seemed only a new edition of warlord China, backed by one foreign impcrialism aftcr another but increasingly I first saw China in late ry25 precisely half my lifetime ago, when by the United Statcs. Chinese "Soviet arcas" were rising in I was forty years old. I have made six visits in all, choosing Kiangsi and in othcr parts of China, but were impossihle for a times when some revolutionary change seemed impo(tant and foreigncr to visit. Then the Long March of the Chinese Red also possible to see. In ry21 it was warlord China, with hints of Army, which began as a defeat in the southern provinces, became, change in the south, where a new revolutionary government had t'y a change of leadership to Mao Tse-tung, a spectacular shift of been set up by Dr. Sun Yat-sen in Canton under a coalition of the base to the northwest, which electrified all China, and brought the Kuomintang and the Communists. I visited this government Communists to the forefront of the national resistance to Japa* when it was acting as host to the great Canton-Hongkong Strike. A new united front was formed with Chiang's government which, ril/uhan. Two years later, in r9z7,I went up the Yangtze River from Shang- defeated in Shanghai and Nanking, had moved to hai to see the revolutionary government in Wuhan. I remained In late t977 | again went to China by ship from Italy to Hongkong in Wuhan until its government ceased to be revolutionary and and thence by plane to Wuhan. From Hankow, under the temporary began suppressing workers and peasants; that was when I travelled conditions, I was able to go by the special train of Yen Hsi to Moscow with Michael Borodin and the returning Russian ad- shan, the Shansi warlord, to the headquarters of the famous visers by auto across China's northwest and the deserts of Mongolia. Eighth Route Army, where the Communists, under Chu Teh as During my stay in Wuhan I also iourneyed south into Hunan where Commander-in-Chief, were already working out the strategy and the revolution had been "reddest" and had been suppressed but tactics which is today described as "people's war." At Chu Teh's where the stories of it, told even by its enemies, tcstified to the headquarters in the South Shansi hills I was present during a power and nature of the new forces arising in China among workers military conference to which three divisiofl commaflders came and peasants. across the Japanese lines. They were Lin Piao, Ho Lung, Liu These first two visits gave the material for my book "China's Po-cheng, still today among China's top leaders. Millions" which deals especially with the revolution in \fluhan At that time, in Jantary 1938, they had already restored Chinese and in Hunan. This book has been published in difierent ways government in thirty county towns and were getting radio teports' in several countries. In Moscow it appeared as two separate books, of two or three skirmishes daily in various parts of North China' the first on "Ma,ss Revolt in Central China", the second on rny They r,vere winning because they had the full support of the trip "From Hankow to Moscow". In the American and British edi- Chinese peasants. The Chinese peasants had always hated sol- tions, these two \i/ere combined into a single volume under the diers, but the Communists showed them a new kind of soldier, title "China's Millions". Other editions in Europe and Latin who never raped or looted but respected the peasants and helped AUTHOR'S PREFACE TO SELECTED WORKS xi

lr., *., in their n,,".j":::';r-r; taushr the people theit and put up posters inside the city walls; eastward they had reached ovrn strength and the way to fight and win. the Shantung coast and held the,port of Chefoo long enough to I reported Chu Teh's message: "!fle believe that the hope of run in supplies. This "unruly expansion," even though it was at saving China lies largely in the mobile units of North China. The Japan's €xpense, annoyed Kuomintang generals who had been un- old forces cannot beat Japan; we must release new forces.,, Already able to defend their own towns. From 1919 onwards, sundry students, professors and doctors were travelling in hardship and KMT generals in North and East China had been attacking peril to these Japanese-encircled areas where, protected by the Communist-led troops and cvcn signalling their location to japa- Eighth Route Army, they taught teading and writing, hygiene, poli- nese planes. Chou En-lai gavc n1c a Iong account of these attacks tics and defense to peasants. Some of them I met and learned which he askcd mc n<-rt to publish until hc sent me rvord. to know on the special train that took me to that front. I wrote "Both sidcs arc still silcr.rt about thesc clashes," he said. "We a book about this trip, "One-Fifth of Mankind.,, do not wisl.r to incrcase friction ar-rd Chiang does not want his Not long did that Indian summer of Kuomintang-Communist Amcrican backcrs to know that any disunity exists in China. But co-operation last. Kuomintang generals, who fearcd the popularity if thc armcd clashes increase, we waflt the informatioir to be ready the Communists were gaining in the north by their success in to, rclcase abroad." otganizing the peasants against Japan, began to attack the Com- I was on the steamer approaching San Ftancisco in Jautary r94r rnunist forces from the rear. Many of Chiang's generals in the when one of Chiang's generals staged the notorious massacre of north went over to Japan and fought the Cornmunists as Japan,s the rear guard and hospital of the New Fourth Army. In New puppets. This was leniently regatded in Chungking; they called York a mesrsage reached me: "Fublish what you know." \7ith it "beating the enemy by curved line method.,' it came an additional document, the oflicial order by the Chinese In late r94o, wishing to go from Moscow to America and finding Communists to reorganize the New Fourth under instructions to that Ftritler blocked all routes through Europe, I flew from Alma continue fighting the Japanese "while guarding against'the pro- Ata to Chungking, the capital to which Chiang had retreated, and Japanese traitors of the rcar." At that time, a month after the thence over the Japanese lines to Hongkong. In Chungking I massacre, Americans still believed that the rnassacre hacl been only interviewed Chiang for the first time. He smiled primly and said: a discipiining of unruly troops in which the Chinese Conamunists "yes, yes," which meant nothing. I also talked with Chou En-lai concutred. This was the only version perrnitted by the Chungking whom I had first met briefly in Hankow in 1938. He was in Chung- censorship. king as represenrative of the Eighth Route Army, still officially I released in the New York headlines the story that Chiang no one of Chiang's armies. Ir was said that he could stay in Chung- longer ruled a united China nor commanded a united army. T'hus king somewhat more safely than other Communists because he had it was learned by Chiang's bankers. A more detailed account ap- saved Chiang's life in the Sian Incident. He was not entirely safe, peared in Amerasia magazine and will be published in these Select- however, and received me late at night in an obscure part of the ed Works. \7hat cffcct my revelations had I have no means o[ city. knowing. Probably not much. People with better connections than I The Cornmunists, I learned, had already half a million men in had with the U.S. government - "China expcrts" of the U.S. State their armies all ovet North and East China. Northward they had Department and General Stilwell, commanding U.S. aid to China contacted the Manchurian volunteers, cut railways around peking - we(e informing l7ashington that Chiang was not a reliable ally teii l's PREFACE To SELECTED WORKS xiii against But Stilwell request and Japan. was recalled at Chiang's was the basic strategy that won the Chinese revolution; it has today the "China experts" were later forced out by McCarthy. By becorne an essentiai part of the theory of "people's war." eatly Chiang used American equipment fight the Chinese ry41 to By mid-September the Communist-led Liberation Arrnies had C,ommunists, with the knowledge the U.S. representatives in of doubled the number of county towns they held in north China and China, even while the war against was For twenty Japan on. were approaching Shanghai. Thcy could havc taken that ciry with years since the war, W'ashington, knowing that Chiang Japanese the welcome of its workers but rcfrainccl, to avoid a clash then had lost China, has continued to finance Chiang. r,vith America. Washiogton, frrilirrg to givc Chiang control of North China by its zrir-lift, scrrt Gcncral Gcorgc C. Marshall to ne- gotiate. Marshall sct up in Pcking a kind of super-government After the defeat of I made my fifth trip to China in Japan June called "Exccrrtivc I{caclquartcrs," rvith equal representation of ry46, flyir,g from San Francisco to Shanghai by converted U.S. Kuomintang ancl Communists under Amcrican chairrnanship. In Army plane without seats. It was the period known as the all thc contcstcd fortified cities, sorne forty in number, "Truce Marshall Truce. Chiang was openly fighting the Chinese Com- 'Icams" were set up, also consisting of and Communists under munists without much success. General Marshall, under the forms KMT U.S. oflicers as chairrnen. The Truce Teams were connected with of making truce, v/as trying to edge the Communists out of the territories they had liberated from the a type of policy Executive Headquarters by U.S. army planes which carried supplies, Japanese, rnail rWashington today attempts in Vietnam. and also correspondents who wished to report the war. I pass over the fact that all this apparatus, supposed be When Japan surrendered in September ry4r, Chiang, routed by to ercanging cease-fire localities, Japan's final drive through Hunan, had been isolated in southwest in various actually kept throwing China and could not get to the north or to the sea without territory to Chiang. Nor shall I commenr on the way thar U.S. American aid. The "Liberated Areas" of the Communists reached pilots were enabled to map all North and East China very thorough- from the Yangtze north to Harbin and from the Mongolian deserts ly from the air. I note only that any accredited correspondent could to the sea, interrupted only by strips of ruilway and fortified cities for thd first time travel to all the controversial spots in China's held by Japanese or by former KMT generals who had traitorously civil war and even free of charge. become Japan's puppets. Chiang quickly restored these generals I decided at orice to stay as long as this situation lasted and to favor and ordered them to hold out against the Communists; at to visit as many of the Communist Liberated dreas as possible. the same time the U.S. forces instructed the Japanese not to According to Marshall's figures in his "Cease-fire Order" Januaty surrender to any "inegular" Chinese forces but to hold their posi- 1946, the Liberated Areas comprised 815,ooo sq. miles with tions for Chiang or American troops. Meantime the U.S. air r4o,ooo,ooo population, organized in cight sister areas with common {orce ak-Tifted Chiang's troops and goveroment administrations policies and a common postal system but without contacts with into the northern cities and sent orders to the Chinese Communist the outer wodd. For nine months I travclled those Liberated troops not to take new territory, an order which they disobeyed. Areas by plane, lived several months in Yenan, visited also Kalgan "Take the citie"s. Take the railways," was General Chu Teh's iust before Chiang took it, saw Liu Po-chcng's Four-Province atea order radioed from Yenan to the Liberated Areas in the north and in the heart of north China, and Lin Piao's Northeast area from east. The strategy of surrounding the citibs by the countryside Harbin to Tsitsihar. xizt MORKS xo

I rnust leave to "The Chinese Conquer China" the description I started back to China in September 1948 with the thought that of amazingly effective policies in government, economy, strategy this might be permanent. I took tcn years on the way. and every field of life, v,hich Mao Tse-tung's genius derived from !fl'hat first interrupted me \ras a five months' wait in Moscow his analysis of the Chinese peasants'needs: the land reform that for an exit permit into Manchuria, aftcr which the Russians arrested shifted its tactics with new situations yet liept always the final goal; me as a "spy" and sent me back through Poland. For six years the army strategy that yielded county towns while eliminating thcreafter no Communists anywhcrc in thc world would speak to Chiang's troops; the self-supporting government whose ministers me. !7hen Moscow exoneratcd n.rc in r9rr, srating that thc charge raised most of their food in their spare time and other inventions. had been "without grouncls" I agairr rcncwccl contact with China and Where else in history had there been an army of a million men again liad invitttit)n but mcaorinrc the U.S. State Dcpartment refuscd passport. that drew its replacements in men and munitions from the enemy mc a l:ivcn to ger out of the United States took mc a lcgzrl fight of three years. In August r95B Enaily reached and thus grew steadily for twenty years? "Chiang's soldiers are I Pcking for which I had started ten years earlier. very good soldiers," Mao told me with a smile. "They need only I founcl the type of work for which I had corne; it is to write some political training." Where others would have seen only the about China's Revolution for my fellorv-Americans especially enemy, Mao sav, within the cnemy, the Chinese farrnhand who - those in the new, rnounting struggle against the aggressive wars must be made a friend. Today the South Vietnam Liberation of U.S. imperialism which today threaren all mankind and for Army understands this approach too. - anyone else around the world -wiro may be interested; it seems the left Yenan by one the last planes I of American in early ry41- number of these has greatly grown. For I am issuing now a Letter "You must leave at once or you may be cut ofi," warned Mao. from China, which goes out in six languages to more lands than I "You go cannot rvhere we shall go. But you have now all the shall ever see, and rnore peoples than I l-rave ever known. I found material about us and will take it to the world. lfhen we again also the conditions of life and of travel, both material and social, have contact with the world, you may return." He thought this which enable me eveo at the age of eighty to seek for material and would be "in about two years." to write. I found the same cornradeship and ciear thinking that had stimulated me in Yenan. Beyond this I found more than tr had expected: a wider au- \7hen I left-Yenan I knew that Chioa, under the Chinese Com- dience than I had ever had, some of it in iands I had barely heard mtrnists, was what I wanted for the rest of my life. For this of, where people in national liberation movements want to know there were many reaisons, too long to give in a preface but I hope "China's way." For Peking also is the center of a world. they may appear in the following books. Basically it was because in the discussions in Yenan I felt my own mind expanding and rcahzed that in recent years I had felt it contracting in Moscow into rigid forms. I said: Russians are concentrating now on building Great Russia, but Russia is not my country. The Chinese still think in term of the world revolution where I belong. For the wodd includes and transcends my country. November r96y CANTON I'RI]I,UDE.,'.

Autumn 1925 fN l^t. lgzy I visitcd Chirra on my way from Moscow to Van- couvcr. I hacl bccome a writer on revolutionary changes, living in Moscow, colnmuting to the United States to lectures and stopping in other intercsting lands on the way. For several years revolu- tionary forces had seemed to be stirring in China: the May 4th studcnt movement in ryr9 that overthrew a cabinet in Peking, a struggle in Shanghai in ry25 in which British shot down Chinese workers, and in the sarne year the great Canton strike and boycott against Hongkong. I went to see. As day by day on the train I saw Siberian plains unroll to the great forests, down by the Khingan range to Ltrarbin, Mukden, Peking, I found that my four years in Soviet Russia (where I had handled relief to the rgzr Volga famine ar,d later helped organise a farin colony of horneless children) had equipped me to see the continent of ,\sia as an American seldom sees it. Instead of exotic cult.ure of shrines and ancient palaces, strange customs, laws and religions, that make most w€sterners say "the inscrutablc East", I saw there vast peasant populations of many nationalities - Russians, Buriats, Koreans, Chinese-all more alike each other than they were like any Amcrican farmer. Great rural areas werc shaken by famine when primitive meas- ures failed against drought, yet remained bound in a farm and family routine for centuries unchanged. F'rom them peasant workers migrated to newly built factories where they lived in bar-

* This chapter was not included in the original book but is compiled for this edition from articles published in 1925. It is included here as my first trip to China. CHINA'S MILLIONS CANTON PRELUDE , racks without farnily life. Al1 these conditions came from the giving them Mongolian farms in payment. I also met Feng's prirnitive forms of production. Now these forms were crashing wife, Li Teh Chuan who later became Minister of Health in Peking across earth's mother contineot. For the raiboad, the factory, the and who still occasionally reminds mc when we meet that we first industrial civlTization of the west were inexorably peoetrating met in the Mongolian deserts forty years ago. Asia. They came in two forms between vrhich was war irecon- Feng's expressed program maclc him popular with western cilable: by naked exploitation in the south by the world's im- liberals. tsut "old China hancls" atnusccl tl.rcmsclves with anec- perialisms and by the Russian revolution in the north. dotes about his "ttcason" to allics, which was balanced by their In China there was no national governrnent in the modern sense. treason to hitn, and his flattcring llrussagcs to cncmics; they called There were warlords temporarily supreme in provinces. Peking this "typically Chirrcsc". Pcking was chuckling at the moment was no actual capital; it was a cliplomatic convenience for foreign at a tclcgram hc hatl scnt to Chang Tso Lin offering to lend his powers. It was also the crown which one warlord after anothet trool)s to his cncrny "if you n€ed them to run your errands". set on his head. If London or Tokyo wanted a piece of China, Wlrcn I askccl him how many provinces he would handle with his they bribed an ofiicial in Pcking for his signature. If that didn't prcscnt forccs he replied with fclicity: "Even to manage one work, they financed a new warlord to take Feking long enough to provincc properly is too much for my inexperience." He was sign a treaty. That made it "Legal" for the world. grabbing three or four. Feng was the only one of the three war- As for what the Chinese thought, nobody asked them. Their lords who helped make later history, some of which will aPpear proverb said: "The government dec(ees cannot get out of Pe- in the present book. king's gates." Peking also had students; it was a city of several univer- Three warlords in those days surrourded Peking and took it in sities. Foreign residents were startled by the gteat May 4th tutn. They were Chang and Feng and Wu. Chang Tso Lin, movement it r9t9 in which the students demonstrated against Japan's puppet, lived in Shenyang (Mukden) in what was called in Japan's demands on China until Peking's traitoroud govern- those days "Oriental" splendor, meaning many concubines, lavish ment.fell. This meant to foreigners that China's gove(nment was jade and silks; he received interviewers in a throne-room decorated weak; they did not deduce that China's students were strong- with stufied tigers and half a million dollars worth of iade. I They wrote notes home about students and then turned to more didn't go. interesting business, such as shopping for iade and silks in second- Americans were showing interest in Feng Yu Hsiang, who held hand shops outside the wall. the arid lands of the northwest. American missionaries called him I personally fell in love with Peking. "If I had any real work "the Christian general" and admired his laws against opium and here I would like to live here," I said even in ry25. Years later the discipline of his t(oops. So I travelled two days northr.vest when the People's Liberation Army swept north China and my to Feng's camp in the Mongolian deserts, and nearly ftoze to friends in America waited for them to take Naoking and set up death in a blizzatd on an unheated train. I found a stolid man, their capital, I laughed: "Nanking is a suburb of Shanghai's com- tall and strong v,ho recited his program with a bored but courteous merce. Peking will be the capital." I had no inside wotd from air. "China's first need is to push eclucation until everyone can Mao; I just knew Peking. read and wtite. The second need is to build roads and railroacls." In Peking I met Fanny Borodin who I had known in Moscow Feng kept his soldiers busy building roads and developing tetritory, until she suddenly vanished with her husband; I had r:ot known @

4 CANTON pTaELUDE 5 where they had gone. Fanny told me that Michael Borodin was going to Hongkong. But as a correspondent you should see both adviser to the new nationalist government arising in south China; cities. I will write my brother in Canton to help." he had corne on request of Sun Yat Sen. "You must visit us in I went to Hongkong first. Undcr the impact of the Canton Caoton," she said. "Canton is modern China." Communications strike and the blockade the strikcrs hacl traintaincd for six months between Hongkong and Canton had for months been broken by a by a line of pickets for a hundrctl milcs along thc coast, Hongkong great strike; no Canton boat would meet a British steamer. was dying. Its banks appcalccl to I-onclon for hclp against "I shall ask the Strike Committee for a permit for you," she bankruptcy; the city rvns losing ovcr:l rnillion clollars a day. An said. Amcrican in thc consulrtc saicl ro lrc: "You ]girl who had come with her. "This is Cynthia gate." Liao. You have heard no doubt of her father, Liao Chung Kai, Inside the house of Liao the women's cornmittee was gathering the labor leader who was recently assassinated. '!fle are going to prepare fot a rnass-meeting to be held the following day. Mrs. at oflce to Mrs. Liao's home whete the executive committee of Liao, who,se kind, sad face had hidden with no cosrnetics the lines the Women's Section is meeting." of strain and exhaustion her recent bereavement had brought, Cynthia Liao, a flame-like creature of twenty-one, with dark welcomed me with smiles and tutned to busy herself with the sleek hair and quick-moving eyes, put a soft hand on ray shoulder details of prcparing for her tea-party. Over delicious, elaborate ancl said: "My father v/as one who stood foremost among the tlishc"- tlrc rliscussion of many matters went on. A girl in her common people of Canton. He had lust worked out a plan to twcntics with honcst, pcnctrating cyes, who had speflt seven stabilize our money and finance our province. That was why rrrontlrs itr Mosc<.lw "lcarning zrbout revolutions", discussed the they killed him, because our strike and our revolution are suc- corrrirrl3 tnirss-nrccting ,uvith an intcllectual woman of forty, head of ceeding. But my father's ideas will live arnong the workers. In thc Womcn's Normal School. Othcrs spoke of a recent vicbory his memory, I also am studying silk culture in Canton Christian in rvhich the l7hampoa cadcts had taken the walled city of College because he said silk culture was a grcat necd among the Weichow and said that now was the time for the women to peasants of our province." organise a Red Cross Society. Suddenly I recalled whete I had heard that name, "Liao Chung They also noted that a "pirate raid" presented a problem. A I(ai". A Hongkong paper had said: "That notorious labor-leader week before my arrival, three steamers had come up the river, painted to resembLe Canton government ships. Anchoring near .. . he sent his children to Canton Christian College. .. ." The 'and paper demanded that children of such people be kept out of decent a missionary college they had raised a fire alarm then schools "lest they contaminate the students". This little Miss kidna.pped the first fifty students r.vho appeared. Then they sent Liao by my side in pale blue linen, not even in mourning, was word from theit hiding place in the delta that the expedition had the girl who was doing the "contaminating". cost them $ro,ooo, and they expected it back with a profit. On the wharf we took the dark maroon automobile of Mrs. Liao "This is a rnove from Hongkang," agreed the women, mention- and drove through Canton streets. Cynthia called my attention ing the name of the gangster in Hongkong at whose house the to several wide streets r.vhich Sun Yat Sen had widened, and which pirates met. Everything, they said, must come in its order. It was akeady made Canton the most modern city in China. She pointed less than two years since the Kuomintang had been teorganised and to a rough dirt road, still unfinished, which the strikers were build- set up a revolutionary government in Canton. "We have defeatecl ing as their gift to Canton for its hospitality to coflnect Canton three counter-revolutionary armies," they said, "and consolidated with Whampoa, its port and military base eleven miles down-river. three-fourths of the province. Now we shall have to clean up "The strikers are strengthening our city," she said, "to temind the pirates." Later, in 1926, would come the expedition to the us of this strike forever." north. Above the house of Liao floated a banner whose Chinese charac- Every step of the way had been won by struggle. Even the ters Cynthia translatecl: "Undying Spitit." "'We have taken it widening of a few st(eets in Canton had been bitterly opposed by CFIINA'S MILLIONS CANTON PRELUDE g the metchants, whose shops had to be torn down or moved back. racial fight; it is not a Chinese-British fight. TeIl the workers of But after it was done, and the light and air came in and the shops tlre west from us: we are part of thc worlcl tcvolution." became brighter and healthier, and could load goods into autos The united front of the strikcrs with thc Canton gcvernment right at their doors, prcperty vatrues went up fast and the merchants was, however, an unstable alliancc. Sill<-clacl officials felt uneasy all profited and asked to have a joint celebration of the widening at the streogth of these wotl(cIs, which r.vas hclpiog them to unify of their streets. "So now, africially, the streets were widened by a province. W'orkcrs rcsctttctl [hc n;rpcrrltrcc of silkcn officials, cooperation of the merchants with the city goverllmeflt," said one but used thcir hos;'ritrtlity:rgninst tlrc Ilriti.sh cxploitcrs. There ()rntott; of the womefl, with gentle, understandiog malice in her eyes. was friction in tlrc vcry nil ol' tltcrc was also power. At the strike committee next day I learned the story of the Could thc cotnlritrrrtiort l:tsL/ asked "The strike and its relations with the Canton gove(nment. It began as "lior:t tirrtt'," rtttsr.vcrccl 1]oricliu, r,vhcn I him. a sttike in Hongkong of a hundred thousand Chinese workers who nrcrclr;rnts w:ur( rr 'slirlrlc' govcrnment, by which they mean one rrwn They clear out bandits, build demanded "free speech and the right to open union halls; abolition rrrrrlt'r' tlrt'ir control. want to currency and other things of corporal punishment for workers; equality of Chinese and British ro:rrls, cst:rblish industry, have a stable tlr;rt:rrc good for This brings them into conflict with the before thc law; rcprcscntation in thc Hongkong municipal govern- trade. Il'itish imperialists with r,vhom the exploited workers are in irre- ment of thc Cl'rincsc who formcd 99 pcrccnt of the population. concilable conflict." Homelcss, pcnnilcss strikcr.s lcft Ilongkong ancl wcnt to theit "But surely everyone wants stable government in China," I native villages in I(wangtung provincc for shcltcr. Forty thousatd protested. "People have different views on how to get it and who of them thus came to Canton, whic[r was alrcady the center of should control. But all the capitalists in Shanghai and Hongkong new nationalist government, sct up by Sun Yat Sen, arid the want stable government; they complain that China's disorder hurts "adviser" by Sun Sen be- Borodin was their ofiicial invitcd Yat business." cause of his knowledge of tevolution. "It does," said Borodin, smiling, "but it gives the foteigners Under his advice the Kuomintang had been reorganised in control of what business there is. The more disorder reigns in Ja:rrtary rg24, to admit Communists, whosc spccial interest was China, the more Hongkong and Shanghai profit from their mo- to organise workers and peasants. The sympathy which many nopoly of security. Generals keep their military funds in foreign Canton merchants, for a generation overshadowed by their British- s€ttlements; millionaires run there for shelter. Chinese shipping rival port Hongkong, felt for the Chinese strikers, was solidified seeks foreign flags and pays tribute to foreigners' China's chaos into cooperation. Canton gave the strikers the einpty houses left enables foreigners to loot the country." by a recent ctrean-up of gambling dens and the military camps left I was not convinced; I thought he talked in paradoxes. I was by half a dozen evicted generals. From this Canton base the to remember these words year after year. strikers organised for a hundred miles along the coast the line of In Canton I went to the mass meeting of r,5oo women. They r,5oo pickets that strangled Hongkong. asked me to speak about Russia. Where had I seen such faces? Seamen chiefly le.d them, their olclest modern unioo. Su Chao Grim faces of struggle? I remembered a meeting of women in Chen was president both of the seamen and of the general strike. Kiev who had lived through many bombardments' I talked to He told rne: "There are r4o unions taking part. This is not a the Canton women about the conditions out of which Russia made CHINA'S MILLIONS her revolution, the ignorant villages, the patriarchal homesteads, the enslaved \yomen, the factories with their barracks life. I told of Dunia, a textile worker in Moscow and how she livcd before and after the revolution. I told how the women of her factory organised a hospital and a factory dining-room, and took the CFIAIITtr,R I manager's house for a day nursery. STOPPING IN SIIANGIIAI These women of Canton understood the details of Russia's rev- olution better than any American audience I ever had. It was May r<127 their own life as it had been and might be, I recalled that lvlts. Liao had said: "Our Chinese women are slow to awakeo for they are bound by many harsh traditions, but when they are awakened, they are very strong to endure." llVf iN l:rl orrt orr thc Pacific Ocean on the spaciously luxurious After four days in Canton I left for my lecture tour in America, Arrrt'r it nn lirrt'r wc felt the influence of approaching China. knowing that I should watch from afar this revolution in China Wt lclt it, ratl.rcr strangely, by silence. China dropped out and that it would bring rnc back to China again. ol' thc ncws. The daily newspaper of the ship printed on board and consisting mainly of jokes and information about deck sports or bridge tournaments, contained also the tadio information of floods on the Mississippi, divorce suits in Los Angeles, murders in Chicago, hopelessly hopeful conferences in Geneva. But not a word about China, ot Japa.t., or afiy points to the East. Yet, urhen we had left San Francisco, the front pages were flaming rvith the split between Nanking and Hankow, the entrainment of more and more troops from England, and the departure of ctuisers from the Pacific Coast of Arnerica for the scene where issues were being contested which might mean world peace or world war. VTas it true, as our lack of news suggested, that everything had quieted and ceased to have "news value"? Later, I learned the reason for this silence. One of the pas- sengers asked our captain just before we reached Yokohama why there seemed to be no news from the East. The captain smiled. "V7e get the news," he said, "but we do not publish it. V/e have a Chinese crew. The beggats are so excited about politics that when we publish news about China they don't wotk but iust stand around discussing the Revolution. The news from Japan we edit out for the same (eason, to create the impression that we STOPPING IN SHANGHAI I2 CHINA'S MILLIONS r) have no radio connection with the East. We have chiefly these cies. I7e foreigners \rere still the elect of the gods; the customs excitable Cantonese on board. If they onae get to fighting among officials did not even open our passports but merely glanced at themselves over this Nanking-Flankow business, . . . well, good- the red leather cover which announcc'd us Americans and waved night." With such cheerfully callous American efficiency did our us past to the streets of thc city. Thcrc wc found rickshaw men captatn deal with his Chinese crew and their Revolution, in the glad to get ten or fiftccn ccnts for pulling thcir human freight short interests of the speed of his ship and the comfort of his care{ree, distances to the hotcls of Shanghai. I passcd by thc park on the careless passengers. Bund, rcservccl only for "wlritc foll

In the ten days which he had iust spent in Japan, he told me have lret feet bound and, as a gir1 of fourteen, she had refused the that he had received a pile of calling cards 6ve centimetres thick betrothed chosen for her; later shc had carried bombs in Peking from lapanese coming to ask about China. to kill the Manchus. But her revolt had been solely for the old "Japanese people," he said, and seemed to believe, "are so families of China against the Manchus, and for her own tight as sympathetic with the Nationalists of China that they force their a woman to do as she liked. Sinccrcly intcrested in "women's goyernment to a policy of non-intervention." rights," she had takcn forty Chincsc girls abroacl to study in The only hopes which this Americanized Chinese professor had France, where thcy hacl .stu

$zere mentioned; there were supposed to be officers to inspect the Iooting, fear. We rejoice that on October roth you were freed candidates, accepting only those who were physically fit for display. under the blue sky and white sun! [Kuomintang flag.] Though This was a peculiady nasty rumour; for the Chinese, whose men we were happy to get the city open, we rizere unhappy to see and boys often go half naked in hot',rzeather, expect their women such pitiful people. . . . to be meticulously modest. "The Revolutionary Army must get tid of the suffering of the r#e A discredited missionary, said to have been dismissed from people. and the people are one - in our sorrov/s, peace neady every mission board in China, got out carbon copies of a and danger, in getting tid of hindrances, in getting a full life, supposed letter from Hunan, claiming that "by a new law, all girls in getting free from imperialism and militarism. over sixteen must be marcied within one month or the govern- "The light of the Revolution has come to l7uchang; Chekiang ment will provide husbands for them." With this letter he sent is free; Fukien is taken. !7e can all together solve the difiicul- a picture of the costume said to be worn by the womefl prcpa- ties in Hupeh. . . . gandists with the Nationalist Army; it was a vety scanty bathing "Imperialism and militarism disappear before our faces." suit so drawn as to look grotesquely immodest. Mingled with these Here is another from the Fourth Army to the people of !7uhan: wild tales were very many other stories with some foundation, such as the seizing of foreigners' prope(ty by trade unions an.d peasants, "Up to this time to see a soldier was like a rat seeing a cat. unions. You wete so frightened you couldn't run fast. . . . If you couldn't To oppose these vatious tales, some of the liberal forces of escape you said: 'Most exalted Sir.' ... But this time of fear is Shanghai, chiefly Americans, were circulating whatever correct over; oov/ you can play under the blue sky and white sun. !7e information they could gain from up-river. It was thus that I soldiers of the Fourth Army are from the factories, fields, shops first saw copies of the revolutionary placatds from the walls of and schools. . . . Because we were oppressed we joined.the army. ril/e Wuchang, which were mimeographed by some liberal-minded and you, though our clothes are different, have the same secretaries of the Young !7omen's Christian Association, and sent spirit. !/e are flo longer 'Most exalted Sir'; we are you,t soldier not only to friends in Shanghai but in hundreds of private letters friends. We hope you will spread the word that together to America. They also urged me to go up-river to Hankow. ..There we fight imperialism, militarism, bad ofiicials, grafter.s, great landowners. . . Because is a new revolutionary spirit alive there which is difierent from . of the ioy of this little reioicing don't forget your enemies past anything we ever saw in China." Certainly the placards they and sufferings. "\flork a published showed a new spirit; surely never before have the soldiers fot National Assembly. Down with unequal treaties. of a victorious army atter. any siege spread such proclamations, Unite!" calling for the "get-together" of people and soldiers. Here is one: Here is a more definite programme, also taken from the Fourth "From the Fifteenth Army Administration to the people of Army: U7uhan: "Now that we have taken !7uchang, we must: "'S7e are sorry you had to suffer because it took us so long to Protect business take the city. For fifteen years you have suffered under the Get rid of heavy taxes North. For forty days you sufiered under the siege, hunger, Establish free speech for the people crrrNA's MILLIONS 26 uP THE YANGTZE 27

Protect people's organisatiorrs and help them increase. pened to have power of search in ar.ry cities along the river; {or Have a People's Assembly they were under Chinese law and accepted it. But the British, Set up good ofiicials Japanese, and occasional American ships, insisted on their right Do the will of the people. to immunity from search, and were coosequcntly often fired upon "All unite and enter the Kuomintang. Oppose \7u. Oppose by generals of one side or other when they failed to stop on signal. imperialism!" To this frre they replied with their ship guns, prcparing the way for "incidents." Such were the placards that came down the river from I-Iankow, The only protection our Gcrman ship had, as went through expressing the spirit and programme of the Revolution' it the war zone, was afiorded by four Chinese characters painted very large on both sides of the vessel, and meaning "Virtue Empire Trading Ship" "Virtue Chinese characters Three kinds of steamers went up-river from Shanghai. The - Empire" being the for Germany. By reason of this sign they passed peace up the British boats were running thrice weekly, travelling always slorvly in Yangtze and, when we approached either bank the river, in convoys with gun-boat protection. But they would not take of peasants or soldiers, of either side, fishing from little boats, waved women without a special order from the British ,\dmiral. The their hats in friendly greeting. On one occasion when desultory Japanese line had no obiections to women passengers. Being shooting was going on between Nanking and the port of Pukow on Orientals, they lacked the British pose of chivalry which assumes the othet side of the river, and a German trading ship approached, that women's lives are more valuablc than men's lives' But their the shots stopped, not to be resumed until it had passed. Such ships had stopped running for lack of cargoes from Hankow. There was the Chinese courtesy to noncombatants. remained the German ships, which also admitted women, not A11 but one of our twelve passengers were womefl, who had from lack of chivalry but because they knew quite impersonally been unable to travel on the teg:ular British steamers. A Russian that life was perfectly safe in Flankow. A11 the German merchants gid at my table, was a supervisor in the Chinese Telephone Ser- were staying there, together with their wives and children, in spite vice at Hankow, which employed her as expert. She told me the deadly heat of Hankow summer had already of the fact that why she had left and why she was now returning. "Those labour resorts were inaccessible behind various fronts begun, for the hill unions got so awful that I, as a foreigner, simply couldn't maflage of battle. the ofiice. So I said to the boss: 'I'm going to take my vacation. regular river service but, from time The German lines had no Wire me when it calms down a bit.' . . . So now he wires that the time, an ocean-going freighter, passing from Japan thtough the to unions are not so strong any more, and I'm going back to my iob." leave Shanghai China ports and the Indian Sea to Hamburg, would Thi,s was the first clear hint I had of the change in Hankow. go to l-Iankow directly from Woosung, to one side, and up-stream My cabin mate was a German 'lroman who had lived many got passage the little town at the mouth of the Yangtze. Thus I years in Hankow. "Unfortunately," she added, when she told me on the S.S. Sacbsen This steamer went unarmed and without any this. I asked her why she considered life in Hankow unfortunate gun-boat gun-boat escort, The effect was to make the usual British and she replied that it was deadly dull. The only duller place, she escort seern a trifle ridiculous. The Germans also stopped willingly said, was Kiukiang (the city below Hankow where the. British to submit to search from any local Chinese authorities who hap- concession had also been seized by the Chinese). Seeing my uP THE YANGTZE 28 CHINA'S MILLIONS 29 amusement at her statemeot she explained it. "There is no taking place, for it was May 1o, the anniversary of. the Shanghai place to go in Hankow except the tacecourse. No theatres and massacre. A tribune was set on the summit and around it were only two 'kinos.' There used to be a band but it left after 'the crowds of white-clothed people. More than twenty flags waved trouble'" (the phrase by which respectable foreigners in Hankow above them, practically all of them red. We could discern one allude to the Chinese seizure of the British concession). "If you banner of red with the letters U.S.S.R.. across it in Russian' Most want to take a walk, there are only two places," she continued. of the flags, however, were Kuomintang emblems, bearing in the "Either you stroll along the Bund, or you go to the r.acecourse. corner the "blue sky and white sun." A few hours more dragged Deadly clull, nothing whatever doing. . . ." by, during which the blazing sun of Central China grew ever hotter This, then, v/as the Hankow to which I was going as the most and hotter, warning us of the hell of heat we might expect in July. exciting spot on earth's surface, the place where the dice were Then we passed the Standard Oil tanks and the miscellaneous being sha-ken which might decide the question of an Anglo-Russian fringe of foreign industry, and came in sight of the Hankow water- war, with China as battlefield, the place rvhere the form of China's front, thickly lined with foreigtt gun-boats. We came slowly up to future was being forged with pain and struggle under the extreme the dock of the city, then widely named abroad as the capital of handicaps of poverty, blockade, and clashing interests. . ' . "Du11, Bolshevism in China, but where aheady, as our woman telephone deadly dull," she saicl, "only Kiukiang is duller." operator knew, the unions were losing po\{er and the red colour Peacefully our boat-load of women steamed up the Yangtze, was fading. knowing that we were in the midst of civil w^r, yet seeing no signs of it. Lazily we watched the sun rise and set on the yellow waters of the mighty river. Beginning at Woosung, where its gteat width makcs it seem like the sea and where its waves toss high frorn hoizon to hotizon, we gradually watched the banks from the florth and the south draw ncarer. From time to time we saril/ an English or American gun-boat, but even these seemed peacefully inactive in the hazy distance. At the river mouth, and agait at Nanking, were small Chinese war vesseis of the Nanking Government. Our last newspapers before leaving Shanghai had told of the break between Britain and the Soviets, and of a rupi'd, Nationalist dtive toward the north on both railroads. But on our boat a regulat German gong called to regular German meals and, in the cool of evening, a phonograph played fot dancing on the deck. For a space betrveen Nanking and the region under Hankorv the waters were bare of Chinese vessels, but presently scores of trading junks again appeared and, near the shores, the boats of fishermen. Three hours before reaching Hankovr we pas,sed a small village from whose hill-top a demonst(ation was RED FORCES IN HANKOW

Hankow's importance to the tevolutionary government lay in the fact that it is the chief industrial and commercial centre of Central China. It is the outlet for wheat from the north and for rice and tea frorn the south, for sesamum and wood-oil and many CHAPTER III tropical grains and othef rav/ products, coming to it down a thousand miles of back country by three rivers which meet here. RED FORCES IN HANKO\r This also has given Hankow its importance for foreign nations, who have established here territorial "Concessions" which occupy the main water-front. A beautiful modern boulevard known as the TffE city of Hankow' in May rg27, was known throughout Bund runs for perhaps two miles along the river, flanked on the the world as "Red Hankow," the seat of the left-wing government water-side by docks of foreign shipping companies and, on the of Nationalists. It is one of three cities facing one another across shore-side, by high modern banks, office buildings, and apartment the waters of the Yaigtze, and Han rivers, which meet at this houses. This area was formedy under the control of various point. Across the wide Yangtze, wide enough to be turbulently foreign governments - Japanese, British, German, French, Russian dangerous in winter storms, towers the ancient walled city of - each of which had its sphere of ownership and maintained its !7uchang, centre of provincial government and university learning own municipal government. The German Concession was for many centuries. The Nationalists had taken l7uchang aftet a abolished by the Allies after the World !Var. The Russian Con- long and terrible siege in which many of the inhabitants had died cession was given up after the Russian Revolution. The British of hunger and pestilence; they macle it the centre of their new Concession was overwhetrmed by mass action of organised workers Nationalist provincial governmeflt. In \Vuchang, met the first in the winter ry26-27. So these sections of land were known as "Provincial Congress of Feasants, utilising the historic provincial Ex-Concessions. Behind their strip of fine foreign buildings and assembly buildings near which the Revolution of rgrr had started. spacioirs streets came the crowded Chinese City, which surrounded Teng Yen Ta, issued at 'S7uchang thousands of colourful posters them on all sides except that of the river. from the army p(opaganda headquarters. I was invited to stay with Soong Ching Ling - Mrs. Sun Yat To the west of Hankow, across the narrow river Han, ctowded Sen - on the top floor of the Central Bank overlooking the Bund. with iunks and houseboats, lies the city of. Hanyang, famous for At the ent(ance to our building stood two neat little Nationalist its arsenal and iron works, which furnish the sinews of war for sentinels in uniform, with the "blue sky and white sun" emblem the Revolution. Hankow, a semi-foreign city, housed especially of the Kuomintang on their armbands. They guarded Soong that part of the Nationalist Government which maintained contact Ching Ling and the other treasures of the bank. At the top of the with foreign powers: finance, foreign afrairrs, railway administra- stairs, in front of our apartments, stood another soldier without tion, the official newspaper printed in English, the offices of High rifle. He always saluted when I arrived,, not because I was im- .$7uhao Adviser Borodin. The three cities together make up the portant but because he thought that anyone visiting Soong Ching cities, from which the Nationalist Government derived the name Ling might be. Around the building were spacious gardens where 'Sfuhan Government. the former owners of the Russo-Asiatic Bank enjoyed tennis, but cHINA',S MILLIONS 32 13 whete no'uv Soong Ching Ling gave garden parties to organise Red in her a vein of iron. I saw her hold firmly to her path through Cross aid for the wounded Nationalist soldiers. every possible family and social p(essure. Her friends sought The bank itself, which served as the governmental bank of the vainly to induce her to desert the revolutionary government of Nationalists, was not in happy condition. For many years Hankow Ilankow, even placing at her disposal a Japanese ship for flight, had been shut away from its nourishing hinterland as tides of mili- on the theory that she was being held unwillingly. When she made tary movements went to and fro, cutting ofi now the north, now it evident that she temained of her own free will, all the subtle the south, now the great western province up the Yangtze. To weapons of slander were turned against her, bespatteting not only the economic difficulty was added a financial catastrophe, when her reputation but Dr. Sun's memory as well. Her best-loved the silver reserves of the Central Bank were seized in Canton at brother, T. V. Soong, on u,hom she had hitherto telied as the time of the split with Chiang Kai Shek. The government piled revolutionary counsellor, cam€ to Hankow to negotiate a com- up monthly deficits. In Hankow itself there was a shortage o[ promise and to beg her to desert the !fluhan Government. silver currency, which the local merchants had hoarded and the Standing thus utterly alone, with even the most trust€d foreign banks had sent out to Shanghai, to the embarrassment of member of her family become an enemy, she never wavered in the revolutionary government. Every morning I could see, outside her devotion to the Revolution as Dr. Sun had envisaged it. my window, several hundred coolies waiting in line to get the She stood by his will for co-operation with communists and for great quantities of copper money which was necessary tor paying organising workers and peasants; as long as this was Wuhan's wages. No one was allowed to draw more than $5o worth at a position, she would not desert them. But when the timid liberals time, but this made a heavy sackful. of N7uhan swung into a militarist reaction, she refused to let Soong Ching Ling - Mrs. Sun Yat Sen - is the most gentle and tlre name of Dr. Sun cover such a betrayal. She then left exquisite creature I know anywhere in the world. Slight, clad in Flankow, giving out a statement o[ such severe denunciation that spotless linen cut Chinese style, she has a gracious which in dignity it was suppressed throughout the district controlled by \Wuhan. seems uosuited to the rough struggles of revolution. Coming of Thus'she btoke with her own patty at the end, fot the sake a wealthy'Shanghai family aod having been educated in at Ameri of the communists and peasants and workers. She who had can college, she has a sensitiveness which makes even a slight seemed in body and character so gentle, proved firmer and more discourtesy torture her. Yet revolution had claimed her; she was tenacious than any other mernbcr o[ the Nationalist Central dedicated to it, not only by her own devotion, but by the half- Committee. worship bestowed on her as Dr. Sun's widow by millions of simple I rernember the garden party which she gave to raise rnoney Chinese. She told me smilingly how she had eloped to Japan to for the Nationalist Red Cross. It was the first social event, in ioin Dr. Sun, breaking a betrothal to another man, which had been r:evolutionary Hankow attended by the representatives foreign arranged by het family and scandalising respectable Shanghai of - goveroments. Mrs. Sun sensed keenly the latent social frictions. "since no girl of a family like mine ever broke a betrothal." Joining her fortunes to this revolutionary idealist many years her senior, "So many people who have never spoken to us before," she she followed him from land to land in his struggles and now said to me, 'owho, even amoflg themselves, are not friends - devotes her young widowhood to the fulfilment of his lifelong Germans and French, English and Russians - they suddenly see dreams. Though in nranner courteous almost to softness, she has each other and stifien." It was a most incisive description of RED FORCES IN HANKO\T 14 fi society in Hankow - a little group of conflicting foreigners supports for a new organisation of society so that life may again facirrg a Chinese administration which they mutually distrusted. be stable. These supports must be, first of. all, the peasants and Outside, on the river, were more than a score of gun-boats, the workers. A so,ciety based on the satisfaction of these two ready at a moment's notice to fire on the city. Inside the garden, groups is well-bottorned, since the peasants are the givers of gun-boats eating ice-cream and the representatives of those were food r.vhich even primitive society needs, while the industrial behalf of drinking soda-pop w-ith Nationalist officials on workers sustain a1l that organised life we call civilisation. enemies. v-ounded soldiers whorn they tegarded chiefly as These two groups must therefore be sccure in theit basic needs; Over presided Mrs. Sun Yat Sen, aware of every social it all and they a(e flot so to-day. \Wages in }lankow have not increased friction, yet by the charm of her personality wringing aid even for nine years; though the cost of living has doublcd or tripled. from the enemies and postponing inevitable collisions, that she Yet our methods of production are so mediaeval that to satisfy might gain a breathing space for the northern advance of the the just demands of workers would bankrupt much of industry. revolutionary armies. This is our problem. The workers have seen it: they made . The spokesman to foreigflers on behalf of the Vfluhan Govern- demands and the factories closed. The peasants have seen it: rnent was Eugene Chen, Foreign Minister and one of the left- they attacked the gentry and the gentry refused them loans wing leaders. Born, not in China but under British rule in for spring planting. Now they starve. The peasants and w-orkers Trinidad, he had received an excellent Anglo-Saxon educatioo, have not the means to finance themselves; they must make and was far more at home in the English language than the alliance with the small bourgeoisie. must Chinese. He played therefore little part in the shaping of All unite and work together against the common enemies, which are political policies, but v/as extremely able in announcing them to feudal militarists and foreign imperialism." foreign governments. For this, indeed, he possessed a keenly This mild pronouncement, which expressed incisive command of English and a knowledge of English law the ofiicial point of view in May in Hankow, and literature beyond that of his diplomatic opponents. He ry27 had by no meafls sufliced the revolirtionary fervour the earlier also believed in co-operation with communists, and in organising of days of Nationalist victories. A few months previously, peasants and workers; having come to that belief neither through when the fire of the mass movemenrs, spreading northward any Marxist theory nor any personal rrJatrar, to the toiling masses, in the wake o[ victorious armies, was at its height, had but through the intellectual conviction that China's workers and it so infected the intellectuals in the Kuomintang peasants rnust be satisfied through fundamental changes before that they had outdone peasants and workers in the fierceness of a stable governmeflt can be possible in the land. their demands. In those days Sun F'o, the son of Dr. Sun by This was, it fact, at the moment, the ofiicial programme of his 6rst wife and a typical business man of the conservative sort, the Kuomintang, accepted even by those who later turned against had shouted: "Kill the gentry." Hsu Chien, elderly Minister it. Eugene Chen expressed it to me most cleady, in frequent of Justice with anarchist tendencies, made flaming speeches interviews in the Foreign Cf{ice. before great mass meetings in Hankow more extreme in their "China is still mediaeval," he said, "both in organisation and demands than those of the communists. Men of this type, mentality. But this mediaeval structure is breaking up, an

Thcy were faced by serious internal problems. Not only had Across the street from the Foreign Office was a stone building Chiang Kai Shek seceded* and established a governmeflt at whose lower floor housed Tbe Peoplds Tribune; above were Nanking, but many rninor generals in the heart of the Wtrhan the apartments of Michael Borodin, for four years Russian territories had declared for Chiang and had begun scattered Adviser to the Nationalist Government. Two young Ameriaan attacks in various places. I7hile these were in process of being ionrnalists, !7i11iam and Rayna Prohme, run The Peoptds Tribune suppressed, a definite military couflter-revolution started in the ancl the allied Natibnalist Nervs Agency, their task being to province of Hunan, led by the subordinates of Generai I'ang carry on propaganda in the Engiish language on behaif of the Sheng Chi. Yet Tang Sheng Chi was the chief general wbo Nationalists. More than any other individuals, thcy are re- was still considered loyal to }fluhan. During his absence at sponsible for the despatches to Arnerica on which was based the ttre northern front, his subordinate generals, mostly sons of landed liberal opposition in the United States which prevented armed fortunes of the Nationalists gentqr, grew impatient over seizures of rice and the setting up intervention. They had follor.ved the thence Hankow through four years of tribunals by peasants, and seized porver by force, suppressing from Peking to Canton and to rvere yet both remained peasants' organisatiols and killing their leaders. These mtlitary of labour. Neither of them Communists, with the left wing of Nationalism even after the collapse in diciators still declared allegiance to General Tang, who in turrr I'Iankow. They kept a left-wing Press aiive even after the left was the leading general of the S7uhan Government. Could wing itself had ceased to function. Then Rayna Prohme went Wuhan accept isuch a tainted allegiance? Would his government to Moscow and died therc, after se(vices to the Chinese Revolu- abandon its generals peasants? Caught between these two or its tion which are well worthy of comparison with those which anothcr forces, it srvayed back and forth, and ended a few weeks later American, John Reed, gave to the Russian Revolution. in complete reaction. Yet the slogans of the past still survived Michacl Botodin, invited four years before by Dr. Sun Yat Sen and wcre cxpressed by rnany who r,vere soon to abandon them. to coroe as Adviser to the Kuomintang Farty and the Nationalist Sun Fo, for instancc, outlined to me at this tirne a definitely Governrnent, lived and worked on the floor above The People's socialist programrnc and told me, with approval, how "of our Tibune. At the side entrance which led to the door of his eight ministries we givc two to the communists, the ministries apartmeflts, were always standing from one to haif a dozen of agricultute ar.rd labour, which are their special interests." A automobiles, belonging to officials of the government who had moment later he alluded to "this Fall when we reach Peking." come to consult him. Inside his various rooms, at all hour-s, At this period r'n Ftrankow it still seemed possible to a business day and night, meetings of the Kuomintang or the Communist rnan like Sun Fo to satisfy workers and peasants through two Party were going on. ministries, to placate soldiers by some other form of loot, ancl to To the English-speaking foreign comrnunity in Flankorv, Borodin advance with a united front to the glorious taking of Peking. rvas a force almost superhuman, Lrut hc was regardcd rather as a devil than an angel. "Have you really scen him? N7hat does + Though General Chiang had the superior military position, it is ccr:(ect tc he look like?" they would whisper. Ancl when they knew that speak of his govcrlment as a secession since, according to Sun Fo, of the thirty- I had met him several times and expcctcd to meet him again, six mernbers of thc Kuomintang Executive Cornmittee, clected at the last Party or Congrcss, t.rcnty-four were actir.ely working rvith Wuhan, and only six wrth they hardly knew whethe( to regard rne with unusual respect Chiang Kai Shek, while six were dead or inacive, unusual suspicion. They looked on him as the sole author of CF]INA'S tr[ MII,LIONS RED FORCES IN }IANKOW cvery new dccree or document, whether Eugene Chen's notes to Clrina was aheady in chaos, torn by civil strife between scores foreign governments, or Madame Sun Yat Sen's statement of her of mediaeval chieftains, all of whorn were robbing the masses reasons for leaving Wuhan. Every rnove hc madc rvas thc and reducing the nation's power to withstand foreign intervcntion. subject of excited comment. If he even chanced to sleep normally Fie believecl that it was the desire of the "imperialist nations" at night, and the light which often burned in his ofiicc till three to see such chaos continue, since it gave them excuse for continued in the motning was darkened, men passing the house after depredations and increased the control which they exercised in midnight and seeing it in darkness, would spread the word the strategic ports. He himself asked always one question: through Hankow that Borodin had "escaped last night in his "What so,cial groups in China have courage, coherence and dis- private aeroplane," which meant of course that the fall of STuhan cipline enough to organise a stable governmeot and create a was a mattef only of hours. Totally unused to expecting any ffirodern nation?" He held that these qualities were to be found ability in governrnent from the Chinese, and misled by the legend in the rapidly organising peasants and workers of China, and of the "strong man" under which Anglo-Saxon peoples have that the prcpff tevolutionary tactics was therefore to organise always envisaged the government of "backward flations," they and educate these elements, to the end that they might eventually were unable to see any governmental force anywhere except in take power and forrn a goverriment. At this time it was his Borodin" In this, as far as the actual members of the Wuhan view, and the general orthodox cornrnunist view, that the existing Government were concerned, they \yere not so far wrong. Alt revolution in China was a "bourgeois-democratic Revolution," of these rnembers were constantly coming to him, not only for i"e., a Revolution to clear China of foreign imperialism and the the advice which his long experience in many revolutions enabled rernnants of feudalism; but that such a Revolution could only hirn to give them, but even more for the strength of rcvolutionary be successful through an agtariat R.evolution ted by workers and pnrposc which hc had and which most of them lacked. Among including the seizing of land for landless peasants. "Only the them all, as thcy swaycd and compromised between the powcr inclusion of wide masses of toilers in the struggle," read the mass rnovcmcnts of the and thc powcr oI the militarists, he alone resolution passed in May, ry27, by the Communist International, seemed able to rnark out a clcar path and give reasons for it. "can cteate a strength which can overcome the sub-division of His teasons werc so sound and bascd on such broad experience China by the imperialists and smash the remnants of fcudal that, for a long time, they held even those mernbers of the Kuo- relations." mintang whose natutal inte(ests were against the movemeat of Foreign correspondents coming up-river for a week in "Red workers and peasants. Hankow" always asked first for an interview with Borodin and Borodin's importance in the Chinese Revolution lay in his usually received it. They came expecting who knows whar sort coflstant, intelligent study o{ economic forces and social groups of bloodthirsty extrcmist: most of thcrn left with such adrniration in China, interpreted by the light of many past revolutions. I that their newspapers would hardly publish their reports. The -ny have heard many otherwise well-informed liberals in China assert Itussian Adviser impresscd them thc dcfiniteness of his that the communist purpose, as illustrated in Borodin, was to statements, tare among China's officials; by his broad grasp o[ "plunge China into chaos in the hope that perhaps communism the forces that made China; and by the clearness with which he might emerge." I have never hearcl such a suggestion from aoy chose a path among them. FIe impressed them also by the more communist and certainly not {rom Borodin. He considered that pcrsonal qualities of fearlessness and re'\rolutionary devotion, and 40 cHrNA',S NITLLTONS 4I by an intuition which scemed to sense at oncc the rnind of his was thcir chief source of steadfastness and revolutionary purpose intervicwer and devise some easy approach to it. to the encl. One wonders how much the mere fact of his illness tsorodin was more or less ill rnost of the wceks I was in shortened the revolutiooary period of Wuhan ancl whether, if Ilankorv, with an old fever acquired during his four years in he had been able to go to the Chengchow conference for the the Chinese tropics, complicated by a broken arm. He rvoul

possible," "crazy" were the mildest ad jectives used regarding Ilcvolution, '"vhen did the metal workers begin to ger any benefit? these demands of the workers. The demands in fact, usually Did they benefit as soon as the exploiters were overth(own, or comprised the entire labour code of the sov.iet Unio., in,cluding clicl they have to suffer long and make many sacrifices before vacations with pay, social insurance, eight-hour day, wage in- t['rc Revolution was finally established and could give thern creases, hospital care, workers' clubs. In every case which came bcnefits?" Such u.ere the fundamental questions they were dis- to fiiy notice, however, the workers who made these dernands cr-rssing in Hanyang - the workers thernselves taking A conscious were willing to keep on working if they received a wage increase paft in developing a government. of a dollar or two per month, and recognition of their union. Many were the sairifices they were already rnaking for their The demands v/ere propagatda; an effective way of acquainting revolutionary governmeot. They gave up their demand lor an the workers with the ultimate programrne which lay before them. eight-hour day to work thirteefl to seventeen hours in the arsenal Extremely backward wer€ many of these workers, and very "because our revolutionary governrnent is menaced." They crude was the unionism devised to meer them. I recall, for postponed the demand for a child labour law; 1 myself saw instance, the workers on the dyke near Hankow, where thc children of seveo and eight working ten hours in Wuchang cotton walking delega-te, representing the trade union, seemed more mills and was told by union organisers, "Wuhan is blockaded; interested in achieving production than in meetiog the workers' we must not attack production and especially foreign-owned desires. He boasted in my presence of his purpose to prevent production." They had reason to sacrifrce for !fluhan, for a certain holiday and used, among his arguments, all inducements elscwhere their situation was far more serious. In Shanghai, from appeals to revolutionary loyalty to threats of flogging. Canton, and Hunan v-orkers were being executed. In !7uhan, Crude, tyraarical, yet the system he replaced had been crucler they still had the chaoce to raise their heads and argue a little. and more tyrannical still. The union, at least, had more than They wcre grateful for this meagre privilege. doubled the pay of the workers and was educating them nightly Meantirne the forces were gathering which woutrd take even for a rnore dcrnocratic use of their rights. The walking delegate tiris advantage from them. They were gathering even from the himself, who boasted of his power to arrest any man on the dyke, success of !7uhan's armies, which, in their northern drive, were became m.st humble when approached by a^y "labour committee," beating back their enemies and efiecting a junction with other since it was his chief ioy and function to form and incite such Nationalist forces, the People's Armies of Marshal Feng in the committees and thus p,iepare the way for thc submergence of north-west. A conference between these two groups was called his own autocf,atic power. to effect military and political union. The Military and Political Far more advanced than these primitive dyke-workers .wer€ Councils of Wuhan were to go aorth by spccial train to consolidate the metal workers in the Hanyang arsc,al. I attended a reception their victories. The result of that conference rras to be the defeat u,hich they gave to visiting labour delegates from Russia. They of the Revolution and the betrayal of the hopes of the workers wished to ask the R.ussians certain perplexing questions which and peasants who had given to Wuhan the victury. they said were the subject of much debate among them. ..what "During your Revolution," they asked, attitude did you take towards sabotage in government industries? Did you ,,During eflcourage it, or punish it, or tolerate it?', . . your TNTO THE !(iAR ZONE

plrrt, rntrving toviards each other from the utmost extremes of ()hil:r, hactr met at last after battles and victories unknown before in Cl.rincse history. The great trek of Feng Yu Hsiang through the north-west CHAPTER IV 1'rrovinces, after his defeat near Feking, might itself take tark nmong the famous forced marches of history. Retreating from INTO TIfE \trAR ZONE Nankow Pass far into the deserts of Mongolia, his arrny used rup their food and \vore ollt their uniforms and shoes. 'Ihey even lacked water, for the scanty desert wells, r.vhich barely sufiice CaNNSC asparagus, iced socia-pop, Sunkist oranges fronr for the sparse population of natives, were exhausted by the passing California, Cailler's chocolates from France - such were the of thousands of men. Hungry, cold, thirsty, they gatheled evidences of our "hardships" on the military train going north themselves into Kansu in the far north-v/est of China, and there from Ftrankow. Yet we were in ttrre depths of Cenrtrai Chiaa reorganised and began anew. Sweeping south into Shensi, they crossing a war-torfl region. Behind us in Hankow lay fourteen lifted the siege of historic Sian-Fu, where the people were clying thousand wounded, flooding the hospitals and overflow.ing into of starvation. After rnany nnonths, with numbers increased by carres and wa(ehouses hastily cornmandeered by the R.ed Crcss tens of thousands of local troops, and rvith splendid Mohammedan Committee under Mrs. Sun Yat Sen. I had seen thern lying cavalry from Kansu and h4ongolia, they arrived near the western on bare boards and bare earth - Canton boys, and boys from ead of the railroad which runs through Chengchow, and there Hunan and Hupeh who, at the battle of Lingying, went up waited until the coming of the Cantonese should open the "vay against thc flower of Chang Tso Lin's regiments - boys 'uvho, for thertl. thotrgh bcatcn by superior artillery, conquered in the end because Meaotime for a year the troops of Canton swept northward. thcy did not know that thcy wcrc beaten. Thousands more of F{aving first consolidate.d their own province, Kwangtung, they these boys ftom tl.rc Iron Arrny of I(wangtuflg were lying norv, passed over the mountain passes into Honan. There they received we kner.v, somewhere in the great plains on either side of our the adctrition of a hundred thousand tr{unanese soldiers - frcry train. Yet ovet the rice fie1ds and wheat lancls, bought, scarcely fighters but none too well disciplined - under Genetal Tang a week before, at such cost, the governrneflt military train from Sheng Chi. Inspired by Nationalist propaganda, these troops Hankow was already passing, equipped with evcry cornfort for displayed qualities flever before seen in Chinese rvarfare. The the traveller. Ilourth Cantonese Army, especially, became known as the Iron It was an historic trip. Altet a year of ad,rances towards Arrny, and such was its reputation that, although it lost heavily in each other, the soutirern and northern Nationalists were to rneet. battle, its numbers were constantly augmented by the peasants With the taking of Chengcho$/, a iunction point ,,vhere the and workets and students who joined it; until, at last, it was large Feking-Hankow railroad is crossed by a line running east and cnough to divide into two armies, the Fourth and Eleventh. It west, the north-west arrnies of Marshal Feng and the Cantonese was said of these men that "even when their officers are killecl, arrnies from the south had been united. SeparateC by thousands the men will fight on," v,hich could be said of no other troops of miles, these t$io forces, acting according to a common rnilitary in China. They had beaten back the troops of Wu Pei Fu, INTO THE WAR ZONE 46 47 leaving thousands of their dead on the field, but without making with us, according to Chinese custom, Rayna's ho.use servant Li, any ovcrtures to or receiving any from them. In this again they to {ieive as "travel-boy" in charge of our baggage. He slept departed from the usual custorns of Chinese warfare, where the happily on our suitcases in the aisles, made our beds, brought us lesser arrned force either 'deserts to the Larger, or attempts to tca and hot water; and grinned from ear to ear at the excitement strengthen itself by buying the other troops. They had taken <,rf seeing the big generals of whom previously he had only heard. southern Clrina to the Yatgtze and had still advanced northward On the station platform of Hankow a great crowd gathered up the Hankow-Peking :a.ilway, towards its iunction with the to bid us farewell, dressed in a medley of Chinese ancl European Lung Hai line, which led west to Feng and east towards the sea. costume. Most beautitully anayed of all was Foreign Minister To reach that junction they had yel to reckon with the best troops Eugene Chen, in a Chinese robe of classic style made of heavy of Chang Tso Lin, who advanced against them with British tanks dull cream silk. "I have brought you a few things you might and French aeroplanes, neither of which, however, did he know not think to get," he said pleasantly, and bestowed upon us a how to use. Accustomecl only to the hills and ri,ce paddies of large electric flash-light, a fan, a well-filled cantcen with cups, the south and unaccustomed to fighting in open country such as and a bag of copper coins for small purchases. He was right; the fields of Honan, the wiry soldiers from Canton beat we suddenly recognised these things as forgotten necessities. "vheat back the tall well-armed fighters from the north by sheer daring, Some day, perhaps, in a more happily organised world, all foreign unexpected night attacks, and reckless advances against artillery. ministers will be expected to exhibit such constant kindliness to Thus they opened the way into Loyang and Chengchow for the foteigners instead of standing aloof to represent the dignity of waiting armies of Feng, who ioined them there at the ruilway their nations. junction. Sun Fo, the son of Dr. Sun Yat Sen by his first wife, and as But the union of ideas had not yet taken place. Conference Minister of Communications the chief of out transport, .was a across these €Jreat open spaces had been impossible. It was yet smiling, rotund man, in European business dress, with an armband uncertain how far Feng agreed with Hankow on problems which of black in tokeo of mourning for his father. Hsu Chien, Minister were growing steadily more acute, problems of peasants against of Justice, who, according to words but not deeds, was the landlords, of workers against merchants, of military power againsi wildest rudical of all, was a tired-looking elderly man in a crum- civil power. Therefore, as soon as the armies had cleared the pied grey uniform, wearing eye-glasses. Mrs. Wang Ching Wei, railways, the Military and Political Councils of Hankow moved in a lilac Chinese gown, short and self-satisfied of countenance, on to Chengchow for conference with Feng to settle questions of the reactionary daughter of a comprador family, was at the station military and political tactics. to see off her husband, who, as president of the Executive Com- It was in this special train that I teceived permission to go to mittee of the Kuomintang, was perhaps the most important civilian the war zoie, to see the Nationalist armies on their march to on the train. He himself, it grey business suit with white shirt Peking" Rayna Prohme, correspondent of the Nationalist News open at the throat, looked like a university athlete rather than a Agency, and myself were the only foreigners on board. !7e forty-two year old politician. General Galcn, the Russian Mili- shared a four-berth compartment over which was writtcn io tary Adviser, took the compartment next to ours; he travelled in 'W'omen's Chinese "Western Bedroom." dtrl other compartments plain khaki without armbands or any special decorations - a ,,hobo were occupied by high dignitaries and theit secretaries. We took sumrner suit," said an American at the station. CHINA'S AIII,LIONS INTO THE WAR ZONE 48 49 Suddenly thc bugles blew a military fanfare. General Tan through the aisles of fhe car I saw that at half the windows stood llen Kai, son of a viceroy and now one of the heads of the Military soldiers, leaning on the open window sills, asleep on their [eet, Council, dressed in a shapeless Chinese robe, marched across the their glearning bayonets swaying gently with the rnotion of the platform to the train. It was for him that our train had been ttain. By accident I was iostlecl againsr one of these statues; he long waiting, for now a bustle of sounds and movements betokened gruntcd a bit resentfully and woke, moved to let me pass, and quick departure. Mrs. Sun Yat Sen had already given us a box sank at once to slumber again. In his half-drugged awaking he of chocolates. Mrs. Sun Fo presented us with canned peaches was again the peaceful peasant lad of the Hunan plains, accepting and tea biscuits. We pulle

CUBNCCHO!7 was a typical Chinese city unrler the shadov of civil war, a condition which was also typical. No one knew whether it had one hundred or two hundred thousand inhabitants, for no accurate celrsus had ever been taken. Everyone said the population was now incrcased by eighty thousand troops, but I doubt if these had been propedy counted either. Statistics are not China's strong point, either in armies or cities. ,{.s in the country districts the ancient peasant life of China still persisted, troubled by the passing of armies but readjusting itself with infinite patieflce, so here in Chengchow the ancient mercantile life of the Chinese city persisted, troubled but patieotly adjusting itself. Rickshaw coolies shouted for ttade when we emerged from the buitrdings where we were quartered. In old markets, at eaiy morning, the mats on the ground were covered with fresh green produce. Men and naked boys lounged, chattered, and performed all the functions of life in the streets, while women walked modestly with the bound feet, blue trousers, and long blue tunics of Central China. War afrected Chengcho,ur chiefly in two ways - the comman- cleering of houses and the floods of paper money. To the civilian inhabitants these two ways possibly teduced to one - the exhausting of econornic resources by the preseflce of eighty thousand good- natured but hungry and penniless males in their m.idst. The soldiers were obviously obedient unaggressive peasant boys. Except undet exciternent, and we ourselves saw rro such occasions, they indulged in comparatively few deeds of violence. They were CHINA',S MII-LIONS TIIE CENERALS MEET IN CFIENGCHOV 56 57 endlessly. marching out of or into some headquarters or other, or crr,.rl, and there is candle g(ease on all our furniture." The rev- standing patiently at attention for hours along the street ar posts ,'r t'rrcl fathers, because they endured these discomforts without of duty, uncomfortably rigid, with rifle firrnly gripped and bayonet l)rotcst, had vron a reputatiorl all over Chengchow for friendliness. pointing upward. If, in the press of the crowcls, tr chanced to liar more serious to the iocal merchants than the housing crisis stumble against one of thern, he moved politely and apologetically 1r'rrcluced by the soldiers was the financial crisis produced by the out of the way. ncw paper money. Be,sides all the various forms of fluctuating. But even the least aggressive soldiers require a rcot for shelter roinage which have always cursed China, three sorts of new paper when they are quartered in cities. Sleeping humbly in long rows nroncy had been current in Chengchow to the ruin of the local as coolies are accustomed to do, they nevertheless filled with their slropkeepers. There came first the feng-piao, forced upon them eighty thousand the primary schools, district schools, halls and hy the northern troops of Chang Tso Lin, issued by the engraving courts of ternples, churche,s, banks, warehouses, foreign missionary plants of Mukden without backing, and almost worthless even premises, afid any empty building of any kind whatever. And inside Chang's own territoty. It was rurnoured, indeed, that wherever they were quartered, the furniture was ruined. scrious friction had developed between Japat and Chang Tso Lin Such was the chief trouble of the Catholic Fathers, in who,se bccause he had ruined countless Japanese merchants in Manchuria mission Rayna and I were quartered for our first night in Cheng- with his feng-piao. Peking shops had also been flooded with it chow. We were sent to our temporary home with the cheering for a year, the merchants in the native city having been compelled inforrnation that "these ate vety good missionaries, so sympathetic by force of arms to accept it until they hid their better class wares with the Nationalists that they invited our gcncral to lodge with or closed down completely. After Chang Tso Lin was driven them." The mission provcd to bc a beautiful stone structure built fL'om Chengchow, his paper money lost even the slight fictitious around a spacious grecn court, an unusual breathing space in the value there that it had once possessed. crowded city. On the stonc pavemcnts of the court were piles of Two other forms of paper money norr/ came to anrioy'the mer- soldiers' baggtge, anel, a fcw dozen soldiers wcre passing in and chants: the printed notes of Feng Yu Hsiang - not lithographed' out. The black-robed Fathers, strolling slowly along the arched blrt merely turned out by a printing press and not even looking corridors which flanked the court, loolied anything but happy, and Iike money-and the Central Bank notes of the Hankow Govern- I asked them, speaking French since they came {rom the Latin ment. Feng's money had at first no guarantee whatever but the countries of Europe, if it was true that they had invited the generaJ word of Feng, but it began to acquire some value rvhen it was to stay therc. taken as payment of taxes levied by Feng, and still more when "Look you," they said, "it is war. It is terrible;what will you? the railway passed into Feng's hands and his money was accepted See, in war it is better to have one big general in your house than for tickets whenever civilian travelling was permitted. The Cen- to lrave hal[ a dozen little ofiicers fighting for place in your courts. tral Bank notes had a certain amount of silver behind thern, pos- Our general arcanges for us all the permits we need in a war sibly more silver than other bank notes in China which were better zone." They were canny realists; they adapted themselves to life known and accepted; but how was any Chengchow merchant to as it existed. They told me also, gratefully, that the soldiers were know or believe it? It was all paper to him and utterly undesired. "good boys," not rough nor unseemly. "But our lamp chimneys Nevertheless the shops of Cheogchow accepted this paper are all broken, aod our walls fuil of nails, and our pans all bLack- money. They had to ! They were so cowed by long experience of CHINA'S MILLIONS THE GENERALS MEET IN CHENGCHOW t8 59

tlre dominant nilitary that they accepted it even r.vhen our humble ,l('no'als of Feng, importaot personages in thernselves, and semi- travel-boy, Li, presented it. But they never gave "good money" irrtlcpcndent potentates, since any o[ thern rnight desert Feng's in change. They gave their goods, putting the prices up very far Itlclcrship. They were held together, not by any permanently rec- in the iropeful gamble that perhaps alter all this money might be ,,rlrriscd governmeflt, but by a new, thin cerncnt of Nationalism exchangeable for something, and they gave change in similar paper rvhich, to rnost of thern, was merely a polite name for an ailiance rnoney. But not in silver or copper; for this they demanded silver rvirich they found mutually profitable. Thcre was Chang Fa Kwei, first. This silver weflt somewhere back in the shop to be safely {cneral o[ the Iron Armies from Canton, and believed at this tirnc hidden. And no doubt the most valuable part of theit goods v/as to be more politically cons,cious than any other general, since he also hidden. They would, however, give Fcng's printed notes vras youag enough to have been influenced by the political training in exchange for notes frorn Hankow, or vice versa; thus on the of the Kuomintang rather than by the feudal traditions of his financial field also was the new alliance recognised. clders. Even under these handicaps trade went on in Chengchow as it There was also General Tang Sheng Chi, our own rnilitarist 'rr/ent on in the Middle Ages of Europe under similar unpredictabie frorn Hunan, who had at this time quite a reputation as a radical. extortions, or in the Europe of the rJ(odd War under more modern It rvas said on good authority that he had applied for mcmbership depreciation. I stepped into shops of textiles, shoes, and food and in the Communist Party, so irnpressed had he been by the great found the shelves not entirely empry, though prices were very high. porver latent in the organisations of workers aad peasants, through The Chinese merchant of these little inland cities rnust live some- r.vhich he had thought to find his own pathway to greatness. But how and, to live, he must function; like the peasant he had adapted now his subordinate generals in Hunan, his chief province, had hirnself to many such periods and somewhat painfully survived. n:rade a military coup ddtat and were killing workers and peasants, But we realised what almost incredible relief would follow so lvhile he was at the front moving towards Peking. trt rvas not yet 'far-away simplc a matter as a stable coinage, or the opening of the channels ccrtain how rnuch he could control those generals in of trade so that whcat might pass out to the Yangtze and goods Flunan, nor was it even certain how much he wished to control fetlrfn in paymcltt. Such a reopcning was what the merchants of them. This would depend on where he saw his chief advantage. Chengchow hoped from our confcrence. To them any alliance FIe was commander over Chang Fa Kwei and yet, on account of such as that between Feng ancl Hankow v/as a blessing, since it tire feudal tradition of independent generalship, not entirely able promised that some time, when the railways were repaired and to command him. He was presumably the servant of the rff/uhan cleared of soldiers, the passage of goods might again begin. Any Governrnent, but actually he was rapidly becoming the master of other ailiance, whether with Chiang Kai Shek or rvith Chang Tso thaf government. Lin, would have been equally welcorne, if only it expancled the Feng himself arrived in Chengchow after we did, perhaps by territory over which fighting and banditry ceased and trade became chance, or perhaps from some consideration of proper prestige possible. difficult for foreigners to understand. Thus hc was met at the The most noticeable persofls in Chengchow on this occasion r.vcre station by all the dignitaries of the conference, who had therlselves not, however, the merchants, or any civilian authorities, but the been met only by Feog's subordinate. He alightecl with ostenta- generals. There were scores of these, and alwa_ys ne$/ ones were tious simplicity from a fueight car, which his publicitl, representative arriving to be present at the great conference. There were the told me he had taken "since my brother soidiers also travel in 6o CHrNA'S MTLLTONS 3HO!7 6t freight cars. " ." A long time afterwards I heard thar Feng had ,rrtlook, and saw no harrn in absorbing as many allies as possible: entered the frcight car at the trast station before Chengchow, having (lhristians, Bolsheviks, peasaots and generatrs. Ile announced for travelled thus far in a comfcrtable private car on thc same train. l)casants a benevolent paternalism, but had no intentioo of letting Yet Feng's simplicity, while a conscious pose, was more than a tlrcm dictate to him. He had, moreover, a desire for rnodern mere pose; ir was a useful military tactic. He enforced a rule in tcchnique in battle and hence a keen appreciation of Russian mili- Chengchow that no banquets should be given, costing lnore than trrry advisers. Arnong a1l these conflicting elements he bargained a Chinese doliar a plate, thus eliminating the waste of time and shrcudly. money usually spent by official Chinese in feasting" This saving I met and talked with several o[ Feng's generals. Arnong others of money could be rnore politely covered by a reputation for sim- rvas Chang Chih Chang, u.,hom I had met a yeat before as com- plicity than by penuriousness. rnander in Kalgan. He still rernained one o[ the few Fundarnen- Feng hirrself pdzed, power and organisation more than the talist Christians in Feng's armies, attributing to the direct will of luxuries of cities. He knew well that his soldiers bore hardships God the wonderful harvests of Shcnsi "scnt to help our revolu- with less grumbling, if their officers also enclured hardships. His tiofla(y arrnies." He relaced as a providential miracle Feng's acci- discipline was better than that of the southerners; there was a dental mecting in the wilds of Mongolia with a delegation which touch of Prussianism about it; his men stood straight and saluted had gone to seek him, "when both took the wrong way and by snappily. But though they endured incredible harclships with God's will were brought together in an unexpected place." He stoicism, they lacked the fire of the southerners which had swept <-leclared that "Christianity is the true revolution, of which Marx across eight provinces. They took no risks for a desperate chance rnd Lenin give us only the econornic part" God says in the Bible of victory. This rvas not in Feng's eyes a handicap, for he had so that he will taise up the lowly and bring down the high; is not traincd thern. In his eyes a soldier was not a revolutio,nist, u,hose that revolution?" iob was to risk life for the Revolution, but rather a personal General Chang discussed with me at length the troubLes which tetaincr, a road buitcler, a trce planter. The more of these soldiers Christianity had encountered in Feng's army, and the discussions he had, the grcatcr hc was, for hc could buitrd more roads, pJant u,hich had raged among Feng's generals about Christianity and irn- more trees, control morc tcrritory. Thus he prized the lives of his perialisrn. "The British police who shoot Chinese in Shanghai soldiers alrnost more thalr victory. Certainly he woulci not risk and who invade our country-are they Christians? Or rnaybe them except for surc and substantial gains in territory, which they are not Christians themselves but wish us to be Christians, so meant new soldiers and nely lives at his disposal. Meantime he that we will love our enelnies and turn the other ctrreck when they was shrewd in his alliances, and especially in letting his allies bear strike us. Christianity is a 'dope' to make us stupef,red and humble the brunt of his victories. trIe had gained Chengchow at the cost v,hiie they rob us." of the Cantonese and, if he found their strength exhausted, he Such was the intellectual content of the discussions through hoped to gain Peking by battles in rvhich the losses would fall rvhj.ch most of Feng's generals recanted their former Chrisdanity. ciriefly on Chiang iGi Shek or Governor Yen of Shansi. Through Their actual reasons were probably simpler; thcy adopted Chris- such tactics he had earned a wide teputation for unttustworthiness tianity in order to starud well rvith Feng, and dropped it latet for as an ally, but no one denied that his troops were well disciplined tirc same reason. Feng himself doubtless oflce saw in Christianity, and his territories reasonably well controlled. He was feudal in aad especially in the club organisation of the Y.M.C.A., a means 6z THE GENERALS I\{EET IN CHENGCHOTW 6l

of encouraging simple, moral living and physical training among Bchind the scenes, however, went on discussion and intrigues of his soldiers, while giving them at the same time entertainment, various interests, carefi:Jly hidden from us and learned only much discipline, and that morale which comes from common clubs and later. On one point all vzere secretly agreed; they had decided sports. Later, he found in the Kuomintartg prop^ganda the sarne ttrrat the workers and peasants and communists must be suppressed. useful tooi with certain advantages o\rer Christianity, and adopted Even the Y/uhan Government had decided this. Feng had de- it as a more rnodern method until he found it stirred up too much cided to "control" the peasants' organisations in the interest of his initiative among the peasants. But both Feng's formet Christian artrry, and they wished to throw on Feng the blame for the change. chaplains and his later Kuomintang propagandists, were chosen by They would lose rnuch "face," if they thernselves openly and im- Feng and organised under his orders; they ser-ved the army, the mediatetry went against the workets and peasants who had given arrny did not serve the propaganda. Now, having found both them the poriler in Central China. plans and each these forms of propaganda incompletely oLredient; he was starting Except for this agreement, their were different, a school for training his own propagandists. of them wished to use the other. Feng wished to take Peking, as armies of the Nationalists. He wanted There was also the general his name \ve never inquired who the leader of the united - - to combine both Chiang Kai Shek of Nanking, and General Tang arrived on the second day of our stay in Chengcho\y and turned of ITuhan under his all-embracing banner. He did not feel him- R.ayna and me out of our room in the Catholic A4issio,n, requisi- self stro,ng enough to take the North without them. He hoped tiooing it for some part of his own force. Thereupo.n we were to use both Wuhan and Nanking, without submitting essefltially moved to the China Bank with all the Hankow dignitaries; a move to either. which suited us very we1l, since our little toorn off the court, General Tang, however, and others of the !7uhan Government, though airless and hot and less comfortable than the Catholic were anxious to conquer Nanking and consolidate their power south Mission, was, after all, in the very midst the of discussions. These of the Yangtze,beforc moving on Peking. General Tang viished this went on about us day and night - sometimes a session of the Mili- on account of his personal hate for and rivahy with Chiang Kai tary Council, sometimes of the Political Council, both comprising Shek. I7ang Ching Wei and some of the other politicians of almost the same people. They were discussing the government Wuhan wished it because Chiang Kai Shek had defied their of the various provinces under Feng, the reorganisation of armies, autlrority for more than ayear and, more especially, because Chiang the plan of march towards Peking. From time to tirne we w€re had expelled lVang Ching Wei from Canton the year before' They adrnitted to the lunch table at which gathered all the notables, wished to use the forces of Feng Yu Hsiang in a united drive Feng sitting at the head of the table as hosr, with Tang Sheng against Nanking. Chi and Tang Yen Kai beside him, and we ourselves fiot far away !7uhan indeed was in a difiicult case. Their party government between Sun Fo and Hsu Chien. At such luncheons we noticed was tapidly becoming powerless, and did not wish to admit it. that the traditions of Chinese luncheons differ from dmerican; Their troops had been left in the control of local generals, who they avoid all business discussion. Feng and the other generals were beginning in various distticts to disobey party orders' Their chatted cheerfully about the nurnber of flies between Mongolia and rnost revolutionary soldiers, the Cantonese, had sufiered terrible Kansu, rather than about any of the important questions on which losses in the fighting. They fett embarrassed by the revolutionary China and the world awaited their decision. demands of these masses from whom, formedy, they had drawo 6a CHINA'S MILLIONS TIIE GENERALS MEET IN CHENGCHOW 6s

their strength. Nor had they any financial power, fot there was that their chosen delegates vr'ere betraying them and getting nor a frnancial crisis in Hankow. cvcn a rrrilitary alliance in return" It r,vas in such condition that the Wuhan Governrnent carre to One evening during the conference three of us went for a stroll the Conference of Chengchow. It had one weapon only - the through the walled city of Chengchow, an ancient town long since moral and poTitical prestige of the l(uomintang a.nd of its past outgrown by the comparatively ne\,v city along the railway. Un- revolutionary achievements. But it threw away that weapon. lirrgettably lovely moonlight shone on the great wall towcring A courageous leader might have made use of it. Borodin said lbove us, on the formidable ancient gates of the city, and on the tlusty chaos later to me in Hankow: "Had the party leaders come to of streets and dwellings within them. I{ere and there belated shop, whose part Chengchow with courage, glorying in the stlength of the massed in a open front rnade it almost of the roadlya.y, \ilorkers and peasants behind them, demanding the submission a rnerchant sat invit;ngly, smoking a long pipe. ,of llut most of tl.re shutters were shut ancient shutters General Feng to party control, and threatening him with the - with many cra'cks through rvhich shone candlelight be hatred of the mass movement if he did not submit, it is per- the of the life hind thcrn. haps possiirtre that they might have prevailed, for Feng vzas !(/e wcre seeking one of the scores generals lodged some- hemmed in betvzeen ITuhan and Russia. But they carnc with of wliere in the city. Our only method of search was to stop at apologies and complaints against the mass movements, and with cvery house in front of which v/e saw soldiers ,standing at atten- pleas for assistance. Feng saw that they were of no use to hirn, tion and these included all pretentious halls and buildings either as friends or enemies. He vzas only confirmcd in his inten- - - rnd make inquiries. Since no soldier knew the whereabouts of tion to seek alliance with Chiang Kai Shek.,, any but his own general, this was time-consurning. We found General Tang Sheng Chi, rneantime, became aw-are that he could r;oldiers of the Thirty-Fifth and Thirty-Sixth Armies of General expect no hope from Feng in a war on Nanking. saw IIe that Tang, soldiers of the rnany armies of Feng, generals with6ut num- his troops it faraway Flunan, on whom his power was based, trrcr, but not the general we \vere looking for. \We found, how- would belong not to him but to his subordinate generals unless cyer, grcat, wonderful trees springing raggedly out of tlie midst lie nrade a quick move to the right politics. in He saw that even of the streets and houseyards; picturcsque temples, shadowed the Kuornintang politicians no longer supported the workers, and pagodas. Under them all we found people people and yet more peasants' rnoverncnts. He had no intercst - whatever in fighting lreople. Curled against the houses, chatteriflg, sleeping, resting, to take Peking for Feng Yu Hsiang. So he said no word at tbe tiLrilding littlc firc,s under the shadow of rvalis to co,ok something conference, but quietly began moving his armies again, without or rnerely for idle amusement everywhere, as always, the life even waiting the conference - till should close. in the dust went on. such were the conflicting groups in the chengchow conference, Lost many times, we came at last to a city gatc, to find it closed united only on one thing-rejection of workers' and peasants' for the night. The word of our interpreter induccd thc sentry movernents. But their mutual disagreements were covered by to open it. In panic ar being shut in, we emerged rapidly with- words of politeness, as is the Chinese custom. None of us who out looking, and found ourselvcs on the othcr side of the waltred were onlookers, and none of the workers and peasants and stu- city in a great torn plain. rWc droppcd swiftly down past the

meaflt somethiflg of that prestige so deaf to the Chinese intel- ol' firecrackers and cheers and a waving of banners which dwarfed Iectual. They were now able to cast on Feng the blame for their ,rny reception that had preceded it. The delegates of labour or- intended abandonment of the cause of the workers. This would ;ianisations v/ere there to greet us-the delegates of revolutionary not be done too openly; it would take place gradually, under women, the delegates of students, the turbaned Hindu delegates many veils of words. They had not obtaioed support for their o[ the Anti-Imperialist League representing many nations. Ihey war against Chiang Kai Shek, but they felt assured of Feng,s lrad come to rvelcome and receive.back the emissaries whom they neutrality and, long before they reached the broken bridge on the lrard sent to create a new China. And into that cheering crowd journey back, their minds were adjusting themselves comfortably o[ workers and students and women the traitorous governmen! of to their ne\r task. No longer the eloquent wording of the hopes llankow walked l.ike victors. and needs of revolutionary workers and peasants, in the expres- sion of which all had been loud enough before, and in which lfang Chirrg lfei with his beautiful language had been especially suc- A few days later these workers were calling a general strike, cessful; but the voicing of whatever slogans of "law and order,, in protest at the betrayal of the Chengchow conference. and "control of communists" might placate the rising militarists of Hunan. Passing out of the great Central Plain of Honan, where the peasants had finished in these few days the harvest of wheat and were loading it now on their primitive carts for mansport, we entered the high mounrain pass that leads to the rice fields o[ Hupeh. In the dimness of a waning moon, General Gallen point- ed out to me some half distinguishable shapes under the trees and in the little ravines; these, he said, were the bodies of Can- tonese who had diecl advancing by this parss and railway. Ir r.vas for this that they had died; it was for this thar fourteen thousand wounded lay in the hospitals of Hankow, boys of Kwangtung and Hunan who had marched forth for a hope that most of thern were only beginning to understand. It was for this only that - aftet the revolutionary Iron Armies had been broken by the cost o[ the victory, their allies who survived might establish a rnilitary

THE !i?ORKERS I\{EET IN HANKO'fr 7t which, however, seemed to make no difference in the fervour o[ the delegates" Children Pioneers to the number ol fifty or more formed a guard of honour at the gate for the speakers to march through. CHAPTER VI In tan suits and red neckerchiefs, with long batons, they were up military Their representative, a small boy THE WORKERS MEET IN HANKOST drawn in order. of thirteen years with firrn salute and clear voice, was much cheered when he stood on the platform to give greetings to the labour congress, telling how the Pioneers were watching and fol- T HS fourth annual Congress of the A11 China Fecleration of Iowing the leadership of labour. Labour met in a vasr hall crowded to the gallery roof with 38r Some sixteen or mo(e organisations sent gteetings for the first delegates and some two thousand visitors admitted by ticket meeting; the delivery of them consumed five houts and gave one through the labour unions of the three Wuhan cities. The on- a realisation of the complex social life that is forming in revolu- lookers had been holding their seats for trvo hours; thcy sat for tionary China. There were representatives from the A11 China another five hours of the opening meeting. Thousands more Students Federation, from the All China Peasants, from the Na- rvanted to come but could not. Such was the interest taken in tionalist Government, from the Kuomintang Party (Central, Pro- China's la,bour movement meeting in the midst of a rational vincial and City), from the Communist Party of China. Three Revolution. foreign delegates also brought greetings - Lozovski from the Red Trade Union International, Roy, of India, from the Communist International, and two Javanese from the labour unions. of Java. The grcat hall lool

CHINA'S MILLIONS 72 )w 7) glowing youth. I remember how her arm shot into the air when be sent to confer with their Executive Committee and were she rose on tiptoe to shout a slogan, with eyes uplifted in ecstatic answered, "Therc being no labour movement in China, rile see loyahy, and the sudden embarrassed grin with which she sank no need of sending such a delegation." After which it is not sur- back into her seat when once she made a mistake and shouted prising that China affiliated with the Red Trade Union Interna- a slogan all alone. tional of Moscow. The rneeting began with a ceremony which I was later to see In spite of all I had learned about Chinese labour, I confess that in other rneetings but which I here experienced for the first time. I did not at first believe their tale of three million workers, half All rose and turned to face the portrait of Sun Yat Sen and the of whom had been organised in the past year. Nor did I ex- chart ol his last will. Bowing three times, they repeated the will pect to see at this Congress in war-encompassed Hankow many solemnly. After this came a silence of several minutes "in actual delegates propedy selected by distant p,rovinces. I ex- memory of our revolutionary dead." Then began the fir'e hours pected to find so-called representatives hand-picked from \ilorkers of greetings, punctuated often by cheers and shouted slogans and who had succeeded in passing the blockade. But the Congress by the singing of the International to a Chinese tune. To our itself convinced me. The tone of the speeches was authentic and western ears it sounded hideously discordant, an enthusiastic expressed problems from fourteen of China's eighteen provinces. rhythmic shouting in many keys at once. But the Chinese method I questioned many delegates and found that they had all been of shouting slogans, thrusting one arm high in the air with 6st duly elected by local meetings of delegates from many unioas. clcnchccl, was vcry cffcctivc. Most of them were actual workers from factory, mine, or trans- A fratcrnal clclcgatc, struck thc kcy note of the meeting when port; only a few were paid ofiicials of labour. Only three unions "T'hc he dcclarcd: thrcc formcr congrcsscs of labour had the - the Seamen, Railway rWorkers and Postal \ff/orkets - were tasks of organisation ancl propngar.rcla, this congress has the task orgaflised on a national scale and sent delegates through their of leading the workers of China in thc actual work of revolution. national ofiice. The other delegates had been elected from dis- This congress will decidc not only how to secure the immediate trict. unions, somewhat resembling a Central Labour Council in interests of the workers represcntcd, but how they may lead the America, and representing several trades. This form of organi- Nationalist li.evolution, in which you have played in the past an sation is frankly transitional: national unions have not had time irnportant r61e, but are now called upon to play a decisive r6le. to grow out of the tens of thou,sands of local unions that sprang The outcorne of the Chinese Revofi.rtion rvill decide the fate of up in the wake of the Nationalist advance. The typical form the World Rcvolution in the present epoch of history." of labour organisation at this time was the local union in shop and factory, combined into city or district federations, and be- ginning to combine nationally on an industrial basis. The Chinese Federation of Labout, which was thus meeting President Su Chao Chen outlined, in a long report, the history the midst in of tevolution, is of very recent origin, but of and conditions of Chinese labour. Until quite recently its only spectaculady rapid growth. The more slor.vly developing labour form was handicraft, which still remains the chief form in the movements of western lands hardly rcalise its existence. Chinese back country. Workers serve for years, living in the shops of workers told me that two yearc ago they wrote to the Amsterdam their masters, and receiving no wages but paying money instead Federation of Trade Unions asking that an Advisory Delegation for the privilege of becoming an app(entice, so that they rnay cHrNA'S MTLLTONS l WoRKERS MEET rN HANKOTiT 74 75

learn the trade and €ventually become master craftsmen. Such mine workers from $t to $g, while wages in textile mill,s were still workers have been for centuries organised in guilds to r.vhich both Iower. master and employees belong, the masters being the more im- In return for these wages, very long hours are worked. Many portant members. Naturally, su,ch guilds serve the purpose of shop employees are on duty from dawn till midnight.. In factories guarding guild standards, but give little protection to workers the twelve-hour day is considered good; many factories run sixteen against demands of their masters. They are sharply opposed by hours. The weekly rest day is not usual in China; handicraft the new Iabour unions. workers have no rest days at any time in the year, while factory Modern factory industry came into China rccently, chiefly workers think themselves lucky if they get two rest days a month. through foreign capitalists. On the basis of industrious cheap The mine workers of the city of Hupeh Ying work, eat, and sleep iabour these investments increased in number and value, and soon in the mine cave continuously for twenty days. Only in modern the Chinese bourgeoisie also began to own factories. industries su,ch as transport and metal-working is the day sometimes Especially during the \X/orld W'ar, the industries of China ex- shortened to eight or ten hours. In Shanghai factories weekly rest panded. Competition began between hand labour and machine days are more usual, but by no means universal, while hours range labour, driving down steadily the income of the small handicraft from eleven a day to sixteen or eighteen. masters, who tried to maintain themselves by driving down the Since large scale industry is largely in the hands of foreign wages of thcir workers. Factories were influenced by rvorking capitaT, it was natural that the first labour organisations found conditions which had prcvailed for centuries among handicrafts- themselves at war not only with individual employers, but with men. They took advantagc of the system of apprenticeship to the whole system of foreign imperialism in China. Almost from secure factory labour also for many months without wages; they its beginning, the Chinese labour movement became strongly took advantagc of the unlimitcd hours of desultory work prevail- political, inspired by patriotic opposition to foreign exploitation. ing whcre the workman livcd with his rnaster to secure almost The chief periods of growth in the trade union,s have coincided with equally unlimited hours of work ar the factory bench. The political crises. phenomena which have everywhere accompanied the change to The first trade unions began in Hongkong, spreading rapidly modern factory machinery were aggravated in China by the vast to Canton, until there \yere two or three score such organisations. numbers of cheap, industrious workers, and the fact that capital Bub the nation-wide rise of a labour movement began in the r9r9 had grown international and very powerful. ,demonstrations against the Japanese "twenty-one demands." Begun In China there are many workers who rcceive no money wages by Peking students as a nation-wide boycott, this movement but only a few bowls of rice a day. Su,ch are the apprentices in rapidly spread into the ranks of labour. At this time also the shops and factories and the miners in the three Eastern provinces. influence of the Russian revolution reached China, and many Child labourers in Hankow factories received for many years only revolutionary youths from the student classes began to ioin with Jo cents a month, and trained apprentices in Shanghai cotton mills the workers. received only $r.1o. The monthly wages of labourers on railways There followed the Seamen's Strike of rg22, started in Hongkong ranged from $5 to $ro monthly for unskilled, and from $ro to as a demand for better labour conditions, but rapidly be,coming $25 for skilled mechanics, and this .was the best paid of the in- political through the British threat of suppression by arms. This dustries. Skilled miners gor from $A to $zo monthly, and unskilled strike lasted fifty days and ended in success for the workers, for cHINA's MILr,IoNs THE \fORKERS MEET IN HANKOV 76 T7 the first time giving Chinese labourers the belief that the power of Great as had been the growth of the first tv/o years of Chinese the white man's capital was not entirely invulnerable. labour conferences, it was as flothing compared to the number Shortly after this the North China Railway 'Workers, who which swept into the unions in the stirring days after May 3o. From had aheady organised a committee for strike relief of the Seamen, end to end of the land studeots, workers, peasants, and even struck on their own account and organised sixteen branch uniofls. merchants, took part in anti-imperialist demonstrations. It is Unrest began in Hankow in the form of a strike of rickshaw estimated that a million workers patticipated and ten million of pullers and a strike in the Hanyang Iron Works. So when, on the peasants and intellectual masses. These demonstrations led May r, r9zz, the first National Labout Conference was held in directly to the great Hongkong-Canton strike which began on Canton, there were over fifty delegates representing 2i,o,ooo June 19, 1925, and lasted a year atd ten months, co,sting the great workers. This conference decided that labour organisations should port of Hongkong, at some periods of the strike, as high as two follow the industrial form, and should fight primarily for the right rnillion doliars a day. During this period the organised wotkers to organise, better wages, shorter hours, and freedom from cruel began to be recognised as the strongest fighting arcn of the natiooal treatment. In spite of the purely economic nature of these aims, Revolution, and to be drawn into ever closer contact with the plans the workers had already come into confli,ct with militarists, notably of the Nationalist Government. V/u Pei Fu, who killcd a number of striking workers in Hankow $7hen the Third A1l China Labour Congtess rvas called in and supprcsse d their strike by force of arms, driving their Canton, May y ry26, by the ne'wly formed A11 China Labour organisation undcrground for the entire period of his power in Federation, thcy fa,ced the military plans of a Northern Expedition. Hankow. Delegates to the number ol y4, representing r,z64,ooo workers, The sccond national confcrcn'cc of Chinese labour rvas called attended the Congress, and all their resolutions now had a political lWorkers' by the now wcll organiscd Scamen's Union, Railway character. Even the economic resolutions were demands addresse,cl Union, Miners' Union of Hunan and Kiangsi, and the Cantonese to the Nationalist Government with whom they had thrown in workers. It took pla,ce two years aftcr the first, on May \ t92t, irl their. lot; they asked laws establishing the eight-hour day and Canton. It was a stormy period. A strike in a Japanese cotton a minimum tate of wages; they urged the Northern Expedition mill in Shanghai had led to the killing of a Chinese v/orker by to expand the territory of the Nationalist Government and even- a Japanese foreman, and the demonstrations were beginning which tually unite all China under its banners. During that expedition, u/ere to culminate before the end of the month in the famous the trade union member.ship developed marvellously. Organising May p in,cident in Shanghai, when British police shot into a crowd everywhete behind the army, they brought not only industrial of demonstrating workers and students and aroused all China. r.vorkers but carrying coolies and handicraft workers by hundreds The May r conference in Canton was attended by z1o delegates of thousands into their movement. By the masses, it became from yTo,ooo organised workers, more than double the number considered counter-revolutionary not to ioin the union. In Hunao of two years before. It unanimously decided to unite fraternally their membership increased from eighty thousand to three hundred with the peasaflts and to parti,cipate in the national Revolution and fifty thousand and, in Hupeh, from twenty thousand to four against imperialism and militarism. It decided to form an All hundred thousand. !7hen the split came between Nanking and China Labour Federation and to unite with the Red Trade Union \Wuhan, there were, according to Su Chao Chen, three million International of Moscow. members in the trade unions of China; a great, chaotic rnass of cHINA's MILLIoNS THE !i/ORKERS MEET IN HANKOV 78 79 many trades and callings, most of them uneducated in the ways tialists. Its concluding slogan wa.s, "Long live the Nationalist of unionism, but tapidly being trained by the events of the Revolu- Government !" tion. The unions of Shanghai, at least, possessed enough knowl- Two items in this manifesto are wofthy of special comment. edge of organisation to continue their work underground after For the first time the Chinese labour movement identified its Chiang Kai Shek suppressed them; it was thus that they chose struggle with that of Russia. It is a natural identification, not their delegates to the Fourth All China Labour Congress in only because the Russian workers had recentiy experienced similar Hankow. struggles, but because Russia is the only land which has offered Never before had Chinese labour faced, on a nation-wide s,cale, aid to the Chinese labour movemeflt. Russian workers $ent con- such serious problems. They themselves knew that they confronted tributions to the great strike after May 7o, and long continued a struggle which meant life or death to the Nationalist R-evolu- their aid of the Hongkong-Canton strikers. And here, in this tion and even to their own right of organisation. In the manifesto great Fourth Labour Congress, meeting in the midst of war and facing problems, which they adopted tovzards the end of the Congress they said such desperate which of all the labour organisa- tions of earth sent greeting,s? cable in part: "The Fourth All China Labour Conference opens at a any help or Was there any of congratulations time when the situation is critical, both internally and externally. from the American Federation of Labour over the speed with which they had attained three millioo members? The imperialists have sent their troops to Shanghai, Shantung, and \t/as there any cable of condolence from Europe for the lives that Pcking. Their warships are gathered at Wuhan in an attempt to were daily being sa,crifi,ced to the white terror in Shanghai and intimidate the Vi/uhan Government. . . . They show clearly that Hunan? Chinese labour was left alone in its liour of deepest they are rca

H I He delegates at the A11 China Labour Congress had come from many provinces and had had a great variety of experiences. In their lives one could read the story o{ the Chinese labour movement, which is still recent enough to be compassed by the memory of a very young man. I spent many days talking with these workers from all parts of China, gaining a picture of the many-sided problems of the labour movement. Su Chao Chen, president of the Federation, was a peasant lad of Kwangtung who went to sea in his youth, driven from home by the overcrowding on the land. "I never had any schooling," he said to me. "I bought books and learned by myself. I could aiways agitate very well but my mind is simple." From others I learned that Su had organised branches of the revolutionary Kuomintang from port to port of the world, fighting for llfe against Chinese monarchists, but escaping to help organise the famous Seamen's Strike of r9zz, wher, Chinese workers fitst learned that the great white employers of the earth could be beaten. That was the real beginning of the Chinese labour movement; Su, who helped organise it, rose with it to become its president. He led also the long strike and boycott of Canton against Hong- kong, which in ry25-27 shook the prosperity of the British citadel in South China. Many other seamen from South China I met, who first of all China's millions were forced into contact with the West and learned its ways. There was Chen, son of a poor boatman, born on a boat and living on a boat, as tens of thousands live on the LEADERS OF CHINES]] LABOUR 8a CHINA'S MILLIONS 85 river around Canton. His father weflt to Java on contract labout, struggles and aspirations of Chinese labour: YiiL, the young agitator sending home three or four dollars a month frorn his scanty from Shanghai; Ma, the persevering trade-union organiser of \ffagcs; a few years of this aiien labour killed him. This also is Canton; and Tang, the simple rniner of Hunan, out of a iob. typi,cal of the surplus labour in South China. Chen worked Erst A11 of them are paft of China's restless upheaval, one of them as a cow-hercl, receiving as yearly vages one hundred and twenty- with conscious fiery energy; onc, with tireless patience; one, five pounds of rice, one barnboo hat and one garment. Thus he hardly knowing what he is seeking, except that he wants the lived till the age of thirteen when he became a sailor" chance to a decent life in the world. Diflerent fuorn all of these was Li Li San, who had seven years of schooling as the son of a rural teacher in Hurian. He \rent to France in the World 'War, v-here he rvorked in iron Yri Mo Flwai was the agitator from Shanghai. His long, oval factories, and learned that the French workers were organised and face, high forehead and frank ciear eyes were alert with intelli- thus got bettcr conditions. He came back home to organise the gence. He was most talkative of all the Shanghai delegation, Chincse workers likewise, beginning with the miners in his home expressing himself with vehemence. His glowingly youthful face provincc. Four timcs he has changed his name to escape arrest bore no mark of the many struggles he ha'd experienced, and or cxccr-rtion; hc smilcd as hc told me of the paid assassins in hardiy indicated his tv/enty-six years. He was more like a Shanghai who sccrctly tippcd him off lvhcnever they planned to ioyously hopeful boy than an agitator just escaped frorn the secret atter,ck hirn, anr[ tlrrrs rnac]c thcir r,vcil-paid iob of assassin last police of Chiang Kai Shek. Nevertheless he was thoroughly an longcr. Flis vicrv of tlrc Clrincsc labour movement passed the agitator, having no interest other than to change from iob to iob bounclarics of trris country. in order to organise workets. What group he organised did not "Only whcn wc hrvc strong unions in China," lre toLd me, especially rozltteri as a mechanic he passed easily from railroad "will unions bc able to flourish in Java, India, Indo-China, and to power plant or textile factory, organising everywhere, not so the Philippines." mu,ch-to build up any particvlar union as to build in all directions more remember But even than his world-widc vicw I the human the might of the workers as a base for revolution. I'hus he had weakness he showed when took his picture. Hurrying me away I helped organise those workers of Shanghai who took power in frorn the great court full of labour guards and placards, he led the native city and turned it over to the Nationalist army which me to a sma1l and rather wilted Chinese garden, and posed with later suppressed them. trees and a rivulct in the background. Thus he sought to fix "I was born in Anking on the river," he told me, "and my himself in my record not amidst the tutmoil of triumph but sur- father was some sort of handicraft wotker, but he died when I rounded by placi'd beauty. His life, however, was to lead through 'was three years old. My six brothers gave rne a year of schooling most unplacicl upheavals, illegal organising, party "deviations" was eleven years old; then I went to lvork as waiter on a and again through recantation and study to rener.ved work in the till I signalman, and picked up revolutionary ranks. river steamer. At sixteen, tr became I line There were three of the minor labour leaders who vzill perhaps a knowledge of rnechanics. At eighteen, I wcnt ashore as never be farnous they may be dead by now in some unreported rnechani,c in a public service company. Ever since then I have - interested in unions. My eady days on the river are very clash or capture - yct whose lives portray for me the many-sided been CHINA'S MILLIONS 86 LEADERS OF CHTNESE LABOUR 87 useful to me now, for I have many escapes to make and for this I unions within three months time to three hundred thousand knor.v all the ports of the Yangtze very we11." members. Yii's account of his life is interspersed with such incidents as "A11 of this task," he sai'd, "was carried on by four of us, these: "About that time my life began to be wanted by the Feng- helped by the tevolutionary feeling. By the end of August, the tien troops. Nevettheless, for several months more, Li Li San rnilitary closed out Shanghai tr-abour Federation, and we went and I went organising workers on the railway, protected by the underground again as before May p." loyalty of the workers." Or again: "\[hen I carne back He organised the workers on the Nanking railway and got their from the Labour Congress in Canton, the troops had grown too wages raised from zo to 2, cent6 (gold) per day with a rest day strong for me to escape them in the province, so I decided to every two weeks. Later they got a rest day every Sunday. Such go to the city of Shanghai and organise municipal workers. I are the small triumphs which count among the Chinese workers, gave a bribe of $5o to the foreman of the Power Iflorks in French the most industrious and poorly paid in the world. He organised town, and for this he gave me a job in the power plant. trt was the Ningpo raiTway and got the same terms there. He organised municipal wages from $7.yo very good iob, for from this point of vantage I organised four labourers in Shanghai ancl their rose ^ (gold) unions of city cmployecs the street-car men, the street cleaners, a month for an eleven-hour day to $8.6o a month. - success," me, "influenced other rnunicipal the lrowcr plant and the waterworks. I had them tea'dy in a few "All this he told workers, so were soon able organise Federation of months for: thc advancc of tl-re Nationalists, and it lvas we who we to a took ovcr powcr in thc city." Municipal Employees, including telephone, telegraph, electric postal. ready the Yor.rng Yii's point of vicrv is typrical cspecially of the workers works, waterworks, and Thus we were for General Strike by which we took power in the native city. of Shanghai, in that hc sccs his task not in the slow building of "The labour pickets," he said, relating that stirring event, a single labour unicrn, but in thc unitccl clash of all the workers "seized the police headquarters by surprise and capture'd eight against the united cxploitcrs of thc world. Shanghai and Hong- hundred rifles. $7ith these and with clubs and ::.llway imple- kong are the places where this clash is most open and obvious, rnents 1ve gathered thousands of workers and disarmed the since the newly organising workers fa,ce not the single Chinese Fengtien guards at the arsenal. It took two and a half days hard employer, but the entrenched might of world capital. In many fighting, till we captured the arsenal for the Nationalists. All other ways, Yti's life is typical. He joined the unioo after May power was now in the hands of the labour unions. Before the r9r9, when the protest against the "twenty-one 4, Japanese army came, we chose a temporary municipal government, a Com- swept land the form of strikes and boycotts. demands" the in rnittee of Nineteen, of which five were chosen by the unions. tevolutionary life counts by dates of such protests, and China's Five district groups of labour pickets kept or'der. \(e sent a most of her present leaders of labour entered the field at that time. telegram of allegiance to the Wuhan Government and were Yii took part also in the May 1o demonstration in ry25 in Shanghai, accepted by them." which led to the weil-known shootiflg on Nanking Road. He was Yii told of the r.var between the unions and the "red and green arrested and released on one hundred dollars bail. In the gangs" of gunrnen, who he claims were armed by Chiang Kai tremcndous wave of labour sentiment which followed the shooting, Shek to stir up troubie and give an cxcu,se for suppressing both Yii was one of four organisers who brought the total of Shanghai groups. He told of machine-guns turned upon workers, massed g8 CHrNA'S MTLTTONS to await the result of a parley between their leaders and the army Ma chou Fan, a ,-",,;:;, ,r;,,:: or Canton, n,, ,"1', headquarters, "That was the \trorst suppression that ever happen- in the brief nine years of his working life the birth of Canton's ed in Shanghai," he cried. He told of his own escape, with his new unionism and its struggle with the ancient guilds. He took wife arrested, his family scattered, his comrades executed, while part in that struggle, patiently organising, studying, fighting, Yii left the house of a tdend, "dressed in swell clothes and carrying failing and learning from failure, till the day when he fled before the baby" as if he were the young son of the landlord. Thus he the forces of Li Chi Shen as delegate to the Labour Congress in passed the surrounding detectives and made his way to the river Hankow, unable to return to Canton f.or fear of the strangling where passage had akeady been bought for him on a boat to squad. Not at all disheartened, he was helping to call the first FIankow. meeting of printers' delegates from eight provinces, to launch in "But I dared not go aboard as passenger since detectives the midst of civil ',var an All China Printers' Union. An unromantic aim, it sounds, but it had been for years the goal o{ watched the river boats. So I remembered my old iob as waiter, Ma's patient, tireless labour. dressed in waiter's clothes and went on board carrying a bundle Ma Chou Fan is short and stocky. Instead of the flaming of brooms as if I had iust been shopping for the boat." youth of Comrade Yii, he has dogged persistence. Yri askcd mc to tell his story to the workers of the world "so a As befits a worker in an intelligelt crak like printing, had more that they rnay know what we workers endure, and that we are not he far e'ducation than the usual Chinese worker. I-Iis father owned a violcnt mobs but civilised folk, who only revolt agaitst great handicraft shop not far from Canton, and was able to give his opprcssion." I am not ccrtain whcthcr thc story of Yti proves son five years in the Chinese classics before his livelihood collapsed this. But it makcs unr.lcrstandablc thc incredibly rapid growth of under the competition of modern machine industry. Then Ma the Chincsc unions, which thc 'Wcstern lvorld as yet hardly abandoned learning and got a iob in a rice shop, carrying hundred believes. They grew through tirc rcvolutionary spirit inflamed pound loads from dawn till midnight. He received as pay only by "incident" atter "incident" and through the driving relentless the tips of customers; his master gave him rice and a place to will of many organising comrades such as Yii. sleep in the shop. and, organising If in Shanghat Hongkong the newly workers of Under the strain of this labour young Ma's health was breaking, face conflict assembled modern China in the might of world so a year later, by his own and his father's savings he paid $ry capital and flame under its pressure into hot revolt, in Canton (gold) to enter a printing shop as apprentice. He worked without their antagonist is more venerable and insidious, the thousand- \rTages; but the forernan guaranteed him the wonderful wage of year-old merchant guild system of China. The conflict also is $ro a month when his term of learning should be accomplished. more comptrex, marked by many failures and betrayals. Before Here Ma first experienced the deceitful ways of the wodd; for modern industrialism began, these guilds of China flourished; he soon became a full-fledged printer and began to receive not when Canton became the first open port of China for intercourse $ro, but $r a month in addition to tice. rff/estern with the world, her merchants added to their ancient "This was due to the contracting system," said Ma to me- \il/est, cunning the new knowledge and resources of the adapting, "Ever since that day I have fought that system. The foreman utilising, entrenching their control of the intimate ramifications was paid for the work of all the workers and gave to the workers of social life. themselves only what he was compelled to give, keeping the rest. go cHrNA',S MILLIONS .,r N7e had no organisation and no streogth to compel a fairer clivi- now ,,-,,, ,";^;; ";,:';" ::;':*. ,o u,,o..,, -ll printers, sion." to forrn in one union all workers in the shop, the typesetters and setters of foreign type, who before were organised Before long Ma himself was foreman, "but without the contract .V7e system," in a newspaper plant opened by one of Dr. Sun Yat Sen's separately. united the groups this time, and we won. better organisation, partisans not far from Canton. There was enioye'd, for two brief Some of our new strength came from the and some from the Nationalist movement gathering power. yeats, a happy time of study, in which the entire wgrking crew We for,ced an agreement by which we got $r5 (gold) a rnonth of the shop took part. Choosing only skilled men, and not cx- without the contract system; and, if we do not like the rice ploiting thcm, Ma's gang finished its task in six hours daily, the employer gives us, we may demand another $4 a month eatmng for caclr man the tespectable sum o[ $q (gold) monthly, instead of tice. Instead of sleeping in shops on tables or while Ma himsclf got $ro. Their magnificent leisure they spent floors, we nov,z get lodging-houses from the employer, with not reading boc,l

as a most gracious and efiicient chairman. Her gentle nod hushed all private talk at the encl of the table and held my guests silent while each in turn answered my many questions. She rose at the end, with the gracious dignity of her twenty years, and gave me CHAPTER VIII lormal thanks for the luncheon, begging me to tell the workers and women of America that "we also, the backrvard workers of FIGHTERS FOR WOMEN'S RIGHTS China, are part of the World Revolution." I forbore to tell her how little the workers and women of America felt themselves part of this World Revolution which stirred her ardour. NOWftnnE on earth to-day is the social clash more pictur- Yet lVang Yeh Kin, like most of the textile workers, had esque ancl startling than in the fight for women's rights io China. only recently learned to read a little, and could not write at all. In this ancicnt land, with its primitive peasarftry, where parents She had gone to work in the mills at the age of eight, "when nry to gct foocl still scll thcir daughters, and where respectable women parents could no longer feed me." At first she got no wage at rcmain intloors jn rctircmcnt, there has arisen a generation of all, as apprentice; after six months she got six cents (gol'd) a day. "bobbc,cl hrir girls" wlro dcclare that both sexes are equal Now as a skilled worker she was making t\il/enty-one cents for citizcns. 'I'hcy nrnrchccl bchind the Nationalist armies as prop- her twelve hours labour, "ti7hen I was young and made mistakes," agaodists in uni[oln'r; tlrcy arouscd thc cotrntryside; they forrned she said, "the foreman beat me. !7hen I grew up, he did not womcn's unions. i\'[nny o[ tlrcnr to-dzry are martyrs because of beat but fined me. But late1y the uoion has protected us ftom thcir activitics. fironr timc to tirnc ncws dcspatches from China both fines and beatings." dcscribc thc cxc,cution of a clozcn or a scorc of women, who are "Betorc the union came," she continued, "we could none of us condcmncd as rcvolutionists on thc cvidcncc of their bobbed hair read at all. But the union sent teachers to the lactory at lunch alone. hour.. These teachers said:'Hurry your food and have a lesson.' The first group of womefl tevolutionists whom I met were So we learned to tead a little at lunch time, but we did not the trade union delegates in Hankow. Some twenty of thern sat learn to write. For there are no desks and paper, and we have in the A11 China Labour Congtess, chiefly textile workers from no time. Now again the reading lessons also are closed since the Shanghai and !7uchang. Notably among thern I remember Wang union was suppressed." Yeh Kin, the child-faced orator who led the Shanghai wornen's I asked Miss !flang to tell me more of the union. "Before the delegation. She was a textile worker toiling twelve hours a day Nationalists €ame to Shanghai," she said, "there was aot a union in the spinning mills. Slight, with soft round face and soft bobbed in every factoty. But afterwards we had them everywhere. Our hair, she seemed like a fourteen-year-old chilcl in a grammar school meetings were public until Chiang Kai Shek began his suppressions as she bent smiling over her seat in the Congress. But she held but norr ',ve have them in secret. However, the unions still exist two thousand workers spellbound by her fiery denunciation of in all the factories. The union has an agreement about wages; Chiang Kai Shek. those beginning as apprenti,ce nov/ get B cents a day (gold); after Later, when I gave a luncheon to the tveaty women delegates, six months they get a , cent increase. But the British factories do and asked Miss Wang to take the head o[ the table, I saw her not live up to this agreement since Chiang has come. \Y/e CHINA'S MILLIONS FIGHTERS FOR WOMEN'S RIGHTS s8 99 got no change in working hours. The tsritish factoty where I work V/e expect an eight-hour d,ay and. better wages. This is is modcrn; it has two shifts of twelve hours e ach. But in old especially needecl for women, who are most oppressed of all living style Chincsc factorics \iliomen wolk sixteen hours a day from four beings. Not oniy must the woman wotk twelve or sixteen hours in thc rnorning till cight in the evening. There is also one British in the fa,ctory, but she must wash and sweep and cook at home, Iactory whcrc the \reavers v/ork severiteen hoqrs, til1 nine o'clock and also comb her hair and look a.fter herself. . How can she in thc cvcning." roanage herself with such long hours? We expect the Shc tolcl mc the method of union organisation' "'We elect Nationalist Government to make the {actories have schools for us committccs in onr mass meeting. If anyone rcally can fight for the to learn in. And also a spe,cial room to feed babies in. And bencfit o[ othcrs, we clect that person. The officials of the union hospital care when we are sick, because we are all too poor to pay arc clcctccl by clclegates whom we send from the factory" Out for a doctor. And also vacation with pay before artd afuer babies union clrrcs nrc tcn ccnts a rnonth. The union has also abolished are born. Also to abolish all cruel and shameful punishments." shamciul ;rLrnislrnrcnts. Formerly when a girl made a bad mistake, They had learned very well the revolutionary labour progtamme, thc forcrnrrrr coulcl shlrt her all night in a wooden cage; it is a very largely modelled on the conditions aheady obtained by the workers small cagc; you cllr)not lic down thete." Young Wang's gestures of Russia. as shc clcscrilrcrl ttrc ttrrt:owncss of the cage \I/e(e as graceful as All of these girls faced capture and possible death if they should tl-rosc of :r tl:rtr,r.cr; hcr voicc was as softly melodious as that of a return to Shanghai under Chiang Kai Shek. They smiled wheo siugcr, stmtrgcly (()ntrlsting with the facts she was desctibing. they spoke of their chances; they were too full of life and oI the Young Two of thc rlclcgntitln wc[c dcscribcd as "students." sense of being part ol agreat world movement to take the thought Textile Union, had Szc, who wttrl

I had heard. Coming from Canton she had had a longer time to the unions, even apprentices were to get money for their laborlr expect tevolutionary changes and to be disillusioned by betrayals' from the very beginning! A girl whosc glowing face I had noticed below the platform Three textile workers of $Tuchang joined to tell me the wrongs proved to be a textilc worker of \Wuchang, named Kiang VTin I{sia' of women - an earnest-faced weaver in a blue blouse with a sickle- She had bcgun work at the age oI thitteen for five cents (gold) a and-hari-lmer pin fastening her coIlar; an old wonlan in a black duy. Whcn the union came in October of 1926, she had ioined sleevcless jacket with greying hair, who had lost all her children; immediately. and happy, glowing young Kiang, full of the excitement of being "The suffering in past times was vety great," she said. "No part of a union. They added statement to statement, re-echoing need to speak of it now. The factory uscd to take women v/orkers cach other lil

tomatoes and such things, she told me; but "costly things like pork, age of seven and eight in the factories. Have v/e the right to tax beef, mutton ate cooked by the master himself so that I should poverty-stricken workers whose own childr'en work in cotton mills not eat them." A policeman learned that she was badly treated in order to have schools for slave girls? and teported her case to the women's union. They sent an "So we consider these slave girls not as citizens with the right investigator. The rnaster hid Yii Ming in the roorn of a neigh- of education, but as workers who deserve protection from cruelty bour, but the neighbour advised the girl to corne out and show and the same chance that other workers have. According to the herself. She was afraid to talk at first though the investigator larv a"dopted by the Nationalist Government, all slave girls are spol

open transfer of the bride to the home of her husband's Parents, for a permanent divorce. I announce this in order to stop any constitute the legality ol marciage. Divorce has been achieved not interference with my liberty by the relatives of my husband.. . ." by any civil pro,cess but by sending the wife home and obtaining It was not apparently the husband she was ahaid, of, but the her parents' consent to teceive her; the council of relatives and relatives, who constitute in every Chinese household a power and sometimes even of neighbours, played ari important part ifl such a disturbing elemenr. place transactions. The women's union had merely assumed the of The Chinese courts of this period, as far as they came under ncigl.rbours, making divorces more or less tecognised by its own Nationalist influence, recognised as legal any published divorce punish recognition. It also at times assumed the right to, husbands about which there was no quarrel. But the habit of accepting punishments or mothcrs-in-law for cruelty to \trives; such took the neu/spaper notices as constituting divorce, led sometimes to serious form of a shamcful procession through the streets in a dunce-cap, abuses.' A young girl of my acquaintance, studying in the ril/omen's whilc thc guilty onc \r/as compelled to shout slogans on behalf of Ttaining School, became engaged to an officer in the Nationalist lrtr/omcn's frccrlom. army. He did not at first tell her that he had a wife at home in Divorccs, howcvcr, \vcre sometimes obtained in the !7uhan cities his village, living with his parents; when at last he was forced clc,cree the union. \ff/hen r.vithout thc formnlity o[ a from women's to make this revelation, he carefully concealed the fact that he thc

shouted, pushed, waded. The upper classes of rX/uchang were also riding in rickshaws, while the poorer were splashing barefoot through the puddles. Passing rapidly between wide stote fronts, whose open shelves were piled high with goods, we came to a CHAPTER X stone building hung with posters, the headquarters of the A1l China STUDE,NTS AND PEASANTS OF HUPEH Students'Union. Ling Lee Fu, member of the standing committee, looked weary, both from the terrific heat of a Centratr China summer and from the baffling strain of work and conflict. Son of a fairly pros- IT i, no, without reason that my account of the pea,sants of China perous editor in Fukien, he had been graduated from Amoy Uni- begins with the students' union. It was the students who first versity and Fukien Forcign Language School. The studenis' peas- atoused and organised the peasants. Later, the awakened union, he told me, was organised on a basis of individual schools ants began to assume control of their own organisations. But united in a City Federation. The city is the unit from which until the last day o[ my stay in Hankow, and till the suppression arise bcth the provincial and the nar.ional students' unions. The of the peasants' union, half of its executive stafi still consisted of student rnovement has been in existence for nine years. Formert,v studcnts. it consisted only of stuclents in urriversities and upper middle I visitcd on thc same day the All China Students' Union and schools (aged sixtcen to twenty), but since the eighth Congress the peasants' union of Hupeh. They werc located not f.ar apaft they have adrnitted students ftom the Middle Schools \i/uchang. Junior in tlre historic city of So swift is the river that for (ages twelve to sixteen). These latter schools have a special an hour and a half our launch toilcd across and up the Yatgtze, Boys Corps, undcr guidance of older students. though the reverse trip from Wuchang to Hankow takes but half To what extent, I asked him, v,ere the students concerned with an hour. I landed at steep stone steps under high to\ilers. Great politics (ather than with their own education. piles of broken brick indicated the attempt to tea,: down the wall "No student union has ever taken actual part in governrnent,', of Wuchang, in accordance rvith the announced desire of the Na- he ansrvered, "except temporarily in connection rvith mass move- tionalists to remove all symbols of the Middle Ages. Like other ments. In Shanghai, the students' union co-operated with the Nationalist intentions, this also had Ianguished; no workmen were labour pickets in seizing the town for the Nationalists; in mass any longer visible attacking the ancient rvall. Only the chaotic movements of Central China, we have had representatives on piles of broken bricks left a single great breach, but this, perhaps, people's tribunals. For the past five or six years we have helped was sufficient to prevent any future siege or defence of the city. the Nationalists in every vay. Nevertheless, we consider that A iob begun and abancioned, yet sufficient iri its destructiveness; our final function is not with government but with education. It like other iobs of the Nationalists. is not true, as our critics claim, that we destroy education by lfl/uchang. There had been rain that morning in Narrow stone taking the students out of the schools into public movements. streets were still flooded to the depth of several inches: Wu- It is not the true education that we are Cestroying. \X/e are chang, the beautiful, historic seat of government and learning, has seekirlg for ourselves and for other young men an education suited no aCequate sewer system to carry off \ilater! Our rickshaw boys to China in the twentieth century. So far there is no such educa- STUDENTS AND PEASANTS OF HUPEH r28 CHINA'S I\{ILLIONS r29 tion; we do not even know what its form will be. !7e have in were beaten by the students," he said. "After this, all sorts of China two kinds of education to-day. There is the old classical students' organisations were started, which led in all kinds of patriotic education, which gives knowledge of the Chinese classics but no movements, strikes, boycotts, fighting the old officialdom. knowledge of science or Western mechanical civilisation. Then The third step was when the students' unions began to support there is the education of the mission schools and a few other Dr. Sun Yat Sen. lfhen Dr. Sun called a People's Conference schools on foreign models: these give us VTestern ideas, but un- in Peking, the students' unions held preliminary conferences in the digested and without relation to China. Our student movement provinces. After the death of Dr. Sun, the students became is seeking to take what we need from both these forms, and one of the pillars of the Kuomintang. So when in May rg2t, a develop the new education which we should have to enable us Japanese foreman killed a worker in Shanghai, the students left to take part in building modern China. In our political fights the schools to demonstrate and this led to the May 3o shooting. "The also, we have this aim. Besides this we struggle for better science May demonstrations v/ere chiefly in the hand,s of students equipment, better health and physical culture, and all the aspects until after the shooting. Then they passed into the hands of the of education which suffer badly under the militarists. Even under rising labour movement in Shanghai. The students' union de- 'Wuhan \Me must still fight the militarist influence and try to re- clared its intention to take part in the fight of the workers and organise thc educational system." Peasants when they call strikes or protest taxes. From early 1926, Young Ling considcred that young Chinese need most to know the students' union gave special attention to Feng Yu in this prcscnt dccadc (r) science, (z) good systems of govern- Hsiang, and carried on p(opaganda whereby Feng was helped to gain ment, (3) revolutionary theories. The mission schools, he said, for a time control of the northern provinces. !7hen the for- powers had donc some good in bringing the first 'W'estern knowledge to eign intervened by their note of protest over the Taku China; but nevertheless thcy were part of the cultural invasion forts, the students again made demonstrations, and Tuan Chi Jui, of imperialism, in that they gave special attention to the history, head of the Peking government, kilted thirty-six students and geography and language of foreign lands, and taught very little wounded hundreds in front of his house. This was the incident about China. "W'e know more about America than about our of March 18, 1926. o\Mn country," he complained. "Also they compel us to attend "The students now saw that talk and agitation were empty, chapel and spend time in Bible study whether rve are Christians and that they must learn warfare. Over a thousand went south or not. These are the things we especially object to." to the Whampoa Academy. The union began to see that hope Ling Lee Fu outlined briefly the history o[ the students' move- really lay with the Canton government, so we held our eighth ment in China, beginning with the "Renaissance Movement" Conference in Canton, Joly ry26. In the Northern Expedition which inaugurated a simpler style of writing. This movement many students took part, not only with the armies but before sprang into political prominence with the demonstrations follow- the armies came, by agitating among the workers and peasants of ing May 4, r9r9, against the Peking warlord government's traitor- Central China." The students' union has contributed many martyrs to the Chinese ous surrender to the Japanese of the Chinese province of Shan- tung (previously dominated by Germany) under the Treaty of revolution. Besides those dying at the front, Ling said that Versailles then being framed by the victorious Allies following several hundred were killed by Marshal Wu and General Sun Germany's defeat in the Wodd War of ryr4-r8. "Many traitors Chuang Fang. In Shanghai the students took part in the armed MILLIONS STUDENTS AND PEASANTS OF HUPEH r30 CHINA'S rlr atta,ck whereby the workers and students seized the city govern- imposing gate\ilay, I came to a stone-floored pavilion facing a ment and held it for the Nationalists. Ling claimed that four green garden. Flere I waited for the representatives of the hundred students had been killed by Chiang I(ai Shek, "as being peasants' union. The walls were hung with large red banners communists though in fact they were not." The Shanghai Univer- beairrg inscriptions, and posters showing the ghastly torments of sity had been sealed shut by soldiers. So now the student union peasant martyrs who had akeady sufiered death in some district was supporting \ruhan "flot completely, but as closer to the reached by the militarist teaction. - -Wuhan masses than Chiang is, although also has many imperialist A slight thin youth clad in a shapeless suit of faded blue cotton elements." "Iifle are trying to build," he said, "a united front at last came to us, explaining that all the members of the executive between the petty bourgeoisie, the vzorkers and the peasants and committee were down in the province, investigating the reports even the soldiers. The soldiers behave very wildly, bttt afuet all of military excesses, and reorganising and strengthening the local they come from the peasants and have done service for the revolu- unions, but that he, Ten Ya Sheng, as chief secretary of the union, tion. The students work among ali these groups, carrying on would give us any information we desired. He had a pale intel- propaganda." lectuai face, sincere, devoted, and very weary. Throughout his It was the students tvho poured into the viltrages in the autumn talk there were always from six to twenty peasants, standing about aod winter ol ry26, organising peasants' unions everywhere and in the open pavilion, listening to his explanations anC occasion- giving to them all a ccrtain form, fixed by the propaganda depart- ally adding a comment. mcnt of tlic Nationalists. Peasants all over the r.vorld are said to be harcl to organise. In By the cnd of the year, hol,vcver, the "nvoik of the students was this the peasants of China form a startling exception. By hundreCs accomplished, and the peasants' unions began to function indepen- of thousands, even by millions, they poured into the peasants' dently, and to expand undcr their own leaders. The importance unions in the Nationalist controlled provinces. They set up o[ the students' union - which will go down in history as the first peasants' tribunals, took control of lands, and passed death sen- carciet of propagancla to the masses, helping to arouse first the tences. They had, however, been suppressed with wide slaughter v'orkers and then the peasants - sank then in relation to these and indescribable tortures by reactionary soldiers. At the time of greatet mass organisations. my visit to the Peasant Union of Hupeh, the li7uhan Governmeni had passed resolutions for "better control and sane development" of the peasants' movement, resolutions whose effect would depend The peasants' union of Hupeh vas located in rfi/uchang in an largely on the method of enforcement. ancicnt, rambling building of exquisite architecture, court after Most docile and industrious perhaps of all earth's creatures is court of green plants and sloping roofs and latticed walls' At the the peasant of the Chinese plains. Toiling to feed a fantly fuon entraflce several armed "peasant pickets" stood as a gtard of two or three acres o[ eath, with methods most primitive, his life honour, reminding me that although the labour pickets had givcn is a constant rvar with natu(e in which defeat means dea.th, rvhile up tl-reir arrns a short time previously, the pcasants' unions had victory means only the chance to renev/ the struggle another year. still the tight to a number of pcasant militia, di.stinguished from Even in good ycars his harvest hardly suffices to feed him till the soldiers by dark blue cotton suits instead of pale blue-grey. Passing next harvest; he dozes through the cold months on insufficient these guards, and crossing a court of uneven stones to aflother diet and feeds himself up in the spring to start work. In periods CHINA'S IvIILLIONS ENTS AND PEASANTS OF HUPEH t32 41 of flood or drought he has no (eserves to call on; in all great of social revoiution. It is not without economic reason therefore famines, Chinese peasants have perished by rnillions. Of late that, in three successive revoiutions of the past century, South years has come a pest worse even than flood and faminc, the hordes China has flan-red into a hot, if temporary unity, which has broken of semi-bandit soldicrs, who tax the peasant unmcrcifully, seize itself against the scattered individualist groupings north of the his food and carry ofi his sons for the army. One would have to Yangtze. However, io the north there begin to be new militarist go back to the Middle Ages in Europe to find anything remotely landlords, as successful generals, or sons of high ofiicials, invest approaching the torments and insecurities of peasant life to-day in their fortunes in the soil. Chang Tso Lin himself is one of the China. greatest landlords of China. \7ith this changing social condition For clecades there has been a prevalent view of the Chinese demand for social adiustment is beginning, even in parts of the peasant, that he was a small landholder and therefore averse to nofth. change. Apparently, conditions of land owncrship vary grcat7y The first peasants' union was organised it ry21, in Haifong, in from province to province. The northern provinces are flot so the province of Kwangtung. The accounts of its organisation show greatly crowded, and seem (though no reliable statistics exist) to acuteiy the suspicion and fear which the peasantry feel of all consist largely of small, independent farmers, extremely poor, but outsiders. Fot months a young student laboured among them, nonc the less landorvners. In these provinces one hears much trying to get a hearing. They deferred to him with trembling ct-,rnplaint of the soldicr, but not so much of the landlord. In the until they learned that he came neither to collect rents flor taxes; southern ptovinccs, however, onc finds a landlordism which recalls after this they had no time to waste on him, being busy all their thc worst cxccsscs of the fcudal system, with rents as high as ;o waking hours in the fields. He could not venture to carry his per ccnt to 70 per cent of thc harwcst, with interest rates reckoned propaganda into the village itself, since only the women remained in rice as high as roo pcr cent for a few rnonths'food; and with there in the daytime, "to talk with whom was improper for me, exactions of special gifts of chickens, geese, livestock. Here a stranger." Finding that his city clothes seemed a barier, he hungry pcasanis sell daughters iflto slavery to get food for the adopted peasant clothes and habits. When he had convinced half rest of the family. a dozen peasants of the need of organisation, he found that the In the oorth, therefore, the peasants tend to unite by villages attempt to list their names caused thern to flee in terror. Such, for the purpose of self-protection against bandits and soldiers, but eveo four years ago, was the attitude of the suppressed peasantry without desire for serious social changes. Three peasant youths, of China. for instance, returned to their village in Honan after a night's But the Haifong peasants' union, once started, spread with absence and found the house burned and the inhabitants massacred terrific speed. Peasants discovered the power of the boycott, to a man by the irregular troops of Wu Pei Fu; they ptornptly went which they enforced with desperation, knowing that defeat meant to the riearest headquarters of "Red Spcars" in their neighbour- both collective and individual destruction. They compelled town hoocl and oflcred themselves as fighters teady for death. This merchants to lessen higtr charges for market privileges by collec- type or' bitter conflict between peasaflt and soldier, rvithout social tively transferring their market to vacant land elservhere. In the programme, is typical of the notthern provinces. In the south, popular anger after the May 1o shooting in ry25, and again when however, the peasants tend to demand a governmental unity large the Nationalist armies swept north in 19z6, the students who pouted enough to curb great landlords; hence their dematds take the form into the villages began to find great interest in organisation. In 134 cI{rNA',S MILLIONS the single province of Hupeh, the peasants' union claimed three was open .,0 .r:; ;#;.".;"-"; district, ." iL million members in fifty-eight county organisations. They pre- our first Provincial Congress, in January r92j, repofied two million \We sented lists of four thousand peasants killed '"vith horrible tortures mernbers. estimate now three million. Each mernber ioining by reactionary soldiers. must filI a questionnaire, giving name, family, age, past record, Secretary Ten himself was the son of a fairly well-to-do peasant, and how much land he has. He must be recommended by two in the village of Fluang Ming. There being no school in his village members, and must pay dues of 'one big copper' a month (one- he was taught in his home, and late( became a rural teacher" third of an American cent). Three classes of people are not Six years ago when Dr. Sun organised the Kuomintang, young admitted to membership, opium-smokers, those guilty of violent Ten foined the revolutiotraty pafty through the introduction of a crinres such as banditry, and those owning more than a hundred city friend. He was the only person from his village who ioined, acres of land." an'd it rever occurred to hirn at that time to think of a peasants' Secretary Ten told me also of the peasant courts and the peasant movement, for such was not yet the programme of the Kuomintang. militia. All former courts, he said, were monopolised by landlords, Nevertheless he began to persuade his friends among the richer town rowdies, loafers, and corrupt grafters. The Nationalist peasants to join the Kuomintang; then he began to organise a Government had as yet sent no [e\r/ iudges, since there were school to teach young boys the "Three Principles" and to tell the not enough men for such work. So the peasants organised them- peasants tl-rat, when the Revolution came, it would lighten their selves to punish crimes. heavy burdcns. Little by little he came closer to the problems of "If it is a small crime, we decree a small punishment through the poorcr pcasants and, in January 1927, wherr the first Hupeh the peasants' executive committee. But if it is a big crime, per- Provincial Peasants' Conference was held, he went as delegate from haps meriting death, thcn rve call a mass meeting of peasants his village, madc many reports and suggestions and was finally and have the accusers state their case before the meeting. If appointed chief secretary of the Provincial Federation. He was the meeting votes for death, we shoot the criminal at once and cleady a man whose social past connected him with the uppet bury him. . . . The Nationalist Government has now sent classes of pea,santry, but opposed to landlords and militarists. orders that punishrnent of crimes must be in the hands of the The peasants' union of I{upeh, he told me, began after the May government only, and the peasants are glad to give to the govern- 3o shooting had aroused all China to a flame of Nationalism. ment this task of fudging, but the government has no legal ofiicers Students came into the province, agitatifig, organising. Later peas- in all these districts. Our greatest demand is that the !7uhan ants began to take posts of leadership. The present executive Government should quickly establish our local governrnents, deal- committce consisted of thirteen peasants and {hirteen inteilectuals, ing justly between man and man. Such a governnnent we peas- most of the latter with village.background, like young Ten himself. ants will still defend with our lives, if the government will grant "Our movement falls into two periods," he said. "The first us afms." \X/u periocl was secret organisation under Pei Fu. From May 3o, The question of arms led naturally to the peasant militia. By r92t, till the end of 1925, we grew to 7,ooo members. Then serious the regulations of the provincial peasants' union, each district suppression started and, until October t926, ortr organisations were union was permitted fifty armcd militia, supported by the local 'sought out and punished, but nevertheless continued to grow. From peasants' union, the local Kuomintang, and the local government October 1926, when ttre Nationalist armies came, our movement iointly. Altogether they had had three rhousand revolvers in 7r

Ir u6 CHINA'S MILLIONS STUDENTS AND PEASANTS OF HUPEH r17 Hupeh province, but the rcactionary generals, incited by Chiang to blarne the union. $7e promised to organise co-operatives, but Kai Shek, had taken many of these, and now they had only seven for this also we have no rnoney. hundred. They had hardly any rifles except a ferv in the hands "A fourth difficulty is the presence of bad characters who sell of the bodyguard serving at the union headquarters in Wuchang. themselves to the gentry to be assassins. The peasants' union There ought to be more of these peasants' troops, he said, and suppressed opiutr and gambling and the men who formerly lived they should be given the right to defend the peasants agaiusl by tlrese things are out of work afid are desperate. Many of them reactionaries instead of against bandits only. rnight become honest peasants if we could give thcm land, but "In the Huang An district, for instance," said Secretary Ten, the law forbids us to take land from the gentry till the new land "reactionaries killed twenty-one of the most responsible peasant policy is settled and the courts decide. So these unemptroyed leaders. The union has begged the government to send ti:oops loafers, getting nothiog from us, turn to serve the gentry, v/ho to protect them. But the government says the troops are busy ernploy thern to assassinate peasant leaders. For protection from at the front. The union then asks for the right to use its own these assassins we must wait for the law, since the government come arms; but this also the government f otbids, allowing it only against forbids us to ludge them ourselves. But the law does flot recognised bandits who attack villages, but not for civil conflict to aid us. These loafers also use their time spreading bad tales peasants within the village. $Vhat can we do? The reactionaries recognise about the in the ears of the Nationalist Government no law; they kill as they wish. But we must recognise law, for itself, so that many of them do not understand what we are They also spread rurnou(s among the peasants that the we arc a responsible union. Yet the law cannot help us and only doing. Nationaiist Government is falling, and thus cause despair and forbids us to hclp oursclves." lawlessness." Thus Sccrctary Tcn began tl.re list of the difficulties confronting Against this terrific list of difficulties, which bowed the shoul- the peasants' union of Flupeh. FIe went on to othcrs as serious. ders of Secretary Ten and made his face weary and wan as he "Our second trouble," he said, "is that we won the confidence recited. them, he told me that the peasants' union made only tv/o peasants promising relief from bad conditions and the of the by sirnple demands, immediate establishrnent oI local governrnents This not carried Responsible many miscellaneous taxes. is out. with enough rnilitia to support them against bandits and lawless poor govetnment is leaders see how difficult it is, and how the reactionaries; and imrnediate establishrnent of co-operative stores under the burden of the northern expedition. But the ordinary and government credits to peasants, since "otherwise we will all peasant only cries: 'Liars! You did nothing for us. Now we starve to death." Such elementary and necessary demands but w-on't tristen to your empty words.' - undcr the military and financial and political situation of Wu- "A third difficulty is the economic blockade of the gentry. !7e han - such Utopian drearns ! are trying to break down feudalisrn. But feudalism is based on A more cheerful light came into the sectetaty's face as he tol

"Every union starts them at once; we use the union hall or a than zo per cent a year. It prohibited the tenant cofltract system, peasant's house for headquarters; the local union provides a table by which large landowners lcased land to middlemen who in turn and a few chairs. If more chairs are needed, each family send- subtret at great profit to poorer peasants. The peasants' unions in ing a son sends also a chair. The family provides a pencil and tr-Iupeh were making' no greater demands than these. Their paper; the peasants'union hires a school teacher for five dollars resolutions declared against "any movement for equal partition of (gold) a month. It is not hard to start this sorr of school when Iand," and said that "prcpefty confiscation shall be limited to the peasants are all hungry for learning." rowdies, bad gentry and counter-revolutionaries" - in other words, His insistence that there had been zo,ooo such schools almost the criminal classes. In,addition to the land reforms they de- convinced me. Certainly the Chinese educational revival, when manded the establishment of responsible government in the villages it once begins, is likely to surpass in speed any educational revival and the right to arm themselves and defend it; and also the right the wo,rld has known. to organise schools and co-operatives. Besides the establishment of new schools, he told me the On the ba,sis of these simple demands began the peasants' social' peasants' unions had suppressed gambling and opium-smoking over revolution in the most backward and suppressed districts o[ Cen- a wide area. They had protected their villages against raids by tral China, where feudalism was most strongly efltrenched. It was organised bandits since in such cases they were permitted to use not communism they asked for and died for; it was only the first: arms. They had delivered besieged cities into the hands of the step of escape out of the bondage of feudal system. Nationalist armics by the strategy of their peasant knowledge. Thcy hacl offcrcd thcmsclvcs as transport and as soldiers. Th"y had harasscd thc advancc and rctreat of thc militarists. Th"y had pourcd into thc ranl

mountaifls of Southern Flunan; and a representative of the Foreign Ofiice of Vuhan who had been permitted to take charge of the Foreign Office in Changsha, because he was a known conseryative with prominent relatives. CHAPTER XI Many tales of past adventure in Hunan were exchanged on the boat. The two missionaries represented buildings in Eastern .OR.ED" REACTION HUNAN IN Hunan worth a quarter of a million. The Nationalist armies had used a few vacant buildings the preceding summer, but the totat damage had been chiefly the co,sr of whitewash. The real trouble l- HE little Japanese steamer on which we sailed poked came, they said, when the unions were organised. Their servants its way south frorn Hankow up the Siang River into the heart of had made "outrageous demands," but had accepted an increase of Hunan, famours at that time as the spot where the peasants' rev- {$r.;o (gold) per month without going on strike. Their teachers olution had been "reddest" and where now the reaction rvas also had made demands for salary increases but, as these exceeded bloodiest. As in Shanghai no one had known what r.vas happen- the rnission budget, "we simply closed the school at the end of ing in Hankow, so in Hankow flo one knew what '"vas happening the term with no more discussion, and this astonished them so, in Hunan. Yet Hunan was ostensibly under the $/uhan Gorrern- that they probably haven't caught their breath yet." The local rnent. ActrLrally Hunan \tras go-,refned by certain generals, who Chinese were so regretful ovcr the closing of the school that, first professcd loyalty to General Tang Sheng Chi, who in turn pro- the alumni, and then the local gor/ernment, asked permission to fesscd loyalty to $/uhan. But no civilian authority from Wuhan open and run it. The mission refused but, after their departure, had been perrnitted to cnter Hunan since thc night of May zr, the local government occupied the buildings to house the pupils rvhen the local military had driven out thc peasants' and workcrs' of a government high school which had been burned. The unions unions and had begun killing their leaders. Civilian in";estigat- also had asked to use the chapel buildings fot rneetings "every ing commissions from V/uhan had been turned back by bayonets" week from January to April." This also was refused, but after A militarT investlgating commission under General Tang himself the missionaries left, the unions had used the buildings" The mis- was permitted to enter, but Tang, under local pressure, had re- sionaries adrnitted, however, that the unions had not been as de- turned a "whitewashing" report to !(/uhan. He had to; othenvise structive as some soldiers of the Sixth Army, who had occupied an his arrny would have quickly desetted him. empty dormitory and had torn up floors and desks for firewood, It was under such conditions that I left Hankow in mid-July relusing to accept orders from any authority in Hunan, "because for Changsha, the capital of I-Iunan. Where the recognised gov- our general is in Nanking and we recognise no gcneral in this ernrncnt itself could not investigate, tr, as a foreigner with an p1ace." American passport, could go with case. It was a two days' fourney The German mining agent "never had trouble wirh the unions." in a Japanese trading steamer, which also found no difiiculty in He said that in Jantary, when he had taken a new ore-washing cro'ssing battle-fronts. I7ith me on the boat were trvo Amcrican rnachine to his mines, he had had ttoublc with the "likin" stations rnissionarits, the first to return after the general exodus under - the internal custoros levied arbitrarily by every district. "But consul's orCers; a German ageni of a mining company in the when I explained that I was a German, everyone helped me, in- ..RED" r42 CIIINA'S l,Ilt,LIONS }IUNAN IN REACTION r4? clucling the unions. My mine closed in January because oI trouble clestruction of the unions, many men and two girl,s had bcen with our Chinese stockholders." He explained that the mining killed. The girls had been active in the women's union ancl had cornpany was formed by foreign capital, with a few Chinese stock- tried to get control of the Orphans' Land Fund for the union to holders to make its incorporation legal. "But after the Nationalists administer. came, all Chir.rese got to thinking so much of themselves that out stockholders demanded larger sums for the use of their names. So the mine closed do',vn and I stayed as caretaker, going out every As the Japanese steamer drew near to the shores of Changsha, two weeks for mail to Chengchow, the nearest city" we saw the doc[< crowded to the very edge with a mob of shout- "Once, early in June, I was stopped at the place where they ing, gesticulating coolies, ready to leap upon our ship. When change sedan chairs and askcd for ten dollars (gold) for some- we were yet several feet arvay they jumped madly across the thing the unions wanted. I told thern I would give them one dangerous gap and ran through the decks in search of passengers dollar and they accepted it. But I was afuaid thcy would stop whose luggage they might carry for a few coppers. In such a me for money at every station, so I rvent back to the mine. lfhen contest only the young and strong were successful. On the dock they took my dollar it was not robbery; they put my name in a rvaited a great crowd of disappointed coolies, older men, unable book and told rne what the money was for, I have forgotteo ri/hat, to compete in the struggle, forlornly hoping that some chance n.raybe a br:idgc or a school ot something. A11 these new gov- crumb of work might come to their share. Nevet in any part of ernments collcct for somcthing; but they never build the thiogs the world have I seen such nakcd ghastliness in the struggle for they collect for - they do not stay in power long enough. bread. Two weeks later, when I came out from the mountains, the unions The narrow streets of Changsha were solidly paved with stone. were all destroyed. I said to the man at the station who had High in the air from the roofs of trvo and three storcy buildings, taken my dollar: 'What will you do if I report you in Cheng- rvhite and blue awnings were stretched against the deadly sun. chow?' FIe was terrified; he offered to give back the dollar, or T'hey. created an arcade in the space beneath thern, lined on both very much more if necessary. I could have made a good busincss sides by cavernous shops, forge-fires, carpentry benches or tailors' of blackmail! Of cour,se I promised I would never complain, but wares. Among men and women, crowding, pushing, among dogs he was so frightened that he followed me all the way to Cheng- asleep on the paven.rent and babies a,sleep on bamboo beds or cho,,v. ." Such was the picture the young German gave of nursing quietly at the breasts of blue-trousered mothers, we came the white terror in the southern hills of Hunan. at last to the exquisite green lawns of a foreign mission. Our A member of the Chinese gentrlr acquainted with the two rickshar.v coolies attcmpted to overcharge us, and my interpfeter missionaries, rvas returning to Hunan on our boat. He was a demanded of them: "Is that the price fixed by your union?" prosperous looking man with shifty, suspicious eyes. FIe would "Givc us what you like and don't talk about unions," they cried not talk with me, for I wa.s a stranger. But he talked with the in terror. They had interpretecl his innocent question as a threat missionaries, and they told me his experiences, in the tor.vn o[ to denounce them as union members. Such was our introduction Yu-hsien about rzo miles south of Changsha. None of the gentry, to the terror existing in Hunan. he said, had been killed in his region; but most had fled to Day after day in Changsha I met this te(ror. I talked with a escape the heavy taxes imposcd by the unions. Now, with the young secreiary from the Foreign Commissioner's Of{ice, but he ..RED'' REACTION 144 CHINA'S MILLIONS HUNAN IN r45 rras too frightened to tell me anything that had happened. Pale students' union, no Kuomintang Party, no Communist Party, and almost trembling, he sipped his tea and evaded my ques- no Nationalist Government, except the Commission for the tions. Later I learned that young Dr. Hsiao, who had come with Reorganisation of the Kuomintang, whose head 'xas Y. Y' Lee, me ofl the boat from Hankow as the nerv Foreign Commissioner, a shrewd reactionary. I talked both to him and to one of was discharging several of the former secretaries as supposed com- his under-secretaries. The Commission, they told fi€, had munists. In all Changsha no worker would admit in the presence been appointed by the Wuhan Government on telegraphed of a foreigner his past membership in a union or speak about recommendation from General Tang Sheng Chi. This sufficiently their activities" The only people who dared talk freely were the characterises its membership, It had dissolved all Kuomintang foreigners, chiefly missionaries, and the upper military and rcac- organisations and demanded new registration of members with tionaries, who were quite glad to be interviewed by an American. nerx guarantors from old tried members of the Kuomintang. They Yet from the conscious and unconscious admissions of these people, frankly told me that the purpose was to eliminate communists, enemies of the former unions, I gathered an impression of a who "are not allowed any public demonstrations or any meetings mighty mass movement which in discipline, fervour and power if we can find them, but it is hard to discover them sometimes"' astonished me. Even its broken fragments, interpreted through In order to prevent communists attending meetings, all meetings of the mouths of enemies, bore witness to its greatness. any kind were required to have police permit, and "iL we learn that I asked the chief of staff of the Military Governor horv widely any such meeting is really called by communists, we stop the meeting he had yet "restored order." For nearly two months, he told me, and arrest the leaCers. ." Even the tea-party given at the they had been expelling and executin€i "communists and rioters," Swedish Mission to the young girl graduates of the mission school, and "people who persisted in otganising and agitating." All the was twice visited in my presence by members of the police force, Iarge towns, he assured me, v/ere akeacly quite "safe," since there since the mission had neglected to obtain permission for the were plenty of soldiers in them to suppress the unions. But he gathering. All schools from the middle schools up were ordercd did not advise me to go into the hills or the more distant villages. closed for at least six months to give tirne for the cleaning out of The solCiers were going from village to village, and house to hcuse, communists and ra,dicals among the stuCents. inquiring if there were any "bad characters or communists" aod, I asked Y. Y. Lee how they managed to discover communists when the household answered no, as they always did, the soldiets among the Kuomintang membership and ','rhether it had been hard required "two guarantors from among the well-known families of to suppress the unions. He replied that new members applying the locality," in other words, from the richer gentry. In spite of for the Kuomintang mlrst not only have proper guarantors, buL this very thorough cleaning, he regretted to say that sometimes were given a period of probationary r.vork in the village, "to see after the soldiers left a village, the peasants' unions sprang up whether they behave like communists or Kuomintang in their work under a new name. But now that the troops were returning from among the peasanrs." IJe agreed that it was hard to put dorvn the northern front, he believed they could stalion enough soldiers the unions, and that several hunclred peopie had been executed in through the rural districts to "completely handle the difficulty." the process. "Not all communists need be killed," he said. "They Such rvas tlre thoroughness of the military reaction in Hunan. must be investigated, Most of those who were leaders in peasants' In all the province of Hunan there were at this time no civilian or workers' unions are to be killed. . . . As for soldiers, no organisations legaliy existing, no peasants' unions, workers' unions, commnnists must do any political rvork in the army. The former ..RED" r46 CHINA'S MILLIONS HUNAN IN REACTION to political workers in the arrny who are comrnunists must report at I talked to German merchants ancl other foreigners in tlic city once or when they are discovered they will be killed. Thesc of Changsha. Ali of them considered Tang Sheng Chi a "regular political workers are now no longer under the orders of a political communist general" who had been "put in his place" by his own department in rJTuhan, but under the orders of their local com- subordinates. "General Tang came dowo here to Hunan and mander in all things, and under army law and treatment like any made a speech defending the unions. But his subordinate generals soldier." threatened him, and he had to leave Changsha and go to a house They told me that the peasants' union had had ten million across the tiver. There the generals calied on him with a docu- mernbers in the province of Hunan. I asked what evil they had ment to sign and he signed it. He saw that it was no more use done that made it necessa(y to suppress them. I was told that to side with communists; if he did, he couldn't keep his army. ." These Gerrnan peasant they had blackmailed the rich for money, had gone to the hornes merchants expected that some day the movement come agarn of the rich and eaten up everything, ,camping in large numbers in- would in another form. They had been much the grounds till the rice was exhaustod. Thcy said the peasants impressed by its streogth. One of the biggest German exporters during "People's had prevented the free export of rice in order to drive the price informed me that the Power," as the time of union control was called, the peasants' union had accepted down, and when I said it seerned vefy strange that peasants who the paper money of the Government instead "It gror.v rice should waflt a low price for it, they answered that these I7uhan of silver. is the first time the peasants ever took paper were poor pcasants whose rice was finished by April or May and willingly," he laughed. "But they actually stabilised that currency for some u,eeks by who had to buy rice on credit in order to live until harwest. They accepting it for rice through the new co-operatives. We made a also told me that the peasants had "cut all women's hair and lot of money from tt. !fle could get Hankow paper for much killed all the chickens and cut down all trees and generally be- les,s than silver, and use it among the Hunao peasants at full haved like crazy folk." Since I had already seeo mafly wornen value. That was when they still had unions loyal to Wuhan. with long hair and many trees still growing, I asked where I should Now. . . oh, now of corlrse, you need silver again in the country go to obse(ve gone, that the trees were and they told me on Yolo as always." San Mountain I might see it, where the poor of Changsha city had cut the trees for fuel. They told me, especially, that they had discoversd a plot organised by the communists, which was that, on The difficulty of learning facts in the province of Flunan was ,shop-clerks May p - Memory Day - all should kill their employersn much increased by the wild tales that were spread about every all workers should kill their bosses, and all young people in general occurrence. Citizens of modern lands who denounce the rumours should kill the old people over thirty. This tale I was to hear again that find voice in newspapers have no conception of the far wilder and again in Hunan. It was based on an alleged confession made rumours in illiterate lands where stories are conveyed by word by the president of the labour unions of Siangtan, during tire tor- of mouth. The diffi,culty of collecting evidence may be illustrated tures that preceded his death. The long list of plots which were by the single story of a girl exeiuted in Siangtan rvhen the military said to constitute this confessiofl, was in no way open to the public, reaction came into the town. but extracts from it appeared from time to tirne in the statements "She was a terrible girl," said my first informant. "She is said of the reactioflaries, as iustification for their own activities. to have beaten her own mother. She had her mother arrested .,RED" I4E CHINA'S IVIILLIONS HUNAN IN REACTTON r49 and paraded in disgrace through the streets and put in iail for women's union. She bobbed her hair and made speeches in the many days. She was so bad that, when the soldiers came, her st(eet. She was making a speech shouting: 'Down with Hsu own brother, out of filial piety, gave her up for judgment. They Keh Hsiang' when the soldiers took her. Naturally they executed say that her mother clapped her hands at the execution." The her, since Hsu was their leader. I was present in the square where relater. of this dramatic tale confessed that she got the story third- she was executed, in front of the Middle School. They tied her hand and referred me to her informant, the Chinese head of a hands to a post and she shouted: 'Long live women's freedom. loreign mission organisation. He, however, told quite a difierent Long live communism!' On this they shot her." story. All that is clear from these three tales is that Li An Lin is "I know this girl very we11," he said. "Her name was Li An dead, though perhaps, if I had stayed longer, I would have found Lii1. FIer mother was keeper of a shoemaking shop and rvished someone to contradict this also. It seems also clear that she to marry the girl for much money to a man the girl did not like. died a communist and that it was her courageous expression of her The mother put the girl by force in the "red chair" of marriage aod views that killed her. A1l other details are conflicting. sent he( to the husband. Later the gid escaped from her hus- Similar difiiculties attend the reports of executions in Hunan, band's house and went back home, but the rnother refused to take both those under the unions and those under the military reactions. her in. So she rr/ent fo( protection to the women's union, and it Always the stories date that in the next city, or in a more distant was thc union and not the girl that arrested and paraded her county, there were thousands. But in their own city they always moiher. Later it is said that the girl asked her mother for $zro stated much smaller numbers. Two or three "greedy gentry" in (gold), but whether this was to buy herself free from the marriage the smaller to\tr/ns, or five or six in the district tribunals, were or for some othe( purpose, I do not know. The mother til/as very given as important indications of the "red terror" during the rule angry and when the soldiers came, it was she and not the brother of the unions. The executions of the union leaders under the rvho denounced the daughter. She did not intend to have her soldiers were usually gteater. No one coutrd give any figures for daughter killed; she merely wished a little punishment, the ptovince that were reliable. The Committee for Reorganising "They asked the giri in court: '\Vhy did you oppress your the Kuomintang admitted that at least two hundred union leaders mother?' She answered: 'My rnother firsr oppressed me.' They had been killed in suppressing the workers' aod peasants' unions. asked her then: 'Are you a comrnunist?' And she answered The rnost intelligent Chinese I met in Hunan, a student of political proudly: 'Yes, I am a communist. Though you kill me flow, economy and well informed generally, estimated "perhaps two the principles of communism will triumph.' So, of course, they hundred executed by the unions and twice or thrice that number killed her. But how could the mother know that the girl would by the mllitary." be so loolish as to say before the soldiers that she was a com- A woman teacher in a foreign mission school which had been munist?" closed by the Revolution, told me a typical story of how the rev- This tale seemed exact and I believed it till I heard an entirely olutionary movement came in her town, but she exacted my promise different story from a prominent Chinese merchant, "Yes," he neve( to mention her name or the name of the city. To mention said, "there was one girl executed in Siangtan, Her name rvas unions at all, even in the calm way she did it, was dangerous. It Li An Lin; I know the family. But she never had any trouble at was a few days before Christmas, she said, 'nvhen "the peasant 'all with her mother. She was head of propaganda work of the movement and the communists penetrated a Chinese classical school 15O cHINA',S MILLIONS u ,r, near our school and called for strikes and parades. There was as yet much frorn the peasants and demanded rent in famine time. I no peasants' union but the dernand was that these students leave do not knorv how rnany were killed in our district; maybe ten. school and organise the peasants. The three missionary schools of But they arrested many. !7hen the landlord was presented before the town refused to ioin the strike and the students of the goverir- the people's justice committee, they had an accuser; the committee ment schools paraded against them and issued handbills threatening investigated, and asked the landlord if he would give back the to close them. Every day they carne shouting: 'Down with money he had squeezed from the people. If he gave in to them, Christianity! Down with mission schools!' Our school therefore all right; if not, rnaybe he was killed. was closed at Christmas and the foreignets left." "After the schools closed in our to\rn, more than a quarter of I asked what kind of people joined the unions and if she knew our girls ioined the women's union which was started by the girls personally any of the leaders. "Most of the local peasants ioined," in the Chinese professional school. These gids laughed at our she answered, "but the leader was usually some man who could girls and called them running-dogs of the imperialists; later they read and write, sornetimes a man who helped peasaots prcparc said that persons not members of unions would have no citizenship statements for the law courts and who had influence with them. I in the future government. So many of our girls ioined also. knew the leaders in the union flear our family. Its chairman was "The rvomen's union first went from house to house to enrol Chen, a butcher, a very good man indeed, connected with our members. Then they tried to open a trade school, for sewing, church. The vice-chairman was a postman, also connected with weaving, cooking, and making stockings, but this did not go well the church. Yes, they had to flee later or they would have been for want of money. Later they sent girls into the streets to get killed. But I do not know if they wcre communists or not. other women to cut their hair ofi. At one time the peasants' "Therc wcre four unions: pcasants', workers', merchants' and union also had pickets at the city gates and cut off the hair of all women's. The labour unions selected in each trade the most women rvho entered. This was in Aptil, but the magistrate trustu/orthy as leaders. First they demanded increase in wages; ordered against it, and word also came that it was not the Revolu- later they talked about controlling the factory themselves. Th"y tion to do this; so they stopped. The women's union also talked took charge of accounting in hhops and decided how much the about freedom of marriage and divorce. In the peasants' union employer might keep for his family. I do not know if they did it was decided that people married by their parents might get a this in many shops, but they talked about it. The peasants' union divorce after six months if they found they could not like each decided what tate the landlord should get for his land. Th.y other. But this did not actually happen. However there were also decided to whom he should rent it, and would not allow him several cases where girls chose their own husbands without their to rent to the man who could pay most, but to the man who parents'advice. had a big family and needed land. Formerly the competitioo for "lrhen the troops came to our city to fight the unions, the land drove the rental price so high that the poor could ge! no peasants cooceotrated in a school belonging to our mission. There land. The peasants' union proposed fixing the rent, but it was were three or four thousand, each with a stick or spear and a few never settled. Th"y waited fot the government to pass rent laws, with revolvers. They marched to the edge of the town to meet and meantime they fell. But during their power they arrested the soldiers and launched a fight. At first the peasants won and and shot a few of the gentry. These were the most wicked and the soldiers retreated, but then the soldiers came in larger numbers hated men of the county, officials who stole much and squeezed and took the town. For a whole month the soldiers were in ..RED" HUNAN IN REACfiON I5) r52 the town, but the peasants were in the villages and every little a German in Southern Hunan, "the power of the magistrates the rvhile there would be a clash when the soldiers weflt out to the existed no longer, except to sign the resolutions issued by viilages. Only in the past two weeks did they begio to reaiise People's Power." "People's Power" was unarmed, except for small that the peasants' union cannot exist any more. So now they 'nvork This Sroups secretly because they have not enough strength to be open. of peasant militia numbering two or three hundred to a district. "Yes, the soldiers executed many peasants. In the viltrage of They had been taught to accept the Nationalist army as their T- the soldiers sought for the president and vice-president, but armed force. But this army now included ail the reactionary they could not be found. So they burned their houses and the militarist elements absorbed in its expedition northwatds. Its were being houses of their relatives. People are very excited and frightened, petty ofiicers were sons of landed gentry, whose fathers moving frorn place to place, afraid they will be koown as peasant arrested, fined, and executed by the unions. The orders that unioo members. It is more upset flow than before. . From came from vacillating Wuhan $,ere at one time to "control" the what the peasants did in the past and now, I think they will come mass movement, at another time to "encourage it," and then again again when the soldiers are gone. They tell us that the purposc to "control it." Whenever these orders reached the local peasants, of the soldiers is only to get rid of the 'bad leaders.' Perhaps when they obeyed; but the ordets did not always reach them. The o[ thev have done this, they will allow the union to be re-established." disciplined heroism they showed, the realism and simplicity Such was the hope that was held before the simple people by their demands, their readiness to support with their lives any continued announcements from the Wuhan Govetnment regarding government that ofiered stability and hope, were v/orthy of more "immaturc actions of thc peasants" and need of "saoe control of heroic, clearer-thinking leaders. unions and proper training of leaders." Not all at once did tlee "They attacked too many enemies at once," said an intelligent landlords; but faith of the masses in 'Wuhan pcrish. But the soldiers of Hunarl Chinese to me in Changsha. "They attacked the piece ground had no such illusions. even my servant is a landlord who owns a tiny of. The story of this one town is typical of what had happened with and gets a few dollars a year from it. They attacked the families astonishing speed over the whole province. Beginning in the late of soldiers; they attacked the middie classes. They attacked fall and eady winter oE 1926, under direction firom Changsha, a religion. They attacked imperialists. They attacked the desire student moveflrent sv/ept from town to town. The schools were of old wornen for long hair. They had certainly not the strength closed by strikes and parades and the students poured out to to cope with these enemies at once. organise peasants. Everywhere this movement was opposed by "Nevertheless, they did four things that were very great. The the foreign-owned schools, and everywhere the resulting conflicb peasant of China has slept for many thousand years, submitting closed those schools by January. By mid-winter the peasants' to all evil without believing he could accomplish anything; now unions rvere everywhere developing their own leaders. Meantirne he has become conscious of his collective Power. Second, the relation a school for leaders had bcen established in Changsha, and in a peasant has taken no interest in government, seeing no few weeks tirne, this corps of half-trained organisers followed the between politics and his daily needs. Now he is very much against students into the villages, and began to combine the hundreds of interested in government. Third, the r.videspread fight 1ocal unions into district and regional organisations. Week by illtteracy has not only taught many thousands to read, but has weck the porrer of the unions grew until at last, in the words of awakened in the hearts o{ the entire peasantty the belief that to r I

154 CHINA'S I\.IILLIONS { Iearn to read is the right even of the poorest. And lastly, the womefl are now awake. My own wife, who Iast year would not go out on the street except in a closed chair, now organises a lfomen's Co-operative Exchange with forty women to sell hand- icraft products of the members. All of these seeds have been sown and will come up again. How soon I do not knouz, maybe two years, maybe tlilenty" Even now, in my native to\r,n, rHE REV::J';i i-'Jk"FoNG when the soldiers leave, the union starts o,nce more." The northward sweep of the Cantonese armies with the propr- agandists in their train, submerged though they were in the encl fT *., not enough, I felt, to visit the city of Changsha, if I under the feudal armies they acquired but could not absorb, ac- wished to learn what the Revolution had accomplished and what complished this awakening of Central and Southern China the the reaction was doing in the countryside of Hunan. A hundred only - victory that cannot be taken from them. rniles to the ,south was the little to$/n of Yungfo,ng, and its county capital Siangsiang - spots where all foreigners assured me the ltevolution had been "reddest." Elsewhete in the province the peasants had killed occasional Chinese, or occupied the vacant houses of foreigners who had fled. But in Yungfong and Siang- siang the peasants' and workers' unions had actually driven out foreigners and taken possession of their premises as union head- quarters. These foreigners - German missionaries of the China Inland Mission- were back at their stations now; it was possible to visit them and learn what had happened, I therefore decided to make a trip south to Yungfong, into the heat of the rural districts of what had once been "Red" Hunan. At this point in the province of Hunan, an Ametican road runs for a hundted miles through the Middle Ages. It is the only road practicable for either automobiles or hotses of the entire province of many million people. Built chiefly by the International Famine Rclicf, it runs from Changsha south to Yungfong, along a wide, brown river and through deep, green valleys where the exquisite curves of rice terraces lead up to rough hills of bare grass fit only for pasture, and end far beyo,nd in grey-blue mountains. !7hen we came to this road through a cloud-butst which almost washed our rickshaws down the narrow channel of the Changsha streets, we found an autotr"uck waiting on a splendid roadbed of gravel 156 CHINA'S MILLIONS THE REVOLUTTON IN YUNGFONG rr7

quite unaffected by the downpour. Such an advantage, even in centre of the Yungfong labour unions; now it was again the shrine the matter of independence of weather, has modern life over the of the Germao religion, breathing a worship of law and private Middle Ages. With a loud snort and a bucking movemeor, such property and old-established manners which seerned utterly unaf- as Chinese drivers seem to think necessary to emphasise the power fected by the storm of revolution that had passed over it. The of the modern cofltrivance under their hands, we started on our floors were warped with age but washed with German thorough- ,0urfley. ness; the sheets and towels were crisp and clean. Even the texts Here and there a \iloman in blue trousers and long coat stood on the walls: "Ja, Yater," and "Sage es Jesu," hung again in staring passively at o,ur autotruck, or little youngsters giggled and their old accustomed places, undented by the great upheaval in pointed at the two foreign ladies in its front seat, or an irnpassive this "reddest" spot of all the "red" Revolution. Pastor Schinde- boy with vast umbrella-hat still dripping from the recent rain w-ulf lrimself w-as a thorough evangelical, tracing the direct hand crossed our roadway to some tiny sidepath, leading home at twi- of the Lord in all things, except where he traced the handiwork of light a sluggish water-buffalo. Occasional villages we passed, the devil. The Lord, he told me, had used the peasant Revolu- clusters of low houses, grey and tar,, of sun-dried bricks. At night tion to chastise the rich for their sins of greed and graft; now he we came to the city of Siangtan and, since our automobile would was using the soldiers to punish the peasants fot their unruly go no further that evening, we went an hour's iourney by rickshaw excesses. It was a convenient doctrine; he could be happy what- thro,ugh the narrov, dark streets where ghostly banners waved and ever happened. It did not, however, spoil his German thorough- ro6y paper lanterns glowed in the vaulted night above us. Once ness in observing facts and remembering them. the flamcs of a forge into which I looked inadvertently as we "Yungfong," said Pastor Schindewulf after dinner, while we passed a shop-front, darkened all the world thereafter for many restlessly fought mosquitoes that came through the unscreened minutes; once the fircs in f ront of the Temple of Kwanyin, where vrindows, "is a town of perhaps ten or twelve thousand people on the gifts of the faithful wcnt up in flames to the goddess of mercy, 'the Street'; it serves as entrcpdt for many villages back in the brightened our pathway for a hundred yards. hills" . The lands around are owned chiefly by ten ot twelve rich Beyond and behind all these dim and glowing shops, ali these families, who lease them to peasants in return for half the crop. green, rice terraces, all these tumultuous cities and sun-baked Thus their granaries are full to bursting with half the rice of the villages, we came atter a day and a half to the town of yungfong district, which they hoard till the fifth or sixth month of the year which runs in a single street along a ruptd, brown river, fresh from when the poorest peasants have eaten their harvest and the price of the grey-blue hills. It was the end of the auro road and the end ricc goes up. At times in the past the rich have hoarded the o[ our journey. We picked our way from rock to rock bet$/een a ricc t-ill the poor were rioting with hunger at their granary door row of houses and the tising river, crossed on an arched stone bridge - so sccure did they feel in the ancient submission of the Chinese to the other side of the water, passed by the usual shop-fronts pcasant. Then they opened the granaries and sold fo,r high prices; and an occasional temple, and came to thc small and ancient house to those wl.ro could not pay they made loans of rice, exacting two where dwelt Pastor Schindewulf and his wife and daughters. and three-fold retutn at hanrest. The house had been for twelve years a shrine of Gerrnan pro- "This year, however, there was a peasants' union. In Yungfong testantism in this far country, so utterly difierent from the orderly was the central union for t\.yenty miles around. Every ten li or countryside of Germany. ft had been for a few brief weeks the so (about three milcs) there was a local peasants' union, but they CHINA'S MILLIONS rt8 THE REVOLUTION IN YUNGFONG r59

all came to Yungfong as a centre for parades or meetings or to $loo (gold) and 8o piculs* of rice. They took from him chiefly bring rich gentry tor taxation. The heads of the peasants' union money, since his lands were tealands. From those who had more were Long and Li, tenant peasants of good reputation. Bui some rice, they took as high as 3oo piculs of rice. They promised to of the small local unions had less reputable leaders. Twenty li repay the rice after harvest, but only pound for pound without away f.rom here was a very bad union leader who killed a member interest, not two and three-fold as they had been forced to pay of the gentry. Not with his own hands of course; he sent him before. The ri,ce was stored in a warehouse next to the mission, with an acrusation to Siangsiang, the big district union which was and Pastor Schindewulf testifies that every day they drew out higher than Yungfong and assumed powers of life and death in three or four thousand pounds of this rice and so,ld it for low this district. Siangsiang tried this man of the gentry before their prices in the temple to the poor. committee and executed him. I spoke to the union leader about This was the "People's Food." Three miles away they had his action and told hirn he had committed a sin. But he had no another station, so that no one need walk too far. Not everyone could repentarice in his heart for the man's death. He said: 'He was buy this rice; one must be on a list. Pastor Schindewulf was able a very rich man who did only evil and no good all the days of his to write his two servants on the list by going to the [fe."' peasants' union and registering their names, wages and the number in their families. After this they could buy every day half "And was it true that the rich man was wicked?" I asked. a Chinese pound (about three-fourths pound) "Yes, it was doubtless true," admitted the pastor. "The gentry of an English f.or every member of the family. They could not buy for the missionary's killed by the peasants' union were chiefly the worst gentry, greedy family. IThen Pastor Schindewulf protested that this was unequal grafters, the men who paid worst wages or gre\il rich from stolen treatment, the union replied that they had calculated carefully and famine funds, or took the last grains of rice in famine years from hed only enough rice to feed all the poor till. harvest. Those who hungry peasants. But thesc are not crimes for death penalties," had enough money must buy from private traders at higher prices. he added with conviction, transferring his fixed, priestly scruples Some of the funds from the sale of rice were used by the peas- to the elemental upheaval. "Moreover there is no doubt that the ants' union to start schools for poot children in all the nearby rice belonged to the rich and the peasants who took were it villages. They proclaimed that every child, however poor, had stealing." a right to learn to read. There were many such schools iust Thus we came to the tale of the "People's Food," most the starting, but they had all been closed by the military reaction. revolutionary action accomplished p,easants by the of Yungfong, T'hc pcasants had talked much about a Co-operative, to be started and by them the done in third month of their existence. In Yung- from thc rice sale and used to finance future rice purchases and fong, I learned, the peasants' union did not consider that it had pcrhaps the purchase of seed. This hope also died in the power to pass death sentences; these were referred to the district nlilitarist rcaction. But the "people's Food" remained for a time union in Siangsiang. Such definite discipline existed in even the even under the white terror. The new merchants' union, which first months of the peasants' organisation. But Yungfong took the was the old rcactionary merchants' guild under a new name, did power of arresting rich men and making them pay "contributions." not dare provoke public unrest by stoppiog the rice sale. Only They knew how much these people had and taxed them ac- cordingly. The owner of the hotrse where the pastor lived paid * A picul is rzl English pounds. CHINA'S MILLIONS THE REVOLUTION fio IN YUNGFONG 16r thereafter they gave the money to the original owners. And slorvly worked only half the time. Peasants from the surrounding coun- the prices began to go up. Thus ended in Yungfong the peasants' try, hoping for a iob from the wharf-coolies' union, had poured attempt at food control and schools for the poor. into the town of Yungfong till it became a serious problem for Besides the peasants' union, there were many other unions in the union whether to accept all these new mernbers and all starve the rWith to\Mn of Yungfong under the "People's Power." German together, or refuse them and be accused of fighting their brothers thoroughness Pastor Schindewulf could give me a list of twenty- of the Revolution. These were problems that have daunted four unions; wharf-coolies, servants, cooks, bamboo-workers, shop- more experienced unionists than the wharf-co,olies of yungfong, clerks, iron-workers, brass-workers, rice-huskers, many tailors and and for which with China's overcrowding and present economic tlore. Even the four telegraphers had a union. There was a system there is no good solution. But remembering the heart- tenants' union to which Pastor Schindewulf himself belonged since breaking scene ofl the dock in Changsha, when the strong, young he was a tenant in his house. The tea-packers were not yet men risked their lives to leap upon our ship for the chance of a organised since the seasofl for tea-packing had not come. The ferxz coppers, r.vhile the old and less agile waited dumbly for cotton-pickers were organised in the peasants' union, not under the starvation, I felt that the great competition for a livelihood in labour unions. All this daailed thoroughness of organisation was China, which is her most enduring problern, had been gallantly achieved in three months from December to March, 1927. faced by the wharf-coolies of Yungfong. The German exactitude which enabled Pastor Schindewulf to There were other regulations of the wharf-coolies' union which give the number of unions, gave also the current local wages. had been enforced on the German pastor. !7hen he returned frorn "$7e pay our cook $l.lo (Sold) a month and our serving woman his involuntary exile, he sent his house servant $z.oo; they get their own food from their wages. Shop-clerks get to unload his boatJoad of baggage $r.;o to $4.oo a month and rice in addition, according to their and household furnishings. To the first load the coolies on the experience and skill. A woman shop-clerk gets perhaps teo cents dock made no obiection but, when the house a month and her food. Clothes? Oh, if she works for a rich servant returned and they saw it was his intention to make a man, she gets the cast-off clothes of the family Such were cornplete iob of unloading the boat by himself, they beat him away the workers of Yungfong who dared take the "People's Power" from the docks and sent him home. They followed him to the and organise revo,lutio,n, mission and informed the pastor that his servant was a house The wharf-coolies and the carrying-coolies who bring loads of setvant and a bamboo-worker, and that only regular wharf-coolies goods from the mountain villages to the little port of Yungfong, from the union would be permitted to unload the boat. The introduced new regulatio,ns regarding labour. They ruled that pastor complied and went to the union, to request that they would wharf

Such was the conflict which arose constantly between foreign mis- horns and bugles, workmen with spears, regular soldiers from the sionaries and the new nationalism that flamed through China. magistrate rvith rifles." Such was the wave of Revolution as iL The first attack on religion made by the unions was not against broke ovet the house of Pastot Schindewulf. Pastor Schindewulf but against the Buddhist idols. Members of The pastor asked for the leaders, and there stepped forth the the students' union and the young men's corps broke and burned chief telegrapher, the principal of the middle school, and the officer the idols in the two chief Buddhist temples of yungfong. Bur of the soldiers who was a Christian. The pastor asked them to when they began to denounce household gods and proclaim the come into his study and tell what they wanted. "Excuse us," intention to destroy them, the women interveoed. The wife of they answered, "as you are a German, we should flo,t bother you. ..I the chief idol-smasher is reported to have cried: will kill my But ootv the Kuomintang is against religion. Therefore we tell husband if he touches my gods." So the campaign against idols you to leave Yungfong. ." The pastor seized the momerrt to languished, because the chief idol-smasher could not clean up his argue about the value o{ the Christian religion for China! own house. Among the peasants also the attack on religion was "Now we have People's Power," they answered, "and we need not very successful. !flhen the soldiers of the reaction came, one no religion, but we need your chapel for out labour union." The of the peasant leaders of a local union went to the temple idol pastor asked for their legal warrant and was told, "we have no to ask his fortune. He received an answer that his life would be time to wait for warrants, and besides we need none, since Chaog- spared, and thereafter went confidently thror.rgh the village tilt sha itself now takes orders from the People's Power." He asked the soldiers killed him. This man, who believed the oracle of four weeks' delay to affange matters with the Chinese evangelists, the idols, v/as nevertheless a leader in the Revolution. but this was refused. He then asked four days' grace to pack his The account of Pastor Schindewulf's expulsion from yungfong belongings and this was granted. "You may take all your personal and his return indicared a rcmarkably disciplined organisation on things," they said, "but not the property of the mission. For the rnission the part of the unions. It was in the wave of anti-foreign feeling was given to the people of China and is now taken over People's after the bombardment of Nanking that his mission was closed by the Power. ." "And so," says Pastor Schinde- by the unions. He himself claims that the orders came from wulf, "I demanded a receipt for all my things and told them I Clrangsha, from agitatrng students and young communists, \yho would return and expect them again. They gave me the receipt came first to Siangsiang as regional centre, stirred up the party and when I returned I got everything back in order." Several incongruous headquarters and unions and seized the foreign rnission build- incidents followed, in which revolutionary determination blended oddly politeness, ings in that city, and descended at last upon yungfong with the with the old Chinese and formal aid of the magistrate's soldiers. For three days, he learned after- court sentences were modified for most informal reaso,ns. Through them all one gets the flavour wards, the various unions in Yungfong debated, the peasants, and of the Chinese countryside. There was a forced parade mission merchants' unions opposing the taking of his building, while the of the servants and church employees disgrace through streets labour unions wished it because of their need of a headquarters in the as "eaters of foreign religion." There r.vas a debate in the yamen as and meeting-hall, which purpose the mission chapel would admi- to their sentence in tably serve. which a few voices called for death; but the maiority decided to "cut the hair of the women and let them go, but "Early l7ednesday morning gentry came and warned us. Even imprison the men." Yet the same evening Pastor Schindewulf while we talked the crowd arrived; gid and boy students blowing went to the yanen anC CHINA'S MILLIONS t6l THE REVOLUTION IN YUNGFONG t6s explained that he needed his cook to help him pack - this was union lived in it together with men unionists and labour soldiers. considered sufficient reason for letting the man out of iail! To the minds of the orthodox Chinese, all of these are "ruined On the second day, when the packing was almost completed, women," who must certainly have been living in utter promiscuity. a minor war occutred between Yungfong and a nearby village over These girls, I learned, wore uniforms like men; they went tirelessly the question which had the right to tax a certain rich man, the frorn house to house urging the unbinding of. feet, and the cutting village where he lived or the town where he sold his produce. of hair, and the right of young people to marry without their Local battles of this kind occurred in many parts of Hunan. A parents' consent. From all of these facts it appears that it was man of Yungfong was wounded in the skirmish and brought to the more potent emotion of Revolution rather than of sex which Pastor Schindewulf for treatment. After treating him, the pastor stirred them. But to the older inhabitants of Yungfong, the felt emboldened to demand and get the release of his other Chinese wearing of men's clothes was only an additional horror. employees and evangelists from the jail! There began again a One girl especially was picked out later for punishment. !7hen debate about his going. The peasants' and merchants' union the soldiers overthreu/ the unions, the reorganised merchants' formally begged hirn to "reconsider and stay in Yungfong." But union removed the girl's clothes to her waist and exposed her the labour union sat silently waiting, while the local party head- for two days and nights in the temple at the centre of the main quarters refused to allow him to continue preaching, so he went street under t-he guard of soldiers, "so that every man in town on with his pa,cking. All of the unions, including the labour may see she is really a woman." Then she \ras sent home to union, accompanied him to the boat with farewell speeches and her husband's house, for gids of nineteen in China have nearly firecrackers, thanking him for his work in the past and for "giving always husbands, and she lies there to-day in Yungfong disgraced his mission building to the Peoplc's Power." Such is the Chinese and hidden. method of saving "facc" which persists even in revolutions. "It is worse now in Yungfong thao before," said Pastor Schin- Pastor Schindewulf camc back a fcw weeks later, armed with dewulf. "When the soldiers came, they killed five men: one who papers which he had secured in Changsha and Siangsiang, not had accused and thus killed a man sixty li away; one who had only from the government but ftom the regional labour union, accused and thus killed a rich man thirty li away; one who was ordering the unio,ns of Yungfong to return the building. Armed hcad of the young men, who were supposed to have said that old with this order, he walked into the chapel filled with spears and mcn should be killed; and one who lived in the Union House along banners, presented his documents and got his building back in with thc gids. What the fifth did I do not know. The soldiers four hours' time. He presented his receipts and recovered all his arrcstccl two v/omen and wished to kill them for having forcibly furniture, even that which had been removed to other union cut nrany women's hair; but they were found to be pregnant and headquarters. sent homc to their husbands. But the rich have learned noth- There is one thing above all that shocked the pastor far more ing. Thcy arc more bitter than before and oppress worse than than any seizing of buildings or commandeering of rice. The ever. If a rich man even says a word against a peasant, the taking of property by one side or the other is, after all, a com- peasant is takcn off at once to iail. So the discontent increases; monplace in the feudal wars of China. But during the time when there will comc another explosion. Worse, I think it will be, than the unions occupied the mission building, ten girls of the women's this one." t66 cHrNA'S MTLLTONS l REVOLUTTON rN 1'LTNGFONG fi7

Three or four pictures close the tale of yungfong: A narrow much thinking and planniog and hoping went on. They who had slept path of stone blocks winding across rice-fields and streams to a for a thousand years in dumb submission had awakened to village, with a procession of coolies for ever traversing it-shout- the intoxic.ltion of power. This experience they took with them ing, sw of the way of their heavy into the dark night of suppression and tercor, weighing their burdens f the countrysicle into yung- failures and successes, and piling up for the future the knowledge fong in is crowded out by cheaper of who were friends and who were enemies. Those who in four man-p,ov/er. . The little tea village at the end of this pattrrway, brief months swept to the organisation of "People's Food" and where girls and women crowd together in tiny shacks for the work schools for the poor and peasant unions across the countryside of tea-packing, and where the chief merchant of the village looks "from every ten li to ten li" and found through these simple, worried if you mention his son, the black sheep of the family who necessary things new hope for life, did not give up their hope at was a leading member of the local Kuomintang committee. The the bidding of soldiers. Always behind the soldiers, as even their son is at home, and the father hopes he can bribe the soldiers to commander had told rne, the union revived under a new name. spare him. . The ancienr Buddhist Temple at the centre of And in the grey-blue hills of South Hunan and Kiangsi, thar the street, which has seen many historic moments in the past few ancient mountain refuge of fugitives and oppressed, the leaders months: where the idols were first broken, where the ...people,s who survived reassembled shattered forces, planned, organised for Food" was sold, where communal dinners were held on festival the future. days by the Unions, and where later the half-naked gid was ex- Out of those shattered peasant unions of South China, out of posed to the gaze of the passers-by, by order of the merchants' the hopes and experiences of those millions of peasants, Soviet association which norv has hcadquartcrs in tl.ris same temple. China was to grow in the next half decade. The lcading mcrchant of Yungfong, sitting in the temple, proudly caressing his baby son who still wears the ancient top-knot aod silver circlet as guard against devils, then lifting his hand from the child's head to make a gleeful gesture of a beheading axe when I asked what would happen to, the union leaders if caught. Last of all, a group of peasants, edging away from me when I took ..you out my note-book while the pastor warned me: frighten them. They have heard that rhere are four hundred gun-boats in Chang- sha and that the American aeroplanes will bornb the villages in revenge for the expulsion of the foreign missionaries. They think you are collecting evidence." So ended the Rwolution in Yungfong, with soldiers restoring order by killing union leaders, with merchants again displaying household gods and silver amulets, with peasants afraid of foreign aeroplanes. But Pastor Schindewulf, and everyone else I met in Hunan, knew quite well that under the deceptively quiet surface, t FRAGMENTS OF REVOLUTION $s "\)7e cried: 'Are you serious?' 'Yes,' he replied, 'very serious.' He told us that since we were Germans and had done no harm in the town, if we wished to rernaio as business men we might rent any other house in the street but nct this house which CHAPTER XIII was a public structure built for the people of China, and which FRAGMENTS OF REVOLUTION the People's Power r,-zished now for a union headquarters ancl not for a mission. !7e might take with us all our personal belongings, but must leave the equipment and furniture of the mission. He also told us that since we were a poor mission and might not halre TgnOUCff the countryrside of Hunan saw many other i I money for our sudden departure, the unions had voted to give us fragments the peasant of Revolution. I stopped in Siangsiang, $zoo for travelling expenses to Shanghai! which had beeo tI-,e head regional powers of a union with "While this amazingly business-like conversation went on in the of life and death. The German missionaries, who had been ex- dining-room under guard of soldiers, a group of workmen removed pelled from d their mission here also, told a talc of disciplined with a stone chisel the carved narne of the mission above the otganisation on the part of the unions superior even to that in outer dooi, replacing it by a sign which anoounced the central Yungfong. They r.vere ruthless, but they accomplished their aim union headquarters of Siangsiang. Another grollp, under the lead with wastc motion littlc and no atrocities. of two bookkeepers with large books, went from room to room "We wcrc sitting at dinncr on Easter Monday, April r7," said and Iisted all the contents, including even the number of doors "whcn the missionarics, our amah told us that hundrcds of labour and the glass panes in the ,"vindows. Ail rooms which contained rnilitia were in the strect. W'c continucd quietly eating for there no personal possessions but only mission equiprnent, \ilere at once had been no agitation against us, and wc thought if they wanted scalcd shut by pasting two strips of paper across the doors." us they would come in. Soon thc hcad of a leader appearcd at "In trvo hours' time, from six to eight o'clock on that Monday our dining-room window; he blcw a signal and the militia poured cvcning," said the missionaries, "the whole thing was over. Vfle in. Sorne took positions at the doors of the room; but they did h:rd agreed to leave the following Wednesday and they thanked not touch us. As soon as we saw their leader, we wefe not afraid; trs politely and withdrew, leaving behind ten regular soldiers from he was Mr. Nieh, principai in the government high school, and rlrc nragistrate, with instructions to guard both the missionaries and an old acquaintance. Hc rvas now leader of all the unions of llrc ncw union property. As long as the labour guards were here, Siangsiang, but except for his Bolshevism, he was alv,ays a re- llrr:rc was no looting. They would have killed even their o\flr sponsible man. rrrcrrrlrcrs i[ they had broken disciplinc. But the regular solcliers "He said: 'The Kr:omintang has decided that we do not need lclt rrs guards wetre another txatter. Ncxt morning when we were this foreign religion. We have People's Power now, neither pres- prrcliing, loafcrs carne in {rom the streets and began to steal things ident nor magistrate.' He asked us to leave in three days' time, bcforc orrr cyes. The magistrate's solcliers did not protect us, but since the peasants' and r,vorkets' unions needed our building as joincd in thc looting. They did no't dare etter the roorns sealed headquarters. by thc unions, but they came ll,'here \,ye were packing and pulied 170 * things e-ven out of our trunks. ![e decided not to wait till *"r. ,,ooo"o # Wednesday but to leave the same evening." searched all passers-by, turning most of them back. They allowed Shortly before six o'clock tv/o women and one man of the mis- the Germans to pass but searched their baggage for arms. In sion started to the boat they had secured. Crowds of children Siangsiang itself the missionaries found the unions in their former began jeering, then others shouted "Down with foteigners." At house makin g rcady for battle, and the attitude of the masses was Iast a great mob was crying: "Kill, kill." The missionaries such that they did not feel safe in remaining. They wished to teached the boat in rnuch fear. But by nine o'clock that evening return to Changsha but were not permitted "'since that is enemy when the last man of the mission left, aftet finishing the packing, land now"; they were told they might go to Yungfong to ioin the the unions had heard of the situation and sent their labour guards other German missiooary, "since we control all that territory and to escort him to the boat. He reached it without disturbance. he has his house back and can take care of you." Early next morning the boat left, but when they had gone ten After waiting five days in Yungfong, the Germans from Siang- kilometres Mr. Nieh overtook them, explaining that they had siang learned that the unions were fleeing before the soldiers, and left so quickly that he had not been able to secure the $zoo, so they returned in haste "to get our house before the soldiers got he had come after them to bring it. An ofiicial from the magis- it." In this they were unlucky. \7hen the unions left, the trate came also and ordered the boatmen to treat the foreigners magistrate of Siangsiang, returning to his ancient duties, put a seal wcll, sincc their expulsion from Siangsiang did not meao that any on the house to preserve it for the foreign owners. The soldiers privatc pcrsons might loot from them; any persons who behaved disregatded the seal, broke the doors and entered, rnaking their lawlessly towards thcm rvould bc punished by the law and the headquarters here fot two weeks while they "cleaned" the district. unions. Thus thcy camc withor-rt furthcr incident two days down After some debate, their ofiicer allowed the missionaries to occupy river to Changsha. two rooms on the upper floor, but the soldiers took all the beds In Changsha, the Germans bcsieged the Foreign Commissioner's and used the kitchen. Two weeks later the soldiers left, pursuing Office for a papff ordering the restoration of their building. "But their conquests from district to district. the Foreign Office had no po\iler against the People's Power," they "rJThen they moved out, they stole everything they comld lay told me. "The Siangsiang union recognised only the provincial hands on," said the missionaries. "Th.y took stoves, coal, doors, union of Changsha. After four weeks, during which we knew the windows, tables. rJTe stood in the door and prevented them as Foreign Ofiice was consulting the labour unions, v/e got a permir much as possible; we would order the soldiers to put down theit to go back to Siangsiang on a visit. ." loot and they would do so. But then they would take more loot The day after the Germans left Changsha, the counter-revolution thnrugh thc back door and the windows. The unions never took began in that city. The soldiets made a night attack on the head- :)rry property out of the building; they brought instead some chairs quarters of the peasants' union and the labour unions, driving out arrd tables from ano,ther mission in order to furnish their offices. the inmates after a bloody battie. But in the villages the unions I'irrt thc soldiers stole as individuals whatever they could put hands still reigned suprerne. It rvas under such conditions that the mis- on." sionaries were caught between the lines of battle, and saw the Iirom their vantage point inside the soldiers' headquarters the preparations made by the peasants. For the last forty-five kilo- (iclnrans saw much that occurred during the counter-revolution in metres of the road to Siangsiang, there were sentinels posted at Si:rrrgsiang. They learned also, though only by hearsay, what the 172 CHINA'S MILLTONS RAGMENTS OF REVOLUTTO* ,, unions had done. "The unions had their iail in the back of our ycar from tire first small beginnings in October. Soon the whole house," they said. "This was the centre for a very large district provincc r,vas responsive to the plans from the centre. At Christ- and all local unions who had complaints against what they called Ilrfls time there were orders to attack religion. So by January the 'greedy gentry' brought them here for trial. I do not know how pcasants' union near Siangsiang had serzed four of our out-stations fnany ]Mere executed, pethaps as many as twenty. A few cases I for union headquarters. Then in February, orders came from know, a man who had been a regiment commander and retired Wuhan to respect the property of foreigners; arid at o,nce the tich from graft, and ano,ther who sold rice higher than the price peasants gar/e our stations back. In April again there were stu- fixed by the unions. I knew another man, named I-o, from a dcnts from Changsha whose agitation led to taking over our build- nearby village, who fled from his house because they asked frorn ings but agarn, by the middle of May, the orders were for modera- hirn more money than he possessed. They took his house for a tion and were beginning to be obeyed when the military reaction school for poor children, and he himself was hiding in Siangsiang. came. When orders came from Y7uhan, it took them two or three Then the unions of Siangs.iang began to register all the people in weeks to teach the villages, and sometimes the yamens did not the houses and he fled again. But the peasants' union of his teil the peasants of these orders. But wherever they learned of village took pity on him and sent wo'rd that he might return and the orders they began to obey. ." live in his house as care-taker for the school. He went back to I asked of the extent of the white terror since the reaction. live in his house, weaving stravz sandals in his spare time for a "All union leaders are beheaded if caught," they told me. "They living. Now, of course, he has all his house again and ali his are investigated first at the yamen but this is very short, only to land." know if they were active in the union. Some fifty li (seventeen Schools for the poor had been started in Siangsiang and sur- miles) from here there was a battle between unions and soldiers, rounding villages. As early as December rhe unions borrowed and the soldiers captured fourteen men and killed them all at once. some desks and tables from a schoo,l that the mission had formedy In another direction, ninety li, the soldiers caught fifteen fleeing operated, but which they had closed two years before frorn lack unionists from difierent parrs of this district and killed them all o{ funds. This union school ran six months, continuing even after the sarne day. Almost every day for two rveeks the procession ttre military reaction, since the primary teacher in charge of it had of condemned in Siangsiang passed our house to the North Gate. no connection with politics and had been paid for the whole time. About thity were executed in those two weeks at the North Gate trn June he closed it aod returned all the desks to the Germans. by the soldiers, of whom one-third were women. Others wete "It u/ill fiot open again," they said, "for the money to run it was cxccutcd at the East Gate, but we do not know how many, as taken by the peasants from the rich." tlrcy clid not pass our house. Lately there are not so many, but "The People's Fower grew month by month," they told me. t()-r)ror[ow there is to be a woman executed." Thus was the Rev- "At first they did not know how much they could do. They pre- olutiorr suppressed in Siangsiang. pared people the by schools so that they will hear what is said. Wc lcft the town in the late afternoon on the autotruck. Near By and by the yarnens have no po\per except to sign orders made mc sat a finc-looking officer of the Nationaiist army from Kwang- by the People's Power. The unions and the communists have all tung. FIc had studied four years in the rX/hampoa Academy, and the power. When they see that the power of the people is in their w;rs now in Hunan recruiting for the Eleventh Army-one of the hands, then they put forth their plans. . . . It took only half a "lrorr Arn'rics" of Canton. !7e learned later that many of the 174 FRAGMENTS OF REVOLUTTO* a/, active rnen of the peasants' and workers' movernent were trying "Bcfore May zr, the Kuornintang Party was powerful and to escape from Hunan by joining these armies. The rumours ran speculation in money was forbidden. The peasants accepted Han- through the countryside that the peasants would thus get arms kow paper money for ::ice through their new co-operatives, so this and training,"ald when they come back, they will not be so easily paper money remained good and merchants were not afraid of it. beaten again." However, the Hunanese generals complained to But now the party and the unions are gone, the speculators mo- General Tang Sheng Chi and when I reached Changsha I found nopolise the market, and Hankow paper dollars drop to half their that orders had been issued forbidding the sending of recruits {ormer value. Yet the soldiers force this paper on us, though the from Hunan to the "Iron Armies." tax-collector refuses to accept it. The former gefltry, the military The city of Siangtan, revisited on my way back to Changsha, and the magistrate ioin to squeeze the merchants. They had last gave other glimpses of the revolutionary conflict. A German night a banquet and asked us to give them at once $6,ooo. How woman who had lived next door to the district peasants' union, can \tre keep on making such contributions?" remembers three fights there. The first occasion was a conflict There had been no direct confiscation of rice in Siangtan: the over the death sentence passed on two men by the union; the unions here managed with more sophistication. They received families and friends these men attacked the union headquarters several rWuhan of thousand dollars from the Government for , rice and were beaten back. The second fight gtew out of hair-cutting purchases for the army. They therefore decided to prohibit in- performed by the women's union of Siangtan city. Their agitators dividual selling, since the rich men were boorsting the price and visited a nearby village and cut ofi the hair of many v/omen, one demanding silver. The unions collected rice through a co-opera- of whom afterwards tried to drown herseif. Armed men of this tive and sold for Hankow paper money to the Nationalist arrny. village came down in wrath against the city, stating: "If we want Later, when the rice of the poor was exhausted, and the rich were our women's hair cut, we can do ir ourselves." It is not known hoarding rice in the warehouses, the unions demanded that they how this struggle ended but it appeared to reach a compromise. open and sell at a fixed price. The tich refused, pretendiflg that The last fight was when the soldiers came from Changsha to sup- there.was no guarantee of purchase and that they feared seizure press the peasants, who resisted at first but finally fled. After and looting. The unions and the magistrates thereupon organised this fight the German woman found a dead peasant outside her a committee for upkeeping food in Siangtan, and collected a gate. She told me there were many executions. guarantee fund from every shop in the city. They said to the A leading merchant of Siangtan said that conditions under the rice-owners: "Here is your guarantee; now open and sell for the soldiers were worse for the merchants than they had been under fixed price." The rich did not dare refuse, so rice was sold cheap- the unions. "The unions and employers had agreed on a wage Iy in Siangtafl; the guarantee fund was later returned to its donors. scale in practically all the shops. Only three or four shops fought My informant was a progressive merchant, a vetefafl member of the union and closed rather than pay the wage scale. The union thc Kuomintang. He said: "Our chief desire is for the party to opened these shops itself and ran them. Since the reaction, there rcturn and control all labour unions and merchants' associations, is much more trouble. The wounded soldiers take things from so that no merchant can speculate with the coinage afld no magis- the shops without payment. \(hen I{ankow paper dollars were trate can demand arbitrary sums. 'We desire flext a provincial worth only r8o coppers, the soldiers made us give 36o for them. l'rank to issue p,aper money with good security so that people will So the shops lost very much. hirvc conEdence as in the time of the unions." 176 CHINA',S MILLIONS TRAGMENTS OF REVOLUTTO* ,77 Frorn rnerchant this I learned the origin of the tale that had l propaganda department had invited the peasants and workers to been spread over Hunan, regarding the alleged plot of the unions forget their fears and to reioice and play under "the blue sky and to kill all employers, all bosses, all landlords and all men over l the white sun." Now under that same blue sky and white sun, thirty years of age. This arnazing tale was widely believed; it was the workers and peasants were being put to death. based on an alleged confession made before death by yang, the union leader of Siangtan. Yang, said my merchant informant, was a scholar, who had done secret organising for the Kuomintang for tJThen I came back to Hankow after a week in Hunan, I found eight years. He had been the merchant's own teacher. Yang had that the reaction had made swift strides in the capital also. Most been frightfully tortured and was alleged to have signed a can- of the union buiidings in Hankow and Wuchang ve{e occupied by fession, but no,one had been shown the signature. "They behead- soldiers. It was claimed that this \ilas temporary, due to the con- ed Yang in the market-place and soldiers kicked his head about cent(ation of armed forces in !7uhan for the expedition against Iike a football. The relatives of a pharmacist whose shop had Nanking, and the need of quarters for the armies. But the labour been confiscated by Yang's union, disembowelled the corpse, cut unions were expressing no hopes for the future. The Communist it in four pieces, gave it to a dog to eat and burned what was Pafty was completely underground; the interviews I had been left." The Chinese regard such treatment of a corpse as a greater prornised with its leaders were never secured. The labour and punishment than rorture of the living. peasant leaders were going underground also. Madame Sun had My informant made me promise that I would give his name to abandoned Hankow and fled to Shanghai, staring that the name no one. Even merchants and members of the gently were being

from the south, they had for some mooths shown submission to brief fame in the taking of Swatow and were then swallowed up the new power of the Kuomintang l.vhich they did not understand. io the great hintedand of China. They were to emerge again as But step by step they had begun to express themselves, and had the nucleus of the Chinese Red Army, and Chu Teh was to appear found at each step no serious opposition. Until now, there was in history as first chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council flo power in !7uhan except to sign the o,rdere issued by the military. of the Chinese Soviet Republic. The .,Iron military itself was not united. The Armies,, of Can- The rVuhan leaders, however, had aheady decided to break ton which had carried the Revolution north to the yellow River, with the communists. Under their apparent wavering, this pur- though shattered by many battles and diluted with alien elements, pose was strengthening and becoming clear. What was latet said still retained enough revolutionary feeling to resent the open to have crystallized it was a message that reached them that the counter-fevolution of the Hunanese. As they started down the communists might be preparing to arm the peasants and workers Yangtze against Chiang Kai Shek, they were asking themselves in defense of "People's Fower." 'W'hat why they should die against Chiang for the sake of Tang. The then happened was that $7ang Ching lVei and the Kuo- long-expected war between !7uhan and Nanking had degenerated mintang "progressives" who had cheered so loudly for revolution, into a personal war between two rival generals. In this personal who had shouted "Kill the gentry," and made speeches more war, General Tang was following the old Chinese custom of plac- radical than the peasants' simple demand for People's Food, peo- ing at the front for slaughter the revolutionary armies of Cantonese, ple's Schools, People's Justice, knew suddenly that no humiliation in order to get rid, not only of the enemy, but also of his own at the hands of soldiers rtras so horrible to them as the armi.ng of revolutionary soldicrs. The "Iron Armies" .were aware of this in- their own followers! Better to make peace with the feudal-minded tention, and murmurs wcrc beginning which led a few days later warlords of Central China, and 'trestore order" over the bodies of the masses. to a sudden revolt when part of the Cantonese started south again. Better even make peace with Chiang Kai Shek and the Shanghai Here once more the vacillating cowardice of the civilian mem- financiers; Or even with foreign imperialists. After all, Mrs. Ching \Wei bers of rVuhan Government betrayed the Revolution to its last Wang had her fortune in Sumatra rubber; there was something to be said polvers. bitterest defeat. \When it became clear that the military leaders for foreign If reconcilia- tion with Nanking proved difiicult, one could paris (to were turning against the workers aod peasants, and that Genetal live in which Wang Ching Itrei actually fled for a few years until Chiaog Tang was sacrificing his few revolutionary soldiers for his received him), but not with rough, armed masses whom one had personal victory over Chiangn Mrs. Sun suggested that the civilian called comrade! That was to the Wuhan "progressives" the governmeflt of !7uhan lead revolutionary the forces south to ultimate horror! Canton to entrench themselves in the historic base of revolution. Thus ended the alliance o,f the last section of the Kuomintang Had this step been taken with firmness, the \n/uhan leaders might with the communists. Thus was broken that united front of have carried enough armed forces and political prestige regain to workers, peasants, intellectuals, and patriotic merchants whi,ch had their ancient citadel. But they wavered, halted and submitted carded the Nationalist Revolution so gloriously to the yangtze, to Tang Sheng So Chi. the soldiers who started south were only uniting a natiorr in its advance. Its northern enemies were fleeing small fraction a led by communists, and commanded by men as before it; the foreign nations were yielding to it and preparing to yet unknown - Yeh Ting, Ho Lung, Chu Teh. They srvept into recognise it; but the feudal militarists within ir rose to dominate ilo CHINA'S MILLIONS FRAGMENTS OF REVOLUTION t8t it, and the would-be democrats and liberal intellectuals, wavering To-day over the greater patt of China lies a fiercer chaos than for a time, at last followed their lead. there has ever been before. Step by step the I(uomintang which \X/ith the passing of the !7uhan Government into a reactionary arose as a defiance to foreign irnperialism has become the tool of dictatorship, under the Hunan military clique, there remained that imperialisrn. Cut ofi by its own act from the masses, it found no spot in all China where workers and peasants were free to in the foreign ovedords its support. The price of that support organise or even to assemble. Such was the situation at the end was subservience to Japan and civil war against the Chinese people. of July r9z7 when f returned from Hunan to Hankow, and found But in the heart of Hunan, among the broken fragments of rev- that the mllitary dicratorship was in control of the last citadel olution, I felt a hope for the future of China which I ha.d not felt of the Revolution. in listening to her able orators and clever intellectuals. The episodes gathered, Borodin, rvith most of the Russians, left on July z7th. Had he re- I told by the enemies of the Revolution, showed mained evefl a few days longer there is little doubt that he would a realism, a directness and orderly courage which had been pain- have been shot. For the Cantonese "fron Armies" sent down river fully lacking at the upper end of the Chinese social strucrure. In less by General Tang as shock troops to be sacrificed in an attack on than six months these peasants, ignorant, superstitious, stili children Chiang Kai Shek revolted on August rst and started south. Borodio of the feudal ages, were dealing shrewdly, fearlessly and democratically would have been the scapegoat had he remained. The day he with food control, local government, iustice and left, however, courtesy reigned. The heads of the Nationalist education. So Governmcnt came down to the ttain for a formal farewell. Up I felt no incredulity when I heard, in the half-decade that followed, to the final moment they tried to interest him in their proposal for of the orderly achievements begun in these same regions by these peasants and workers organised war against Chiang Kai Shek. Every action of his made aoswer: under the rising Chinese Soviets. It will be such peasants and workers and "Since you have decided to break up the wotkers, and peasants' - not the north- ern or southern generals, or the wealthy organisations, I cannol work with you." but subservient bourgeoisie of Shanghai, or the timid politicians and officials who will have Later one incident trickled out from his breakfast with Marshal - the courage to carry their country out of the Middle Ages into Feng Yu Hsiang in Chengchow. Feng has asked Borodin what the modern wodd. was the difierence between Nanking and Hankow" Both claimed to be Nationalist Governments, yet they were preparing to frght each others. Feng had tried to unite them under his orvn banner for war on Peking. He had been told that Borodin and the Communists were to blame for his failure. Would Borodin define the points of view of the two antagonists? Borodin surprised him. "There is no difierence,,, he said. "Once there was but now there is none." "Then what are they figLting for?" asked Feng" "Chow," answered Borodin, "only chow," alluding to the rev- enues of Shanghai. ANNA LOUISE STRONG

Born 8o years ago in Friend, Nebraska, U.S.A. the writer be- came a prorninent worker in the field of social reform. Later, !florld \ffar I and the October Revolution of ryq brougl.rt her to revolution and socialism. She helped edit the newspaper of the Seattle General Strike, one of America's greatest working-class st(uggles, in r9r9. Then she went to the Soviet Union, in Lcnin's lifetime. In subscquent years, she gained worldwide renown as an indefatigable reporter oI revolu- tionary developments in the Soviet Union, China, Spain, Poland and other countries, in books and in tl-re American press. Six journeys over four decades to China, where she now lives, form tl-re background o[ the present series. Anna Louise Strong has a rec- ord of always standing with the working people, the makers of history and masters of mankind's [uture. At present she is prominent in the internationalist solidarity moYement with the people of ++15-E.rFE/\E Em. ES.Effi.Sffiffi+ Victnam in their valiant fight against U.S. imperialism, to which trtr,FHffii}Hffi( JhH ) she has also devoted many writ- 1965sH-ffi places {f, B: ( jE ) 3os0-1343 ings and much effort. This 00130 her in the mainstream of the mili- 3-E-752P tant progressive movement of the American people today.

s t, ANNA LOUISE STRONG Selected Works on China's Revolution

Anna Louise Strong, famous American author and iournalist, has written more than thirty books and countless articles in her eighty years. We are now printing a selection of her writings on the Chinese revolution over four decades. They will appear in six volumes, covering many major events and developments.

The author was in China twice during the revolution of. ry25-27 which opened the armed struggle against imperialism and domestic reaction. She made two further visits during China's war agaiast Japanese invasion. After World War II, she saw the Chinese people's war of liberation against Chiang Kai-shek and his U.S. backers, spending considerable time in Yenan, centre of the Chinese revolution, and in other liberated areas. To this period belongs her book, "The Chinese Conquer China". Since her return to China in r958, she has written vivid and penetrating books on the rise of the People's Communes and the liberation o[ the serfs in Tibet, and a long series of reports and com- ments on maoy internal and international events concerning China. Anna Louise Strong's writings on China are illuminated by her rich experience in other countries the United States, the Soviet - Union, Vietnam, Laos and many others. But it is not only that vast range of contact that makes her writing rich and alive. It is the unwavering conviction, confirmed again and again by history, that the interests of all the peoples, in- cluding the Chinese and American, lie in standing and fighting together against imperialism and reaction, now headed by the imperialist rulers of the U:S.A.

New Wotld Press, Peking, China

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