---
title: 'The Enemy Within - An Eyewitness Account Of The Communist Conquest Of China'
url: 'https://samisdat.in/books/the-enemy-within-the-communist-conquest-of-china-1967/read'
markdown: 'https://samisdat.in/books/the-enemy-within-the-communist-conquest-of-china-1967/read.md'
lang: eng
date: '1967-03-14'
description: 'The Enemy Within THE ENEMY WITHIN AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT OF THE COMMUNIST CONQUEST OF CHINA ST PAUL PUBLICATIONS THE ENEMY WITHIN THE ENEMY WITHIN AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT OF THE COMMUNIST CONQUEST OF CHINA by RAYMOND J. DE JAEGHER and IRENE CORBALLY KUHN DAUGHTERS OF ST PAUL, HOMEBUSH, N.S.W. 58, Ab…'
---

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The Enemy Within

# THE ENEMY WITHIN

# AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT OF THE COMMUNIST CONQUEST OF CHINA

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ST PAUL PUBLICATIONS

#### THE ENEMY WITHIN

# THE ENEMY WITHIN

# AN EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT OF THE COMMUNIST CONQUEST OF CHINA

by
RAYMOND J. DE JAEGHER
and
IRENE CORBALLY KUHN

DAUGHTERS OF ST PAUL, HOMEBUSH, N.S.W. 58, Abbotsford Road, (Tel. UM 7170)

#### Copyright 1952, Raymond J. De Jaegher and Irene Corbally Kuhn

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

#### PREFACE

China, that immense country, a continent rather than a country, a sort of human continent, was for centuries regarded as being excluded, as it were, from any evolutionary process. Frozen in a tradition not dissimilar to the continuity among animal species, this human sea remained in a kind of interior viscosity which any internal movement or external impact had ever been powerless to disturb. If at any period she seemed agitated with superficial change, China began again to last on and on.

I once spent the whole evening talking to Sun-Yat-sen on board the ship which was taking him back from Hong Kong to Shanghai. One year later both the last Emperor and the last Empress died at the same time. Two years later the revolution broke out.

Whence this scandalous success? It was due, on the one hand, the China's great allies who ever displayed much immaturity and multiplied glaring instances of undiscerning, uninformed and over-optimitsic policy; on the other, it was due to the astuteness of a party with truly devilish inspiration.

Are we disheartened? No.

It was high time that the Church in China, as the adult

PREFACE 7

and minor sister of the other Churches of Christendom, should receive that baptism which was her due, baptism by blood. It has been given! The apostles who built up that Church and who will be identified with her for ever may rightly be proud of her. All the news coming from there can only warm our hearts with enthusiasm.

The live burials, especially those burials which Father de Jeagher tells us are the everyday practice of the Communists, do impress us as being endowed with a "sacred" meaning, a sacramental majesty.

That ancient land, the land which the children of Han have loved so much, with a love which Pearl Buck depicts so happily in her fine novel, The Good Earth, is not only enriched with those lifeless spoils Communists bury underground, but that land is also, thanks to them, impregnated with the final agony of martyrs and with their last prayers. Hands that are pure have risen and even now do rise out of that land to bear witness. Father de Jaegher even tells us of a man who was restored to life and one day came to the door of his parish house, covered all from head to foot with that horrid mud. He also speaks of those twelve Little Brothers of St John the Baptist who went down into that ditch which was alluded to by the Psalmist when he prayed to the Lord to save his soul from the "laeu inferiori".

A harvest has been consigned to the earth.

Paul Claudel of the French Academy.

#### CONTENTS

|  | Page |
|---|---|
| PART I. THE RED TIDE COMES IN |  |
| I 1937—HOW IT ALL STARTED | 15 |
| Fulfilling my destiny I am elected Magistrate | 19 27 |
| II THE REDS ARRIVE | 31 |
| The Communists ask a "favour" Optimism short-lived Next day he pulled another trick We outwit the General | 33 36 38 40 |
| III THE REDS GAIN CONTROL | 45 |
| The first wedge Winning the people over This was standard practice Winning their confidences Applying the screws | 46 46 47 48 50 |
| IV THE FORCES AGAINST COMMUNISM | 52 |
| Buddhism attacked Confucianism confuses the Communists Taoism vs. Communism Chinese Moslems The Protestant Missionaries Communist raid technique | 53 55 57 58 59 |

|  |  | Page |
|---|---|---|
| V | DISRUPT THE FAMILY—DESTROY CIVILIZATION | 63 |
|  | They flatter the ambitious | 65 |
|  | They denounce family discipline | 68 |
|  | They win over the wallflowers | 69 |
|  | They encourage divorce | 70 |
|  | They set brother against brother | 71 |
|  | From family to village | 72 |
|  | Save cloth—Lose modesty | 73 |
|  | The magistrate got bored | 75 |
|  | Emancipation from elders | 77 |
| PART II VI | I. **THE RED TIDE RISES** JAPAN HELPS TO COMMUNIZE CHINA | 80 |
|  | I pland for Mr Wang | 01 |
|  | The price of courage | 84 |
|  | In soldiers on a spree | 86 |
|  | Enemy brutality exploited | 88 |
|  | even encouraged | 90 |
|  | Treachery unmasked | 91 |
| VII | THE MASTER PLAN FROM MOSCOW | 92 |
|  | Reversing the roles | 94 |
|  | Confiscation | 96 |
|  | and compound interest | 97 |
|  | Boxer rebellion exploited | 98 |
|  | Take my own case | 99 |
|  | A good deed repaid | 101 |
|  | The four degrees | 104 |

CONTENTS

|  | Page |
|---|---|
| VIII COMMUNISTS HAVE NO FRIENDS— ONLY COLLABORATORS | 107 |
| No friendly critics | 108 |
| or week party members | 110 |
| Ordeal at the bridge | 114 |
| Saved by friendly peasants | 116 |
| IX OUTWITTING THE COMMUNISTS | 118 |
| Resurrection of a dead man | 122 |
| X COMMUNIST TORTURES | 128 |
| Hardening the Communists of tomorrow | 130 |
| XI COMMUNIST ORGANIZATION | 138 |
| Starting a Communist cell | 1.40 |
| Their efficient courier system | 140 |
| Education held in high esteem | 142 |
| The West betrays China | 144 |
| Chinese students join the fray | 146 |
| He founded the Communist movement |  |
| in China | 147 |
| Wolf in sheep's clothing | 149 |
| XII HOW COMMUNISTS CAPTURE THE |  |
| UNIVERSITIES | 152 |
| How to become a "professional" student | 152 |
| Wall newspapers | 153 |

|  | Page |
|---|---|
| Freshmen are big fish | 15€ |
| Baiting the anti-Communists | 157 |
| Chiang Kai-shek calls a bluff | 160 |
| "Self-government" is Red-government | 161 |
| We plan a counter-attack | 162 |
| XIII MOSCOW BLUEPRINT IN ACTION | 166 |
| Dominating the army | 167 |
| His face was red | 167 |
| Fr Gabriel Lao | 171 |
| Metamorphosing peasant society | 171 |
| Soviet brand of culture | 174 |
| The bear swallows the dragon | 175 |
| XIV COMMUNIST PROCESS OR |  |
| INDOCTRINATION | 178 |
| Yenan-Point of on return | 181 |
| No country—only a cause | 182 |
| When Communists covet | 183 |
| I interview Gen. Ho Lung | 184 |
| His idea of a joke | 188 |
| Bro. Peter bluffs his way out | 190 |
| They bury them alive | 191 |
| XV "ALL MEANS ARE USEFUL" | 193 |
| Communism and Christianity | 194 |
| How they fool foreigners | 196 |
| A hand-out to Hanson | 197 |
| Suspicion becomes second nature | 200 |
| Hwang Hwa turns on the charm | 203 |
| …like Chou En-lai | 204 |

| ONTENTS | 13 |
|---|---|
|  |  |

|  | Page |
|---|---|
| and makes false promises | 205 |
| PART IV. THE RED TIDE ENGULFS CHINA |  |
| XVI PRELUDE TO A BATTLE | 208 |
| I could be a Red army General | 210 |
| How the Reds restricted travel | 214 |
| The benevolent bandit | 217 |
| We care for the sick and wounded | 219 |
| I take an alias | 222 |
| The mule leads | 224 |
| Pancakes and a packed bed | 228 |
| Father Lebbe at last! | 229 |
| XVII TREACHERY IN A MOUNTAIN FASS | 233 |
| He underestimated Red cunning | 234 |
| 60,000 killed through Red treachery | 238 |
| The price of silence | 241 |
| XVIII IN A JAP CONCENTRATION CAMP |  |
| (WEIHSIEN 1943-45) | 243 |
| A Trappist smuggler | 247 |
| Irish wit outwits the Japs | 248 |
| Contacting the world outside | 252 |
| Plans to escape | 257 |
| Reds to the "rescue" | 265 |
| August 15th 1945 | 267 |
| XIX THE VICTORY THAT FAILED | 270 |
| A review of recent events | 273 |

|  |  | Page |
|---|---|---|
|  | The Generalissimo pays a tribute | 276 |
|  | A model farm | 278 |
|  | Even the intellectuals got fooled | 280 |
| XX | FAILURE OF THE MARSHALL MISSION | 286 |
|  | The Russian rape | 286 |
|  | The charming Chou En-lai | 288 |
|  | The Reds get "Marshall aid" | 292 |
|  | The spy who knew too much | 294 |
|  | CLARA'S poor logic | 299 |
| XXI | ESCAPE FROM CHINA | 302 |
|  | The mysterious Dr Hatem | 302 |
|  | Forcing the Missionaries to leave | 305 |
|  | What's five years to a Communist? | 307 |
|  | Three days to do the impossible | 312 |
|  | Communist plan of capture | 314 |
|  | and of isolating their opponents | 315 |
|  | A Communist can play many parts | 318 |
|  | The 3 Red P's: Propaganda—Panic—Plunder | 320 |
|  | A Judas in the ranks | 324 |
|  | "One of you is a traitor"! | 325 |
|  | Help came too late | 326 |
|  | Marked for quick liquidation | 328 |

## PART I—THE RED TIDE COMES IN

#### CHAPTER I

#### 1937—HOW IT ALL STARTED

IN SOME ways that cool September night in 1937 was much like all the other early autumn nights I had known since my arrival in North China nearly seven years before. I did all the same tasks and followed my accustomed routine, except that I had much more to do, because refugees, fleeing from their homes to escape the Japanese invaders, had increased from day to day. The people had been on the march since the Marco Polo Bridge incident near Peiping on July 7; now, two and a half months later, we had three thousand housed in our compound alone, just outside the west gate of the city of An Kwo.

1 Two spellings are used in this book for Peiping. The city was called Peking or Northern Capital from 1409 through successive dynasties, wars, and upheavals, until the National Government of China renamed it Peiping in 1928. The spelling Peking, therefore, is used to describe the city and events taking place there before 1928. After that time reterences in this book use the Peiping spelling, not the Communist reversal to Peking, since the National Government, although in exile, is still the legal, recognized government. The only exception to this is when reference is made to the University of Peking, which for so many years has been so designated and known throughout the world that it seemed inadvisable to change.—I.C.K.

In all those years, except for the two and a half years I was interned by the Japanese, I never saw the Communists take any action that was not a carefully calculated move to advance communism. What few persons realized at the time was that their "united front" with the National Government of China was a Moscow-ordered move. Its announced purpose was to fight "the common enemy, Japan". This, I learned from experience, was entirely secondary, even incidental, to the primary purpose, the real purpose, which was to infiltrate Central China, eventually to seize all the land and all authority, and to exploit the patriotism of the people in order to impose on them by treachery and force this barbaric foreign ideology (Ch. VI page 91).

But on that cool September evening—the festival of Chiu Fen, the Autumn Equinox— I knew nothing of this. I have no gift of prescience; I had no foretaste of what was to come. I had no warning, either, that a single small event of that night was to change the fixed course of my life.

I went to bed early, for I was tired after the long, hard day that had begun at dawn. The night was full of quiet now. All the familiar noises inside that populous compound had long since ceased. But the night was electric and alive. I could not sleep. My mind was full of churning thoughts and ideas and pictures and memories. When I had sailed away from Europe seven years before, I knew that I was not only leaving behind my old life but was cutting all ties

with family and friends and with the Western world of my ancestry and youth. In China I had plunged into my new life at once and found myself so completely at one with the country and the people that, although I was the only European in the mission, the only foreigner in the area for miles around, I never felt lonely or different. I seemed to have been born for this life and vocation and, day by day, I became more attuned to Eastern thought and ways.

It was a rare and disquieting thing for me to be lying awake as I was on this night, thinking of my childhood in Belgium, my boyhood in England during the First World War, all the events from those early days until now flipping over one after the other in a series of pictures in my mind. It came to me suddenly that I had had a birthday on the thirteenth of September, couple of weeks back, another milestone that had gone by unnoticed. It was 1905, when I was born in the town of Courtrai. My father was a mining engineer who had died at the age of thirty-eight, leaving my mother with five children to bring up. I was the eldest, and it was natural for my mother to ask me to be the "little head of the family."

A month after my father's death the war broke out and my mother took us all to England. My younger brother Francis and I went to grammar school in London, and Mother educated my two sisters and another brother at home. Then some Belgian Jesuits opened a school at historic Hastings, and Francis and I went there to study.

We saw the German Zeppelins come over and we shivered with fear, for we were only children far from our own home-land, which we knew was now completely over-run by the enemy. We did not realize, however, until we returned to Belgium in 1919, after the Armistice, that our family home was completely destroyed and that everything was gone. Mother's family was from a border town in the eastern section—the first Belgium town across the line

from Germany—and it was there that she returned with her brood. There was very little money left. Nevertheless Mother saw to it that Francis and I went to the Jesuit school in Verviers. "We can always save money on other things; we must never sacrifice education," she said over and over again.

## Fulfilling My Destiny

As I lay awake on my narrow bed in An Kwo on that September night in 1937, I thought of that memorable day in Verviers seventeen years ago when I had first met Father Lebbe. I could see the strength and fire in him, and the indomitable spirit in his frail body. I could see the question in his eyes as he probed mine when I told him of my desire. He had looked at me long and deeply, searching me to see if this was a boy's whim or if I might, indeed, have the singleness of purpose that a man must have for the life I said I wanted.

He bade me wait until after my graduation. He sensed my impatience, but he did not speak of it. He came often to Belgium, and I worked for him as his secretary, and we talked. Always we talked of China. In little ways he directed my studies and encouraged me to continue hard, physical work, something I was used to and enjoyed. I had always been active growing up. My father had taught me sports. I could skate and swim, box and play soccer,

and climb mountains and walk long distances with heavy packs. I played all the heavy games, and when I was twenty and had to go into the army for my period of compulsory military service, I was able, as the eldest male in my family, to choose my branch of service. I chose the cavalry so that I could go in for hard riding.

Father Lebbe was in Europe for seven years. Before he returned he had realized another great hope for his adopted country. He had witnessed in Rome in 1926 the consecration of the first six Chinese bishops. When he returned to China in January 1927 it was to serve under the first of these men, Bishop Melchior Sun of An Kwo. Just before he left, Father Lebbe arranged for me to meet the bishop, who then presented me to the seminary in Louvain so that I might be his student. I had been a lay student at Louvain for two years before my military service. Now I was there as a seminary student, working for my master's degree in philosophy in the Institute Superieur de Philosophie de Louvain. This is the school founded by Cardinal Mercier, of which the eminent American, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, whom I was to meet years later in China, is also a graduate.

and exploiting the disintegrating influences of a transition from one culture to another.

The past flowed all around me. I was drowning in these recollections. Then the present came strongly to my rescue. The dogs barked in the compound. I heard the thin wail of a sick baby, the sigh of the night wind, and then, at last, I fell asleep. But it seemed to me that I had slept only a few minutes when I was again wide awake. The gatekeeper was talking to someone, and although it was three o'clock and the cocks had not yet begun to crow, I was up and dressed before one of the mission boys knocked on my door. With him was District Magistrate Chang Yang-wen's chit coolie. The magistrate and I had been friends for more than five years, and I know it was no small thing that had brought his boy here with a message for me at this hour of the morning. The coolie's face was impassive; I could read nothing there. Nevertheless, I was disturbed and I quickly unfolded the paper and read it in dim light.

The message was brief: the magistrate had received orders from the government to leave An Kwo with his local staff, the police, and all other officials. He was sorry not to be able to say good-bye in person, but his orders had been to leave immediately.

I knew at once why he had chosen this odd hour to tell me this disturbing news. He was counting on me to lose no time in helping the people in whatever way I could until the army should arrive; to manage things in the interim should the Japanese attack. Over ceremonial tea we had spent countless long evenings, he and I, discussing politics, economics, and philosophy. And in most matters we found we had agreed on the fundamentals. He had made a practice, too, after we became good friends, of talking over local problems with me and he knew, therefore, that I was thoroughly familiar with them.

It was almost time now for the compound to be stirring,

He was about fifty-eight years old at this time, a man of average height, with a round face, gentle eyes behind spectacles, a small, thin mustache that, like his short-cropped hair, was going gray. His whole appearance was one of calm gentleness; that quiet, calm exterior was a true reflection of his inner quietude and peace that come from his life of sacrifice.

"I was born a peasant," he said. "If I were not a bishop, I would still be a peasant eating peasant food. So I shall eat what the peasants eat, even though I am a bishop, and the money we save that way will be used for education for all, not just our Chinese Catholics."

The bishop was worried about them and I was quite personally concerned, too, because I had a little school inside the jail and had baptized half the prisoners. It may seem odd that this should have been one of our concerns, but there were many reasons for our feeling. It was hardly likely that anyone in An Kwo, already crowded with refugees, would want to share his meagre food rations with these criminals, or that any man could be spared to guard them. Yet we had no authority to release them, and how to reconcile these two aspects of the problem baffled both of us

As soon as I could, then, I went to the district magistrate's office in the city to see what had happened. I wheeled my bicycle inside the gate and left it in the courtyard while I reconnoitred. All the police were gone. There were no guards anywhere in the compound. The magistrate's office door was unlocked and I walked in. There was no one there either. The entire building was empty. Fortunately, the phones were still working. One by one I called the magistrate's offices in the four neighbouring countries of Li Hsien, Puo Yeh, Shen Tseh, and Anping.

But the phones rang in empty rooms. All the officials, apparently, had left under orders at the same time.

When I saw the big locks were still on the doors, I knew the men must be inside. I shouted. They recognized my voice even before I called my name and they answered me. I knew then that all the prisoners were there. I knew, too, they would die unless someone took on the responsibility for them. Still, I could not release them, for I had no magisterial or official authority. And if I just freed them on my own responsibility and they plundered the city, or if just one of them committed even a petty crime, then I would have the whole city against me. The war had created great tension everywhere, and we were so close to the invading armies that fear was omnipresent.

Faced with this dilemma, I went to see the president of An Kwo's Chamber of Commerce, Mr Pu Wen-pu, one of the city's rich men, a man of considerable authority and influence.

"Can you help me release the prisoners?" I asked.

He was aghast at the idea and looked at me as if he thought I'd gone crazy. "What? Let those criminals out? They'll plunder the city! They'll murder and rob everyone—and rape the women! I wouldn't take the responsibility for letting them out," he said flatly. "If you want to do it, go ahead—you have my permission," he said sarcastically.

But that was not the answer I wanted. That didn't solve the problem at all.

So I tried another influential man, Mr Shu Weinung. He

was equally reluctant to do anything, afraid of the consequences of such unorthodox action.

If these two men were so opposed to releasing the prisoners I knew I could not expect any support whatever from anyone in the city. I was on my way back to the mission in despair when a soldier on a mule came trotting by, going at a good clip along the main road. He was one of the local boys and I hailed him.

"What's your outfit?" I asked.

"Twelfth Division, Third Army," he replied.

"Who's your general?" I called after him.

This was good news. General T'ang was a commander I had had some dealings with and I knew I could talk to him. "Is the general coming?" I asked the soldier, who had wheeled around to answer me. He assured me he was, but urged me to be careful. "The general will be coming through the west gate," he said. "And he'll be walking with the other officers. The soldiers are all riding like me."

Early in the war the Japanese concentrated on killing officers, confident that if they killed enough officers they would more easily and quickly demoralize and destroy a nearby leaderless army. But the quick-witted Chinese soon saw through this concentrated bombing and machine-gunning of all the men on mules and horses. This morning, however, was the first time I had heard of the trick the Chinese were using to outwit the enemy.

The cook, like all Chinese cooks, took this in stride and produced a simple but excellent meal. We even found a

little wine for our guests. And everything was piping hot. The general and his men relaxed for the first time in days and enjoyed the meal, the quiet, the peace and order of the place.

However, I was not done yet. Luncheon over, I took the general aside and spoke to him.

"General," I said, "Western-fashion you have said 'no' and it means 'no'. Chinese-fashion, you still have a way out."

He laughed good-naturedly, amused that a foreigner would apply Chinese psychology to a purely local Chinese problem. Still laughing, he asked me what I wanted.

By now I knew what I wanted. I had made up my mind on a course of action. So I spoke directly and forthrightly to General T'ang.

"You are concerned for the prisoners—you, yourself?" he asked me.

"Why didn't you tell me before you were so interested?" the general asked, almost impatient now in his desire to help me.

He had his aide summon a few soldiers, and with them I set off for the prison for the second time that day. We broke the locks on the doors in the two outside walls and then on the innermost one. The men had known since my early morning visit that something was amiss. They had not eaten; they had had no water; no one had come to unhitch the chains that bound them together.

Before the soldiers broke the chains I put on a great show of authority. I told the prisoners that I was speaking for the general.

"You will be released," I said, "through the goodness of General T'ang, and he will give you your choice of joining his army, of coming with me to the mission, or going home to your own villages. But," I said—and I meant it—"if one of you dares to plunder, to commit any crime in the city, no matter how petty, he will be shot at once. This is the general's order."

The men shouted that they would accept the conditions. The soldiers marched them out through the three doors in the three walls and we lined up the few—the very few—who had decided to join the army, and the larger contingent that had chosen to go home. Somewhat ruefully I accepted the incontestable fact that nobody, not even my converts, wanted to come back to the mission with me. However, the incident exercised a far greater influence on my life than one could have imagined possible. By itself what I did was a simple act of humanitarianism. Yet because of the circumstances and the times, the people exaggerated its importance.

They were so pleased that the prisoners had been taken out of their midst, set free without any trouble in the city at all, that they sent a delegation next day to the mission to wait on me and ask me to become the district magistrate.

One does not just turn away from such an expression of honour and confidence with a plain "No, thanks." I was greatly touched by the people's confidence, but I thought it hardly fitting that I, the only white foreigner in that area, a Catholic parish priest, should be the man to administer a district of some half million Chinese.

I voiced my doubts on that score and the delegation

quietly silenced them. I spoke of my comparative youth and of my short seven years among them there. Their spokesman brushed those objections aside. For a long time we discussed the matter back and forth. I had to be sure that this was not just an intense expression of Chinese politeness. I had also to be sure that I was sufficiently equipped to administer such a job properly. And I had to be satisfied in my own mind that it was something I should do. In the end it was my bishop who decided for me, and I was satisfied because it was a Chinese decision made by a Chinese for the good of the Chinese, one in which I was glad to concur.

My bishop listened to the discussion all through the afternoon. Finally he turned to me and said, "The people want you. The work they want you to do is for the welfare of the people. Take the office. Do not take the title."

Under my direction next day we organized a governing committee and, still acting without real authority, called it a provisional committee. I began at once to recruit a police force and to link the villages together throughout the district to protect themselves. For a month I devoted myself to my district duties. By October 21 the four hundred villages were completely organized into small entities for their own protection; the police force in the city was in excellent shape; so were all the other arms and branches of officialdom everywhere in the district.

And just as we had completed this reorganization the Chinese Red Army arrived. Although we had been expecting them, we had no faintest suspicion of the extend and depth of the tragedy for China, and, indeed, for the world, that was presaged by their arrival. Their occupation was to be more horrible than anything the Chinese had known

under the worst onslaughts and depredations of the Japanese yet the people had no opportunity to know it. Some, recognizing its real face sooner than others, where caught in the trap of their own awareness, and by then it was too late for all.

Soon after the National Government's troops moved south, the Communists moved east from their remote base in Yenan, over the mountains, then north. As the Japanese advanced into China and their military operations increased in intensity, it became evident that this undeclared war on China, which had been going on since Japan's seizure and occupation of Manchuria in 1931 and which China had at last accepted on July 7, 1937, was now the all-out effort to conquer the whole of China.

The Japanese followed the lines of communication; they didn't have enough men to occupy the whole country. The Communists had long since known this and understood how to turn it to their own advantage. They moved instantly to occupy what the Japanese could not occupy. And what they occupied they organized in tight Communist fashion, following Moscow rules and directives, corrupting old and young alike, deceiving the people, taking advantage of patriotism and youthful idealism, ruling by fear and undermining the natural elements of resistance to communism which are present in all civilized countries.

In China the strongest elements of resistance to the barbarism of communism are the six religions, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism Mohammedanism, Protestantism, and Catholicism; the family; the clans and the street societies; the moral patrimony of the Chinese themselves; and the National Government of China.

At the outset, too, it must be stated that there is no real difference between Russian communism and any other communism, no matter what the national brand label is. All Communist control is based on Moscow's master plan for world conquest. This master plan is followed in all

Communist and satellite countries. What differences exist are purely superficial ones, generally in methodology. When such adaptations are made they are temporary until the local conditions calling for such compromise have been adjusted. Compromise is anathema to Communists. They root it out speedily and ruthlessly as soon as it has served its purpose. And they permit no one but Communists to use the techniques of compromise. The live-and-let-live man is not allowed to live very long once the Communists find him

We were soon to see all of this unrolling before our eyes like a Chinese scroll painted by a devil.

#### CHAPTER II

WHEN we heard the Communists were moving north I called a meeting of the leading citizens of the city, the men who had first asked me to take on the duties of magistrate and who had been helping me run the city and the district in our Provisional Committee. I suggested that we welcome the Communist soldiers. But the people had heard stories about the Communist occupation in other cities and villages and they were frightened and not at all favourable to my idea. To tell the truth, I was not overly enthusiastic about my own suggestion, but as acting magistrate I felt it was my duty to make some sort of showing; apart from that, wishful thinking led me to believe a show of friendliness might be useful diplomacy.

"Let us try", I urged. "Let's give them a welcome and see if we can work with them."

"I believe any kind of Chinese troops are better than Japanese," I said. "let's see if they are anti-Japanese as they say. If they are really against the Japanese, let us help them fight Japan," I persisted.

preparing myself for my missionary duties, I knew less about contemporary political affairs than about old Chinese ways and customs and Chinese ancient and medieval history.

Their arguments convinced me. I, too, decided to wait and see.

It was just about a week later, on the twenty-first of October, that I was visited at the mission by a young Chinese Communist officer. "I represent General Lu Cheng Ts'ao," he said, handing me the Red general's visiting card. "I am his aide."

We bowed and exchanged the usual Chinese amenities. "General Lu will arrive tonight," the aide said. "He will make An Kwo his headquarters. He would like you to join him for supper."

I accepted the invitation with thanks. Then the aide got down to business.

In the evening I went out on my bicycle to the big house which General Lu had commandeered for his temporary headquarters. The house was built of gray bricks, which the Chinese prefer. The red brick houses, so common in Tientsin, Shanghai, and the other port cities, are "foreign taste". Most of the Chinese houses in this northern part of the country have flat roofs but this one had the gray-tiled curving roof that the wealthier class like. It was obviously a rich man's establishment.

The happy chatter of Chinese family life was missing; the grayness was stark and unrelieved. On this bright October day there wasn't a single flowerpot with blooming purple asters or chrysanthemums or any of the other flowers and plants with which the Chinese decorate their inner courtyards. These had already been removed as useless impedimenta. However, as I was ushered into the general's private quarters, I noticed that here, as in the rooms in

My eyes travelled quickly over the Chinese characters on the *pi'en* as I went through to meet my host, and I identified them as honours bestowed on the former occupant of the house. The Communist general had not ordered these removed summarily, as he had the flowerpots. Not all Chinese can read, but even the humblest illiterate among them knows what the *pi'en* are for. These made an effective show to impress the ignorant.

General Lu received me with promptness and politeness. We dined together, just he and I his chief of staff and a few officers. He was a young man, tall, very thin, with a plae face. He was a good conversationalist and spoke an excellent modern Chinese. He was thoroughly grounded in the Communist philosophy, but he knew a great deal about the other side too. He had begun his military career with the National Government's Fifty-third Army, the army of General Wan Fu-lin, in Manchuria. When that army was defeated by the Japanese he was in Sian and, since he had long harboured Communist sympathies, he joined the group that was led by the Manchurian general, Chang Hsueh-liang, in the Sian coup in December 1936. General Chang Hsueh-liang had been given the responsibility for wiping our communism in the area. But the Red propaganda had been particularly effective among his troops since they had been driven out of their homeland by the Japanese. The Red slogans were all concerned with ending the civil war and resisting the Japanese.

himself. Then it was that Chiang was seized by General Hsueh-liang and other high-ranking officers. He was held prisoner for a fortnight while conferences went on interminably among Communists, Nationalists, and Manchurians.

If General Lu had not supplied me with details about his career, I still would have known he was a fairly recent recurit to communism, one who had not come under the tutelage of the real "old" Communists, the ones who had been in the movement since the early twenties. I noticed that he smoked only one pipe of opium that night. This was his allowance. And it was this that told the story. The old Communists would not allow their important men to smoke opium at all. They believe a man with a passion for smoking, or liquor or women, or any purely physical pleasure, cannot be trusted to be a good party man. Chu Teh, a member of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist party, one of the "big three" in Chinese communism, used to be a drug addict. He quit opium rather than communism.

This gave me the opening I wanted.

He was taken aback by this move on my part. Apparently he was not ready yet to relieve me, and so he protested strongly, and in the most flattering terms.

"I have heard already how the people like you," he said. "That is what is important. The people. And what the people want. You must go on with your duties. You will honour me by continuing."

But I was not to be dissuaded from my resolve, and with equal politeness I insisted on resigning. However, I agreed to help until a regular election could be held, to continue with the three members of the Provisional Committee who had done the major work of administration and reorganisation with me. These were good patriotic men, able and honest. One was the sixty-year-old president of the Chamber of Commerce, Mr Pu Wen-pu, a gentleman of the old school. The second was Mr Shu Wei-nung, an energetic, able man, a born leader; and the third was a retired brigadier general, Chu Cho-ts'ing.

#### Optimism Short-lived

When I left the general's headquarters that first night I was hopeful that we could really work together. My optimism was to be short-lived. Three days later General Lu arrested the three principal members of my Provisional Committee. He sent for me and wasted very little time with preliminaries.

It was useless to argue, and since he had already put

his "chop" or official seal on the order and stamped the hour on it, I knew I would only be wasting precious time. I started out at once to collect the rifles and the money, and my thoughts were bitter.

When we had dined on the night of his arrival, the general had expressed great interest in the way we had organized the district. He asked me what we had done in the city. He wanted to know where we had got guns. I told him quite honestly how we had gone about it.

These were the rifles, cleaned and oiled and usable, which the police and responsible people in the city and district now had.

All night I wrote letters and sent them by emissaries, asking for the rifles to ransom the three men. The people were loath to give them up and their reluctance was understandable. It was easier to get the money, but, even so, at four o'clock next afternoon, with only four hours to the

deadline, I had half the money but only seventy rifles. There seemed no chance at all of getting the rest in time, so I went to the general to bargain with him.

But the general was not in a bargaining mood.

"What I have said, I have said. You must get all I've asked for or your friends will be shot," was his answer.

One concession I wrung from him—an extension of time-He put "until midnight" on the order, chopped it, and dismissed me.

The general made quite a show of it. He received us with all his staff, for I was not alone—some elders of the city had come with me. With the money in his hands and the rifles stacked behind him, the general made quite a speech.

#### Next Day He Pulled Another Trick

He issued a proclamation telling the whole of the city and the county that the payment in rifles and money which the people had made was not their debt; it was the duty and responsibility now of the three men whose lives had been saved to repay the people by paying an equivalent sum into the city treasury. Of course the fact that the three committee members were not working for themselves, but were voluntary officials working for the people, was not mentioned. Nor was there any use in making a protest; the men would only have been arrested again. These three had to find another twenty thousand dollars and another two hundred rifles and pay the city. And of course in the end this went to the Communists, too, when they finally stopped all the pretence and the play acting and took over the city.

And now they began, really in earnest, to take over. The general called for an "election". The Provisional Committee hesitated, stalling for time. They began to interpose objections. They pointed out that An Kwo, a big district directly in the war zone, made free elections difficult, and time was needed. Meanwhile, wouldn't the general please appoint a magistrate.

Meanwhile, however, Mr Wang Hoan-chang, a well educated local lawyer, came to me and told me he wanted to be the magistrate. "I am not a Communist," he said. He was a good man and I did not need his assurances that he would work for the welfare of the people. I knew he would from his past record. I agreed to back him, and I passed the word around quietly through all the villages to get behind Wang, who was all right and could be trusted.

Two hundred and forty delegates had come in from the villages in the district, and when the votes were counted there was a total of 202 for Mr Wang. General Lu was amazed at first because, while he had suggested that the villages send representatives and delegates to An Kwo, he had not anticipated this turnout, nor the almost unanimous vote for Mr Wang, who was now the truly, legally elected magistrate of An Kwo.

#### We Outwit the General

The general saw instantly that the people had outwitted him. He made no open show of recognition of the fact nor of anger, but moved instantly to check-mate Mr Wang by appointing a commissar to "help" him. Mr Wang served for three months while the general was absent from An Kwo and for a month after he returned. By that time, however, the "helper" had so rigged things that the general was able to make a case against Magistrate Wang and arrest him. There was a public proclamation that Wang was not working for the people; that he was a "traitor" There were other lies that, I was to learn from sickening repetition and reiteration, constituted the basic pattern Communists

follow in justifying removal or liquidation of unfortunate victims who have served their purpose.

When Magistrate Wang was thrown into prison early in 1938, the Communist general immediately appointed the stooge he had wanted from the beginning.

"We have a government," he declared, "and the govern-

ment appoints the magistrates."

This, it should be remembered, was in the first months of 1938. The Communists controlled twenty-four counties by this time. Late in 1937 the Communists had organized a border government in North China with the consent of Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek. By 1940 they had control of parts of Shensi, Hopeh, and Chahar, a territory about equal to Italy in size. Within this area they established strong bases from which to pursue their guerrilla tactics. During this period the Communists played down their violent social and economic measures but in no way abandoned their basic Communist policies. Under the banner of nationalism and resistance they intensified their propaganda and indoctrination efforts, and they sought to rally patriotic feeling in support of the Red Army under its new name of Eighth Route Army.

General Lu had only one thousand men when he arrived in An Kwo; in one year he had one hundred thousand. He achieved this by exploiting the patriotism of the Chinese people, by making it appear he was interested only in fighting and licking Japan; and he never called his army the Communist Army. It was always the "People's Army".

That Red Army grew tougher as it grew larger and bolder and more skilful all the time. In the years from my fateful first encounters with General Lu I was to meet many other Red generals, colonels, and plain soldiers. I came to respect their toughness and I never underestimated their blind dedication.

Those were nightmare years when we were caught between the stupid, senseless cruelty of the Japanese invader, and the obscene cruelty, combined with the treachery, of the

The nightmare quality of those years was not merely something I experienced vicariously. For most of the years I was there I was a foreigner only by accident of birth. I lived a Chinese life, speaking no language but Chinese, forgetting sometimes there were any other language than the Latin for my priestly office and the Chinese for my daily life. I ate, slept, thought, talked and lived in Chinese fashion, and the struggle was mine not just because I was there but because I was part of it. I became one with the people, and they were one with me. I worked with the Communists because I had to, and I worked against their evil schemes and ambitions with every bit of intelligence and energy I had, every minute I could.

In the first three months of General Lu's stay in An Kwo I watched the way the Communists enlarged their armies. In all the central part of the province of Hopeh there was no authority. The population of twenty million was at the mercy of whatever force was strongest.

Guerrillas roamed the countryside. Bandits who had gone underground when law and order prevailed came out of hiding and took advantage of the Japanese war to recruit followers. There were three main groups that were made to order for the Communist army—guerrillas, bandits, and some very real patriots unwilling to believe any Chinese, even a Communist, would not do everything he could to deteat Japan. All of them were looking for rifles, revolvers, and arms in order to become strong as units. The patriots and the guerrillas wanted only to fight the Japanese; the motives of the others were less idealistic and pure, but they hated the Japanese invaders, too, and were willing to combine fighting them with a little looting-for-a-living on the side.

When the Communists began to take over towns and districts they wanted to be sure of one thing from the outset: that they got rid of the bandits that infested the district. Their campaign to suppress the bandits was waged realistically for purely practical purposes and not because the bandits were bad. It was rather that the bandits were potential guerrillas who would just as soon prey on Communist armies as on Japanese, and because the bandits had arms the Communists wanted. Characteristically, however, the Communists waged an effective propaganda campaign simultaneously with the bandit suppression. They were ridding the country of the bandits for the good of the people, they declared over and over. Naturally, the people approved the Communist doctrine of bandit suppression and helped whatever they could. The Communists had hundreds of willing helpers, informing on bandit hide-outs, secret bandit leaders. And so little by little, wherever they went after the bandits, as soon as they could do so effectively, the Communists attacked them unit by unit, defeating them or absorbing them, depending entirely on their degree of co-operation.

had incorporated him and his band into the Red Army. The general was forthright and direct about it. He invited Chu Chan-k'oei for a conference. He gave him tea and cigarette.

"Join up!" he ordered Chu.

Chu, however, was an independent man.

"Suppose I don't?" he inquired.

Chu accepted the ultimatum. He went along with his men to the Five-Story Mountain, the Sacred Mountain, Wu T'ai Shan.

One fine day every non-Communist who had gone, or been sent, to Wu T'ai Shan had to choose between being a live Communist soldier or a dead Chinese patriot. Chu became one of the great Communist generals. All the ambitious guerrilla leaders did too. By the end of 1938, in just one short year, all the bandit groups, the guerrillas, and all the brave little units of patriots had been "suppressed" either by being killed or by being incorporated into the Red Army.

#### CHAPTER III

#### THE REDS GAIN CONTROL

Before growth can begin, however, the people, like the soil or the medium for the agriculture, must be prepared.

The propaganda mills began to roll. There were books and pamphlets for those who could read, lectures for the illiterate, all pounding home the one idea—the People's Army would protect them by fighting the common enemy, the Japanese. The anti-Japanese idea was fostered night and day; the Communists under General Lu were following the secret orders of the Red leader, Mao Tse-tung, to take advantage of the war and the people's hatred and fear of the Japanese, to extend and consolidate Communist power.

#### The First Wedge

In a very simple way the general got control over the comings and goings of everyone and obtained as well a complete register of the population.

"To prevent traitors coming into the country," he said, "we must issue passes." The patriotic Chinese, most of whom would never in any circumstances have gone very far from their homes, especially in wartime, promptly presented themselves at designated places throughout the district and were given important looking passes, even to go just to the neighbouring villages. At the same time their names were written into the Communists' records, and the doom of many brave and decent men was sealed then and there. It was a characteristically devious and disguised form of census, showing name, age, occupation, and many other salient details, which was to prove diabolically useful when the time came to decide who was to be liquidated and who spared and used to further Communist ends.

#### Winning the People Over

Under such discipline and orders the army at first was exceedingly polite. The news of the Communist savagery in Kiangsi Province was known to a few well-informed men and remembered by them; most of the population of An Kwo, however, was too far away in time and distance, as well as in the purely personal preoccupation with living through the backwash of that horror and succeeding ones, to link up those Communists with the new People's Army who said they were fighting the Japanese.

There was no petty thievery. If one succumbed to temptation he was promptly punished by General Lu, and the general naturally saw to it that the victim and as many as possible of his friends witnessed his administration of "justice".

The young women had nothing to fear from the soldiers either. They became accustomed to hearing these well-behaved young Chinese address them as "sister-in-law" and the old women as "grandmother". The soldiers made a practice of going among the people to knock on the doors and ask, "Is there something we can do for you? Can we help you sweep the floor, grandmother? Can we get water at the well for you, sister-in-law?"

"We are the People's Army; we are not the Mandarin's Army," the soldiers said, and they made real and continued efforts by their actions and their words to get the people to make invidious comparisons.

posed for propaganda purposes abroad. The people who didn't know anything about the Red Army were easily converted; those who believed it was intrinsically bad began to doubt their own convictions and to believe, rather, that the Red Army had been the victim of lies. They wanted desperately to believe what the Red Army told them about its good intentions; understandably, too, they wanted to believe that what they were seeing with their own eyes of helpful and correct behaviour, instead of looting and lust, was truly honest behaviour which represented a new ideal of patriotism and brotherhood in China.

## Winning their Confidences

"I like Cho," the soldier would continue. "The money-changer, I mean. He's really a good man."

"Oh, no, he's not. Not that Cho. He's a bad one. You wouldn't like him if you really knew him. He's not good at all," the peasant would say, concerned now that a fine young soldier might come under the influence of a man the villagers knew to be deceitful and cunning.

So a little while later Cho is approached by one of the politicos on the general's staff with an offer to work with

them, and Old Peddler Wang, the good man, is put to death.

From information secured this way and by divers other means, the Communists learned where they could put their men into key positions in education, the police force, everywhere.

Of course not all the soldiers in the Red Army who were gathering this information were Communists. They were trained to do these things as part of the general police and were not told by their officers that the information brought in was being used to betray the confidence of the decent peasants and village folk who gave it. Nor did the villagers begin to put the pieces together until it was too late. The Red Army officers, almost without exception, were Communists from the beginning; and as time went on and Communist successes grew, all the officers were Communists.

Still another by-product of directed questioning in the seemingly casual, comradely conversations between the soldiery and the people was the information about arms and ammunition. Every Chinese family that had any property at all, even just their cooking utensils, their bedrolls, a few primitive farm tools, yearned for a gun. A gun meant protection. Farmers banded together to share common ownership of one rifle; the wealthier farmers and landowners had a few rifles. Indeed, rifles were a rich medium of exchange, and in those times people preferred them to cash.

The Communists needed all the rifles they could lay their hands on beyond what they were allowed to have legally, if they were to increase in power and numbers. Persons were arrested on the slightest pretext and forced to pay a certain number of rifles. In fact, everyone arrested was faced with the alternative of handing over rifles of being shot. Always the people were punished for misdemeanours, big crimes, or no crimes at all by being fined in arms instead of money, a typical Communist trick which was used as

part of an ascending spiral of ever-increasing demands to achieve maximum control over the population.

#### Applying the Screws

It was a simple procedure. They would call in a rich man who had given fifty dollars in the drive to "help the government".

"You are rich," a Communist officer would tell him, fixing him with an accusing eye. "Your contribution of fifty dollars to your government is not enough. You must now give arms. Bring ten rifles here tomorrow." He would name the hour, dismiss the man, and put his chop on the order.

As the weeks went by and more and more such fines were levied by the Communists, it was seen that the process was continuous. The man who was fined ten rifles at first was neither shot nor imprisoned that time, but just when

he began to breath easily once more, he would be arrested again and fined ten rifles. It was much harder for him to get the guns the second time and the deal cost him much more. By this time, too, he knew he was only buying a little time and that he would have to resign himself to a third arrest and a third demand, and so on, until one fine day...

In this way the Communists got a fine haul of arms. The more arms they got, the more easily and quickly they could enlarge their police force, the regular force, and the secret police. The larger the police force, the more men the Communists could put into key positions to overcome all the anti and non-Communists. Always, of course, they justified their actions with the appeal: "Those who have money must give money; those with guns and ammunition must give arms; those who have only their strength must give their strength to the cause!"

The time a man buys, dealing with the Communists, has a way of running out faster than he can replenish it. Time bought in this manner weakens the buyer and strengthens the seller. In the end the smoke consumes the fire.

#### CHAPTER IV

#### THE FORCES AGAINST COMMUNISM

absorption in this ideology, so foreign in origin and character, that raises the puzzling question of how any Chinese can subscribe to it. And in that anomaly lies the answer to the riddle. In it, too, is the implicit portent that communism will be destroyed in China by the Chinese nativism it has corrupted but not eliminated.

#### **Buddhism Attacked**

Buddhism, by itself, is a negative religious doctrine which teaches one to be patient and to suppress desires because desires are sources of suffering. It is a religion of mysticism—the tending of the inner light; the realization of the Eternal as immanent in the human soul through calmness, meditation, and prayer. The form of the religion which appeals to the largest number of Chinese is the Ching T'u Tsung, also called the Amidist or Lotus school. It was founded by a native of Shansi in the fourth century. Kuan Yin, its Goddess of Mercy, and Amita Buddha have endeared themselves to the popular mind by their devotion to the human race. But in this form of Buddhism, as in all the others, the distinguishing characteristics are negative; passivity and patience are the ideals toward which to strive.

Their first action was to chase the monks out of the pagodas and monasteries and seize these buildings for their own purposes. I myself saw the Communists encamped at the Sacred Mountain: Wu T'ai Shan, in Shansi Province. That was the seat of the great Communist base and training centre Where General Nieh Jung-cheng made Communists out of patriots and guerrillas and bandits. The holy places of Buddhism are generally found on hills or mountaintops. Four places, however, have come to be specially sacred to Buddhism and pre-eminently objects of Buddhist pilgrimage. Of these, Wu T'ai Shan is the most important in North China, since it is the seat of Mongolian Buddhism. Here General Nieh Jung-cheng, an "old Communist" who was a returned student from France and Belgium in the socialist University of Charleroi soon after World War I, now commander-in-chief of the Shansi-Chahar-Hopeh Military District, made his headquarters. Here he trained the Communist recruits and reindoctrinated the older ones.

But the followers of Buddhism, whose religion has been persecuted, will not soon forget these Communist outrages; and while this is just another page in the history of Buddhism in China, which since 217 B.C. has prospered or declined according to the tastes or political necessities of the current ruler, no other persecution has been so ruthless nor engendered so much deep hatred.

visited me in secret to see if there was not a possibility of their uniting to fight communism. We talked for a long time, and they told me of their determination to keep alive and to fight communism. At that meeting there was a devout and courageous Buddhist who is crusading throughout Red China today, encouraging other Buddhists, lighting their hopes, strengthening their hands. Actually, the philosophy of Buddhism, unchanged for centuries, is today, by force of circumstances, undergoing a profound change, turning from its ancient, contemplative mysticism to a dynamic philosophy of active resistance to communism. I am sure that the Communists never anticipated that a religion which stressed pacifism and resignation could, when threatened with extinction, transform itself into a hard knot of rebellion. But that is precisely what happened. Buddhism underground is a vital, powerful, fighting force against all Communist doctrine and practice.

#### Confucianism Confuses the Communists

Confucianism gave the Communists more trouble from the beginning because it is a positive, moral doctrine, based on the principle of authority and harmony in human relations—the king and the people; father and son; husband and wife; brother and brother; friend and friend. Here again, in another way, communism is the exact opposit. The Communist doctrine is anti-moral, anti-family; it is opposed to any authority except Communist authority.

While Confucianism is spoken of both as a religion and a philosophy, most foreign critics and some Chinese deny that it is a religion. There are, however, points in the teachings of Confucius and his immediate disciple, Mencius, which might have developed a religion as the Western world understands the word. In any case, Confucianism has been a substitute for religion for millions.

In An Kwo, soon after the Communists came in, I attended a big meeting where they made the first all-out attack on Confucius among many which the people were to witness. The audience sat in shocked and horrified silence as the Communists shouted and bellowed. The principal speaker was a bold-eyed young man who had been a party member for some time, apparently, and had obviously been through the major stages of party teaching. He had, I learned, already passed progressively through the village, regional, and district training centres and would undoubtedly be chosen to go to one of the schools of indoctrination in the old Communist capital of Yenan—schools the Chinese Communists call their "universities", next to the last link in the chain of intellectual enslavement of specially picked Chinese youth sent to "graduate schools" in Moscow.

"China is run-down!" he shouted. "China is the prey of the imperialists! China has been sucked dry by the foreign devils! Now the Japanese monkeys are here, chittering and chattering with their big guns and little guns, with their airplanes and their bombs! Why is China so weak? I'll tell you why! It's because China has followed Confucius, and Confucius was full of backward ideas. He was not forward-looking and progressive like the Communists are today. Confucianism has made slaves of China's people, chained them to old ideas in a modern world. Communism is the progressive doctrine of today. It will free you from slavery. It will make you powerful and respected in the modern world that respects only power and force!"

He went on and on and on tirelessly, repeating and reiterating one big lie after another, returning always to the theme for the evening; Confucius was an outmoded reactionary whose doctrines and ideas must be discarded if China was to defeat Japan.

At the end of the meeting everyone was required to cry out, "Down with Confucius! Down with Confucius, the Great Traitor!"

The people were furious, and twice as furious because of their impotence. To revile and dishonour China's greatest sage, who had been revered for ages as the fountain of wisdom and virtue, was not easy. The words stuck in their throats.

#### Taoism vs. Communism

Confucius believed in the power of human nature to remain upright if properly taught; Laotze, the philosopher to whom Taoism is traced, believed human nature would keep straight if left to itself. Lao's doctrine of inaction has never been thought practicable. Taoist monasteries are few when compared with those of Buddhism or the temples of Confucius, yet the influence of Taoism in China has been very great. Many of the secret sects are more or less imbued with Taoist influence; and the bloody Boxer uprising of 1900, with its hypnotism and its fanatic belief in the invulnerability of those possessed of its amulets and magic charms, is one instance of its power.

While Taoism began as a philosophy it later developed into a religion, and the popular Taoism of today is concerned with the worship of idols, mainly national worthies from the Shang Dynasty down; with the exorcising of demons; the writing of charms; incantations for rain, and so on.

Nevertheless, the nobler Taoism, quietest, transcendental, and mystical, as was its monastic founder, Laotze, has never wholly perished. Not only is Chuang-tzu, its noblest ex-

ponent, widely read for his style and beauty, but a small number of the elect keep up the old Taoist tradition as, for example, in the Lao Shan monasteries in Shantung province, a Taoist stronghold from ancient times.

So the two forms of Taoism, the esoteric and the popular, both constitute cores of opposition to communism. The Taoist says we must not force anything; the Communist exists and grows by force. The Taoist wants to be at peace and have harmony in life as there is harmony in nature; to unite everything in harmonious relation to the whole; the Communist wants to fight and to divide and spread confusion and disorder.

Those Taoist monks who led solitary lives in small pagodas around the countryside were evicted early by the Communists. They had no way of living because they were even less organized than Buddhists. The authorities among these monks, who through meditation and ascetic practices sought immortality, were put to death. The others, who made a humble living by acting as priests for believers, were driven out. They went back to the people when they, too, were not killed. And in secret they practise their incantations, while the people keep silent. Isn't it natural to suppose the incantations will be against these new "demons," the Communists? And that devout believers may become, as did the Boxers, a fanatic sect dedicated to driving out these Chinese with foreign, barbaric ideas, just as the Boxers of 1900 went to war against the white foreigners?

#### Chinese Moslems

The Islamic history records that Mohammedanism made its advent in China in A.D. 651. Later Moslems came by the overland route through Persia and Afghanistan into Sinkiang and other parts of China. In A.D. 755 the Caliph Abu Grafar sent an expedition of four thousand Arabian soldiers to China at the request of the Chinese Government to help subdue a rebellion, and these soldiers afterwards settled in China, married Chinese women, and are the ancestors of many present-day Chinese Moslems.

#### The Protestant Missionaries

As for the Western religions in China, Protestantism is a Christian faith based on many doctrines and divided into many sects. Communism is one in doctrine and one in organization. Here, too, is a difference that for the time being, anyway, and considered only superficially, seems to work in favour of communism. But Protestantism for more than a century had steadily expanded its work in China and done an enormous amount of good among the people and won many converts. Its mission schools and colleges in the big cities, as well as in the interior, have educated hundreds of thousands of Chinese. Its hospitals and missionary doctors have spread the gospel of hygiene and health as well as the gospel of God.

Many Protestant missionaries, preachers, doctors and other laymen have already been murdered by the Communists. These martyrs are the inspiration for resistance. One I knew well. He was Dr William L. Wallace, Baptist medical missionary and superintendent of Wuchow's Stout Memorial Hospital. He was forty-two years old and he died in prison last winter on February 10, 1951. Dr Wallace came

from Knox-ville, Tennessee. He was a fine-looking man, tall and spare, always calm, always devoted to his work and the people. He was a special friend of the Catholic Maryknoll fathers of the Wuchow diocese and for fifteen years treated these American missionary priests and nuns when they fell ill. Even during the war years Dr Wallace stayed in China, and when the Communists came into Wuchow he still remained and kept right on with his work despite the obstacles and hindrances they put in his way.

His popularity with the Chinese of the Wuchow area, who had real affection and respect for him, was his undoing; Communist propaganda about the "wicked Americans", those "imperialist Yankee dogs", could not stand up against the living example of this young American doctor's goodness and devotion to the Chinese people.

It was just the week before Christmas, on December 19, about three o'clock in the morning, when Communist soldiers knocked on the Stout Hospital gate. They said they had a sickman who needed attention. When the gate was opened they rushed into the compound, surrounded Dr Wallace's house, pulled him out of bed, and searched his quarters.

#### Communist Raid Technique

From this point on we have a perfect demonstration of Communist technique for their administration of "justice". They "found" a pistol under his mattress. Dr Wallace said he had never had a gun: servant swore it had not been in the room before the Communists came. Nevertheless, the Reds took the doctor away to prison in his pyjamas, despite the freezing December weather. There they tried to get him to sign a confession. They called a "denunciation meeting", but not one Chinese would come forward to condemn him. The Reds then arrested six members of the hospital staff as "reactionary pro-Americans". These unfortunates were never seen or heard from again. Dr Wallace

Communist recognition of Catholicism as its strongest enemy among all the religions derives from an understanding of the philosophical and practical ramifications of one of the fundamental tenets of the Church. Catholic doctrine teaches that the Catholic Church is the oldest and purest form of Christianity and that, though its dogma has developed to meet changing circumstances through the centuries, its integral core of belief remains as it was when Christ named Peter His rock. Every Catholic, therefore,

If, then, structurally and organizationally, communism and Catholicism show a similar pattern, there is this great all important difference: Communism is dedicated to the disavowal of personal responsibility; to destruction of all freedom; and to the total suppression and extinction of free will. Catholicism, on the other hand, is dedicated to acceptance of personal responsibility; to freedom of choice; and, above all, to the nurturing and expression of free will.

The Catholic believes the absolutism of his religion derives from God; everybody knows that the absolutism of communism descends from the Politburo, that collection of twelve apostles of evil dedicated to destroying man's most precious individual attribute—his free will.

#### CHAPTER V

In particular, at first, they ridiculed filial piety (hsiao) and all it connotes. This term, so important in Chinese social and political history, is much more comprehensive than the English translation of it would imply. Hsiao is the basis of the virtue we call humanity, and it is also extended to rules and made the basis of the political structure. The word is found at the very beginning of Chinese history, three thousand years before Christ, where it is written of a ruler that "he kept harmony by filial piety."

Millions of Chinese have no formal religion. They are neither Buddhists nor Taoists; they do not follow Mohammed or Christ. But there are very few Chinese indeed who do not revere the sage Confucius, and even fewer to whom ancestor worship, in greater or less degree, is not an integral part of their lives. And until the Communists began to propagandize with words and force, there were probably no Chinese at all, except the most debased and unregenerate, who did not have a modicum of filial piety.

The Chinese family is the backbone of the Chinese civilization. It is a unit by itself. In the old days, under the old system, the emperor was the head of all the families of China. The Chinese even have a name for a good public official—they call him "the father-mother official". The family in China means the whole family—father, mother, sons, daughters-in-law. Many families made a clan, and many clans in a district not only constituted an excellent system of mutual helplessness but were a guarantee of good government. An individual or one family might not dare accuse a bad magistrate; several clans together could petition the government for his removal.

In the Chinese family the authority comes from above. The oldest member in each family, whether man or woman, represents the ancestors for the family. It may be the Old Grandmother who is the ancestor. If this is so, all the sons

will obey her, and the daughters-in-law and the grandchildren too.

There is great strength in this system, strength of itself and the accumulated and accrued strength of centuries of adherence. And it is a system that is in conflict with the Communist idea. So the Communists used their system of "divide and rule" to break it.

In the years from 1937 to 1949, when I lived under the Communists, I saw them hacking away continuously at every branch and bough and twig, and, simultaneously, at the root itself of the family system.

#### They Flatter the Ambitious

"Why should you waste yourself and your talents on useless old people who don't care anything about you anyway?" he would ask. "You must not become old-fashioned like them and the others in this village. You are not stupid like them. You are brilliant! You can be a great leader of women in the New China!"

As an afterthought he told her she was beautiful, too, but only as an afterthought, because the Communist seducer in China makes love to a woman's brain first. It is a greater compliment there today, and the Red agents relate to ambitious Chinese girls like Mong Shu-lan the "success stories" of Communist women in other countries. Passionara, the Spaniard, was one of the early heroines; and in China, the

female demi-god of the Communists, Mme. Sun Yat-sen.

When Mong Shu-lan's Red agent judged the moment was right, he took her. At the beginning of their affair the girl had some qualms. She had not been unfaithful to her husband before, and the idea took a little getting used to. However, her lover provided a handy escape device for her. Under his tutelage she pretended great, overpowering fear of the Japanese and in the spring offensive of the Japanese armies that year, when the countryside once more became a battleground, she became a "refugee" and so escaped from her husband and her family.

She stayed away three years and joined the Communist party. When she returned to her village she was president of the Communist Women's Organization for her district.

After the Japanese war was over and the Communists came out into the open to launch their intensive campaign to seize China for themselves, she became president of the Communist Association for women in the three large heavily populated districts of Chengting, Kao Cheng, and Wu Ching.

In the west suburb of the city of Wu Ching, which I knew well, I saw another striking example of the technique used by the Communists in breaking up a family. This time they concentrated on separating a young girl from her parents. They chose a particularly happy, harmonious family—father, mother, two sons, and a lovely modest young woman. Liu Wei-ch'in was nineteen when her capture became the prime amatory and political objective of a militant young member of the Communist Agricultural Association named Ho Choen-shan. Liu's family was a conservative one, virtuous and good in the best traditions of Chinese family life. The young woman was not allowed to roam the streets aimlessly by day nor to be outside the family gate after dark.

Ho was able to visit Liu in her parents' home despite their objections.

## They Denounce Family Discipline

Once inside he began to upbraid the parents for their strictness. He argued and fought with them until they were completely bewildered. He criticized them and their old-fashioned ideas before the girl herself, belittling her parents in her young eyes, playing on her youthful inexperience and natural desires always, making it appear that her youth and beauty and talents were being eaten up by her selfish, greedy parents. He ridiculed their ways, berated them for their "tyranny", and persuaded the girl not to busy herself so much with household duties.

The girl formerly had been most active in the household, but now she grew daily more lazy and more difficult, until her parents were in despair. They tenaciously resisted all efforts on Ho's part to marry the girl, however. This warfare continued for months, and he grew more and more vicious. The girl, now completely captivated by him and converted to his thinking, disobeyed her parents, repudiated their authority, and married Ho. In the last stages of this strange wooing he, too, used the Communist lures which had worked on Mong Shu-lan. The young and pliable Liu was dazzled by the picture of herself as a "woman leader". She was so thoroughly indoctrinated after leaving her parents' home that later she did become the local president of the Communist Association of Women in that district, even as Mong Shu-lan had. Ho Choen-shan married her, of course, because only by marrying these young, foolish, inexperienced

girls can the Communists maintain the illusion that they are not really destroying the old foundations of family life but are just modernizing them. The combination of marriage and a career is a heady one for Chinese girls, especially those in the provinces, the smaller cities and villages, somewhat removed from the foreign influences which have saturated the port cities, and in the thirties had begun to move slowly inland from the coastal areas.

#### They Win over the Wallflowers

These are the women who are the vanguard, instructing other women in their revolutionary duties and in the Communist concept of love and marriage, a radical departure, indeed, from established concepts. Marriage in China before the Communists took over, was entered into thoughtfully and happily to produce children and carry on the family, to attain conjugal harmony and realization of self through acceptance of responsibility and all that implies. Romantic love, as the Western world understands it, was not always present, but it wasn't always absent either, even in marriages that had been arranged by parents when the principals were mere babies.

But in the new Red China the Communist party line on love is expounded now in tortured dialectics, in pamphlets which discuss "problems of love and marriage". They describe the new "democratic (i.e., Communist) love" as a state in which "men and women have no mercenary relations and, therefore, the highest form of love is reached... This love is sober, intellectual, and revolutionary." The pamphlets

advise what to look for in choosing a life mate. "The Communist youth should look first for correct political thoughts and then only afterwards for education, temperament, health, and good looks."

#### They Encourage Divorce

A few freedom of divorce is at work in Red China too. It is too early yet for over-all figures to have been compiled, even for such irresponsible statisticians as communism breeds. But in one city in Kiangsu Province the Communists announced that 1931 "feudalistic" marriages had been dissolved in just one year of Red rule. The basic grounds for divorce are "proof" that one party has been reactionary, counter-revolutionary, backward in thinking. This kind of "proof" can be supplied as quickly and easily as a cur can bark or an ass can bray, and as often as the party demands it of its two-legged counterparts.

Little by little the Communists kept dropping the acids of discord to speed the corrosion of the element of resistance implicit in family relations. Shortly before I made my own escape from Communist China I saw how they had used brother against brother to undermine an entire village.

It was in Liu Chia Chwang, in the district of Sin Le, in Hopeh Province. In this village there were fifty families named Liang, descended, no doubt, from a common ancestor. From 1937 to 1947, all through the ten difficult years of war and more, this village kept its tranquillity, managed its affairs, kept strong and intact in the midst of trouble and disaster all around it. The good feeling among all, the strength exerted by the fifty families bearing the name Liang were prime factors in maintaining this order and tranquillity. The village was a fine example of the efficacy of the clan system, a testimonial to the strength and integrity of this particular clan. The village, to a man, was opposed to communism from the beginning and had successfully resisted infiltration of the hated alien ideas.

#### They Set Brother against Brother

But in 1947, a Red agent of great skill, specially picked for the job, was sent to the village of Liu Chia Chwang, so opposed to communism, so impervious to it. He arrived at dusk one evening and settled right in, taking up his residence with two brothers. These young men had lost their parents; they had no sisters or other kin, and neither was married or betrothed. This is a situation rarely encountered in China, and it was particularly favourable for the agent's plan. As a matter of fact, the brothers had been chosen for this concentrated effort after study of the entire village and all the families in it by the agent's superiors. They even knew that it was the elder of the two brothers who was weaker, and had learned all the places where he was vulnerable.

The Communist made very little progress at first. But he persisted with limitless patience to work on the peasant ambitions of the elder brother. At last, when he had inflamed that ambition, softened him up with flattery, and stirred up the discord between the two brothers to the point which he judged to be exactly right psychologically, he promised the elder that if he would join the party he'd see to it that he would become the chief of the first Communist organization in the village.

This finally won the man. He joined the party. He

Now, as a Communist himself, he had to justify his action and his own position, and since he couldn't do it logically, he began to rationalize. The clans and all the village people were furious with him for having broken faith by joining the party and selling the village into communism, for they realized that now that the fabric of their solidarity had been ripped, even so slightly, the tear would grow bigger.

#### From Family to Village

The agent laboured now to instruct him in the evil methods of suppressing resistance. The new convert worked hard to make discord in the village so that he could win adherents. His own brother argued with him, as he had done before, but to no avail, and finally repudiated him. He gained a few followers among the least stable of the villagers, and with every one he gained he sowed some discord and anger among the people. He began to use the methods of the Teou Cheng—the People's Court, or public judgment—against them then. As everyone knows now, "people's justice" is just another name for lynching. To the people of Liu Chia Chwang this horror was almost more than they could bear, and they upbraided the traitor in their midst and crushed him roundly. As the people grew angrier with him, he was harder on them. And of course, since he had lost his brother and had no friends among his own people and could not undo what he had done, he became of necessity a convinced Communist, seeking

applause for his cruel acts from his new comrades. From that time on the village no longer had a peaceful day.

The people of this village, like those in countless other places in China, believe in a sharply defined moral code. That code comes from Confucian philosophy, chium, tze, wherein a great man is held up as an example and a model to others. It is a kind of Oriental noblesse oblige, and all over China it used to be a common experience to encounter an elder admonishing younger members of his family or the community that "the chium tze would not do this" or "the chium tze would not do that". The code encourages simple people to strive mightily for perfection. It makes for a higher standard of morality than one might reasonably expect from uneducated, often completely illiterate peasants, with nothing offered in return except self-satisfaction and a great self-respect.

The Communists attacked this high moral ideal continuously because they realized that anyone with such a rigid code of morality will not, as is required of the comrades, be prepared to sacrifice everything for the party. They recognized the strength of the traditional force of Chinese ethics. Few civilizations have arrived at such a fine degree of personal morality as the Chinese, and especially the Chinese of the north. In the south, where communism gained its first adherents, the virtues are not so strongly nor so tenaciously held. The north had a pure way of living that was a strong influence in maintaining the chastity of its women particularly.

The Reds appealed to the lowest instincts in men to achieve their purpose. They plastered the walls of villages and towns with such inscriptions as "Down with Moral Confucianist Doctrine!" "Down with Confucian Justice!" "Down with Confucian Modesty!"

#### Save Cloth-Lose Modesty

I alighted from a Peking cart one hot summer day, and

portunities for spreading their ideas that everything should be enjoyed in common—education, meals, sleep.

At the time when our schools at Kao Kai Cheng had not as yet experienced the depredations of the Japanese, the Communists took occasion to open a "model" propaganda school there. The director proudly introduced all the new Communist ideas. The Chinese middle schools for boys and girls of high school age serve a large territory, and the students coming from a distance, sleep in. There were separate quarters for both sexes, although all the girls used the common k'ang the big brick bed on which they slept side by side, while the boys followed the custom in their section. The Communist director, however, in the name of equality of the sexes, ruled that boys and girls should sleep together, alternating on the k'ang, boy, girl, boy, girl, up to the capacity of the bed.

But the Communists met stubborn opposition. In village after village which I knew intimately I heard from the people and saw for myself evidences of their dislike of Communist innovations.

Once in Siao Nan Liu, a Christian village, Communist leaders came to me and complained that the girls refused to "comfort them". "These peasants have such a poor education that they have no appreciation of the new ideas", one Communist told me humourlessly.

#### The Magistrate Got Bored

Another time, in my own city of An Kwo, the Communist magistrate who had replaced Mr Wang, the legally elected magistrate whom the Communists has arrested and imprisoned, saw an extremely pretty sixteen year-old girl from the suburbs on the street. He sent one of his assistants to the girl's mother to say he wanted her. The Chinese had had plenty of this kind of thing from the Japanese during the occupation. Unworldly, trusting people, they did not expect it from their own military men and officials

and the Chinese Communists were still masquerading as the protectors of the people.

request.

"My daughter is too young to leave the family," she told the messenger. But the peremptory nature of the demand, the boldness of the messenger himself, his threats and wild words had frightened her and she appealed to me.

"What can we do?" she asked me. "If we continue to refuse we'll be denounced as traitors," she told me, "and may be our whole family will be killed and our daughter taken anyway. What shall we do?" she cried.

I thought about it for a while and then I suggested to the mother that she play for time and not antagonize the magistrate. The girl had a slight eye infection and this

gave me an idea.

The next day I sent her on the additional forty miles to Paoting and the convent there. Instead of staying just a few weeks, however, she remained with the nuns all through the war and eventually became a nun and a nurse. She was attached to the Sacred Heart Hospital in Shanghai when I saw her again. Her desperate escape was a dim memory by that time and we even jocked a little about our frantic ride. Her family took great pride in her vocation and her work, she told me, and, as I had predicted, there were no reprisals because the magistrate had indeed got bored waiting and found himself another comforter".

## "Emancipation" from Elders

On another occasion I was riding my bicycle from a village in the district of Puo Yeh to the market town for that area. As I came close to the town I saw a big gathering and I assumed it was market day. But it wasn't market day, nor was the crowd assembled for any ordinary event. I heard the beat of drums, the clash of cymbals, the shrill noise of Chinese flutes, and then I saw a procession winding through the streets. Little Chinese boys came at the head, carrying banners emblazoned with Communist slogans. I dismounted from my bike and ranged myself with other onlookers against a wall to see what was going on. The procession came to rest in a cleared space, and a young woman in her twenties stood up on a stool to harangue the crowd. She spoke in a violent way, using hard and cruel words, and accused her mother-in-low of all sorts of evil actions and indecencies. I noticed as I listened to her that she had pulled her long hair down around her face and disarranged it completely. This is a Chinese peasant's way of showing anger; the more disarranged the hair, the greater the anger for the grievance, supposed or real. And this young woman's hair was very untidy indeed.

The old woman—and she was an old woman—was crouched in a corner against the wall, trying to hide her face

It is no secret that Chinese family life is not always perfect; family life is not perfect anywhere, any more than life itself is perfect. And the Chinese, like the rest of the civilized world, have a saying that one doesn't wash one's dirty linen in public. But the Chinese are far more punctilious about observing this than the Westerners, and for a Chinese to abuse his family or upbraid any member in public is an act of great immorality. I was thinking of this, shaking my head in amazement, wondering that such a thing could ever come to pass in this small tradition-governed place.

Suddenly the daughter-in-law stopped short in her tirade. She shouted some instructions to the little band of musicians who had waited restlessly as she spoke, and nodded toward the leaders of the procession. An evil-looking youth swaggered over to the old woman and ordered her to get up and get going. The old woman struggled to her feet, still trying to shield her face from the crowd. He shoved her impatiently, knocking her off her balance. Weakly she got to her feet again. Then he lined up the musicians and the bannerbearers. The drummers beat their drums; the ragged, unkempt crew struck their cymbals together and piped on their flutes. The procession began again. The poor

old woman, still wearing the dunce cap, stumbled along behind them. The daughter-in-law followed, taking up once again her litany of abuse. The whole village then straggled along, following, everyone in a kind of sullen daze.

It made a strange and pathetic parade, I thought, as I watched the last unwilling marcher disappear. Later I learned it was the first time such a thing had ever happened, not just in that town but in the whole district. I could not shake the memory of it and I made discreet inquiries about how it had all started, what it was all about. The old woman, I was told, was the victim of her daughter-in-law's conversion to communism and had no choice but to submit to this public humiliation or be killed. The daughter-in-law, for her part, was demonstrating her "emancipation" from the outmoded ideals of respect for the family's elders.

As I was leaving, saddened and depressed, I became aware of an old man watching me as I took my bicycle off its stand. Our eyes met in mutual embarrassment. He looked down and carefully smoothed the long gray beard that lay against his faded blue robe. He shook his head, sighed deeply, looked up at me again, an expression of ineffable sadness on his worn old face. "No more virtue—there is no more virtue in China—it is gone—it is finished—there is no more virtue."

#### CHAPTER VI

#### JAPAN HELPS TO COMMUNIZE CHINA

WHILE the Chinese Communists realized early that they would have to wage unceasing and unremitting warfare on the natural elements of resistance to them in their own country, they knew there were certain other elements that favoured their penetration and progress. For one thing, their ideological, political, and economic warfare was carried on continuously under such euphemisms as "patriotism" and "war effort". For another, the people were on the sharp horns of a cruel dilemma. The Japanese armies were overruning the country, and each new Japanese victory meant a whole new cycle of bestiality and horror. The people had known relatively little peace for a long time and were desperately eager to believe the Red armies' loud protestations of patriotism and determination to wipe out the Japanese invaders.

That in itself gave the Communist an edge. The people were loath to believe that a Chinese—any Chinese—could be as bad as any Japanese. In those early days of the war the Japanese hostilities turned the simple, peaceable Chinese peasantry into furiously angry patriots ready to believe almost anything any other Chinese told them.

And of course the ostensible united front that now obtained, the pledges of loyalty and co-operation the Communists had given Chiang Kai-shek and the National Government, all lulled the people into the belief that the Chinese armies were truly united to defend China, to protect the people and drive out the Japanese.

The Communists fought the Japanese but only as a part

## I Plead for Mr Wang

Lu, not just about school and tax matters, which I had represented to him as matters of first importance, but to intercede for Mr Wang. This had to be done with the utmost casualness, a kind of "oh-by-the way" off-handedness.

The general greeted me with a show of hearty warmth.

"How have things been since I last saw you, comrade?" he inquired.

As usual, he was chain-smoking cigarettes. Aides were coming and going. There was constant movement and activity of personnel while we talked. One of the aides brought in some magazines smelling strongly of fresh ink, obviously just off the press. The general took one and handed me one.

"You were so kind, comrade, letting us use your printing press at the mission when we first came to An Kwo that I am happy to present this copy of Red Star to you."

He picked up his brush, ran it over the ink black, and inscribed my Chinese name in large, bold characters on the cover. I smiled broadly and thanked him, and my smile turned into a rueful grin as I thought of the curt orders issued to me on that October day when the general's courier had come to our gate with a copy for the propaganda posters and proclamations the general had wanted printed to announce his arrival and his determined anti-Japanese patriotism.

I examined the magazine with lively curiosity and real interest. It was a professional-appearing job, well printed, extolling the party line from cover to cover. I asked no questions about it because I knew that it had been printed in the Communist's own establishment in Ho Kien, about a hundred miles from our city. It was the Communist's own establishment now. They had expropriated a Jesuit press there and were able to publish a daily newspaper, books, and this magazine—the first Chinese Red magazine I had seen. To be able to do this much, in this inland district, was a tribute to their efficiency.

"I made some vague comments and thanked the general

for the magazine. I was about to speak to him about Magistrate Wang. It was almost as if he divined what was in my mind, for he rang a bell and said, "I've sent for Magistrate T'ang. I want you to meet him. You've been so helpful in this district and you are so familiar with the problems of the people here that I'm sure you will want to give him the benefit of your experience."

In a few minutes the general's Red stooge, Mr Wang's successor, appeared.

The general introduced us. He spoke of the nearness of the Japanese, the probable imminence of the attack on An Kwo. He obviously was not going to let me discuss at length any of the matters I had come to see him about. I mentioned the school and tax matters. He suggested I confer with Mr T'ang. I then brought up the matter of Mr Wang's imprisonment. I made a strong case for him, and since I had been his counsellor and he had also appointed me inspector of the district while General Lu had been absent, I was able to talk with a great deal of authority and I made the most of it.

The general was annoyed, but apparently he did not deem it politic to show his displeasure. He agreed to "think about" Mr Wang's case. He assented to my request to visit him in prison that day, and then, since I was there, he invited me to inspect the military academy in Anping where three hundred young men were being trained to be officers in the Red Army.

If there were any special features of the military establishment, I'm afraid I was not especially aware of them. Because there, for the first time in this district of Hopeh, which I had come to think of with such warm, close affection as my home, I saw displayed the faces of the enemy—pictures of Lenin, Marx, and Stalin. I saw, too, something I had never seen before and have never seen since anywhere in Communist China, a picture of Mrs Lenin!

"The Chinese Communists will destroy China," he said. "They will use the Japanese invasion for their own purposes. They will kill more Chinese than Japanese. You will see," he added sadly.

It was quite true, what Mr Wang said. If it hadn't been for the Japanese invasion, communism would never have succeeded in China. The atrocities lit fires of patriotism in the people, and the flames burned fiercest where the oppression was the worst. In the north, at the beginning of the war, the Chinese people who were under the Japanese were much more patriotic than those who had not experienced the cruelties of the enemy. Not until after South China had shared the experience of Japanese cruelty were they one with their northern brothers. The Communists were quick to see this and to use it to their own advantage.

#### The Price of Courage

Discerning men like Mr Wang, courageous in their frank hatred of communism, were marked for quick liquidation. I didn't know it then, but I was seeing Mr Wang and talking to him for the last time. He knew it. He begged me not to waste time trying to effect his release but to use my energies in helping other anti-Communists like himself to outwit the Chinese traitors "like the general and his stooges", he said bitterly.

short period they plundered the entire city. They sent to Tientsin for fifty large trucks and loaded on them everything of any value they found in the city. Only our mission, outside the gates, and the Protestant mission, St Barnabas Hospital, escaped, not because the Japanese liked us and wanted to favour us, but because at that time they were afraid of bad propaganda. The year before they had killed the Dutch Bishop Schraven and seven foreign priests, of Dutch, French, Czechoslovakian, and other nationalities. They had also bombed the French Jesuit mission of Sienhsien to the east of us. The consuls of the various countries had made strong protests to Japan about these outrages, and for a while the Japanese military in China was somewhat more selective in its behaviour, concentrating on helpless Chinese.

It was the custom of the Japanese high command to reward its soldiers for victory by giving them three day's freedom. It was license rather than freedom really, for soldiers were permitted to go anywhere and do anything at all—get drunk as goats, rape, loot, murder—nothing was forbidden them. Details were on duty, of course, to oversee the official plundering and load the trucks, which moved in and stripped the city but most of the soldiers were on their own and made the three days a hell on earth for the people.

On one of these days after An Kwo had been taken, the gatekeeper at our mission came to me gibbering and shaking, almost hysterical with fear. There were four drunken soldiers at the gate. They had demanded girls and pricked him with their bayonets just to see him jump. They soon tired of tormenting him, however, and told him to "go get the boss". He ran from them to search for me, and they followed him into the mission compound. I went out quickly to meet them. They came swaggering toward me, an odd-looking quartet indeed. They were dirty and dishevelled, and each man had a brace of live chickens, tied by their feet, hanging head-down from their belts. These were chickens

## Jap Soldiers on a Spree

The Japanese soldiers stood there now in the empty compound, reeling and slobbering, the squawking chickens tearing afternoon quiet into patches of ugly sound. The men were doubly dangerous because they were not only drunk, they were in an ugly mood besides.

They came right at me, advancing and pointing their bayonets at my heart.

I smiled agreeably, as if handing over young Chinese girls to drunken Japanese soldiers for their sensual satisfaction was a great privilege. And I beckoned them to follow me.

I took my usual long strides, and when I came to the door of the lovely Chinese-style cathedral I had to stop and wait for my stumbling, staggering "guests" to catch

up with me. I unlocked the door and went into the cool dimness of the church. The little ruby glass lamb in the sanctuary glowed in the dimness; the presence of God enfolded me and gave me courage.

The four soldiers stood gaping at the interior of the church, and I started on my tour, again beckoning them to follow. We went from statue to statue, from station to station, and before each image of a saint and the Virgin I paused and told a long story in Chinese, varying it sometimes in English. When I spoke in English I managed always to get the word "girl" in several times, pointing vaguely as I did so. I never gave them a moment's rest, and we made the rounds quickly, not once but twice, the first time for the statues, the second time for the stations of the Cross, the depiction in carved wood of the last sorrowful journey from Gethsemane to Calvary.

For we had two thousand refugees hidden away in the compound and they were mostly young girls and women and children, and a few old people. They were hidden in the seminary, the nuns' convent, in all the buildings behind the church, some directly behind us. They were all saved the fate of the women of Huo Chia Chwang, only ten miles away from An Kwo; also of the village of Cheng Liu Che where the Japanese soldiers had arrested all the women and raped every last one of them.

These horrors we were spared—at least for a while. We had plenty of horrors of other kinds.

## **Enemy Brutality Exploited**

The next day, April 6, from 3 A.M. to 5 A.M., the Communist troops attacked the Japanese and the Japanese began to retreat. I marked their departure by the column of smoke that began to rise from the city about eleven o'clock. Only after the Japanese had left, did their last stragglers set the fires to complete a city's devastation; and as soon as I saw the smoke I got on my bicycle and made for the town. This was my second trip there since the battle, and this time there was no Japanese sentry to keep me from going through the gates to help the wounded. The city was a shambles. It was noon now, and the hot sun beat down on the hundreds of dead strewn every where. The bodies were piled so high in the streets that I had to leave my bicycle at the wall and pick my way through. At first it seemed there was no one alive anywhere, but as I pressed on I heard moans and cries and weeping, and presently the living who could walk began to emerge from hiding. They told me the Japanese had closed and guarded the city gates as soon as they had arrived, and bayonetted everyone in sight. This silent carnage had its

Ahead of me I saw the British flags flying over the Protestant mission, and I made my way there as fast as I could, because I knew I could find help there. On my way I met Miss Burnet, the head nurse of the British Anglican Hospital. She rounded up a doctor and a male nurse to accompany me into the city, and the three of us started back. Several Chinese Christian Brothers of St John the Baptist, whom I had picked up earlier had been helping put out the scattered fires and locate the wounded. Women with their children, who had taken refuge in our mission, were already beginning to trickle back, looking for their men. One family stood weeping outside their house, terrified to go in. It was as if they knew what awaited them. I reassured them, not believing what I told them in my desire to comfort them, and went in myself. There, lying on the ground beside the k'ang, disembowelled and bayonetted to death like dozens of others I had seen, was the husband and father

Home after home mourned its dead and totted up its material losses. Sometimes the home itself was a smoking ruin; sometimes the humble house was intact but not a stick of furniture or a cooking pot had been left inside.

The next day and the day after we had more help as one by one the people of the city returned from the nearby villages where they had been hiding, from our mission refuge and elsewhere. We worked desperately hard to bury the dead, a task that seemed endless. On the third day all the hundred Chinese Christian Brothers from the mission and many of the people who volunteered as gravediggers realized that they would have to dig the graves less deep if they were to finish the job before the dogs ate the bodies. We were exhausted from frenzied efforts to keep ahead of the half-wild dogs that came from everywhere and the starved mongrels that always roam and forage in any Chinese city. But there were too many dead and we couldn't dig fast enough.

It was sometime before I saw the Red general again. When I went to call on him to discuss some business which had to clear through his headquarters he would not let me speak. I could see he was angry, and I wondered. What now?

I thought, of course, I had misread his angry face; that his anger was not for me but a hangover from a previous conference. His words were like push buttons lighting up all the horror pictures of human agony I had witnessed in An Kwo after the Japanese had retreated, pictures I had been trying to bury in the darkest, deepest recesses of my memory. I covered my eyes with my hand for a moment and began to speak without looking at the general, for I did not want him to see the emotion I felt.

"I wish I could have done more, General," I said. "The poor people! Such wicked slaughter! I wish—"

I looked at him, not understanding what I had heard. I noticed that he had not called me "Father" or "comrade", as he always did. Plainly, he was too angry with me to bother with even a pretence at the amenities.

"Do what again?" I asked.

"Save wounded civilians," he answered. "The more Chinese the Japs kill, the better for China," he went on. "The Jap killings and bayonettings encourage the Chinese people to hatred. That's what we want. That's the way we can get every man who can walk into my army!"

#### Treachery Unmasked

My own anger rose at this. I was about to protest against his callousness even though I knew it would be useless. But now I knew for all time that the Red Army was out to conquer the Chinese, not defeat the Japanese. I realized, too, my own strength in dealing with him lay not in showing hot anger but in a quick, cold-as-ice thrust that would take him by surprise and put him on the defensive.

He looked searchingly at me.

"Our great enemy is not Japan," he said.

"Who is your great enemy?" I asked.

"Chiang Kai-shek, He's our great enemy," the Red general said. "And because Chiang is our great enemy is why we Chinese Communists musn't fight the Japs too much. We must not let the Japs be too strong in China; but we must not fight them so hard they'll get too weak. If they are too strong, then communism can't win in China. And if they are too weak, Chiang Kai-shek cannot fail to win."

#### CHAPTER VII

#### THE MASTER PLAN FROM MOSCOW

NOW THE battle between me and the Communists was joined. It was to be a battle of wits, but the general and I both knew that no matter how much we parried and feinted, no matter how much we smiled and dissembled, we were not, never had been, and never could be "comrades", not in the Communist sense, nor in Christian brotherhood. It was far easier for him to accept this than for me, because he had neither morals nor ethics and owed allegiance only to communism, which doesn't care how it wins so long as it wins.

Also, the general had the advantage of me in every thing but my spiritual assets and resources, my unshakable faith in God and my religion. He had his army and ruthlessness ever at his command. I did have one small material advantage—he still had occasional need of me.

There had never been any misunderstanding between us about my position, however. From the beginning I had made it clear to him that communism was anathema to me; that I would help him and the other Communists in the army only so long as I was convinced they were fighting the Japanese. I made it plain, with all the emphasis I could command, that I would not allow our printing presses at the mission to be used for propaganda to spread Communist doctrine.

"I am always ready to die," I told him, "and I will die rather than do anything against my conscience."

That was at our very first meeting, when I had gone to him as the magistrate of the district, chosen by the people, to relinquish my temporary office. He had been astonished to discover that the magistrate was a Catholic priest (Chap. II. page, 35). He had been more astonished when I told him I had been serving pro tem—only until I could hand over the office to a Chinese authority. He had not expected that I would acknowledge Communist authority in any form, for he knew that I knew that calling himself a "People's Army" general or an "Anti-Japanese army" general didn't change his essential communism.

But now he knew that I knew, too, that even the pretence of fighting the Japanese for patriotic motives would no longer stand up. For me that meant the chips were down. Now I had to develop yeh yen—eyes that see in the dark the first of three requisites of the Communist soldier. (I already had the others: "iron feet" to endure long marches, and a stomach that sustained me and was satisfied with minimum rations.) I knew that it would be a cat-andmouse game from here on.

I began not only to watch everything more carefully but to make detailed notes of what I saw and heard and to study and analyze my findings very carefully. From time to time, whenever I had an opportunity, I sent my notes in French to a friend in Peiping, who forwarded them to another friend in Belgium. These diaries, which I retrieved in 1950 after I had to flee from Communist China, covered these early years of my personal experience with Chinese Communists and the Japanese. In 1943, when I was arrested by the Japanese, there was barely time to hide my latest notes and manuscripts in the walls of our mission. I was interned for more than two years, and when I returned to An Kwo I realized my hiding place had been discovered, because those papers and manuscripts and books were all gone. Fortunately, however, my habit of memoriz-

ing most of what I had written enabled me to reconstruct names and places and dates. Besides, the experiences were so deeply graven that I could never forget them.

My first serious studies were concerned with the methods of Communist penetration of China, which the Chinese Reds accomplished through all the devious ways and means that were blueprinted for them by their Moscow masters.

## Reversing the Roles

First was the "class struggle". Chinese communism relied chiefly on the success of the class struggle for its own success. Like Soviet Russia, China is a predominantly agricultural country, and 90 per cent of its population are peasants. The industrial proletariat, concentrated in the big industrial centres, Shanghai, Hankow, Taiyuan, Mukden, Tientsin, comprise only about 1 per cent of the whole population. There was no such thing as class distinction in the great mass of the peasants, so it was necessary for the Communists to create such distinctions in order that war of class against class could be fomented. This is the most efficacious way the Communists have to acquire a man's property or to destroy him, or to get his property and kill him, too, if he proves intractable or unco-operative or is just not wanted around for any reason or no reason at all.

The Communists divided the peasants into five categories which were to become, according to plan, five different classes. These classes were, first, the rich; second, those in easy circumstances; third, the moderately comfortable; fourth, the poor; and, fifth, the hired labourer. There was no fixed rule for determining a man's class, but in each village those with the most land were labelled "the rich", and the rest were classed in proportion. The scale was, therefore, altogether relative to place, because the "rich" of one village could be the "moderately comfortable" of another.

The "poor" and the "hired labourers" were chosen as the

basis of the organization, the point from which the attack was to be launched against the other classes. This attack would follow the Communist theory that riches come only from personal labour, and the wealth acquired by "exploiting" the worker—i.e., the poor and the hired labourers—must be taken back by force of the party. The seizure and transfer must be accomplished even if violence and bloodshed ensue.

Four great means were to be employed to this end:

The first of these means was Fan Chen Hui, or the reversing of the poor and the rich. The workers and the hired farm labourers banded together to become the masters of their erstwhile masters.

The second means was Fou Tch'eou Hui, or vengeance which allowed the poor to revenge themselves on the rich.

The third method was Ts'ing Suan Hui. Through this device, "the paying of scores", the Communists found a really excellent pretext for despoiling the rich. Every "injustice" committed by a living person or by any one of his ancestors had to be atoned for, with accumulated interest. And of course an injustice, real or imagined, could always be found.

The class struggle is used only in dealing with non-Communists and anti Communists. The Communists try by "public judgment" to break down the neutrals and the opposition in order to make them useful members of the party.

To do this, they watch them carefully, observe them, spy on them, get others to spy on them, and so acquire a great deal of information about them and about their ancestry, background, habits, their ways of living and thinking. When all this information has been obtained, the Communists then start to work on their victims in many different ways, sometimes by persuasion, sometimes by threats, sometimes by public attack and abuse. Any and all kinds of means and methods are used to compromise a man in order to effect his change-over to communism. The Communists pursue their course with the limitless patience one must use in training a dog. Their ruthless efficiency is frightening.

If after all this they succeed in winning docility and acquiescence, they will spare the victim's life and begin to use him. But they will still watch him. In fact, they will watch him forever. On the other hand, when they cannot convert men and women to communism, they will kill them or, as in the case of some foreigners, banish them from the territory, eventually from the country. If they come to believe a man is dangerous, they will not only kill him but destroy his entire family. This is all good Communist logic, which is simply that all who are of no use to the party must be eliminated.

#### Confiscation

The first phase of the class struggle, then, results in the confiscation of real property—a house, or a farm, or mission buildings, or just land. In the second phase, in what the Chinese call a "new examination", the Communists take over what they didn't seize the first time—personal possessions, clothing, bedding, furniture, etc. If this "new examination", which is also a confiscation of property, does not bring the subject around to an acceptance of communism, his "examiners" go on to the third phase, which they call ts'ing siuen, or "counting the money to the last cent". In this phase the Communists scrutinize not only one's personal

accounts but also the accounts of his immediate and distant forebears, as far back as they care to go, which means, of course, as far back as they have to go to make some kind of case against a man so that they can squeeze something else out of him in the name of "Justice."

The ridiculous lengths to which the Communists carry these are best illustrated by the experiences of some French missionaries whose fine, improved property the Communists coveted. They charged that the missionaries had failed to pay proper wages to their employees.

"The Chinese workers who were employed by you during the Boxer Rebellion", he was told.

"That's correct", the examiner replied.

The head of the mission protested the ridiculousness and injustice of such a charge, but to no avail. The Communists confiscated the mission itself, the buildings, printing press, the hospital, everything.

Another, similar incident occurred in the southern part of Hopeh. There the Communists accused a Hungarian bishop of having stolen a mule during the Boxer Rebellion. Of course the fact that the Bishop was not even in China during that time, forty years earlier, weighed not at all. The accusation and argument went on interminably, and so did the calculations. When the Communists presented their bill for the mule the bishop was supposed to have stolen, it was for a nice round sum. The entire mission property, valued conservatively at \\$200,000—church, house, school, hospital, convent, etc.—was not enough to pay for that mule.

excess of the value of the real property they intend to seize.

Sometimes it is a chicken for which they say they must have proper legal compensation for "the people". They will start with the modest enough cost of the chicken and then go on to add to that figure the market price of all the eggs the hen might have produced over a period of years, and the cost of the hens from those eggs, and price for the hens from the eggs, from the hens from the eggs, of the first chicken, and on and on and on until the senses reel.

## Boxer Rebellion Exploited

Probably another reason why the Communists chose this convenient episode in Chinese history as the starting point for their reckoning is that there are Chinese still living who can talk about the Boxer Rebellion; Chinese who had been in Peking during the siege and lived through the fighting and the grim aftereffects. The Communists like nice points like this: they can always point to the defeat of the Boxers by the foreign as an "injustice", another vicious example of "foreign imperialism."

Time and time again I was to see the irrational, even ludicrous, attempt of the Communists to preserve outward forms by insisting that they were only righting an "injustice".

they wouldn't have been able to find any such "witnesses". Thus the Boxer Rebellion at the turn of the century proved a gold mine which they worked until the last thin vein ran out and the limits of credulity were stretched to infinity.

## Take My Own Case

Consider an experience of my own. In a village called Nan Ma our church had a property consisting of two schools, a small church, and a playground. The cluster of buildings was situated directly in the middle of the village, and it was a valuable property for which we had paid good money.

There were in this village, as in all villages, some bad characters, and these fellows had been quick to learn the Communist way to promotion and pay. They had gone to the new magistrate soon after the Communists had arrived, and had pointed out to him this property which they said the Catholic Church authorities had taken by force after the Boxer uprising had been put down. In the old days, they went on, there had been a pagoda on the land now occupied by our buildings, and that land, they declared, was common property. Without making any investigation whatever, and with nothing to go on but the unsupported allegations of these local men, the magistrate seized our property forthwith. Then he sent word to me that he had taken it.

"This land on which your foreign buildings stand belongs to the village," he said. "The land will be confiscated and given back to the Chinese people of Nan Ma. You have no right to it," he went on.

the property had been purchased years before from five different families, that it had all been duly paid for, and that we had the registered deed and title right there in the files—a "red title", as the Chinese call it, with the official "chop" or seal.

He had, of course, to return our property to us because the Communists were still going through their rigmarole of "justice". I was interested to know what the magistrate would do to the people who had "deceived" him, so I asked one of our Chinese friends to keep his eyes and ears open and report to me. He came to visit me in An Kwo one day and he laughed heartily when he told me that the Red magistrate had made a personal visit to the village of Nan Ma and reprimanded the people severely.

"When you make accusations against anyone, and especially against these accursed foreigners," he said to them, "you must be sure that they have no proof to the contrary. I have lost face over this," he stormed. He made a special search for the particular informants in this case and finally dug them out of hiding and gave them a most unpleasant time.

## A Good Deed Repaid

As a corollary to this story, some months earlier a Chinese youth of twenty had come to me weeping. He begged me to save his father's life. His father was a great scholar, a well-known and learned magistrate, a man of truly great mind and heart, who was in hiding because he had been warned the Communists wanted to liquidate him. The son told me the entire story, in all its myriad details, and renewed his pleas to me to save his father's life. I did not know the man except by name, nor had I ever met the son before this day. But this was not the first time, nor was it the last, that Chinese who were strangers to me came to me themselves or sent messengers begging me to save their lives.

"I'll do everything I can to save your father's life," I said. I'll try my utmost. I may not succeed, but if you will follow all my instructions and we have good luck and God is willing, then I think we shall be successful. When you reach home, tell your father to shave his head like a coolie and get some old coolie clothes somewhere. This is Friday. You'll need a day to get home. I can't leave until after Sunday. On Tuesday next then, I'll arrive in your village. I'll go through the village on my bike. Tell your father he is to follow me on his—he can pick me up outside the wall. He is to follow me through the village, but he must not speak to me—just have him trail along after me. We won't linger. When I leave

"Choose the best", I told him. He took off the dirty travelstained coolie garb and put on the kind of robe he was accustomed to wearing. He never forgot this small gesture I made in deference to his pride and selfrespect. Years later, when I came out of concentration camp in Weihsien, he was waiting for me with two bags full of fresh, clean clothing. That was late in 1945.

When the Red magistrate seized our property in Nan Ma and I had to write the long memorandum to him, it was Magistrate Li who prepared the argument, the legal brief one might say, which, with the photographs of the deed and title, I counted on to get our property back. He studied the whole matter carefully and put his best efforts into the task. I was overjoyed with the results—not only with the language of the brief but with the writing itself. However, Magistrate Li begged me to have someone copy the paper because his calligraphy was so distinctive that it would be recognized and his hiding place discovered.

"Who did this?" he asked

"My secretary wrote it," I told him. "A Catholic boy," I added, for indeed the Chinese Christian brother who had copied the brief was a Catholic.

"He must be very good," the Red magistrate said, conceding excellence in spite of himself, reacting briefly like a true Chinese instead of a Communist.

"Oh, we have lots like him," I returned with what I judge to be just right shade of casual arrogance.

In the fourth phase of the class struggle, for instance, the phase they call Choei Ch'a which means to go to the very bottom, beyond which one can go no farther, they will say to a man: "All right. You seem to have given everything. But we are not satisfied. You are keeping something back." They then apply physical force to make their victim talk, to make absolutely sure he has nothing left to give to them.

#### The Four Degrees

The man was a rich man of the district, Mr Wang Chan-ch'oen. First, the Communists confiscated all his lands, goods, and buildings. This was accomplished by a popular judgment—the first degree. Mr Wang was hauled up on a platform in a public square and several Communist stooges, alleged "victims" of the man's "exploitation" and "oppression", came forth to point their fingers at him and charge him with every vile crime in the category. All around the square the people were assembled, the good and the bad, Communists and non-Communists. No one is allowed to stay away from these public "trials". The indoctrinated Communists, the professional agitators and rabblerousers are in the vanguard. They have their own means of arousing emotion and fear and panic to a kind of hysterical anger that demands retribution.

The Red magistrate enumerated other crimes committed by Mr Wang Chan-ch'oen. His accusers joined in loud imprecations and lamentations for the "injustice" they had suffered at his hands. Their bewildered victim began to protest. The accusers rushed at him. The magistrate stopped them with an upraised hand and addressed the mob.

"Comrades, this man denies the charges. Do you believe him?"

"No!" they screamed in unison.

"How shall we deal with this oppressor then?"

"Confiscate his lands, his property, his goods!" the crowd called.

"Should we not be lenient with him? Should we not let him keep some of his lands and goods and buildings?"

"No! No!" shouted the stooges.

"Don't you think it is too cruel to take everything from him?"

"No, it is not too cruel!"

"We are right!" the mob replied.

"Comrades, thanks for your trust. We promise to act according to your will. Our main shortcoming has been too great mercy and too reluctant suppression."

Then the mob cheered wildly and shouted: "Hail the People's Government! Long live Chairman Mao!"

Everything in the way of lands, buildings, and goods was taken away from Mr Wang Chan-ch'oen. Then a year later, in 1946, he was examined a second time. This was the second degree, or the "new examination". This time all his clothes, furniture, personal belongings were confiscated. The next year, 1947, the Communists made an accounting of all his funds. This was the third degree, and he had to give up everything, every last dollar and copper and cash. The year after, 1948, they subjected him to the fourth degree, with its physical force and violence. They suspended him by his thumbs and big toes, like a hammock or a slack U, for a day and a night, from the great beam across the centre of the house where he was living. After this torture he broke and revealed that in one of the fields he had formerly owned he had two jars full of silver dollars, a carved jade cabbage, and a small jade basket.

That was the complete examination of the victim. Now

The Chinese peasants for centuries were wont to bury possessions and riches which they wanted to keep secure. The Communists, Chinese themselves, knew this, of course, and dug up the land everywhere in their search for hidden treasure. Search was also made for treasure which the peasants might have entrusted to tried friends or acquaintances in the free or non-Communist zones, before all China was taken over. The torture visited on Mr Wang Chanch'oen was only one means used by the Reds to make the peasants talk. Many of the higher classes suffered death for their refusal to speak, hoping by their sacrifice to protect their families from abject poverty and destitution. But as time went on even the lowest classes who had been given lands and possessions of the liquidated rich had their newly acquired riches taken away and were killed without mercy, even as were the first victims on whom they had called down a "People's judgment" themselves.

#### CHAPTER VIII

# COMMUNISTS HAVE NO FRIENDS — ONLY COLLABORATORS

TERRORISM, as practised by the Communists, is a system of violence which the Chinese Reds began to use against their own countrymen early in the war with Japan, as I have already related, and extended to foreigners in China after the Japanese surrender in 1945. As the tempo of Communist conquest was stepped up year by year after that and all of China came finally under their control, they resorted more frequently to the ultimate in terrorism—mass killings—as regular party policy.

Not until the spring and summer of 1951, however, did there begin to appear in American newspapers and magazines the full accounts of mass execution of hapless Chinese by the Reds. The Reds began now, in some cases, to name their victims and to disdain going through the elaborate farce of so-called legal justification for these thousands upon thousands of murders. They slapped the label of "counterrevolutionary" on everyone they arrested and let it go at that.

By that time American soldiers and marines had been carrying the major share of a desperate war in Korea for almost a year. What had begun as a United Nations "police action" to subdue Communist North Koreans who had invaded the brand-new Republic of South Korea had exploded into a full-scale war, with Mao Tse-tung's Red armies roaring in from Communist China when it appeared certain that the North Koreans had been defeated.

The terrorism, which began with mosquito-bite tactics like anonymous letters and simple threats, progressed through

all the horrors of the class struggle. As a matter of fact, the domination of the party, assured by the class warfare, was reinforced by this atmosphere of terror. At first the Reds diligently cultivated in the people a fear of infringing Communist regulations. Then, when heretofore militant party members showed signs of slacking or cooled off to something less than fever heat in proclaiming and fulfilling their Communist duties and obligations, the party carried out purges several times a year. These purges had a dual effect: they removed any elements which the leaders considered "soft spots", dangers to the cause, and they kept the population in an ever-increasing state of timidity. Thus the ebb and flow of the tide of terror left the people limb and weak, so that they were easier to mould.

At the beginning the Reds were more ruthless in the country than in the cities, and they worked faster there to destroy the people who would not co-operate with them. Seldom did they dispense entirely with their fanciful pretensions to "justice", denouncing a man as a prelude to arrest or execution, but occasionally they just came into the home of a man who had spoken against them and punished him summarily.

#### No Friendly Critics ...

In one of the villages to which my duties occasionally took me, a small place called Wang Mai, there was an outspoken man named Wang Li-choen, who sometimes criticized the Communists even while he gave them considerable help. His more cautious friends urged him to be prudent. He merely laughed.

"Your independent mind is the very thing that the Com-

munists won't tolerate," a wise friend told him. "Keep your thoughts concealed from them. Keep a guard on your tongue."

The leader in the group outside began to chide him for this breach of manners. Wang smiled ironically at this. At the same time he began to experience some doubts about the wisdom of his earlier actions and he resolved to keep the door of his home closed to these fellows. He was sure they'd tire after a while, and whatever it was would all blow over. He was not unduly alarmed.

The wheedling talk and laughter outside increased, and once Wang had his hand on the door to open it.

His wife pulled him away. She threw herself at his feet and clasped him around the knees. She was shaking with terror and she begged him not to open the door.

Now while Wang was not a Communist, he had been friendly with them and helpful to them. His crime lay in his stubborn insistence on maintaining his right to criticize. The murder of a man like Wang for doing only what independent, free-thinking and speaking Chinese have been accustomed to do all their lives had a profound effect on his neighbours. While the Communists used terrorism mostly against non and anti-Communists, they sometimes used it against their own party members as an effective means of preventing rebellion inside the party.

I remember another such case well:

#### ...or Weak Party Members

Then in 1941, after An Kwo and most of the province of Hopeh came under Communist control and I had to be especially careful myself, I encountered him again. I was hearing confessions at two o'clock in the morning in the house of one of my converts in a small village in my parish. A few of the people came to warn me that the Communists

knew I was in the village and the head of the police force in the county was coming to see me.

"Tell them I'm sleeping now but that I'll see them later," I said, wanting time to finish my duties here and gather myself together for the usual battle of wits. But almost on the heels of the villagers who brought me the news came a Communist, alone and unarmed. My host had no choice but to admit him and bring him to me. I recognized my old acquaintance, the former prison head of An Kwo. We greeted each other with great cordiality, but my friends were suspicious. They multiplied all at once, and they all managed to manoeuvre themselves into the room with me and the Red. One brought teacups. Another began to sweep the room slowly, carefully, over and over. A third came in with the steaming tea. Still another fussed with the small furnishings in the room. All this, of course, was to kill time. The Chinese always needs time to think out a course of action; and while my friends were doing all these superfluous little tasks they were making separate plans for my escape if my Communist visitor had any designs on my safety.

At last, however, he grew angry and ordered everyone out of the room. They went dragging their feet reluctantly, casting imploring glances over their shoulders to me. I tried to smile reassuringly at them.

As soon as the room was emptied of everyone save the Red and myself, he fell on his knees and begged me to save his life. I suspected a trick and did not propose to be caught. I had been warned by the Communist General Lu that he'd have me shot if he caught me saving another Chinese life.

"But you are a Communist party member", I said. "The Communists don't kill their own party members."

He hung his head.

"For the most part, that is true," he answered. "But in my case I know they are going to liquidate me."

"But why?" I persisted.

He hesitated.

I was sure now this was a trick to compromise me.

"You will remember that I like to drink a little," he said.

I nodded.

"Well, I got drunk once, and I was warned. But I got drunk a second time, and I know now that my days are numbered."

"You don't believe me!" he said, falling on his knees again.
"Get up!" I said in anger "What do you take me for?"

He buried his face in his hands and began to shake all over. When he looked at me again he appeared ill. There was a greenish hue to his face and he was pouring sweat. So I questioned him. And questioned him. Over and over I put the same questions after long intervals, adding new ones to the old ones, changing phrases and tones, using all the skill in the art of cross-examination that I could muster.

Four hours went by like this, and at last he said: "I'll show you I'm telling the truth! I'll prove it to you! I'll tell you some party secrets to prove my sincerity!"

I summoned all my will to maintain a show of indifference and merely looked at him again and said, "So?"

Then he began to recount a list of crimes that horrified me in spite of all I was inured to.

"I am not afraid to kill," he boasted. "I have killed many men—personally," he said.

"How many?" I asked.

"By myself, one hundred and fifty. With my men, and through my efforts, many, many more."

"Why did you do this?" I asked him.

I knew there was truth in this, and I began to believe he might really be telling the truth about himself. He must have read the change in my eyes. He took a long breath and drew closer to me and began to whisper.

"Tomorrow you will leave the village, is that so?" he asked.

I said nothing, and he rushed on:

"Yes," I said, "now I do. And I'll try to save you. But I will never help you to get to the Japanese lines—that you must understand."

of a plan to help him get to Chungking. He left me at last after nearly six hours of talk. I at least was forewarned of what was ahead of me and I was sure that my Communist friend would not make things tougher for me in the session ahead even though I was equally sure he was in no position to prevent the Communists from stopping me and searching me. His own safety now was dependent in large measure on my getting back to An Kwo alive and unharmed. He had my pledged word. He knew I wouldn't break it, and I had to take his word that he would do what he could. I had little confidence in the amount of his help, however. I might have felt easier had I known then that even an opportunist like him, perverted as he had been, weak as he was, nevertheless had a touch of noblesse oblige.

When he arrived later in An Kwo, however, he avoided me and steered clear of the mission. He kept clear of the Communists, too, and on his own joined the Japanese. He sent this word to me by a long, devious route but told me that I was not to worry; he would always remember that I had saved his life and never, never would he reveal to the Japanese that I had dealt with the Communists!

#### Ordeal at the Bridge

Then, however, I knew that he was intent on saving his own life at any cost, and I approached the ordeal of the bridge with considerable trepidation. The Communist guards stopped me as I came up to the approach on my bicycle. They ordered me to dismount, and one of them flung the bike over to one side so that it almost rolled into the river. There was a great deal of traffic on the river and along the road because it was a market day and people were coming and going between the country and the village.

It was a warm day and I was perspiring freely. I wore my usual long black Chinese robe and I carried only a

small bundle with my toilet articles, a change of underwear, my stole, my breviary, and my rosary. The plain-clothes man who had flung the bicycle to one side looked at me with loathing. It always pained me to see this expression on a Chinese face, for the Chinese in these years had become as my own; and my love and pity for them never wavered or lessened in this ordeal of a foreign war and betrayal by the deluded Communists among them, a self-betrayal that is worse than deception from the outside.

"Take off your clothes!" he barked at me.

I resented the order and thought at first to resist it. Almost at once, though, the other Red came over to me and stripped my long gown off. Then the first one, shifting his gun to his left hand, tore off my underwear.

"Now take off your sandals," the first one said

The peasants had been filing by while this was going on. I had not noticed that they, too, had begun to slow down and stop and that now there was a sizable mob of them gathered on the road just behind us. The people all recognized me. Many were my own converts. Others were villagers I had known over the years. They were all my friends and they were muttering in anger.

I did not know what to expect. The Red guards had

completed their examination of me and my bundle, and now the first one seized my arm. At the same time he cocked his pistol. I am sure it was not in his mind to shoot me, but one can never tell at what instant the trigger of hate that goes off in the brain will set off the trigger on the gun in a man's hand.

#### Saved by Friendly Peasants

Then the peasants acted. They moved forward in a rush, shouting angrily at the guards to release me. Their anger was overwhelming; there were a lot of them by now, and the boatmen on the river added their cries to the hubbub. The guards hesitated only an instant. They flung my clothes and bundle at me and pushed me out of their way. A few of the farmers rushed at me and made a little protective cordon around me while I put on my torn underclothes and sandals and fastened my ripped robe about me as best I could. Then I gathered up my small possessions, retrieved my bicycle, thanked the peasants, gave them a swift, silent blessing, and was off across the bridge and on my way back to An Kwo.

The incident shook me to the core. This was my first personal experience with the forces of brutality which made up the new China.

In the past few years I had heard countless stories of Communist terrorism and I had seen numerous evidence of it myself. Violence and bloodshed were by now sickeningly familiar to me. The horrors the Japanese let loose when they captured An Kwo, closed the city gates, and bayonetted every man, woman, and child they could find inside had made me ill for days after and had given me nightmarcs from which I woke in the night in a cold sweat, trembling in my limbs, my nerves prickling and vibrating with needle-like pain on the surface of my flesh.

The Japanese, though, were driven to kill their Chinese

enemies by a lust for victory and power drilled into them with machine-like efficiency by officers whose sole job it was to make their men perform like murdering robots. The Chinese Communists were practising terrorism for its own sake and inflicting pain and suffering not so much on China's enemies, the Japanese, with whom they were at war, as on the Chinese, their own people, in order to bring them to heel before an ideology as un-Chinese as it is inhuman.

#### CHAPTER IX

ALL THE way back to An Kwo I thought of what I had seen and experienced and what I knew about this barbarous doctrine. I reviewed all my conversations with the Communist officers and commissars, with the Chinese who opposed them and the Chinese who accepted them. I recalled particularly General Lu's stern warning to me that he would have me shot if he found me saving another Chinese life from a Japanese butcher. I began to wonder what my own rule would be if this was to be the new pattern of life in China; especially did I think about how I would meet the situations ahead of me.

As I thought I prayed, for I knew I could not meet what lay ahead of me without God's help. And it was here that He answered me. He showed me that I must act now in this vast amphitheatre of suffering as a surgeon would in all the many circumstances which call for strong, quick decisions. I must decide to become in effect a completely objective surgeon, stifling all my personal reactions of horror and shame that human beings could come to this depravity and degradation. I must do this, I saw, in order that I might devote all my energies to outwitting the Communists. I must do this not merely for the cold intellectual pleasure and satisfaction of outwitting them and saving other lives and my own, but always with a purpose in mind, a valid and moral one—the purpose of maintaining an oasis of decency in all this desert of depravity, and setting against the Communists some organized force for good.

My mind was now easier. I knew I could steel myself

to whatever was ahead. I knew from all the signs around me, from the mounting incidents, that horror would be my daily fare from now on. It was well that I had made my decision to cultivate an outward appearance of indifference before the Communists and had resolved to steel my spirit, for two young people, very close and dear to me, were early victims of the spreading tide of terroism.

Wang Chi-sien had been a student at Seu-tsuen, a fine school well known for its anti-Communist policies. At the start of the war Wang had joined the Nationalist troops. He was wounded in one of the early battles with the Japanese and invalided home, permanently lame. He had an unconquerable spirit, a great desire to help his people, and he asked me what he could do. I suggested he open a school for boys in his own village. He agreed with great enthusiasm and soon had seventeen young students whom he taught conscientiously. He took no fee or wages for this. The villagers, of course, were exceedingly pleased. His school was well established and flourishing when I heard that the Communists were deliberately seeking out and killing all the graduates of Seu-tsuen, his alma mater. In one district alone they had executed more than three hundred Seu-tsuen men. This news disturbed me greatly and I begged Wang to be careful.

"Don't be afraid," he said. "The people of the village all like me—there is no danger whatsoever."

Not long after that he confided in me that he wanted to marry an eighteen-year-old girl of his own village, one of my converts. Wang himself was just twenty-five years old then. I was pleased, of course, and happy for them, but once more I warned him of the danger I knew existed. I had more information now about Seu-tsuen School and I was certain that the Communists planned extermination of every graduate and student of that citadel of anti-communism.

He again reassured me, however, and soon afterwards I married him in the Cathedral of Christ the King in our mission compound in An Kwo. They went back to their own village that same afternoon, smiling and happy, and I waved good-bye to them.

The very next day the young wife came back, weeping and desolate. She told me that when they had arrived at her husband's house the night before, they found it full of people gathered to congratulate them on their wedding. A modest feast had been prepared, the musicians were there, and all the village was joining in the celebration.

When Wang and his bride returned from An Kwo to their own village the Communists moved right into the celebration, and before anyone knew what was happening, they had arrested him and taken him away.

His bride was frantic with grief and worry. I took her to the convent and put her in the care of the nuns. My own first impulse was to go immediately to their village and see what I could do. But I knew I must be prudent. I had no hopes that I would find young Wang alive; I knew too well that he had been marked and I was only bitterly regretful that I had not been more insistent that he leave his village and go to Free China. But I sent a brother to inquire of all the villages within a radius of twenty miles if they knew whether anyone had been buried alive

Day after day the brother went out, inquiring each time in a different place. Three weeks went by and I began to believe it was a fruitless quest. Then one day he talked with a farmer from a village ten miles outside the radius of our search. The farmer said he was sure the Communists had executed someone on the edge of his land. He had walked beyond his boundaries one morning a few weeks back and noticed a long patch of freshly turned earth that had been tramped down, and footprints all around.

That was enough for me. I went to see for myself. Thirty miles from where Wang had been arrested I found his body in a narrow, deep trench, six feet down. He had been buried alive.

In May, June, and July of 1940, in that same district of Puo Yeh, 360 persons were killed; in Tinghsien, 1,700; in Anping, 1,200; and in Shenhsien, 2,000. All these were civilians; they were slain by the Communists for one reason or another, chiefly because the Communists feared the people in these places would rise up against them. It was not only in these districts that mass killings occurred in these three months. It was just that these districts were close to An Kwo and well known to me, and I was able to keep accurate records of the killings. How many thousands more were killed, I don't know.

Ts'un. They were old-fashioned Chinese, wanting no part of communism, and so they were killed. Inside this same tiny village the Communist General Ho Lung killed seventy persons in three weeks by burying them alive. This was no hearsay to me—I went through that village and another, Sung Ts'un, where the general had committed a similar outrage, and saw the wild dogs eating the bodies.

#### Resurrection of a Dead Man

The Japanese in one of the forts near the village of Fong Ts'un ran out of food one day and demanded grain, cabbages, and money from Mayor Chang and the elders of the village. The Communists told the mayor and the people that they would regard them as traitors and burn the village if they gave supplies to the Japanese. Since the Japanese threatened the same punishment, the mayor and his men were between two devils. They held a meeting among themselves, and it was agreed the mayor would go secretly to the fort to represent the village, describe the poverty of the people, and try to get the Japanese to accept a part of the food and money they demanded.

The Communist agents among the Chinese pupper soldiers heard all the details as soon as Chang arrived, and of course they recognized the mayor.

The next day the Communists descended on the village, arrested Mr Chang, and took him away. They had to move fast because the Japanese were too close and they dared not to risk capture by going too far or taking too much time for their gruesome business. These two circumstances helped Mayor Chang enormously. The Reds had to dig a fairly shallow grave, not the usual six-foot-deep narrow trench, and only as wide as a man's shoulders. They pushed Mr Chang in, shovelled the earth quickly, and stamped on it hurriedly.

of the ordeal for him, he said, because the weight seemed intolerable; he was suffocating, his lungs were bursting.

Then, he said, he just lay on top of the earth, getting his strength back, trying to figure out what to do. If he went back to the village, the Communists would soon know it and he would be arrested again at the first opportunity and killed. This time they wouldn't miss. If he went to any of his relatives, they would hide him, of course, but they couldn't do it forever, and sooner or later the Communists would find him and kill him and the kinsfolk who had sheltered him too. Then he said something which moved me greatly and made me thank God I had determined to fight the Communists with every ounce of my own strength and all my skill.

"I remembered you," he said. "You had stopped off in my village just a few days before and preached on the main street in front of the inn. I listened to you talk and afterwards I spoke to you. I remembered your words now in this terrible dilemma while I lay there on top of the earth, fighting to get back my breath and strength. I felt the Christian religion would be kind to me. And so I got up and determined to find you. I began to walk. I walked the whole night.

And that was just what he had done. That man who had been buried alive and struggled out of his grave had walked twenty miles to An Kwo.

He arrived at the mission about five-thirty in the morning. I saw the dirty, sweaty, bedraggled figure of the man, the bluishgray face, and I walked quickly toward him, for he was greatly upset and swaying and I thought he might faint. As I came up to him he dropped to his

knees and made the great kowtow, crying, "Chen fu chieou ming! Chen fu chieou ming!"

How many, many times in China was I to hear that piteous plea, "Save my life!" How grateful I always was to God that I could so many times, with His help, answer the plea.

When he had rested and eaten he told me more about himself and his family, and I knew from what he said that his wife was one of those Chinese women who could be trusted implicitly.

I sent a brother to Chang's village to tell Mrs Chang her husband was alive but that she must not reveal by word or sign that she knew this. Even the children must not know. The brother impressed this on her and then told her the other details of the plan I had worked out with Mr Chang to keep his secret and keep him safe.

Mrs Chang bought a coffin and went outside her village with the brother I had sent. Near the place where her husband had been buried alive they filled the coffin with earth and nailed it shut. This was done so that should anyone but themselves lift the coffin it would seem to hold the weight of a man. The brother put it on a little muledrawn cart, and he and Mrs Chang walked beside it back to the villager, hence to a place of proper burial. She told the villagers that her husband's dying struggles had so controted his face that she could not bear to have anyone look upon his ugliness. She wept copiously, and so did the children. The village wept because, after all, Mayor Chang had died for them.

When the brother returned to An Kwo and told us the story Mayor Chang was greatly affected. He knew he must be absent himself from his family for a long time, perhaps for years; that his wife would have to bring up the children

He stayed in hiding at the mission for a while, and then I sent him to Peiping to work on a farm owned by a friend. The events of the years caught me up. I never saw him again. I don't know if he ever saw his family again. But each year, until I left north China, I would get a message of thanks and news that he was alive and well.

Not so lucky was Mrs Wang In-ho and her husband, one of the early Chinese martyrs. The Wang family lived in Liu Chia Chwang, a pretty place close to a river, fifteen miles from the mission. Wang was a new convert and a zealous one, imprudent because he was straightforward. The Communists didn't like that. They didn't like him either, and so they came one night and arrested him and buried him alive.

"They are devils! Devils!" she would cry out. "They have no humanity!"

She did this for some days, and the Communists left her alone at first, but when they measured the depth of her anger and the strength of her spirit and realized that she would keep up this crusade against them continuously, they arrested her. A few of them hustled her off to a place where a big grave had already been dug. Others went to her house, snatched up her seven-year-old daughter, and hurried with her to the grave. They threw the mother in first, then flung the little girl in after her. The child screamed in terror, and the mother sobbed for the fate of her little one. The first shovelful of dirt was pitched in on the woman and little girl. One of the diggers, a Communist youth recently recruited to the party, put down his shovel. He reached into the grave and lifted the child out.

"The mother is bad and should die, but the child should live!" he shouted.

When the mother realized her child would be saved, she took off her shoes and gave them to the little girl.

The child had no close relatives except an uncle, a Christian brother in a monastery, who would have had to leave the order to take care of her. He asked me to adopt her. This I did at once, and gave her over to the care of the nuns, the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, in Paoting.

The beheading and the burials went on; capital executions increased in proportion to the spread of Communist authority. The most revolting aspect of all this was, I think, that terrorism became a commonplace of policy. The brutality and bestiality were not unleashed by the Communists and encouraged by them through mere accident but always as part of the grand design for conquest and subjugation.

#### CHAPTER X

#### COMMUNIST TORTURES

ONE DAY I was sorrowfully concluding my morning duties in Ch'en-Lu Che, one of the parishes under my care, whose priest had been arrested by the Reds. The big bell in the village sounded, and a frightened youth, who had been the priest's servant, came to tell me that the Communists had issued orders through the mayor to everyone in the village to assemble at an open place ordinarily used as a children's playground.

"You will have to go too, Father", the young man said. "Everybody must be there at ten o'clock."

The bell sounded again and its heavy, ominous peals depressed me even more. I questioned the boy, but he was too terrified to talk, so I decided to go along and see for myself what the Communists were up to now.

When I reached the playground I found the whole village assembled there, old and young, men, women, and children. The children, with their teachers, were in the front row. I inquired what we had been brought here for, and one man whispered to me:

"We are to witness an execution—a beheading."

"It is a big execution. They say there are many—ten or more.

"What is their crime?" I asked.

"They have committed no crime," the man said with bitterness. "They are students. From the anti-Communist school in Chang Ts'un." "Seu-tsuen School?" I asked, and I had to brace myself

to stop trembling.

"Yes, that is right," the man answered. Then he pulled my arm. "Look, here they come! And see—the children! These beasts will make the children witness this horror!" The man shuddered, then spat violently on the ground in anger and disgust.

Memories came flooding of my young friend, Wang Chisien, a graduate of this school, buried alive when the Communists were systematically tracking down all its graduates. I prayed for strength; I reminded myself that I must be the coldly objective surgeon; I must not let my feelings and emotions overcome me. I must watch and observe and not let these Red devils, prowling around up and down the lines of people, suspect that I was sick with revulsion already.

The man behind me had said, "Here they come." I looked now and saw that a file of young men, most of them in peasant dress, hands bound behind them, were being led into the cleared space. They were all so young, so very young!

A Communist soldier barked orders at them, and they were all obliged to kneel down facing the people. The Communists barked more orders, and the young men moved closer to each other on their knees until they were not more than a foot apart. I counted them. Thirteen of them knelt there in the brightness of the morning, the wind from the northern plains blowing across their young faces.

These were the fine youth of China, the good, incorruptible ones, and they were going to be liquidated because they were incorruptible. The local militia, which had been guarding them, stepped back. A Communist officer read out a long rigmarole of charges against them. The word

"traitor" kept jumping out of his mouth.

The people were silent. Contempt was written on their faces. Everyone knew these young men and knew they were not traitors. The Seu-tsuen School was a most democratic one. Its principal had conceived the idea of a half day of studies and a half day of agricultural work, a

kind of practical training in new methods so that the students who couldn't go outside their province for an education would at least have some knowledge and be able to read and write a little when they had to return to their father's farms. It had made wonderful strides in giving a little education to peasant youths who otherwise would have been entirely unlettered. Given time, it could have leavened all of the largely illiterate area with knowledge.

## Hardening the Communists of Tomorrow

The children's voices, on the thin edge of hysteria, rose in a squeaky cacophony of dissonance and garbled words; the teachers tried to beat time and bring order into the tumult of sound. Over it all I heard the big bell tolling again.

over the shining steel and stained and dimmed its glow. Thirteen times the executioner felt steel pierce cartilage and flesh, slide between two small neck bones. Not once did he miss. Not once did he look back at what he had done. And when he came to the thirteenth, the last man, and had chopped his head off, he threw the sword down on the ground and walked away without looking back.

I thought sardonically as I saw this through my own misted eyes that, inhuman devil that he was, he still believed in the ancient Chinese superstition that if a killer looks on the man he has killed at the instant of his death, the soul of the victim, escaping from the body the instant the head is severed, will rush into the soul of the killer, who never afterwards in all his lifetime will know a moment's peace. The cautious Communist was taking no chances; this is why he had beheaded the man almost without looking at them.

There were a few Chinese in that company of forced watchers who now rushed forward with pieces of man tow, the steamed bread of North China, to dip them into the blood gushing from the trunks of the beheaded youths. Some Chinese believe that if one has ye che—a weakness in the stomach—eating bread soaked in blood will strengthen the organ and cure the disease. Criminals were always beheaded in China in the old days and in modern times too, but it was rare for any Chinese to avail himself of the opportunity to test the gruesome remedy. The Communists, however, encourage the people in revolting superstitions like this. On this day, though, they didn't indulge them long. They had something they wanted to do themselves.

Several of the strongest, most aggressive among the group rushed forward now and pushed the corpses over on their backs. I stared horrified as each soldier bent down with a sharp knife and made a quick, circular incision in the chest. He then jumped on the abdomen with both feet, or pumped on it over and over with one foot, forcing the heart out of the incision. Then he swooped down again, snipped and plucked it out.

When they had collected the thirteen hearts, they strung them all on a pointed marsh reed, flexible and resilient, which they tied together to make a band circular carrying device.

The two villagers who had watched all this, too, turned looks of withering scorn on the departing Communists.

"Why did they do that terrible thing?" I asked the older one.

And he turned away and cursed them violently.

"Look at the children," sighed the other. "Our poor children!" he said, shaking his head sadly.

This was the first time I had seen small children forced to watch such bloody executions. It was all part of the Communist plan to harden and toughen them, make them callous to acts of barbarous cruelty like this, and terrify them with Communist power. Unhappily, it worked in many cases. After this I often saw children forced to witness executions. The first time they were horror-stricken and emotionally disturbed, often sick at their stomachs as these children were. The second time they were less disturbed, and the third time many of them watched the grisly show with keen interest.

less than half an hour, the violation of the corpses, the return of the children to school, the sad departure of the families of the young men with their desecrated bodies, and the dispersal of the crowds. Communism is most efficient.

On another afternoon in this same village some children came running toward me as I was walking down one of the back alleys. "Come quickly, Father!" they said, and I ran with them. On the main road, leading to the headquarters of Red General Ho Lung, were four Peking carts. These are the countrycarts, roughly made, without springs, and with two large ironbound wooden wheels.

I walked over toward the Communist soldier who was backing a mule into the shafts of the lead cart. Screams and wailing shattered the air, but there were so many villagers gathered, so many Communist soldiers and civilian stooges, that I couldn't see what was happening. Soon, however, all the carts were ready and the crowds parted to let the soldiers get in and drive away. Only then did I see in each cart a man nailed through his wrists and insteps to the floor of the vehicle. The Communist drivers whipped up the mules, shouted at them, and the cavalcade was off. The rough, rocky roads, so rutted and uneven, jolted the men and caused them almost intolerable pain; and the faster the mules went, the rougher the ride, the more terrible the pain. The Communists drove the carts at a furious pace through the village several times and then took off on the even rougher road to General Ho Lung's headquarters. There the men would be put out of their misery if they had survived the ride. Their heartrending screams echoed through the village. They reached my heart.

own plans for counteraction to communism whenever I could follow them behind the front I had set up of the relatively helpless onlooker and observer. I kept detailed accurate accounts and records of everything I saw and heard, and I studied my notes constantly to discover the outlines of Communist plans and manoeuvres. The more intently I studied Communist methods, the more I saw that while terrorism was the order of the day in those counties and areas which they had already brought under their control they were, simultaneously, launched on a much larger project—the conquest of all China.

They had a method of torture which served also to show their contempt for the National Government of China. They would find a good man, a patriot, one who had expressed sentiments favourable to the government, and would tie him by his hands to the topmost branch of the tallest tree in the neighbourhood. Then they would gather below and shout up at him derisively, "Now do you see your friends from the National Government coming to help you?" If he said, "Yes" definitely, a Red in the tree would lop off the branch and the victim would be dropped to the ground to his death; if he said, "No" truthfully, they would mock his patriotism, revile the government, and drop him to his death any way, with the excuse that he was a traitor! This kind of thing went on all through the war when the Communists were supposed to be co-operating fully and loyally with the National Government, and while they were sending out reams of propaganda telling the United States and Europe of their heroic deeds against the Japanese, their determination to free China from the invader, and their deep concern for the welfare of the Chinese people.

As time went on and the crescendo of terrorism mounted, it wasn't enough just to kill a man. The Communists added refinements of torture, sometimes formalizing them with descriptive names for identification, classification and

They had a method they used for quick death. The doomed man was brought from his home or office directly to Communist headquarters. A group of officials met him and escorted him into a room. "Now we will examine your conscience," one would say, giving the nod to another, who would step forward at once, ripping off the man's upper garments and cutting out his heart.

At the other extreme was a frightful method which was the invention of a Communist in Shansi. On a tour of a city in his province one day he came to a halt before a food shop and stood transfixed for a long time before the big cauldrons, or cooking pots, which the shop used to prepare food in quantity. The Communist ordered several of these, and when they were delivered to him he immediately

arrested some anti-Communists. He conducted the usual kangaroo court, except that this was even more perfunctory and ludicrous than most. While the farcical proceedings were going on he had coolies fill the cauldrons with boiling water. As soon as the trial was finished and he had pronounced his three victims guilty, he had them stripped and dropped into the cauldrons to be boiled alive.

These utterly savage tortures were devised and practised by the same barbarians who unconsciously paid tribute to the technocracy of the industrialized western world they pretended to despise. Many a Chinese peasant who had never seen any of the modern forms of transportation which are commonplace in the west was introduced to the Communist version of them. The ignorant victim who was invited to board "the Peiping Express" discovered it was a short, rough ride indeed. His feet were tied at the ankles with a slip knot, and the length of rope was then fastened securely to the tail of a mule or a horse which was beaten viciously so that the animal ran at a gallop. The stones in the road soon fractured the man's skull. When a victim was invited to "go by plane" he was suspended by his toes and thumbs from the branch of a tree; and when his sentence called for him to "go by parachute" he was tied inside a sack, taken to a pagoda or a tower, or even a tall tree, and dropped from the very top.

In Ping Shan I met a man whose father was skinned alive by the Communists. The son was held by two Reds, he told me, and forced to watch the awful process and

listen to his father's screams of agony until he died. The Reds poured vinegar and acids over the man's body so that the skin would come off quickly and make the job a quick and easy one for the devil assigned to this frightful murder. He began at the back, peeling from the shoulders down, in long strips. The man was skinned, entirely, except for his head. He died within a few minutes after the peeler had completed his gruesome task.

#### CHAPTER XI

#### COMMUNIST ORGANIZATION

The liquidation of all who were natural enemies of communism, the suppression of the intellectuals and born leaders who could be dangerous to the regime were pursued vigorously. Simultaneously the Reds carried on the long, involved process of educating their own leaders, recruited from the youth of the districts; and they set about organizing the total population. The whole people, from youngest to oldest, had to work for the Communists or be destroyed. No longer could an ancient grandmother rest her dry old bones in the mellow sunshine under a locust tree. She was ordered to work—to make shoes. And when her feeble, shaking hands tired of this, she could not be retired to a corner of her hut. She would still require a bit of food and inspire a little pity. The Communists, in the interests of efficiency, decided she was surplus and a burden on the economy. So she was killed, she and the other old men and women like her, who were the revered and respected ancestors.

The Communists were never still, never content just to

consolidate their gains. They were like a cancer cell, feeding and spreading continuously. Every day, it seemed to me, I had to learn a new pattern of Communist technique. There was as much activity running underground, in secret and silence, as on the surface, for the Communists are really like devils, and they neither recognize nor understand truth at all. Trained constantly to disguise, hide, conceal their true feelings, they become habituated to dissembling and lying, until they can never tell the truth about anything, even when a party member is talking to another party member.

Many times when I had made an appointment at a certain hour with a Red, I came to the rendezvous only to find another person there. The routine seldom varied. The Communist always said casually that he wanted to see me anyway, and so he had come instead of the other comrade, who couldn't keep the appointment that day. Then he invariably subjected me to a long, involved questioning: What had the missing comrade told me; how had I met him; what did I want to see him about? He thus checked on the comrade and on me at the same time. It goes without saying that I was obliged to answer all his questions, and of course I knew while I was doing this that he would check my answers to similar questions he would put to the other man later. After all that he briskly took up the business I had come to discuss with the absent comrade.

Often I attended the last of a series of meetings on some local business, expecting to see all the same faces I had been seeing regularly at the previous meetings, but everyone would be strange and different. In any free society, if this happened one would inquire as a matter of course. "Where are the others? What is this?" But with the Communists one can ask no questions; he must show no surprise or curiosity. He must accept the whole thing with complete matter-of-factness and carry on the business of the meeting

#### Starting a Communist Cell

The organization and operation of the Communist cell is a perfect example of the deep suspicion which obtains in all strata of the Communist party and illustrates, too, how these cell units can function so efficiently and resist discovery and obliteration so well. They are like the segments of a tapeworm: cut off one, or two or more, and they'll grow back so long as the head is not destroyed.

Each party member works in his own cell which he organizes, under orders from one person only, to whom he is responsible—the director of the cell. It operates like this: The commissar, A, selects a trusted party member, B, and orders him to start a cell in a Chinese village. B carries out the order by taking the first step, which is to get himself a small job in the designated place. He usually has no trouble doing this because he is polite and agreeable, persevering beyond belief, and he tells a good and plausible story. Besides that, he will work cheaply, cheaper than any other man in the village. This is usually the determining factor and he gets the job.

Meantime the commissar's superior, whom we shall designate as chief commissar, AA, may order A to set up still another cell in the same village, and he does so, putting another trusted party member, C, in charge. Now this party member, C, organizes the cell the same way that B did. But B knows nothing of this new cell and continues to report his activities only to A, while the new cell director,

C, reports his activities only to A too. The chief commissar, AA, may order party members to set up ten or a dozen such cells, all appearing independently of each other, and secretly, in any of the Communist organizations which eventually control the office of the mayor and the assistant mayor, and to set up also the various sections—agricultural, cooperatives, educational, women's transportation and couriers'.

## Their Efficient Courier System

Incidentally, the couriers' section was a special device which the Communists used while I was living under them in China to send messages among the villages. The Communists established their own post offices in 1938 although the Chinese National Government's excellent mail service was still operating despite wartime hazards and difficulties. The Communists used the government service as well as their own. They also made use of the special courier service and, peculiarly enough, allowed non-Communists to use it too. In addition to all this, there was a secret couriers' section which was used by the most secret Communist party members for their most confidential messages.

I had an early opportunity to experience the swiftness and efficiency of this Communist courier service. In 1939 North China suffered disastrous floods, among the worst in her history of many such catastrophes. The plea for help went out and the Western world responded with its wonted generosity. Funds came to us at the mission in An Kwo from the Lord Mayor of London, the International Committee, and other public and private charities. I had to check several counties in our area, to make a census, assay the damage, and calculate our needs. I sent letters to the officials of the counties in the far-flung area, asking for the necessary information. All my letters reached their destination on the same day they were sent, and I had the mayors' detailed, written replies the following day. This would be exceptional service anywhere today. In war-torn China,

in a flooded area, and with hardly any transportation among the scattered and distant places except what a man's strong swift legs provided, it was, I think, extraordinary.

As a rule, the regular mail in small villages comes once a week; in larger ones, twice. All these messages went over the Communists' so-called "open courier" section, and each envelope had a chicken feather fastened to it when it was placed in the hands of the courier, indicating it must go through without delay. Actually, the speed of the courier service is a consequence of the efficiency of the cells. The people know that if a letter coming via Communist courier is not sped on its way and delivered at once to its addressee the entire village will be in trouble, perhaps heads will roll. The omnipresent threat of punishment makes for efficiency at the inception of any totalitarian regime.

The cell is a true product of Communist totalitarianism. It is dark and devious and deadly efficient. The men chosen by the commissars to start cells are the real Communists who are fanatically dedicated to the Communist principle that a loyal party member must be ready always to transmit the Red virus anywhere he can. Wherever he goes—inside a factory, a school, a municipal office, inside the party of opposition—he tries always to start a little cell in order first to promulgate his ideas, disorganize the active or passive opposition, and then, having accomplished that, organize his ideas through his recruits. I saw this done many times and in many places, but especially did I see it at work in Peiping among some of the officials and workers, but particularly among the students.

#### Education Held in High Esteem

best of all China, the great National Peking University, whose president at this time was Dr Hu Shih, former Ambassador to the United States, one of the greatest of modern scholars and diplomats. There were twenty thousand university students in Peiping—nearly a quarter of the student population of all China. Half of them were in the National Peiping University.

This concentration of student population in one place was a powerful advantage to the Communists because students in China exert an influence on their families and in their home-communities and on the illiterate, uneducated masses everywhere, entirely out of proportion to their true worth and quite out of keeping with their youth and inexperience. This is because learning has always been held in such high esteem in China and because the students in China have wielded a great influence on the political life of the country. It is a natural consequence of a system of education which, over the centuries, filled public offices with its successful students.

In the Manchu Dynasty, the last in China before the Sun Yat-sen revolution turned the ancient empire into a republic, competitive examinations reached their fullest development. Education was not sought for its own sake but for office, and the state cared for the education of the people only so far as it might supply itself with literate servants. Out of China's hundreds of millions, only a very few could hope, after years of study, to pass the two examinations which would qualify them to enter the contest for the degree of Bachelor of Arts, held twice each year in each prefectural city. If a young man was successful in these, he became nominally a servant of the state, entitled to wear official dress and get some subordinate civil post from which he might work his way upward. There were always thousands of competitors for the master's degree, but again only a few scholars succeeded in getting it; fewer were even selected to be among the three or four hundred

Not until 1862, twenty years after China opened its ports to the world, was there any change. But once this great empire was open, change was constant all through the second half of the nineteenth century. And after the Boxer uprising serious reforms occurred, resulting in the establishment of Ministry of Education in 1905 which prepared detailed and far-reaching plans to bring China's educational system in closer harmony with the industrialized West, transform it from its medieval oriental character to something more in consonance with a world, which had moved four hundred years beyond it, in technical development and political adjustments. Before those careful plans could begin to expand into real progress the revolution of 1911 threw everything into disorder.

I said at the beginning of the brief explanation of China's educational system that the Chinese student has always had a great influence on political life. The Communists have the Chinese students to thank, more than any other group, for their success in taking over China so quickly at the end.

#### The West Betrays China

the Second World War blew the spark into the Communist conflagration which raged through China and is consuming her.

But when the war was over the Allies forgot all about that.

were the usual diplomatic excuses disguised as reasons, but none of them could alter the fact that the promise was broken. There was one Chinese diplomat who did not forget, and when all other European and American diplomats arrived in Versailles he was there too. He called the treaty a disgrace and he shamed the promise-breakers by refusing to sign it. China, alone, among all the countries which had participated in the war against Germany and whose representatives were even now putting their signatures to the terms of peace, refused to sign the Versailles Treaty.

At that time Dr Lou Tseng-tsiang was a prominent Catholic. Later on he became a priest, and some years after that a monk. He had the distinction of being the first Chinese abbot in the Benedictine Order. This is interesting chiefly because there is another bit of grim irony in the effect of the action at Versailles of this patriotic and honourable

Chinese who subsequently gave up the world and retired into a monastery.

Chinese students all over the country supported the position he had taken at Versailles. He became their hero and the inspiration of a student movement. Thousands of these young idealistic followers of Sun Yat-sen had been enthusiastically looking to Europe and America to guide and help them adjust their ancient feudal society and agrarian economy to the mechanized and industrialized world they realized was so far ahead of them. They were bitterly disillusioned. Their protest against the Treaty of Versailles was strong and direct. They formed the Student Movement of the Fourth of May 1919 to commemorate China's betrayal.

It was at this point that the Russians, emboldened and ambitious, after having overthrown the czarist government and set up a Bolshevik state, sent emissaries to China to exploit the injustice, to cosset the students and persuade China to follow the Marxist line. Lenin in 1913 had written interesting short articles on the importance of China and the development of the revolutionary movement throughout Asia that might be looked for after a revolution in Russia. When the Russian revolution broke four year later, Lenin's colleagues were too occupied with safeguarding their astounding success and extending it westward on the Continent to think seriously about China just then. But when their initial attempts to spread revolution in Europe were stopped in Poland in 1921, they accepted defeat there for the time being. They had time then to think seriously of Lenin's views on the desirability of developing the revolutionary movement in China. The reports from their agents there were enthusiastic about the possibilities. At once, then, they turned to China to exploit the first excellent opportu-

nity provided them by the disillusionment of the student group and get in on the by no means unfinished Chinese revolution.

#### He Founded the Communist Movement in China

In Shanghai in the early months of 1920 seven persons calling themselves Communists grouped around Professor Ch'en Tuhsiu, started a proletarian newspaper, and began forming trade unions. Similar organizations appeared later in the year in Peking, Hankow, and other Chinese cities. And in 1921 the First Congress of Chinese Marxists was held in Shanghai in July and a Communist party was officially formed. Mao Tse-tung, China's Red leader today, joined the party in October. Within a year the party's identity was well enough established to permit affiliation with the Third International or the Comintern, and trained agents of the new Bolshevik government of Russia were there to follow the situation closely.

Meantime, another kind of student movement which I described earlier was gaining impetus in Peking. That was the "worker-student" plan devised by a National Peking University student, Mao Tse-tung, under which two thousand students went from Peking to France to study. The plan had the enthusiastic support of Mr Tsai Yuan-pei, the socialistic-minded Minister of Education, who was the universident. Mao did not go to France with the group

of students he had led in Peking; he stayed behind to study at the university under a teacher who was to become as well known in the United States as in China—Dr Hu Shih.

Dr Hu Shih has served his country well, and I must digress here to say an extra word about him lest there be any thought that he ever espoused or aided communism in any way. In fact, communism has exiled Dr Hu Shih from his own country and made the wheel come full circle for him. He began his career as a teacher in a university and he is rounding out his life in one; but thousands of miles and an impassable ocean of intellectual ideas and political concepts separate his own university in Peiping from his present post in Princeton, where he is curator of Chinese Collections for the University Library.

After the 1945 victory he was made chancellor of the National Peking University and he stayed until 1948, when the capture of the city by the Communists was imminent. Dr Hu Shih's personal tragedy is great: last spring his son in Peiping repudiated his father in a manner typical of Communist-enforced participation in propaganda for a particular purpose. With singular courage Dr Hu Shih bore this most grievous of sorrows, understanding that his son was not truly unfilial but had been turned into something that was perhaps even worse to a Chinese with Dr Hu Shih's code of honour—an involuntary traitor, a victim of communism.

But to return to the Peking of 1918:

His most eager student, one of the most enthusiastic in applying himself to the modernized spoken language, Dr Hu Shih remembers, was Mao Tse-tung. He also remembers him as a vital, keen-witted, and aggressive young man who

seemed to be dedicated to progress and burning with the fires of purest patriotism. There were others who were in the vanguard of the movement with Mao then who went to France while he stayed behind. These were the sincere and honest patriots, young men on fire with the zeal of nationalism; there were others who were already professed Communists; and political opportunists and born revolutionaries. Nieh Jung-cheng, the twenty-year-old son of a wealthy Szechwan farming family was one of these; so was the nine-teen-year-old Li Li-san, who stayed in France after his group went home to become one of the founders of the French branch of the Chinese Communist party and in 1922 was expelled from school there and deported from France for participation in a student demonstration.

These Communist leaders today, having had their earliest Communist training as members of student groups and movements, and knowing how much influence Chinese students can wield just as students, have always paid particular attention to the university youths. It was not only in the N tionl Peking University that they established cells; they went after such Christian universities as Yenching, and they even infiltrated Fu Jen (Catholic University).

Since I was moving around a great deal after I came out of concentration camp in the fall of 1945 I used Peiping as a base, and I had ample opportunity to see what was going on there. I was especially interested to discover how the Communists organized cells in the universities and used them. I have said that the Reds even infiltrated the Catholic university.

## Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

It's a grim joke, but I am sure Fu Jen can claim the

I met this former teacher when he had become the Communist General Chang Chen. He had his headquarters in a little village in the Suning district in Central Hopeh when I visited him in 1938. It was a dark winter day, gray and heavy, and the interior of the mud hut was even darker and gloomier than outside. An aide showed me into the general and we shook hands and exchanged news of this and that in the year that had gone by since we had seen each other.

My eye was attracted by a brand-new book in a bright jacket, just out of its wrappings, on his desk. An expensive looking new book printed in English was the last thing I had expected to see in a dirty mud hut way off here in this remote Chinese village. The book's pristine newness made such a bright spot in that dull room that it held my eye, and the general noticed this. I saw he was pleased and so I gave him "face" by nodding toward the book and asking, "What is that?" with real interest.

"Ah, that!" he said. "That is a wonderful new book by one of our friends. He's an American writer, Mr Edgar Snow. I will lend it to you some day. You should read it." He took the book up and patted it approvingly and I saw its title, Red Star over China.

The general was in good humour that day.

"You wonder, comrade, how I started the cell in Fu Jen?" he asked laughing again. "I started several cells there. It

1 His real name is Chang Sue-yuan, and that is the way he was known when he taught chemistry at the Catholic university in Peiping. He changed his name to Chan when the Red Army came to Hopeh Province in 1937 and he joined the Communists to organize their Health Department. Later, as he advanced in the Red Army, he was known as Chang Chen.

The archbishop was the apostolic delegate. I.t was obvious that Chang had been a convinced Communist for a long time and had become a Protestant only for convenience and to cover up his machinations.

#### CHAPTER XII

## HOW COMMUNISTS CAPTURE THE UNIVERSITIES

THE COMMUNISTS had powerful cells in all the Chinese universities during the Nationalist regime, and the teachers and students were worked on in a special scientific way by the propagandists. The Communists also had a certain number of "professional students" in every university who devoted almost their entire time to publishing Communist propaganda, selling Communist books, and recruiting the brightest and best students.

#### How to Become a "Professional" Student

A "professional student" was one who had already been graduated from one university and was under party order to enrol in another for the specific purpose of advancing communism there. He came as a student but he did no studying; he was interested only in propagandizing and proselytizing. To disguise his real purpose, however, he attended all his classes and took all the examinations. It was really very simple, the way they worked it, and its simplicity made it virtually foolproof. This is the way they did it: Suppose, let us say, a young Shanghai graduate, whom we shall call Lu Si-yuan, came to the National Poking University as a first-year student. He changed his name slightly and enrolled as Lu Che-yuan. He produced an admittance certificate made out with his alias. The certificate he had either bought secretly or forged. But as there were always more candidates for this great university than could be accommodated, Lu had still to take an entrance examination.

Naturally it was always easy for these young Communists to pass the entrance exams because they had already completed their full university training elsewhere.

#### Wall Newspapers

The Communists in Peking University had one most important assignment. That was to publish as many "wall newspapers" as possible without revealing their source. The "wall newspapers" in Chinese universities are composed by the students, who write them by hand, using fine brushwork to make small characters and crowd lots of news into the papers. They are posted somewhere in the university where the greatest number of students will be sure to see them. In general, the practice is the same as that in American univer-

and colleges where student-written announcements are tacked up on a bulletin board, except that the Chinese wall newspapers are not just routine announcements but are real newspapers. There were thirty of them in Peking University at the time of which I write, and nineteen of them were Communist-directed, Communist-written, Communist-distributed. In that whole great university there existed but one real opposition paper.

Actually, the nineteen Communist papers were written every day by the same group of student party members, acting as a single unit or cell to put over this project. Each newspaper had a different name and the news in each, while basically the same, was changed just enough to create the

impression that there were nineteen separate Communist organizations in the university.

Most of the ten thousand or so students who as yet had only the most meagre and sketchy knowledge of the workings of communism and the tricks it employed as standard practice, especially in creating this kind of quantitative show, believed, naturally, that there must be nineteen separate organizations to do such a big job as this everyday. A new student, weighing all this carefully in his mind, just as naturally came to believe that the university was full of Communists, whereas there were only thirty professionals in 1948. It took me a long time to track the number down exactly—I had been working on it for months, making my own calculations from observation, study, and conversations. I read the newspapers regularly, too, with intense interest and considerable, if grudging, admiration for the Red students' skill. The news was all Communist—military, political, economic—and when they occasionally inserted some ordinary items of little or no import, just inconsequential comments, even this dusting of seasoning was with Red pepper.

When one studied these papers knowingly and from profound experience with Communist techniques, it was plain that the news was all the same except that different aspects of it were presented, or the same news was written in several different ways. But, as I remarked earlier, the new student who lacked this knowledge and experience could not fail to be impressed and to assume that each paper was the work of a distinct Communist organization. Through these newspapers, and through their aggressive behaviour, the handful of professional Communists created the atmosphere of the university, and while only a relatively small proportion of the students in Peking University were Communists until the Reds took over on January 23, 1949, many students who wanted to be thought "progressive" and "modern" worked for the Communists. If a student showed no interest in communism, he was sure to be con-

sidered "old-fashioned." In China, unhappily, as elsewhere in the world, the intellectuals made it fashionable to be Red.

In order to further their work the Communists took over a room in the university where they sold only Communist and leftist books, tracts, and papers. They blandly called this room the "students' library", ignoring the magnificent library of the university itself. And they insisted on stocking and running their illegitimate shop themselves. Establishing a completely Communist propaganda centre on the property of the National Government was a mark of the contempt and insolence which became their stock in trade as they grew more powerful. Additionally, when one remembers that the National Government was even then waging an allout war against the Communists, it was virtually an act of treason.

But if the authorities had tried to interfere with this arrogant flouting of authority, there would have been demands for a strike and this, in turn, would have provided the excuse for releasing another barrage of bad propaganda for the National Government. The Communists were concentrating on anti-Chiang Kai-shek, anti-government propaganda both at home and abroad then, especially the propaganda directed toward the United States, and the university authorities knew this. The Communists kept the educators in this strait jacket of fear all the time, paralyzing their ability to act decisively and definitively against the trouble maters. The teachers were not well paid and their understandable discontent was exploited endlessly.

ly, like a clock striking the hours, singly and in pairs, working in relays composed of themselves and students they had duped, they presented themselves to the chancellor's office to complain to Dr Hu Shih in most respectful way about these non-Communist teachers. They were "poor" teachers, they said; they were not properly qualified; the students were not getting the right kind of education; the reputation of the university would suffer; and the students were most unhappy and discontented because they wanted to get the best kind of education so that they might be better prepared to serve China.

It was not long before their tactics began to attract the most radical-minded youths in the student body, and soon each of the thirty professional student Reds had his own following. These they quickly inducted into the party, and their first phalanx was formed. Then they began to organize a second group—pro-Communist in sympathies, amenable to suggestion and, to some extent, to discipline, but not yet ready to be made party members. In this group, too were the students who, in their political nativeté and strong idealism, believed the Communists' promises to make China an oriental utopia. There were Chinese Catholics in this classification, and it was through conversations with them that I began slowly to understand the technique the Reds were using in large national universities like Peking.

#### Freshmen Are Big Fish

his personality. That is why the Communists tried so energetically to win converts among the first-year students. They worked much harder on these than on the older ones, and they concentrated on the students from South and Central China, which had the largest representation in the university. Those youths did not know as much about communism as the northerners, whose impoverished families had been living under its control or close to its influence since the 1930s.

The southerners and the others from the central provinces had not even been born when communism had flourished briefly (1921-27) in their sections of the country until its suppression as a legal party. These young students, once they had accepted communism, even if only partially, were exceedingly valuable to the party because they carried the doctrine to their home communities. And because learning is held in such high esteem in China, they were listened to respectfully on their return; their letters home were read over and over, discussed earnestly, and passed around from hand to hand. Communism gained many converts in this indirect fashion.

If a young university student in the country's cultural capital, centre of political thought, expressed his belief that communism was good for China, then the people close to him in his immediate family and among his other kinsfolk and neighbours were willing to believe it too. The Communist cadres encouraged excessive political activity among the students; they flattered them by pretending to need their advice and counsel in making political judgments about local problems in the students' home provinces. In every conceivable way they worked on him to make him believe he was, in truth, a sophisticated "modern man" and a political pundit.

#### Baiting the Anti-Communists

On the other hand, the treatment meted out to anti-Communist students was abusive, violent, and what is most im-

portant, perhaps, and completely typical of Communist tactics, it was continuous. I knew a boy at the university who came to class one day with an anti-Communist book, a serious, thoughtful work which presumed to question the infallibility of Marxism. One Communist group immediately accused him of being "a Nationalist spy". Another shouted that he was "a Kuomintang member" and an "anti-modern man".

This was standard treatment for all students who carried anti-Communist books or were caught reading them. These young people were attacked all the time, and they found it almost impossible to study. The more ingenious students who wanted to get their work done bought a few Communist books to carry in full view and fool their Red tormentors. But nobody dared oppose these Communist students directly because they seemed to be so powerful. A few of them made a great noise and succeeded in creating the revolutionary atmosphere so necessary and desirable for their aims.

Not the least of the fundamental differences between Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists was the attitude of each toward students. Chiang Kai-shek tried always to get the students to study more and to reduce their political activity. He did not want to discourage their interest in political affairs, but he felt it was detrimental to China to have students interfering in the country's political affairs. They were too immature, too unknowing and inexperienced, he believed, and too early a participation in political life was bad for them and bad for the country. The Communists, on the other hand, not only encouraged students to carry on political activity, they even forced them to interfere in politics. This served two purposes: It kept things churned up and in tumult and confusion, and it brought into sharp focus those dynamic elements of the population the Communists wanted for themselves. It was among the screaming, demonstrating students, rioting in the big cities, exhorting in the smaller places, that they looked for and found the natural leaders they could capture early and train in their own ways.

I remember in 1936 a big delegation of Communist-inspired students marched on the residence of Chiang Kai-shek in Hankow. They carried inflammatory placards and banners and formed in lines, stamping back and forth and shouting all night long at the top of their lungs, "Down with Japan! Resist Japanese imperialism!" This was at the time when Chiang was working mightily to reorganize China's affairs and strengthen her so that she could undertake a full-scale war against the Japanese invaders with some certainty of success. He was buying time.

But the Comintern adopted the popular-front line and the Chinese Communists followed it faithfully, giving proof then as they did later of their loyalty to Soviet Russia's dicta, for the most important single test of unqualified Communist discipline has been the following of zigzags in the world-wide party line. The Russian-dictated line ordered continuous harassment of Chiang Kai-shek, who had to bear the responsibility for the conduct of China's foreign affairs as well as for her internal and domestic ones. The outlaw Communists, on the other hand, were free not only to declare war on Japan and arrogate to themselves all the virtues of patriotism, but to embarrass the government's efforts to avoid a fatally premature, precipitous break with Japan. (Moscow ordered an about-face in 1937 and for the two years following supported the Chinese National Government against Japan, and again the Chinese Communists loyally played their part in the united front.)

But in 1935, "the Communists organized anti-Japanese mass movements, demanded the government arm the people, encouraged coalitions of non-Communist groups and military factions opposing Japan, and generally sought to arouse popular hatred of Japan to a fever pitch. The Central Government was faced finally with the alternatives of either resisting Japan immediately or suppressing patriotic resentment against Japanese aggression. Until Chinese patriotism became a dominant force it had to choose the latter course.

#### Chiang Kai-shek Calls a Bluff

and sufferings will not be in vain. I repeat, I am as eager to fight Japan as you seem to be. And so if you young men are ready to make a personal sacrifice now I can do no less than accept it."

There was a moment's pause. Chiang Kai-shek and his officers waited. Most of the students began to slink away. A few—just a few, however—came forward and gave their names and signed up for the chance Chiang Kai-shek had offered them. One of these was a student named Liu Chechen, who told me the story. He applied himself to his studies and rose rapidly. He was made a general and fought well; and when I last heard of him in 1948 he was righting the Communists.

That was one student who got away from the Communists, one of the "natural leaders" they were always looking for. In their never-ending quests for converts they showed skill and cunning. One of their favourite methods of penetration of a university was to set up a "students' self-government organization", a completely new idea in China. They borrowed many ideas from Western education, bending them to purposes for which they were never intended, making up their own rules as they went along.

#### "Self-Government" is Red Government

First the Communists wrote only a small notice advertising the meeting to discuss self-government. They made this notice so small and posted it in such an inconspicuous and unlikely place that most of the students never saw it and therefore didn't attend the meeting, which usually was a pure Communist setup.

The second meeting was something else again. They wrote and posted a big notice in bold characters and compelling language. No one could possibly miss seeing this announcement, and the size, language, and conspicuous posting all combined to create the illusion that this students' government was already a big organization. Many more students attended the second meeting.

The new organization had a "welfare programme" and a number of attractive, fake features, so that the Communists always managed to fool some students. The organization busied itself continuously in harassing the faculty and the anti-Communist students. It misrepresented itself as the voice of all students, whereas it usually represented only a small number of them. The chancellor and most of the faculty usually knew what was going on but rarely interfered with the organization, believing it to be a lesser evil than students' strikes which would have been called, had the university suppressed the organization.

#### We Plan a Counter-Attack

this whole field of Communist penetration of the universities through students' cells, organization, etc.

I advised him not to take the students too seriously—it is Communist practice always to insist on being considered with the utmost gravity, to consume time and make a big noise out of all proportion to the matter on hand.

"If I am criticized or you are told that I am working 'against the good of the school and the rights of the students', then you must disavow me publicly," I said. He agreed, albeit reluctantly, to this latter request, because he was still so new to all this, so inexperienced in the corkscrew twists and turns of the party line and all the racket and planned disorder of communism, that he thought I was exaggerating.

I went ahead and organized the Catholic students, of whom there were about three hundred in that Catholic university, which had a student enrolment that year of four thousand. We learned there were only seventy-three Communists in the lot—a trifle more than one and three quarter per cent of the total—but a goodly number of the student body were under the influence of that small, vociferous segment.

The important thing, then, was not to let anything get started. I divided the Catholic students who had accepted my leadership into two groups, one that worked aboveground, directly, and one that worked underground. I urged both groups to be especially alert for the posting of the first notice of the students' government organization. This I knew

from experience would probably be the first step by the party members to get control.

On the day the meeting was called the one hundred Catholic students who were in the two active groups fighting communism went to the meeting in a body. I had instructed the strongest and most forceful student in the technique of taking over the meeting.

When the hundred students arrived at the meeting the Communists were astonished. However, the party leader recovered his equilibrium quickly and attempted to seize control. The alert hundred wouldn't have it, however. They insisted on matters being handled with correctness, according to rules of parliamentary procedure. Then the Communist running the meeting announced there were officers present who had been "properly elected" before the objecting students arrived. Immediately, however, the vigorous anti-Communist leader of my group challenged this. He led the others in crying out against such "fascist tactics" and cries of "Shame!" arose.

The anti-Communists, having been forewarned and having the courage to act, were able thus to take over the meeting and elect strong anti-Communists to all offices.

the university at night, our underground went into action, tearing down the posters as soon as they went up, substituting anti-Communist notices instead.

It was a turbulent autumn and winter in Peiping, and when I left I had, perforce and through necessity, become as practised in counteragitation as the most seasoned Marxist. Moreover, I took satisfaction from the fact that I was leaving behind me the nucleus of an intellectual maquis, trained and prepared to meet and defeat the Communists on their own grounds and at their own game.

#### CHAPTER XIII

#### MOSCOW BLUEPRINT IN ACTION

THE GREAT secret of Communist party strength lies in its absolute domination over all elements of the population and in its use of spies, secret police, threats, force, and violence, as well as an elaborate compulsory "modernization programme" to secure this. The party even controls the Red Army; and although the officers are party members, Red generals have political commissars at their elbows constantly, "advising" them, which, of course, is a euphemism for spying on them. I have seen this myself.

The first time was when a Chinese priest, Father Gabriel Lao, a good man, fearless to the point of indiscretion, was arrested by the Communists, and when word came to me I set out for this village to get all the facts I could and try to effect his release. The mayor there, a woman, was a Communist who denounced Father Lao as an "imperialist" and a man who "beat his people", and I got no help from her. The district magistrate to whom she sent me flatly denied Father Lao had been arrested. I knew through my own sources by this time exactly where he had been imprisoned, but I saw I could do nothing with these local officials—I must find the Communist general in the area and put it up to him.

mander of the Second War Zone, and we had known each other for two years and were on fairly easy terms, as he had often stayed at the mission at An Kwo and frequently asked me for small services, which I had given him.

#### Dominating the Army

#### His Face Was Red

The commissar began immediately to bait me.

"So, comrade, you are a Catholic priest, eh? Too bad for you," he said with rough humour. "Your Catholic Church is all finished."

"I don't understand you," I said. "Why is the Catholic Church all finished?"

"Because France has been defeated and so the Catholic Church is finished," he said impatiently.

Since I had been travelling more than two days, this was the first news I had had of the fall of France, and it was a shock; but I had no intention of revealing my feeling to this cocky and ignorant Communist. At the same time I was trying to puzzle out the non sequitur in his last remark.

I was sure I was right. So I adopted an indifferent tone and air.

He was the one who was taken aback then. Incidentally, that is what I always tried to do in my encounters with the Reds. Whenever I was taken by surprise I tried to find a way to turn the tables on them. The general was not displeased by the commissar's momentary chagrin, but it seemed wise to change the subject, which I did.

Suddenly the commissar got up and left. The general and I were alone for the first time since I had come into the room.

General Yu leaned forward. His whole manner changed instantly from hostility and indifference to alert recognition.

As quickly as I could recover from this second surprise I told him the story of Father Lao's arrest. He took notes of names and places and where he could communicate with me. He did all this with lightning speed, and he had an ear cocked for the commissar's return. He sensed rather than heard his step, for he broke off in the middle of a word, and when the commissar soft-footed his way through the door the general was putting on an act with me, wondering out loud where he had met me before.

"At first I could not place you, comrade," he said. "But now, as we have talked and I have heard your voice and studied your features, it seems that we have met somewhere. Can you jog my memory?"

"Perhaps it was An Kwo," I suggested, getting into the spirit of the masquerade. "You came through with your officers once or twice, I believe. I can't remember just when."

The commissar looked me straight in the eye at this point in that disconcerting way he had that was more an insolent stare than a straightforward glance.

"Comrade, how did you know the general was here?" he asked.

He didn't catch me unawares with this question. I had had enormous difficulty learning the general's whereabouts. I had had to enlist the aid of a former coolie at our mission, a man who had been rewarded for killing a Japanese sentry by being made a member of the Red secret police force in An Kwo. He had gone to two or three widely separated

Communist stations and listening posts in our area before he had obtained even a clue. At the last one he sent word back to me to join him, and we have moved silently, almost stealthily, across the countryside for more than two days while he reconnoitred and inquired. This was how I had learned where the general was and obtained the password to his headquarters.

I looked the commissar straight in the eye now and told as much of the truth as I thought would satisfy him.

It was obvious the commissar didn't believe me, but he accepted my explanation. I could see suspicion lingering in his face and I was glad that Lu Kwo-chu, my ex-coolie turned Red secret service man, had covered his tracks so carefully and that I had been so prudent and discreet in our journey together.

I underestimated that commissar, though. He was not sarisfied that my coincidental arrival in the general's bailiwick was the result of the simple fortuitous circumstances I had described to him. He was suspicious and he stayed suspicious; he sent out orders everywhere to check back all the routes between the headquarters and An Kwo and grill all the Communist stations and listening posts strung out through the district. Somewhere along the route someone undoubtedly had seen Lu and me together briefly and reported it. And when the commissar's inquisitors found that report and turned it in, the commissar had put two and two together. All this I, too, pieced together when, much later, the horrifying news was brought me that Lu and his young wife had been buried alive.

that Lu, the simple coolie, who was really an ignorant man, in the secret service through a fluke, had not committed some other act for which he was executed with his wife.

#### Fr Gabriel Lao

He just walked into the mission one day and I went forward and welcomed him as if he were a stranger. I didn't recognize him, not until he called my name and fell forward, weeping. This great, strong man, once so erect and steadfast, so full of health and goodness, was a tottering wreck. He had been starved almost to death all these long nineteen months, and he had been moved from place to place every night. He had a long, black matted beard, he had lost all his teeth, and his once surging vitality was gone. Nor were his troubles ended even then. He recovered and went back to work. He was arrested twice after this, but each time he escaped. Three times since he has been in cities captured by the Communists and three times he has streaked out just ahead of their advance. Anti-Communist guerrillas on the China mainland today remember him and speak of him as an almost legendary figure. And although I have not heard of him now in more than a year, I feel sure that somewhere in China's vastness he is alive and continuing his work.

## Metamorphosing Peasant Society

its traditional Chinese structure into the Moscow model of a Soviet state.

Trained Communists moved into each classification to work among its members. They set up a subdivision of their larger propaganda section (part of the cultural activity) among the workers for the purpose of promoting more production. They did the same with the peasants but included an additional feature—instruction of these farmers and agricultural workers in Communist doctrine to overcome their natural conservatism. The Communist propaganda which was most successful in achieving its purpose of bringing the peasants under Communist control was ceaseless talk of "agrarian reform" and "improving agriculture", and of course the presentation of a programme which seemed to be good for them, with promises of lower taxes, more land, higher prices for crops sold in the open market.

The youth group was meticulously organized, and the young men were given military instruction and Communist indoctrination; here there was concentration on mass organization to break down natural individualism so characteristic of this age group. The Communist youth leaders assigned to this classification divided it into three sections—children adolescents, youths; these sections were subdivided further into two or three groups, depending on the size of the village, to ensure the efficacy of party indoctrination and discipline, as well as military training from the very beginning.

Once the youth training was under way with the fourteen-to twenty-five-year-olds, the instruction of children from four years on was started.

This division disseminated the propaganda that facilitated mass indoctrination. The Communists brought the world into the tiniest villages. A party member read the news from the flat roofs of the houses in the evening while everyone came out to hear and to marvel at this exciting inovation in their lives. The news was of distant places, for it covered the world, but it was always news written to conform to the party line. But how could simple Chinese villagers hearing names of far-off cities and countries for the first time in their lives know that, the Communists had a local newspaper for every region. Generally they reproduced condensed versions of the big newspapers from the larger centres. It was from these condensed and rewritten newspapers that the Communist criers read to the peasants and workers, the youth, the women and the children. It was primitive broadcasting and it was extremely effective.

#### Soviet Brand of Culture

The Cultural Division supervised the theatres, too, and ancient plays and traditional poetry received a new treatment. Every Chinese village has a theatre. It may be only a ruined old pagoda, but it will suffice. For centuries the Chinese have loved their singing threatres and the old classical plays of China and are as familiar with the stories and as passionately devoted to them as the simple Italian peasant is to the operas of Verdi and Puccini.

The Communists "adapted" the classics and used the village theatres to project Communist ideology through the drama or to develop a particular point for local consumption. They used their adaptation to instruct as well as to propagandize, and often the ideas were good though superfluous. For instance, I saw a play in which the Reds stressed the need for economy by showing a family scene. The daughter-in-law was wastefully peeling root vegetables. Patiently her mother-in-law showed her how to peel off the skin in thin, almost transparent strips, reading her a lesson on the virtue of economy in the "new modern China..." Of course it never occurred to the literal-minded Communists that the womenfolk of Chinese peasants, who have to toil so hard and so long for food for their families, would not need lessons in frugality. The chapter on economy was in the book of rules from Moscow and it was read to the Chinese whether they needed it or not.

viously Chinese and the mother made up to look like a Japanese, symbolizing, respectively, "progressive communism" and "reactionary imperialism". The anti-Communist symbol was changed constantly to meet the zigzags of the party line, and these plays were performed over and over, for no one understands better than the Communists the habit-forming value of such repetition and reiteration in propaganda.

Once the village was under Communist control, the people lost every jot of individual freedom. We have seen how they could no longer remain peacefully at home but had to become involved in party activities, and how they were compelled to squander whole days in political meetings and in schools and centres of Communist training, and in joining different unions and organizations. The Communists forced everyone to change their outlook and accept the Communist conception of the world, of life and society, and of all human values. Hsi nao chin (wash your brain) was the expression constantly used to emphasize the necessity of doing away with one's convictions and embracing the new ideas and working for the party. Everyone worked for the success of the "revolution" or was suppressed as a parasite of society.

#### The Bear Swallows the Dragon

All the organizations and subdivisions of people were combed thoroughly for the most promising human material when the final phase was reached. From the various divisions in the workers' and peasants' unions and youth groups the commissars picked men and women for special local work and training. And after the whole system had been chugging along for a while and all the people had been under continuous observation, special attention was paid to the young men serving their Red apprenticeship. It was they who came under the closest scrutiny. It was from their ranks that the party recruited the aggressive and ambitious, the quick, cold, calculating, or embittered ones. Here was where they looked for the material for the future Red leaders of China.

The training of these young leaders began in their village and proceeded successively first to a regional indoctrination centre, thence to a school at the county seat, usually. Next the trainces were sent to a Communist centre in one of the border provinces of Shansi, Shahar, or Hopeh; after that to Yenan. In these years—that is, from 1935 until the Communists gained control of the whole of China mainland and established their capital at Peiping, changing its name back to Peking—Yenan was the seat of the Communist Central Government. From Yenan the young men's Red schooling was continued outside the borders of China, in Chita, Siberia; and it was completed, at last, in Moscow.

The plan was particularly devilish in its conception and execution because only the brainiest young men with the greatest potentialities for leadership, only the youths the old Communists were sure would make the strongest, most ruthless, undeviating Communists, were chosen. As the process of selection went on and the tests became stiffer and more searching at each new training centre, the weaker recruits were winnowed out. The longer a youth survived this testing and training, the farther he was removed from his own point of origin in geographical miles and traditional Chinese influences, and the deeper he descended into the alien barbarism of communism.

The bear had swallowed the dragon.

#### CHAPTER XIV

#### COMMUNIST PROCESS OF INDOCTRINATION

THE EDUCATION of the "young leaders" through all the successive stages which converted Chinese youths into Russian puppets was something I learned about: at first hand as I travelled over North China, behind Japanese lines and in Red Chinese territory, usually quite openly, but sometimes, of necessity, furtively and secretly. The knowledge didn't come to me all at once, naturally; but after a couple of years of close contact with Reds I was able to put together all my bits and pieces of information and observation and reconstruct the blueprint.

Here was an unsophisticated, inexperienced young man whose idealism and lack of wordly knowledge rendered him vulnerable to the Reds' artful appeals to his patriotism. They asked him if he would not like to fight Japan. Naturally he said yes, with earnestness and feeling, and they offered to help him realize that aim by training him. He had done

well in eradicating the bandits with little or no experience and help, they told him. With both experience and the kind of help they would give him he would soon be able to do a great patriotic service in wiping out those "foreign bandits", the Japanese. He fell for this line, and they put him into their first training centre in his native village, with other young men they were testing.

When the Reds discovered the young police officer learned quickly and was enthusiastic and ambitious, they sent him to the regional school. There he met several other young men from villages like his. There were about seventy villages represented and perhaps two hundred recruits, in all, directed by Communist teachers concerned with whittling down this number so that only those malleable enough for stronger indoctrination would be passed on to the third stage.

The teachers learned this by dividing the two hundred into small groups and studying them carefully as the young men responded to the lessons in the Communist party manuals from which they studied.

Then the teacher would pursue the subject further, working on him, pressing and probing to test the strength of his family feeling.

The indoctrination process for the more flexible students in these regional centres was continued for a few months more, and then they were passed on to the Communist county (hsien) school to join the trainees from four or five other regions. Only about five hundred out of maybe a thousand candidates from four or five regional schools passed all the tests. The training in the county school for these five hundred was deeper, more searching; and when the graduates of this segment of the progressive system were ready, they went on to the fourth school.

in surprise searches of the students it was taken for granted that the student was a traitor. No excuse were accepted and punishment was severe.

#### Yenan—Point of No Return

But if Yenan was the geographical point of no return, when these young Chinese Communists reached Siberia they passed into a true limbo. In the Siberian indoctrination camps the youths were kept strictly to themselves, isolated from all outside influences, cut off entirely from any slightest contact with the Siberian population. Even some of the most advanced Chinese Communists resisted this and complained that they had "no liberty", but their complaints did not register with their Communist teachers who kept them under rigid party discipline in order to teach them party discipline. Siberia was the last link holding these Chinese youths to their homeland, and when they snapped that and started on the eleven-day journey over the Trans-Siberian Railway to Moscow, they severed their Chinese ties and broke with Chinese traditions forever. The final distillate of their number, the strongest, most fanatical Communists chosen for Moscow, came at last, in that distant Russian city, to their psychic point of no return.

Moscow has three "universities" exclusively for Chinese. The first one, named for Sun Yat-sen, was founded in 1925 as part of the Russian long-range plan to exploit the Chinese revolution and develop Lenin's thesis for communizing Asia. The other two Moscow schools for Chinese were funded much later.

It is in these three schools that the Chinese who had weathered the tests and training and discipline in the six Red educational centres, from small Chinese villages through Siberian indotcrination camp, received the special guidance and instruction for actual party work in China.

#### No Country-Only a Cause

They were violently anti-religious, and their hatred descended from Christianity, which they hated most, right down through all the oriental religious. Their general air and deportment marked them at once, and a discerning person, used to sizing up people, could pick them out of a group immediately.

They were literally men without a country who identified themselves with no province or village in the way men have from time immemorial. They had lost all feeling for home and origin. They had no roots any more; they had only a "cause".

The Chinese Communist who never left China and was not "processed by Moscow" kept this home-town feeling to some extent, but never the Russian-trained ones. I often found an area of common ground with the native Chinese

Communist, but never an inch with the students who had been sent to Moscow and returned to China to work on the top levels, to make the policy and carry it out themselves as well as seeing to it that others under them carried it out.

#### When Communists Covet

One small illustration will suffice to show the difference between the Russian-trained Chinese Communist and the home-grown brand. The latter will covet something you own, a foreign-made fountain pen, say. He will smile and say, "May I borrow your pen? I need it. I'll give it back to you." Of course he has no intention of giving it back to you, but you accept the inevitable with a smile that tells him you know what he's up to but are not going to hold it against him. The Russian-trained Chinese never behaves with any such "old-fashioned weakness". He sees your pen, walks right up to you, and lifts it out of your pocket or your hand. "I need this. I'll take it", is his only explanation.

My bishop was sitting talking with a Communist one day and put his watch on the table to remind himself of the The Communist surreptitiously slid his arm across the watch and leaned his elbow on it lightly, just cracking the crystal. "I'm sorry," he said, grinning. "I'll take it and have it repaired." That was the last the bishop saw of his watch. He lost so many cheap watches in this way, and by the direct Communist process of summarily confiscating them without any show of polite pretence, that eventually he gave up carrying a watch altogether.

I saw these young men in all the chameleon-like changes of their transformation. I saw them as raw re-

## I Interview Gen. Ho Lung

General Ho Lung's military career began in 1913, when he was only sixteen years of age and led a peasant revolt. Yet, ironically twenty-seven years later he could order without qualms the brutal execution of peasants in the province adjoing his birthplace.

Some early reports say General Ho was a bandit, but he would never admit this. I tried with more boldness than good sense, I confess, to find out from him directly during one of our talks. He evaded my curiosity successfully.

I first met the general on June 15, 1939, when I went to see him in his headquarters in the small village of Liu Chia Tsuo in Lihsien. I had sought an interview with him through General Lu, who told me General Ho Lung would receive me and a Chinese priest.

I always tried to take along a witness with me when I saw a Communist general or any Communist official on any kind of important business. This business was important: General Ho Lung had arrested one of our Chinese Christian brothers and the bishop had asked me to do what I could to get him released.

General Ho Lung's position at this time was that of

division general. When Chiang Kai-shek was persuaded to trust the communists once more in the united front that was set up in 1937, he allowed the Red Army to have a certain number of divisions, although they were all, by joint agreement, to be under Nationalist control.

It must have given General Ho a special pleasure to put this over on Chiang Kai-shek. Once he had been one of Chiang's men; now he was his enemy. As a youthful commander of peasant soldiers who joined him in a revolt against local war lords, Ho, the uneducated peasant, saw his forces incorporated into the Kuomintang armies in 1918. Ho, only twenty-one, was made a regimental commander and took part in the northern expedition against the Communists. Nine years later he revolted against Chiang Kai-shek and joined the Communist party. In the same province, Kiangsi, where the Communist uprising had failed, Ho Lung, the former Nationalist commander, then took some of his own forces who chose to stay with him, joined the Communist Chu Teh, and organized the separate Red Army on the spot.

When I arrived at the general's headquarters and was shown into his office he greeted me with a roar.

"Why not?" I countered

"Don't you know I've burned many of your Catholic churches? That I've killed many fathers like you?"

"And you still dare to come here to see me? Give me a reason," he demanded.

"General Ho," I said quietly, "you say you are anti-Japanese. I am anti-Japanese. We have a point in common."

"Sit down," he said, and I did, with great relief, I must

"The people here are unreliable," he said, "and we must correct their thinking. This is necessary in order to advance communism," he said with perfect frankness.

"But you must have other reasons!" I went on.

"Yes," he said, suddenly angry. "The rich are traitors because money is their god, and we must, at all coasts, take their money away from them in order to give them a true sense of patriotism.

He launched into a series of diatribes against the rich, making the point over and over that rich Chinese, whether traitors or not, must either become followers of communism or face execution.

press the smokers of opium and the thieves and traitors and bad leaders, and all those other groups who want private armies simply to effect their personal ends.

He turned to personalities then and spoke with some humour of a Canadian friend of his, a man who had spent two years fighting in the Spanish war and who was now a military doctor with the Chinese Communists. He did not mention the man's name, but he was amused by the fact that this Canadian, who wore the Chinese Communist army uniform, was sometimes identified by the people as Father Lebbe, my fellow Belgian, or even myself, for no other reason than that we were three foreigners in Chinese territory where there were few, if any other foreigners.

General Ho Lung thought it was very funny indeed that a foreign Communist should be mistaken for one or the other of two Catholic priests.

I was not especially amused and I tried to discover the name of the Canadian doctor, but the general was not telling.

All this was interesting, but I was impatient to get to the business I had come to see him about—the fate of Brother Peter. So I led the conversation around to religion. The general discoursed on it at some length. He said his views on religion had not always been friendly, but now he thought perhaps he had changed his mind a little.

Of course I recognized this as a sop to me. General Ho Lung, like General Lu, was not ready to toss me to the

"I am glad to hear that, General," I said, "because I have come to see you about one of my men, a Chinese, but a Christian brother. His foreign name is Brother Peter. You arrested him a while back—".

The general interrupted me. He was extremely angry. "I don't arrest good men," he said flatly.

I had to leave. Just before I stood up to go I asked the general if he would send a radio inquiry to the western mountains about Brother Peter.

"No doubt the bishop and I have been misinformed about him," I said. "He has perhaps been taken with a sickness and is even now being cared for by your people."

The general's manner changed again. He promised he would send the radio and let me know if he had any news of Brother Peter. He said good-bye in friendly fashion and shook my hand cordially in leading me out.

But just then he stopped and I had a moment's icy apprehension as I saw his eyes crinkle and a wicked grin spread over his face.

#### His Idea of a Joke

"You know", he said, "anybody can come into this village even if he has the wrong pass."

He emphasized the words "wrong pass" and looked directly at me.

The grin had spread all over his face now, and I wondered what kind of grim little joke he contemplated playing on me. I knew his reputation well. All over the countryside he was known as the "Old Joker", and the soldiers and peasantry enjoyed his rough humour and his fondness for playing practical jokes on everybody. I held my tongue and hoped for the best.

"Of course we treat these visitors from the outside very well," the general continued. "We'll let them eat with the army and we give them a place to sleep. And of course when the army leaves we free our guests." He paused a moment, waiting for me to speak.

And then, as suddenly as he had begun this little act, the eneral brought it to an end.

"Take the comrade to the last sentry," he said. "Escort him safely."

It was not a long walk to the last sentry.

We took the first few steps in silence and then I asked the young soldier, "From what place are you, comrade?" When he answered me with the name of his village I recognized his accent and knew he came from the province of Shansi.

He stopped short, and I was aghast at the look of utter contempt on his face.

"The Eighth Route Army is my parents," he said

## Br Peter Bluffs His Way Out

At the gate I picked up the Chinese priest who had come with me to be a witness. He had not been allowed to accompany me past this point. He was as sad as I when I related my conversation with the general. We were sure that Brother Peter was dead. We knew from the message he had contrived to send us that he had been arrested by the Communists, and the general's denial of it only made us sure he had already been killed.

Every time I looked at him after his return from that three-year ordeal I thought of the Old Joker, for General Ho Lung had had his little joke on me—he had never bothered to send a radio to Tai Hang inquiring about Brother Peter.

I went to the general's headquarters many times after that first visit in 1939, and time after time, even when I didn't see the general, I saw ample evidence of the cruelty and savagery which communism was fostering among its men. I never could accustom myself to their utter lack of all human feeling.

#### They Bury Them Alive

I remember especially a conversation I had with some of Ho Lung's staff officers and how shocked I was by the extent to which the Russian-trained Chinese who were making policy had infected these men with their inhumanity.

This was at the time when Ho Lung had used a Japanese offensive in the late winter and early spring of 1940 as a cover for the wholesale massacre of known anti-Communists in the area.

I commented on the horrible cruelty of the practice of burying the victims alive.

He leaned back and lit a cigarette. I kept my expression rigid and unrevealing and expressed interest in hearing the method in detail, although my stomach was turning over in revulsion.

"Ah, that's a good method!" he said. "We tie the man's hands behind his back and we half bury him. We just put him into a hole in the ground up to here," he went on, indicating his navel. "And we leave him there, just outside camp, where the sentries can always watch him and make sure no one comes to him with food or water. A man can live two, three weeks that way," the officer said, "depending on how strong he is and a little on the weather. If the sun is very hot and there isn't any rain to relieve his thirst a little, he'll go faster. But he'll die eventually."

I put my head down for a moment and bent over, pretending to be fumbling with my sandal. When I could be sure I had myself under control again, I looked up. The officer was gently stroking a little kitten that had wandered into the room and rubbed against his leg.

"That is the death we must mete out to the capitalists, comrade," he said to me, "because it is slow and they suffer more; the way we are killing them now is too easy."

#### CHAPTER XV

#### "ALL MEANS ARE USEFUL..."

The Communist indoctrination of young and old alike, but especially of the young men chosen to be educated for party leadership, rested on a three-point philosophic base.

Second, everything and everyone may be sacrificed to

Third, everyone who is opposed to the Communist revolution must be suppressed, no matter, who he is or what his reasons

There was a Mr Chang Kuo-chien, whom I met one day, who told me he had persuaded the National Government officials that he wanted only one thing in life—to fight the hated Japanese. He was so convinced that they gave him official clearance and facilitated his passage from Singapore all the way by boat to an open port in China, then to North

13

China, through the Nationalist lines to the area where he had told them he'd be most useful—Hopeh. He was an extraordinarily clever man to have managed this, for actually he was an old Communist. Ironically, he was chief of police of the whole province of Hopeh all through the war. He caused me a great deal of trouble, and we were forever sparring and matching wits. He had a craftiness that had been sharpened by his cosmopolitan experience, and he was invaluable to the Communists because he had pipe lines to party officials in North China and Communists and radicals among the overseas Chinese in Singapore.

#### Communism and Christianity

One day when Mr Chang Kuo-chien was in one of his didactic moods he told me a story that was intended to point a moral for me. He described it as "the great parallel."

"You are a Christian. You are in favour of the Cross. I am a Communist. I am in favour of the hammer and sickle. Your Jesus Christ, I understand, came on earth to save all humanity by His death on a cross; you preach that He sacrificed Himself for everyone. Well, we Communists have the same aim, with this one difference: The Christians speak about heaven; we don't. The Communists want to liberate the workers from capitalistic oppression and make a happy society out of a bad society. Our means are different from yours. Where the Christians have failed we will succeed. The Christians try to persuade men by inner understanding, but this cannot succeed. The Communists use the persuasion of political, military, and economic means to attain their aim and they cannot fail."

Of course I argued with him, especially since he stressed the use of persuasion. And I had the satisfaction, small as it was of getting him to admit that, from a practical stand-point, their persuasion had proved useless and that only force could bring the world to communism.

He asked me one occasion how many Chinese I had paptized.

"Three thousand! Three thousand converts for ten years' work! What a joke!" he hooted, slapping his fat thigh and rocking with laughter. "What a miserable record for a lifetime!" he went on.

"Three thousand! What a joke! Why, you'll see that we Communists will have all of China, all its millions, in a few years!"

where. True, their converts were not eager and willing. They were "persuaded" by force and held by fear. But communism was spreading. The strength of party discipline rested in the sense one had of being under constant surveillance and of knowing that one misdeed against the good of the party meant death or at the very least, continuous trouble, harassment, anxiety. Fear was the cancer that ate up the people. What deceived the occasional visitor from the outside, especially the foreigner, and what fooled so many newspaper correspondents who visited Communist areas was the outward docility of the people and the discipline of the army. Everyone seemed to be perfectly free and everybody insisted he was perfectly free, because everyone knew that to act or speak in a different vein might mean severe punishment, even death.

My constant contacts with the people in the Communist areas enabled me to know their true sentiments and to comprehend fully that the majority of them were slaves of the Reds. Within a few years of Red control over an area the people were so regimented that they always moved en masse as part of a vast organization from which it was almost impossible to break loose.

#### How They Fool Foreigners

Also, it presents those aspects in such a way that the facts which a careful correspondent is permitted to check or that are susceptible of analysis and verification are always substantiate. The facts which could not be checked or from

There was a Christian from the village of Tung Lu in the Paoting area who returned to his village from an uncontrolled area with a copy of China's Destiny, written by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek at a time when the Reds were outwardly acknowledging Chiang as the legal head of the country and yet, under cover, were betraying him and working against him in every conceivable way. A party member reported to the Communist police that he had seen him carrying this book under his arm. He was arrested and speedly put to death. The people were told he was a "traitor". Just before the Reds beheaded him, they told him he was being executed because he was "a special agent of the Kuomintang"—and that was the report they circulated among their own party members and sent on to Moscow.

I have said that the Red propaganda was masterly. It was, indeed, in its ultimate effects and the results it achieved but much of its success was due to the extreme brazenness of its lies, the shameless boldness of its technique, the way the Reds could about-face on an issue instantly.

#### A Hand-out to Hanson

I was delighted to see this American. Few foreign visitors came to An Kwo at any time, and to encounter one in wartime was pleasant, indeed. We chattered awhile about his work, how the war was going, covering various topics. The Red soldiers stood by, listening attentively.

Mr Hanson told me he was going to visit the armies in Shansi after this tour, which, he said, had already been a revelation to him.

"I have been astonished," he said, "to see the wonderful spirit and energy of the guerrillas (Communists). The Japanese always call them 'bandits'," he went on, "and they say 'bandits' with great contempt." Then he added with a smile, "They're the best bandits I have ever met, and I just hope there'll be lots more bandits like these in China."

I agreed with him, but smiled too, and joined him in

praising General Lu's regime. The officers seemed quite pleased with the way things were going.

"How do you find things here under the Red Army,

Father?" Mr Hanson asked me.

"Fine! Fine!" I answered enthusiastically.

"Indubitably so," I answered. "They are infinitely better

off."

I led the conversation into local matters and invited Mr Hanson to tour the mission compound with me. We set off and I walked quickly, with my usual long, flying strides. The soldiers followed along for a while and then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw we were out of earshot.

He appeared amazed.

"Of course I lied to you," I answered, a shade impatiently, I am afraid. "Would I have said anything else with General Lu's soldiers listening to every word between us? How long do you suppose I'd be around here if I told you what is

There wasn't time then to say any more because the soldiers caught up with us, and I went back to describing the architecture of the cathedral to Mr Hanson. I never saw him again, but last summer in New York City I read the book he published in 1939, after his return to the United States from China. He told of his visit to An Kwo, but he did not mention me or our conversation, which was perhaps just as well for me, since I continued to live under the Communists and to work against them for another ten years and more after Mr Hanson left. He said at one point in his book, "I suspected that the guerrillas were not trying very hard to kill Japanese, and their sabotage work along the railway was certainly insufficient to paralyze Japanese transports."

Mr Hanson apparently was suspicious but not suspicious enough; even he didn't realize just how Red the guerrillas were and his case is fairly typical of the effectiveness of the Red propaganda when they poured it on the foreign visitors and correspondents and routed it abroad through agents, sympathizers, and dupers.

#### Suspicion Becomes Second Nature

Their methods fascinated me, and the more I studied them, the more fascinated I became. The Moscow-trained ones, the chosen ones whose propaganda education away from the simplicity of village life and Confucian ethics up the ladder of Marxist manoeuvring I have described in the preceding chapter, fascinated me most of all. They are so trained in duplicity that duplicity becomes second nature, and after a while they no longer trust anyone at all. Accustomed always to deceiving others, they lose the capacity for believing others, and so they are suspicious of everything

They organize what they call the "method of doubt". A man says simply in taking his departure, "I'll come tomorrow." The Communist immediately wonders aloud, "Is he sincere? Does he really mean he will come tomorrow?" The others add their own questions and doubts, and an atmosphere of suspicion, even among people working together, thus exists at all times. This is deliberately fostered and always with an end in view. For any two persons, left to their own devices, might find a common interest outside communism, and that interest might weaken their party zeal. Pairs like this, or persons who might just like each other and enjoy working or being together in a simple, friendly way, are soon separated. They might disclose party secrets; they might grow careless. The New Order in China prefers robots to men, and it will have its own way or the victim's head.

A Communist party leader whom I knew was discovered to be greatly in love with his wife of a year. She was a loyal party member too. But the man was a new Communist and had not yet learned to disguise his feelings and camouflage his emotions. Inadvertently he revealed that he had two strong passions—one for his wife, one for the party. The depth of his love for his wife, however, was too great in the eyes of his superiors. They ordered him to divorce her. He did.

But I think an outstanding example of suspicion among top party members is to be found in an incident I saw in Peiping during the time the Marshall mission was conducting its negotiations for peace through coalition between the forces of the National Government and the Communists after the Allied victory over Japan. General George C. Marshall and his American mission had come to Peiping in December 1945. The Communist commissioner assigned to deal with the American and the Chinese government

Hwang Hwa had graduated from Yenching, a famous Christian university, alma mater of many of China's great men. He had been a student of Dr J. Leighton Stuart, Yenching's president from 1919, when the American-endowed university was opened, until 1946. That summer the elderly, dignified scholar left the campus to serve as United States Ambassador to China in the tragic three-year period of utter confusion and diplomatic betrayal, collminating in the Chinese Communists' overwhelming triumph of 1949.

Peiping in that first winter of victory that was to be so short-lived after the eight long years of war was seething with intrigue. The people who had suffered so much under Japanese occupation closed their ears to the whispers of threats and new dangers. They wanted only to eat a little decent grain again, and to be warm and alive and to feast their eyes on the serene beauty of their ancient city. Seen from a little distance, with its walls and gate towers sharply defined against the background of the Western Hills,

1 Yenching is now under Communist control. It was not formally taken over by hte Ministry of Education of the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China until February 12, 1951, although it had been so successfully infiltrated that a university committee petitioned Mao-Tse-tung in the winter of 1948, before the Communist armies had even entered the city, to take it over and run it as a Chinese State university. The Communist magazine, People's China, in its May 16, 1951 issue, devoted several pages to an article titled "Yenching—the Rebirth of a University", written by Chiang Yin-en, who has headed the Department of Jouralism there since 1942. Typical of the Communist propaganda against the United States is his statement that Yenching "had been nursed for thirty-two years on American funds to serve American cultural aggression."

#### Hwang Hwa Turns on the Charm

future, the days the Communists wanted to persuade their Western allies and comrades-in-arms that they were true liberals, "agrarian reformers", Chinese patriots of the purest, most selfless stripe. Tragically for China and the West they succeeded.

The general liked liquor but he couldn't hold it. Since he had to be with foreigners who drank easily and as a matter of course, but always temperately on these occasions of public sociability. Hwang Hwa could not let the general lose face by forbidding him liquor. On all these occasions, therefore, Hwang Hwa had to be twice as alert. Despite the commissar's caution, however, some Americans noticed the general's predilection for imported Scotch whisky, and one fine day a few officers invited the general to a party and plied him with liquor. Hwang Hwa was there, too, but someone always came between him and the general as he started toward him, and he was just not able to stop the general's drinking or stem his garrulity. The officers got some unexpected answers to the questions they asked him, and the yield was so good that they waited only the shortest discreet interval they could before inviting the general to another drinking party.

He accepted, of course, and came accompanied by the ubiquitous Hwang Hwa, who explained in face-saving whispers to the hosts that General Yeh's doctor had just examined him and forbidden him liquor. "He is allowed three small drinks, very small," Hwang explained; and on this occasion and all others that followed, an American officer told me, Hwang Hwa watched Yeh like a hawk and swooped down on him, holding up his own glass and saying

"General, a last glass to your health!" to remind the general he had had his third.

#### ... Like Chou En-lai

This Hwang Hwa was an extremely clever, intelligent man. He was in his thirties, vigorous and handsome. He was especially skilled in deception and in the art of getting away with it by making use of his not inconsiderable charm and tact. In this he was very like Premier Chou En-lai, born a mandarin's son and so mild and affable in manner that he has often had to remind Westerners he really is a Communist. Chou has the same kind of charm. Yet Chou En-lai, sometimes called "the Fox", the administrative boss of all Communist China today, is the nerveless political opportunist who sent thousands of Chinese to death when he ordered the wholesale purges of the spring and summer of 1951 into high gear.

In the winter and spring of 1946, however, General Marshall and his peace mission sincerely, if naively, hoped they could effect a rapprochement between Chiang Kai-shek's government and the Communists. And in that same year, just before the Marshall mission went back to Washington, Hwang Hwa made a tour of all the Christian religious establishments everywhere in the vicinity of Peiping.

The tour had a specific purpose. He had anticipated their actions; he knew that those who would write and talk against the Communists to reveal their machinations to the world and prevent their coming to power would be the persons who had had the longest experience with the Communists and therefore knew the real motives and aims behind the elaborate chicanery of their propaganda. These persons, of course, were the missionaries, Catholic bishops, priests, brothers and nuns, and the Protestant ministers and missionary doctors.

#### ... and Makes False Promises

With the utmost skill Hwang Hwa painted a picture of early Communist success in China. With equal tact he hinted boradly to his listeners that, if they wrote nothing derogatory about the Communists, the Communists would in turn be good to them; and that later, when the Reds took over Peiping, he would see to it that the missions were protected and would continue to enjoy the same freedom as under the National Government.

On this tour Hwang Hwa tarried a long time at one of the Houses of Studies in Peiping and talked at great length with the young foreign priests in residence there, studying the language to prepare themselves for their work. He made a favourable impression on these inexperienced men who had come fairly recently to China.

After he took his leave one of the young priests, puzzled by the conversation, followed him out slowly and thoughtfully. He saw him pause and talk briefly to the Chinese youngsters who came regularly to the house to play football or basketball on the grounds and who were always hanging around the main gate. But he thought nothing more about it, never suspecting that the charming Hwang he had just met was revealing his true character to that group of boys.

The children had all answered at once.

ground, they told me.

"Don't trust those foreigners!" he said. "They are bad men! They are anti-Chinese, too, all of them! And they don't really like you. That is just to fool you. They will make you suffer—you will see!"

And he ended this tirade by warning the children they would get into trouble if they continued to come to this house or have anything more to do with the young student-teachers.

The boys were astonished. They had never heard anything like this before, and all their experience urged them not to believe what they heard. With commendable courage and loyalty they had decided to go right in and tell the story to the fathers, and that was the point at which I came in.

#### PARTIV—THE RED TIDE ENGULFS CHINA

#### CHAPTER XVI

#### PRELUDE TO A BATTLE

THE CHINESE Communist problem from its inception was overlaid with misrepresentations and controversy. This was not accidental: the Communists planned it that way.

Of course this is at variance with the facts of contemporary history, but I want to speak directly from my own experience and my own knowledge. I was caught in the backwash of the first large-scale proved military treachery of the Communists in the Tai Hang Mountains in 1940, when they deliberately wiped out three crack Nationalist armies, nearly sixty thousand of their own countrymen,

instead of attacking and destroying the key force of twenty thousand Japanese only fifty miles or so distant.

The background of the dispute between the government and the Communists, which came to a head in 1940 and 1941, can be briefly stated. And while I have referred earlier to the circumstances and pressures that forced Chiang Kai-shek to a united front with the Chinese Communists and have spoken of the immediate secret orders issued by the Communists to ignore their pledges, I want to refer here again to significant events in the earlier period from 1937 to 1941.

As early as September 1937, the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang passed a resolution inviting a reconciliation with the Communists in the interest of national

unity. It specified the following terms for such reconciliation: (1) abolition of the Red Army and its incorporation into the National Army; (2) dissolution of the so-called "Chinese Soviet Republic" and other similar schismatio organizations; (3) cessation of Communist propaganda and acceptance of the Three People's Principles; (4) abandonment of the class struggle.

In 1940 recognition was given to a second Communist army, known as the New Fourth Army. The Fourth was put under the command of the Red Army General Yeh Ting, co-founder of the Red Army. However, like the Red commander-in-chief, Chu Teh, he, too, accepted the authority of the Nationalist General Ku Chu-tung in the Third War Area. The new Fourth Army was to engage in guerrilla warfare against the Japanese in the Nanking and Wuhan areas. The total strength of these two former Communist armies at that time was forty-five thousand in the 18th Group and ten thousand in the New Fourth.

#### I Could Be a Red Army General

Interestingly enough, in July 1938, General Lu invited me to become a general in the Red Army. This was not the first time he had proposed I join his forces. He always ended his discussions with "We are going to win-you'd better be on our side."

On June 10, 1939, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek frankly told Chou En-lai, second ranking leader of the Communists, that he would expect complete compliance with government orders from these two Communist army groups. He declared that the government could consistently pursue an attitude of impartiality toward all army units and that if the Communists accepted and carried out government orders their troops would receive identical treatment with that given all other units. But he made it clear that he would not tolerate any persistence by the Communists in their pretended autonomy.

However, the Generalissimo was reluctant to reveal this

The Communists made certain, though, that all the foreign correspondents heard their version, and they put the government on the defensive by getting their story out first. When government explanations were made later, they were naturally received with great skepticism. The Communists were always most skilful in handling their propaganda and they had an excellent sense of publicity and timing. Besides which, they had planned all their manoeuvres long before and had been carrying on an expert campaign for years, winning friends among the correspondents and influencing visitors to their side by inviting them to Yenan, the Communist capital, and arranging supervised tours through limited sections in other areas under their control. They treated all these writers and observers well, giving them reams of "copy" and generally creating an atmosphere that would reflect nothing but credit on them when the stories were published.

There were few foreigners in the Communist areas who could tell foreign visitors, as I had been able to tell Newsman Haldore Hanson when he came to An Kwo with General Lu's Communist "guides" in 1938, that "no" meant "yes" and black was red in Communist areas when they were on these escorted tours.

The Communists had foreseen the inevitable showdown over the Fourth Army's mutiny and they had made certain in advance that foreign public opinion was prepared to believe that Communist troops were the victims of ill treat-

ment and unfair discrimination. Unhappily, some correspondents who personally held extreme leftist views accepted the Communist stories at their face value and gave them wide publicity, particularly in America.

Nor did the the publicity policy of the National Government change materially then or later; and that policy of news suppression and official reticence, for whatever reason gave aid, comfort, and pleasure to the Communists. They piled lie on lie, smear on smear, and demonstrated conclusively that if the lie is big enough and told often enough almost everybody will believe it.

But I am getting too far ahead of my story.

It was in February 1940 that I undertook a trip into Free China to see Father Lebbe. He was working with the armies, leading his society of Christian Brothers of St John the Baptist to care for the wounded. I had only a general idea where Father Lebbe and his unit were, but to get anywhere near the probable area I had to go from the centre of the Communist territory to the Nationalist region in Free China. The Japanese controlled the railways, and that form of travel was out for me because the enemy had marked me as too pro-Chinese and they would certainly not let me go anywhere by train. In fact, they wouldn't give me any travel papers or passes at all.

I had therefore to chart a roundabout course for myself and Brother Anthony, my travelling companion, avoiding all the villages held by the Japanese, heading always in a southwesterly direction with the Polish mission at Shunteh, about 320 miles from An Kwo, as my first major objective. I was sure I could get that far by bicycle and, as events later proved. I was right.

#### How the Reds Restricted Travel

pass people from one to another of these villages. But to go beyond and travel through the ten or so villages in the second circumscribed ring, passes had to be secured from the commissars with authority to write them for all twenty or thirty places in the first and second rings. Then there was a still higher authority who was the only one who could give written permission to travel in and among sixty villages in the first, second, and third, or farthest, circles within the province.

The ordinary peasant, of course, would find it impossible to learn the whereabouts of this sixty-village official; Chinese with more leisure and money than the average peasant could not succeed either. One had to be ingenious and luky to beat it, for the system was nearly foolproof in that it not only restricted travel to the merest trickle in the first ring of villages, but eliminated it in anything beyond that. And of course it was all done with that straight-faced "legality" that the Communists always practised, because the passes were apparently there for the asking, designated as "villager's pass", "regional pass", district pass", "provincial pass", "government pass", etc., and the only trick was to find the regional, district, provincial, or government Red official to write one.

I was arrested twice before I arrived at my destination, Chao Chia Chwang, at eleven o'clock that night. I had had to talk fast to persuade the Communists to let me go on, and only the fact that I had a pass of sorts, not the special kind, but one that was a bit better than the ordinary village ones, saved me. At one point my bicycle was nearly destroyed. To have lost it would have been a catastrophe.

This incident occurred at the entrance to a village. The Reds had stationed small boys there as sentries. These are the youngsters they call the "little Red devils", who earn their apprenticeship in the Communist Youth Corps by their zealous errand-doing and running for the minor party officials and lower-rank officers in small places. The boys were armed

with short, stout sticks, and if a traveller wasn't quick enough in responding to their peremptory cries of "Stop" they'd throw the sticks into the spokes of the wheels. I managed to jump off just in time to save my bicycle.

Then the small boys called for the password and asked me to read aloud the three Chinese characters pasted on the pagoda wall nearby. This was a Communist innovation that served a number of purposes. The three characters were pasted at the entrance to each village and were changed daily. The "little Red devils" were given undue importance by their position and became ver nasty in short order, since they had more knowledge than most of the almost illiterate peasants passing through—or thought they had—and a degree of power and authority over their elders on this point. They mocked the men and women who couldn't read and held them there, forcing the peasants to repeat each character over and over, until they had memorized the three. This forced "education" is part of the Communist training so that the peasants will at least be able to recognize and red Communist slogans. It has the additional value in Communist eyes of instilling in the young people an arrogant disrespect for their elders.

Each time I was arrested by these small Communists-intraining, one of them accompanied me to Communist head-quarters in the village. Each time I had to explain over and over who I was, what I was doing on the road, where I was headed. And on the way out, at the exit from the village, I had to show my pass again and give the password once more. It was small wonder that it took me from dawn until eleven o'clock to travel thirty miles.

Just a few days earlier the Japanese had raided the area and the Communists had mounted their machine guns in the school, drawing the Japanese fire to this group of buildings and fatally exposing the population. It was a wanton act and typical of Communist tactics against their own people under the cover of "fighting the war".

The Japanese, in retaliation, had tried to burn the church, and many villagers had sacrificed their lives to put out

the fire.

I did what I could for the survivors of Liu Chi Chwang and left under cover of pre-dawn darkness. On the third day of my journey I got as far as Tang T'sun and remained there for two days before moving along to Pien T'sun. Between these two small habitations was a kind of no man's land. The Japanese were on one side close to the railway, the Communists on the other, but the strip between, the people told me, was even more dangerous for me because bandits, reckless and lawless, respecting no authority but their own, were settled there, running things to suit themselves.

#### The Benevolent Bandit

The people of Tang T'sun warned me I couldn't cross the bandit territory in safety; I'd have my bicycle stolen from me and I'd probably be killed. But I had to go on, and one of the villagers finally admitted that he knew the bandit chief and, for friendship's sake, he would ask him to give me safe-conduct. He went away muttering dolefully, and presently he returned with a young fellow pushing a bike.

This young man, the villager explained, would be my guide and I must do whatever he did. I agreed and we set off, pedalling across the fields where the peasants, with guns on their backs, were cultivating their land.

The old man welcomed us, speaking softly to me, inviting me to stop and rest in his house and have a cup of tea before continuing my journey. I thanked him and expressed regret that I had to decline, but explained the need for haste on my journey. He smiled, bowed again in farewell, and continued on, airing his birds like some benign old Confucian philosopher out of the ages. We mounted our bikes and rode on through the village and across the fields again. As soon as we were clear of the village my young guide looked over his shoulder and then back to me.

"That was the bandit chief bimself," he said.

"That old man with the larks?" I asked in amazement.

I was speechless, trying to reconcile the image of that gentle, bent old man, so tenderly caring for his birds, with the usual fierce, bearded bandit chief, the scourge of the countryside, held in fearful respect by the Japanese, Chinese and even the Communists alike. The paradox occupied my mind for the rest of the journey, and when I said my farewells to my young guide, the strangeness of it was still with me.

After I had rested awhile I pushed on and for some days I travelled without further incident. I was approaching Shunteh, a town of considerable size. Inside the walls of the city was a big Polish mission with an extraordinary hospital presided over by an extraordinary man, Father Wenceslas Szuniewicz, to whom I was greatly indebted. Father Szuniewicz was a doctor of medicine and a surgeon who had gone all through the First World War. When peace came he returned to find his wife dead. He put his young daughter in the care of nuns and lost himself in his work specializing in the diseases of the eye. Soon, too.

It was not long after I arrived in China that I came to know Father Szuniewicz and lean heavily on him for skilled help. The province of Hopeh, in which our An Kwo mission was located, had a population of thirty-two million then, far too heavy a burden for the province to support. Indeed, many natives of Hopeh had to migrate to Manchuria or Mongolia, or else live at home in grinding poverty. This condition is never good for a country or a people, and the improvement of the economy of the country and the living conditions of the people became a primary concern of the bishop and myself. We wanted to demonstrate to the Chinese people the sincerity of our intentions and our declaration that the Church was not interested wholly in preaching the gospel of Christ but was greatly concerned about the temporal welfare of the people and interested in the mental and physical well-being and development of their children. We built and opened schools and trained the Chinese in improved agricultural methods. But the health problem was a pressing one, and so I began to concentrate on doing something to improve sanitary conditions.

#### We Care for the Sick and Wounded

In 1932 I opened the first small dispensary in An Kwo. By this time we had a nucleus of Chinese Christian Brothers of St John the Baptist, and nuns, Sisters of St Therese of the Child Jesus, who had been educated by Father Lebbe, founder of both congregations. I sent these young men and women in relays to Father Szuniewicz in Shunteh for

training. He took six brothers and six nuns each year for three years. When each group of a dozen returned to An Kwo to put into practice what they had learned, I would send a new batch. In return for this priceless medical and surgical education Father Szuniewicz insisted only that they work among the poor. And it was not just in treatment of eye diseases that they were well trained. They knew how to deal with Children's diseases particularly, and with most of the other ailments that overtook the Chinese. We explained to the people the principle of the free clinic—those who had money paid for their treatment so that we could take care of the poor who could not pay.

Our staff of twelve accomplished small miracles and some big ones. In 1937 alone they treated and cured fifty thousand persons. That was a special year, for we cared for many wounded soldiers after the war had come to our doorstep in An Kwo.

I had reason, indeed, to be grateful to Father Szuniewicz and to value his friendship, and I thought now, with a great lift of spirit as I neared his hospital, how privileged both he and I were in being able, in this way, through service to the people, to create a Christian atmosphere and bring Christian welfare to the Chinese.

My thoughts were not all with the past, however. I had a most difficult present right there with me and the immediate problem of getting inside the gates. I left my bicycle and my small bags of clothing and books in a hiding place outside the city, washed and tidied myself at a small mission, and then, without impedimenta of any kind, and on foot, like any pilgrim, went to the city gate. With me was a Chinese from the village who identified me to the Japanese sentry as a member of the local group. The sentry mistook me for one of the Polish fathers from the mission inside, which was exactly what I was hoping he'd do. He passed me through into the walled city, and I made my way quickly to Father Szuniewicz. I had come now more

than three hundred miles and I was at the beginning of the Tai Hang Mountains. Father Lebbe was somewhere in those mountains, and I had to discover here in Shunteh, if I could, his exact or approximate whereabouts. But the Communists were posted everywhere in the mountains too. Their big important base was here, and to go through the mountains which they considered their own, I had to have a reason which would satisfy them. Obviously I had to conceal the fact that I was headed for a rendezvous with Father Lebbe and his ambulance with the Nationalist troops.

I was not unprepared, however. Before I had left my own mission at An Kwo I had circulated the news widely that I was going to the famous eye hospital in Shunteh for treatment. It was quite true; I expected Father Szuniewicz to examine my eyes and grind new lenses for my spectacles if necessary. However, I had to have more visible need of treatment for this reason to be strong enough to support me past the Communist interrogators.

I had many chuckles myself from the expression of livid fear that I surprised from time to time on the Communist sentries who looked at me, looked at my pass, and pushed me along out of the range of possible personal contamination, muttering, "Old Red Eye, leave quickly!"

When I left the Polish mission at Shunteh I was at first a little apprehensive. It wasn't only that we were deep in the mountains immediately after leaving Shunteh, with the hardest part of the journey ahead of us, but also that the Tai Hang Mountains to the west, in which we were moving rapidly on foot, were occupied by the Communist troops of one of the toughest of all Chinese Communist generals, Liu Po-cheng. General Liu had spent three years in the Red Army Academy in Moscow, the first Chinese Communist general to undergo a thorough course of training under the Russians. He is reputed to have been wounded in every engagement in which he fought and is called the "One-eyed Dragon" by the Chinese, or even by his nickname Liu Tu-yen, "Dead-eye Liu", for in one of his battles he lost an eye.

A throughly indoctrinated Communist from his early twenties, Liu fought with the Russians in 1929 against the Manchurian army of Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang, and gained the doubtful distinction of being the first Chinese Communist general to fight on the side of a foreign power against his own countrymen. I was not eager to meet the "One-eyed Dragon".

#### I Take an Alias

In addition, I was tarvelling as Father Yang, a Franciscan from Lu An, and I was nervous about making a slip that might pierce my alias. I had memorized the names of persons from Lu An and was prepared to give news of the region to anyone who inquired as I went on my secret way to wherever Father Lebbe was. This didn't prove as difficult as I had anticipated, and soon I was easier in my mind, and Brother Anthony and I travelled fast.

their beauty, high and sharp-peaked against the blue skies, like the mountains in the Chinese landscapes on the scrolls painted in the Sung Dynasty. It was imperative that we travel as fast as possible and yet observe the utmost caution, so there was little time to rest and contemplate the magnificence of the jagged pinnacles thrusting heavenward. In one day we did ninety *li* and then, having hit our stride for mountain climbing, we were able to maintain this thirty miles a day pretty consistently. I wore out several pairs of Shansi cloth shoes that the mountain dwellers and countryfolk make in a special tightly stitched way for their own use soft yet strong, and particularly good for climbing in the mountains.

When we had travelled five or six days, as I recall, and were in Honan Province, with a mule to carry our luggage—the books and small supplies I was taking Father Lebbe—and a Chinese mountain man to guide us, darkness suddenly overtook us one night on the trail. We had been given the guide in Wu Nan because we were warned that the mountains ahead were extremely difficult to cross even for natives and that strangers would surely be lost.

I suppose I was at fault for pushing on so far without realizing that the day was wearing on. When darkness came enveloping us completely in the twinkling of an eye, we were picking our way across a narrow ledge, just wide enough for one man to walk at a time. The cliffside rose sheer and stark on one side; directly below, hundreds of feet down, was a swift-running river, and I could hear its rushing waters mingling ominously with the rising night wind. One slightest misstep on that dangerous narrow ledge, one small unseen loose pebble to throw a man even slightly off stride in that blind darkness, and he'd go hurtling to sure death in the currents and rapids below.

he himself was afraid but that he was sure just ahead was a little wider shelf.

#### The Mule Leads

We inched forward and, sure enough, a little way on in distance, a long way in time, the ledge widened out a bit. We felt it; we couldn't see it, for we had no lights of any kind.

"Let the mule go first," the guide called to me, and somehow we shifted around so that the animal was manoeuvred up front.

I took a firm grip on the mule's tail, Brother Anthony caught hold of my long gown, and the guide held on to the brother's gown. Thus, with the mule leading me, I leading the others, we picked our cautious way along, the animal smelling and sniffing the safe strong places to put his feet down.

We went on like this for three long hours. It was February, and the air was bitter cold in that altitude. Snow-covered spots and patches of ice gave us bad moments before we came finally, at ten o'clock that night, to the safer outskirts of Kou Chen, a market place on the great Shansi road.

This mountain town was closely held and guarded by the Reds because it was a key position. They had the headquarters right there in the mountains overlooking the road, one of the old caravan routes, in use today as it has been for centuries. The sentries had heard the noise of the mule's hoofs on the rocks from far off, and from a distance one of them shouted to us, demanding the password. I didn't have the password for the district, but I cupped my hands and shouted back, "Catholic mission." There

It was still pitch-black, and I sent the mountain man ahead to explain in local dialect. They shouted for us to come on in and allowed us to enter the village. However, despite the lateness of the hour, the hard, nerve-racking trip we had made, the fact that we were half frozen and faint with hunger, we had to go through a long examination and a lengthy talk with the Red officers before we were permitted to go on to the local mission.

The next day was Sunday, and in the absence of the mission priest I preached to the people. They came in to talk to me later while I ate and rested. They were much interested in everything I could tell them, and they were all strongly anti-Communist. However, they said very little about communism when we were all together, and it was only afterward, when they visited me one by one, that I learned how much they hoped the Nationalists would come and liberate them. And here, as at every place where I stopped and talked with the people, I asked about Father Lebbe. It was like putting a crossword puzzle together. I would get a bit of information here, another there, and the picture was slowly but surely filling in. Here in Kou Chen the people said they had seen him two or thee weeks ago and had heard he was now in Nao Tze T'sun, a village of Hopeh.

the forts built by the Nationalists on the tops of the mountains, and he told us that the Ninety-seventh Army of General Chu Huaping was in those mountains.

I questioned him closely, because as yet there had not been any open breach between the Red Army leaders and Chiang Kai-shek over the Communists' violations of pledges to the government. However, I knew from my own experience that, no matter how much the Communist armies talked about hating the Japanese and how much they propagandized their "victories" over them, what appeared on the surface and what ran underneath were two currents flowing in opposite directions. It was beginning to be rumoured that if the Communists were not in collusion with the Japanese, at least their operations were well co-ordinated with the Japanese movements. The suspicions were to become tragic facts very soon.

The people in this part of the country clearly expected fighting, and soon, and my guide begged me to be careful. On my way across the mountains here I would have the Nationalist troops on one side, the Communists on the other, and get to the Hopeh village where Father Lebbe was reported, I would have to go into the province of Honan, occupied by government troops. To this day I can recall the joy I felt in seeing the Nationalist slogans again for the first time in nearly three years. I had been living under the Communist that long now, and it was exhilarating to see, "One Country, One spirit, One Leader" splashed on rocks and brick walls and pagodas in the mountain villages and "Long Life to Chiang Kai-shek" on banners fluttering in the streets. We arrived in Nao Tze T'sun in the evening, but Father Lebbe was not there. He had left just a

few days before. My disappointment was keen, but I recovered quickly, for I was on the right track.

This news really rocked me back on my heels, but I pressed on, continuing south that day as far as She Hsien. I knew darkness would overtake us before we could get to the next village, and these mountains were even more treacherous than the one in which we had had the hair-raising three-hour march in total darkness along the narrow rock shelf high above the river.

The town of She is on the banks of a river, a crystal-clear river. Its very Chinese name, T'sing Ho, describes its beauty, for t'sing means clear. All around us were the high snow-covered peaks and the fir trees, marching upward on the slopes, darkly green against the snow. We followed the course of the stream for a long peaceful stretch, and it led us to a village. The inn was crowded, but the host was hospitable and apologetic at the same time.

#### Pancakes and a Packed Bed

"We have only a few eggs and a little flour; not very good, I'm afraid. But I'll make you some pancakes," he said, smiling, and in a little while he came back with steaming tea and the modest meal he had wipped up, which tasted very good indeed.

"Everyman will have to take off all his clothes so no body will use up too much space on the k'ang," the inn-keeper decreed. "Then, if everyone sleeps close and nobody turns over in the night, we will all have some rest."

The tired men nodded in agreement. Nobody complained about this practical arrangement. Better that all of them got a little sleep than a few no rest at all. There was work to be done tomorrow.

We all lay down together, like pencils in a box, and

In the morning I bathed in the icy waters of the crystal river and soon we were well on our way again, walking part of the time past another stream, one the Chinese call the Hoeng Chang Ho, "the troubled river". We walked all day and in the evening we came to an opening in the mountains. Spread out below us was a lovely flat plain, and in the distance we saw the walled city of Linhsien. Earlier in the day, just before we came to the south end of the pass, we had gone through the headquarters of General Sun Tien-ying's Fifth Army. I had no inkling then that many of these men who smiled at us and waved us on would be dead in a few days, thanks to the iniquity of the Communist bent on nothing less than the destruction of this army and the other two crack Nationalist armies in the mountain pass.

#### Father Lebbe at Last!

The district around Linhsien was far more populous than the mountain villages we had come through before descending to the plain. In the northern suburb of the city I had one of those unexpected encounters with a man I knew, always so pleasant when one is far from home. The man was a soldier from my own diocese, although I was now more than seven hundred miles from it. I recognized him first and hailed him, and he came forward eagerly to welcome me and ask for news from home. I was about to push on to make certain we could get lodging for the night when it occurred to me he might have some later information on Father Lebbe. I had very little hope that he would know anything more than I, though, because General Lu's cavalry unit had been almost certain of his destination and I figured I had still a hundred or more miles to go to meet him. Almost casually, then, I asked the soldier if he knew where Father Lebbe was

"In there," he said, turning his head and pointing to a house not more than ten yards away.

I could not have been more astonished by this piece of information, and I showed it, for he looked at me as if he thought I hadn't understood him, and he offered to escort us the little distance to the door. But I recovered immediately, of course, and ran the rest of the way right through the gate and into the house and Father Lebhe's welcoming arms. It had been almost two years since we had seen each other and we both wept for joy.

On the wall behind him in the peasant's house in Linhsien was a large picture of Chiang Kai-shek with characters in the Generalissimo's own calligraphy, expressing his own deepest sentiments of true patriotism, his own moto—his personal standard:

If we seek only to live, the nation will perish;

It was in the Communist subprefecture in An Kwo where I had gone on some errand or other. Here as everywhere in official quarters in China there were always pictures of Sun Yat-sen (or Sun Wen, as he is always called in the North), the father of the Republic. That day Dr Sun's picture had been taken down, I noticed, and in its stead there was an official portrait of Stalin with the simple inscription, "Comrade Stalin". When the subprefect came in to discuss our business he found me staring at the portrait and he sighed with simulated regret.

"I wish I could have done as much for your Church, honouring it in some way," he said, "but unfortunately the Church is a foreign institution."

I pointed directly to Stalin's portrait.

"And he? Is he Chinese?"

Unconsciously, and quite early in the game, this high Chinese Communist functionary showed me the state of mind of all really militant Communists, from the humblest to the highest. To them the U.S.S.R. is the ideal country which, through the dictatorship of the proletariat, will suppress all classes and social lines. China's great past is nothing; all that counts is the "new China" being pressed out of the blood and bones of her people at the behest of a barbarous foreign ideology imposed from top to bottom by ruthless men with savage cruelty.

Even while I was working with Father Lebbe in the little house in Linhsien he received news that twelve of the Brothers of St John the Baptist from the congregation he had founded had been buried alive by the Communists. If he cherished any last fragments of illusions about the Reds, this news destroyed them forever. He was made

ill from shock and grief, and the Catholic unit with him there, the ambulance unit, the relief workers, were all desolate.

I had arrived on February 28, and we worked constantly every day until the seventh of March. All that week noted how pale and ill Father Lebbe looked and, while I was unhappy at the prospect of having to leave him as soon as I had finished the work we had to do together, I was glad, too, because I knew he would be moving along toward a larger place where he could have medical care and treatment. He would not hear of any long rest periods, and I could only bend every effort to get everything finished quickly.

#### CHAPTER XVII

#### TREACHERY IN A MOUNTAIN PASS

ON THE seventh of March, as we completed our work, we heard that the Communists had attacked the Ninety-seventh Army in a big all-out battle in the mountains I had just crossed. What the mountain people had feared was true, then, that there would be large-scale fighting between the Communists and the Nationalists. We were uneasy because we were in Linhsien without military protection, and it seemed wisest to leave and seek refuge in the headquarters of the New Fifth Army in the village of Yao T'sun, a place I had only recently come through on my way south to find Father Lebbe.

Once we had decided, we acted quickly, and Father Lebbe, Brother Anthony, and I set out to walk there, together with his unit of two hundred.

The general in command of the Fifth Army had some troop units in three small villages around us, to the south, east, and west. We were going directly north to the head-quarters.

We had managed to get to Yao T'sun while all this was going on. Yao T'sun was a fairly large town, but there were few houses left standing in it because it was a key point, and the Japanese had bombed it many times. We had a difficult time finding any place to stay, and I went from house to house, begging shelter for Father Lebbe and

myself. Eventually a kindhearted man took us in and once again I stretched out on the k'ang with many other exhausted men, so close that our shoulders touched.

## He Underestimated Red Cunning

While the fighting was in progress on March 8, the second day, we went to see the Nationalist general, Sun Tien-ying, and talked over plans with him. He was cheerful and optimistic and told us that on March 9, in the evening, he would give orders by radio to all his units to consolidate and pierce the Communist lines and join the main force of the Nationalists in Shansi.

But Father Lebbe was concerned about their fate should they fall into Communist hands and he asked me if I would take them back with me to An Kwo. I knew this would be exceedingly difficult since I had to return through Communist lines, but I agreed. Whatever misgivings I had I hid because I would not have worried Father Lebbe for words.

soldier finally persuaded the man to join our party in order to get the animal for us.

I led the procession, the two nuns followed, the Chinese and his donkey were next, and Brother Anthony protected the rear. Father Lebbe saw us off. He waved good-bye and stood in the road watching us as we started north. I turned and waved back, and I left a great weight of sadness constricting my heart because I had a feeling I would never see him again. He must have sensed it, too, for he stood motionless for a long time, returning my wave each time I turned back for another glimpse of him. Soon he was only a dim figure on the dusty road, and that was the last I ever saw of him.

We went north over the route I had followed a while ago, and soon we were stopped by the Communists and interrogated.

"What place do you come from?" the sentry asked.

"Yao T'sun", I answered.

"What were you doing there?"

"I was detained by the Nationalist troops."

"Who are these women?"

"They are women who work among the people, helping them."

"Just over the mountain."

Whenever a Communist asks where one is going it is better to name the closest point ahead. If you are going to a place a great distance away, the explanation becomes a complicated problem, for a Communist examiner's suspicion of a traveller increases in proportion to the distance the wayfarer still has to travel. I was always bound for the next village, just a few miles ahead, whenever I was questioned.

This soldier was particularly stubborn about letting us through, and his suspicions awakened suspicions in my own mind. I was almost certain from his attitude that something had occurred that the Communist didn't want travellers to see and know about.

We reached an impasse. He wouldn't leave his post to take me to the colonel, and he wouldn't let me through to explain our situation to the colonel. Finally however, he relented somewhat.

At the second line I was of course stopped and questioned again, but when I said I was on my way to see the colonel and explain my purpose in travelling and tell him my destination, I was passed on to the third line. And not until officers questioned me here, once more and quite thoroughly, were we okayed and told where we would find the colonel's headquarters in the village ahead.

When we got into the mountain pass and the road narrowed, we had to go single file, and as we toiled up we passed the Communist soldiers coming down. These men were from eighteen to twenty-two years of age, the One-eyed Dragon's best troops, blooded in combat. They were

At noon, when we stopped for food and a needed rest, it was hard to find anything to eat. All the little villages, afraid of the soldiers, had shut themselves up tight. Doors and windows were closed, gates were barred. Everywhere I knocked, frightened people told me they had nothing. But at a tiny mountain inn I persuaded the cook, with eloquence and a small sum of money, to prepare a little food for us and give the donkey some straw. He made certain first there were no soldiers about and then he gave us hot noodles. We bolted them down and took off again almost at once. I heard a voice calling to me and running steps, and I turned, and there was our donkey man who had caught up with us. His donkey was his whole property; his livelihood depended on the animal. It would take more than a few Communists to keep him from losing his animal, he told me vehemently.

That night we came again into the county of She, to the village by the T'sing Ho, the crystal-clear river. We had walked thirty miles in the mountains since dawn, and we were all very tired. But the village was full to capacity with Communist soldiers, and although I went from into inn I couldn't find a place to stay, nor even the promise of a narrow place on the k'ang for any of us. Brother Anthony stayed behind with the sisters and I went outside the village to a small house sheltered against the mountainside. Near the house was a little shrine of Buddha; burning incense curling up in thin, fragrant blue-spirals in the fresh evening air told me that here was an cid-fashioned Chinese family, and I knocked on the door.

When an old man came out smiling and nodding politely, my heart was easier than it had been for a long time.

There are five of us—two women, two men, and myself.'
His face clouded.

I pondered this for a moment.

"Would you permit the women to say with your wife in one room?"

He nodded agreement.

His face lighted up and he was overjoyed that he might thus give us hospitality.

Meantime, as we had headed north, disaster had overtaken Father Lebbe in Yao T'sun. Two hours after we left the Communists attacked the village, and Father Lebbe was caught in the battle and arrested. Their efficient intelligence and spy service had reported that he had been seen with another foreigner, and they questioned him about me, but he could say truthfully that he didn't know where I was. They guessed rightly, however, that I had gone north and set out after me, but we had had too long a start and we had kept moving so fast that we escaped them. I never knew they were after me until long afterwards when I heard the full story of Father Lebbe's arrest and imprisonment, as well as the Communist treachery in the pass when they destroyed the three Nationalist armies.

armies behind them might come unto Hopeh Province for an all-out attack on the Japanese and cut their supply line on the Peiping-Hankow Railway near Changteh. It was in Hopeh Province that General Chang Yin-wu had organized his militiamen who had so successfully held the Japs at bay along the railway line for almost two years. General Chang had to have communication lines. To have communication lines, it was essential that he control the mountain pass between Hopeh and Honan. As the plans took shape, the Ninety-seventh Army of twenty thousand men under General Chu Hua-ping took over the northern end of the pass, just before it drops down to the plains of Hopeh. He posted his troops in the villages and in the forts on top of the mountains.

The Communists knew that if they could cut the communication line between General Chang and the three Nationalist armies in the pass they could prevent the march forward of any other Nationalist armies then or in the future, and that once they had blocked this they could gradually suppress the Nationalist guerrillas fighting the Japanese along the communication lines and secure all North China for Communist control and expansion. The Communists understood all that was explicit in the old Chinese proverb, "He who controls the mountain controls the plain."

Their tactics were simple yet daring. When they saw the Nationalist armies massing in the pass, they sent their most artful and ingratiating officers to discuss with Nationalist officers how they could best consolidate their efforts to beat the Japanese. It was a time when officially Communists and Nationalists were presumed to have that common aim; and while Red ambition had tangled with National Govern-

ment authority, this internal warfare had been sporadic and scattered, partaking more of mutiny than treason, and had never disclosed the ultimate Red perfidy that waited only on this exactly right combination of circumstances and of men and time and place.

Their offer of help was accepted and they moved a part of their troops into that high mountain pass between the Ninety-seventh Army at the north and General Lu Chung-lin's troops in the middle, their discipline and good behaviour allaying any faint suspicions that might have obtained.

It will be recalled that he told us in the morning that he planned to send word on the night of the ninth to consolidate his forces. But the Communists anticipated this, for after the lightning-like coup they executed in the pass against the army in the north and in the middle they now turned as swiftly south and struck a surprise blow at General Sun's army on the morning of the ninth, two hours after

I had left his headquarters, waving farewell for the last time to Father Lebbe.

This was a major shock to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, for while he had had previous warning of perfidy, this was the first major attack of Chinese on Chinese instead of on Japanese, and he knew his worst fears for the success of his united-front collaboration with the Reds were realized. He saw, too, that in the lower Yangtze Valley provinces, the New Fourth Army of the Reds was growing illegally. He kept silent, though, about the treachery in the pass, for this was a shameful thing to reveal to the outside world.

#### The Price of Silence

As for Father Lebbe, in late April, after he had been the Reds' prisoner for forty days, he was given his freedom. They did this only at the insistence of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, who knew they were lying when they said they were not holding him prisoner. Not until the Generalissimo sent word direct to the Red commander-in-chief, Chu Teh, that he would send an army to attack General Liu Po-cheng's Red troops unless Chu complied with the order to liberate Father Lebbe did the Red capitulate. Chu Teh told the One-eyed Dragon to free him.

Father Lebbe was alone now in Linhsien except for a few of his brothers. His medical unit of two hundred had been scattered. Some were prisoners, more were dead. And although he was very ill he walked from Linhsien to Loyang, and entered a hospital there. The cancer which had begun to gnaw at him had grown markedly worse as a result of the bad treatment he had received since his arrest. On June 13 the Generalissimo sent a plane for him and flew him to Chungking. He died eleven days later, on June 24.

Nothing of this was known to me for a long time, of course. I knew only that we were in a dangerous current as we hurried over the pass, coming out at Tse Hsien on March 12. I could now go directly on to Shunteh, where the Polish fathers were—and my bicycle—and not have to circle around the mountains as I had on my way south, when I was looking everywhere and inquiring secretly for Father Lebbe. I took leave of our donkey man and his animal, and the two nuns and Brother Anthony and I arrived in Shunteh on the eve of Palm Sunday. We didn't linger long, once we had seen the nuns safely installed in the convent there, and a week later, on Easter Sunday, we were back in An Kwo. The spring was unfolding in fresh, green glory, the farmers were in the fields, the smell of the good earth was in the air, and almost, at times, we could forget that war was all around us.

#### CHAPTER XVIII

## IN A JAP CONCENTRATION CAMP (Weihsien 1943-45)

The Japanese had occupied Peiping for more than five years now, but they had been at war with the Western powers only fifteen months, and this was the first fine opportunity they had had to make effective anti-foreign propaganda. From my car window I could see official Japanese photographers hopping all over the Peiping station with their cameras, taking still pictures; several more had set up motion-picture cameras at different points and were concentrating on footage of the Peiping foreign residents carrying their own luggage. Everybody had bags, boxes, and valises, whatever they could carry, and some of the women

When the Tientsin foreigners joined us, the Japs routed the train south to Tsinan, in Shantung Province. Once again we changed trains for the benefit mostly of the Japanese still and motion-picture cameramen, and chugged on for another full day to Weihsien. This city is halfway between Tsingtao, the port, and Tsinan, and was the seat of the American Presbyterian mission, then one of the largest and most important in China. Its many fine buildings, including a large hospital and school are grouped in a compound about two and one half miles from the city. It was inside this compound that the famous American publisher, Henry Luce, was born.

When we came to the solid red brick wall and went through the big gates into our prison in the fading light of that March day, none of us knew when we would come out again. This was to be our home now until an Allied victory set us free. We didn't know when that would be, but not one of us doubted that the day would come.

Most of the assorted company, gathered here from widely scattered places in North and Central China, had never had to lift a hand to help themselves in all their years in China. They had lived in large comfortable houses or company messes, with excellently trained Chinese servants, loyal, willing, and devoted, to cook, serve, and wait on them. They had been driven to their offices, or about the towns and cities where they lived, in rickshaws or automobiles. The amahs had looked after the children for the women; the office compradors had handled the tedious and intricate details of business for the men. Life had been pleasant and easy. Now it was to be lived on a new plane entirely.

The Japanese organization, if one can call it that, was terrible. We had to create order out of the chaos into which we were dumped.

The 'human creature is adaptable and resourceful, and our company was no exception. Seventeen hundred persons

constitute a small city. The leaders began to emerge from the rank and file; the ingenious and skilful ones began to organize the conglomerate mess in which we found ourselved into a tidy, orderly whole.

It was exceedingly difficult for us in the beginning, for nobody knew what to do, but we all adapted ourselves to the situation, and we set up committees and began to work in harmony for our own welfare.

It was a little easier for me than for most because I had lived a meagre life and was used to hard physical exercise and outdoor work. As a matter of fact, I was living better in camp than I had lived outside. In An Kwo we had had bread only twice a week; in camp we had bread every day. I have often searched my own mind with some amusement to discover if my eternal craving for bread, never satisfied during my life in An Kwo, was what made me an eager volunteer kitchen helper in camp right from the start. I knew nothing of baking, but many of the fathers did, men with whom I shared this detail; and very few of the other foreigners, who had been waited on all their lives in China, knew much if anything about cooking either.

The food the Japanese gave us, however, was not adequate or varied enough, and the mothers, particularly,

## A Trappist Smuggler

Five Trappist monks¹ were housed in one room in a section of the camp nearest the wall, a most fortuitous location for black-market operations. One of them, an Australian of Irish descent named Scanlan, was quite willing to act as head of our smuggling ring. Father Scanlan was a big round-faced, red-haired man, going bald. He spoke with a soft, slow voice; all his movements were slow and measured. But his mind was fast and good and resourceful, and for this reason, chiefly, the camp chose him to head the ring.

His egg-smuggling operations constituted an inter-faith movement, you might say; Father Scanlan's outside operative who delivered the eggs was Mrs K'ang, a Protestant Chinese, and equally resourceful and spunky.

The Trappists' room was located near a drain which carried off the overflow of water from heavy rains. The drain was built underground to the road that ran outside the camp, by the outer wall, where it was covered with iron bars. Father Scanlan used this drain for his delivery route for eggs, cigarettes, and produce. He would crawl through it as far as he could, and Mrs K'ang or one of her small boys would push the eggs and small packages through the bars to Father Scanlan inside the drain. I often went along to help, especially when we had big orders coming in. The rendezvous was always at night, and that meant working in pitch-darkness.

1 The Trappists had to abandon their habitual silence while they were imprisoned. When necessity released them from their vows, they all talked constantly, as if to make up for years of silence.

He kept the eggs in a trunk, and we did business on a big scale, with many Chinese supplying us regularly. We carried the eggs around the camp in our pockets, delivering them as we went, exercising reasonable caution, of course. We had so many people in camp buying eggs that we had to establish queues in the kitchen to accommodate all the campers who wanted to fry them. Oddly enough, the Japanese guards at first didn't know that eggs were not a part of our regular legal supplies, but one day they caught on and then they began to search for the black market. By this time everyone in camp was in it, and many particularly daring Chinese were scaling the wall, doing business right inside the camp, not just delivering through the drain.

#### Irish Wit Outwits the Japs

It seemed that Father Scanlan operated under a special dispensation from Providence, for he seemed to sense the times that were safe for these over-the-wall operations and the times when it was best to lie low. One evening he put all his provisions in our room nearby and suspended all his operations for a while. He was sure the Japanese were aware that he was the ringleader, and he was particularly careful.

Then one night he had to go out into the grounds, near the wall, to talk to a Chinese supplier who had dropped over the wall to discuss some special business. Suddenly, as they were conferring in whispers, Father Scanlan's ears heard footsteps and he knew the guards were nearby. He barely had time to boost the agent over the wall when the guards flashed their light on him.

It was a black, moonless night; nevertheless, Father

Scanlan had his breviary open in his hand and he was reading from it.

"I'm just saying my prayers," Father Scanlan replied amiably.

The Japanese scoffed at this, naturally, since no one could read in the dark.

Father Scanlan had an explanation. He had begun to read while it was still daylight and he had just kept on, turning pages to have something to do, pretending to read-He knew all the prayers in this book by heart, he added blandly.

The explanation was pretty weak and it didn't satisfy the Japanese, so they took Father Scanlan off and put him in solitary confinement for fifteen days.

Of course the word of his confinement went through the camp immediately, and for a week Father Scanlan never had it so good, as the saying goes. All the mothers who remembered how he had managed to get eggs for their children through the drainpipe, giving up one night's rest after another to take advantage of the darkness, began to bake cakes and cookies and special goodies for him. They secreted these on the children, who were adept at sneaking through the guard lines to the out-of-bounds area where they passed them along via their own relay system to the popular jolly Trappist. Father Scanlan gained weight and had a fine rest in that week, but he was lonesome for his fellow prisoners from the beginning and he spent only eight

Shortly before midnight the Japanese officers were awakened by the rich stentorian tones of a baritone voice chanting:

"Deus, in adjutorium meum intende.

"Lord, come to my aid.

Lord, come quickly to my aid."

Father Scanlan went on from the matins, continuing in his loudest tones:

"Domine, quam multi sunt qui tribulant!

"How many there are who trouble me! How many are there who are against me!"

On and on Father Scanlan went, putting all his heart and soul and voice into his office:

"In te, Domine, speravi:

Non confundar in aeternum,"

giving voice to his own great faith as he sang:

I will not be deceived forever."

An hour had gone by now, and the Japanese were getting restless. At first they had been sure this was only a momentary aberration on the part of this great red-faced, red-haired foreigner, but now, after an hour, when he showed no signs of letdown, either in volume or enthu-

siasm, they began to send for aides and orderlies and ordered them to find out what was going on.

Father Scanlan wore a guileless face when they ques-

The Japanese had a superstitious fear of interfering with religious practices, and when the guards reported back to their officers what Father Scanlan had said, they all shrugged and decided not to do anything further that night.

Father Scanlan continued to chant his office for another hour or so, and he kept this up all week, making his starting time later each night. Finally, in desperation, the officers whose sleep had been wrecked every night for eight days ordered Father Scanlan out of solitary confinement and back to camp.

The news went through camp immediately, and Brigadier Strang, a fellow prisoner, assembled his Salvation Army band of twenty pieces to welcome Father Scanlan back. The band fell in line directly behind Father Scanlan as the Japanese brought him into our area, and with him at their head, and all the shouting, laughing children following, and as many adults as could fall in step quickly, the procession marched in triumph around the camp, tootling and blowing and blaring away, banging on drums and cymbals. Cheers resounded from one end of the compound to the other, with everyone laughing and joining in, Father Scanlan smiling and bowing to all his friends like a conquering hero, as indeed he was.

camp to hold any meetings "without permission of the chief of police".

We all did what we could in that close communal living to keep things on an even keel. We were cut off from the outside world completely at first and we had no means of knowing how the war was going, whether we were winning or losing. We were allowed to write letters, and the Japanese collected them regularly to censor and mail. They imposed restrictions on this correspondence, however, limiting the number of letters any one person could write in month and insisting that the letters contain no more than twenty-five words—what they called "Red Cross' letters written on paper supplied by the International Red Cross and sent through them to the addressees. This was highly unsatisfactory, and when we learned that even these skeleton epistles were held by the Japanese for a year before they bothered to send them on, the indignation of the camp was intense.

#### Contacting the World Outside

A few of us talked together about a way to circumvent these restrictions, and I devised a scheme which I was sure would work. Through our Chinese agents on the outside, our own private black market, I purchased several Chinese-style envelopes and addressed them in Chinese characters, of course, to loyal Chinese friends of certain prisoners in camp who joined me in the plot. Some of these old China hands had many good, close friends among other long-time residents in Chinese cities who were citizens of Germany and Italy and, as such, not subject to imprisonment by the Japanese.

However, while we now had certain fixed sure addresses of persons outside to whom direct letters could be sent, or messages for others enclosed for relaying from the first point, we had to make sure mail from a Japanese concentration camp could pass through the Japanese controlled Chinese

post office once it was safely over the prison wall and in the post office. The name and address of the writer of every letter had to appear on the envelope. This stumped me for a while until, fortunately, I found in the hospital files, which were intact and had been overlooked by the Japanese, a list of former patients with local addresses. This solved the problem. I used these names and addresses on the Chinese envelopes, changing them regularly, of course, and keeping careful secret records of my own.

When the outgoing letters were written and sealed inside the properly addressed envelopes, I weighted the package with a brick and threw it over the wall with money to cover the transaction to the Chinese waiting to receive it. He stamped the letters and routed them to other trusted agents, who posted them at different places. We never used the local Weihsien post office for this business, and our letters always arrived safely at their distant destinations, Peiping, Tientsin, Tsingtao, even Shanghai. We began presently to get answers to our letters and news of a sort.

Our activities with Chinese outside grew so varied and numerous that too many agents were coming over the wall all the time, and finally the Japanese strung an electric wire around the ditch to prevent this illegal traffic. We soon overcame this temporary frustration by using the handful of Chinese coolies who came inside every morning.

These were the only Chinese workers allowed in the camp. They were lavatory coolies who came in to clean out the cesspools and carry the pails outside the camp. The Japanese considered this dirty work beneath them, one that was fit only for the Chinese. I asked for the job of "sanitary patrol captain", whose duties included taking care of all the toilets in camp, in order to be able to make contact with the lavatory coolies. These humble men were searched coming into camp, but when they went out, with their filthy buckets swinging on poles from their shoulders, the Japanese gave them a wide berth and never bothered

to search them. I had observed this for a long time, and now all I did was give the packets of letters to the coolies, who stuffed them inside their baggy blue cotton pants as they went out.

This went on for a long time, and then the Japanese became suspicious again, and before a coolie was passed through the gates a Japanese soldier stopped him and at arm's length poked around in the mess with a long stick. It was really funny to watch those Japanese soldiers, with white gauze masks covering their faces, as they went about this disagreeable duty. It was funny, but it annoyed me, too, because I realized I then had to find still another way of getting the mail out.

Many times after I came to New York and had business at the main post office on Eighth Avenue there I read the carved lettering over the doors, the motto that has set the code for the faithful and trustworthy men in the American postal service. That's the motto that all Americans know, I'm sure: "Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." Everytime I climbed the steps and read that motto I thought of the way we got mail through from the Weihsien concentration camp for more than two years without once getting caught. The Japs heard something that made them suspicious, but we were always just one jumb ahead of them. We were lucky, but I was also careful never to describe my methods or

discuss them with anybody. Only my fellow prisoner in the engineering shop who sealed the tin boxes with his soldering iron knew what he was doing it for—and even he didn't know about my other methods.

The postman was always searched thoroughly as he alighted at the gate, and a Japanese guard accompanied him to the commandant's office. The postman pushed his bike along, and the guard walked beside him. At the office the postman lifted the mailbag off his bike and, with the guard tagging along, went inside to deliver it.

I noticed that the Japanese were most suspicious of the Chinese postman but never of his bicycle and that it was left beside the door unguarded. I noticed, too, that there was a small canvas bag which hung from the frame of the bike, between the saddle and the handle bars. This was the bag in which the postman undoubtedly carried his local mail, I reasoned, and into which, on his return from the commandant's office, he put the rolled up empty bag which had held the camp letters and papers.

For a few Saturdays I watched his coming and going and observed the fixed pattern of the routine. One Saturday I strolled casually by and dropped a few letters into the empty bag while the postman was in the commandant's office with the guard. Then I walked away and stood off to one side and waited to see what would happen.

It was natural, since we had had so much success getting our mail out, that we should have thought of getting ourselves out.

One of our number was a brave and ingenious Englishman named Laurie Tipton, who had been connected with the British-American Tobacco Company before the war. Tipton knew agents of the company in the city of Weihsien, but they were afraid of the Japanese and were of no help to us. Then through one of the American Franciscan brothers in camp I made contact with an Irish priest in Crow T'sund This village was a hundred miles away from us, but soon we were in frequent touch with him and, through him with much of what was going on, because he had a radid and collected all the news that came over it, wrote it out, and assembled it in readable form. He gave this to his Chinese servant, who came by railway to Weihsien, walked to the camp, and at an appointed hour, threw the packet over the wall.

## Plans to Escape

Tipton and I agreed to work together about this time to establish sources outside and try to arrange for the two of us to get away. Little by little we accumulated maps, information about the country, location of enemy forces, Communist forces, all that. We also learned to our great joy that there were Nationalist guerrillas nearby, and through my faithful lavatory coolies I made contact with them. This took a lot of time because among the coolies, who were changed every month, there were Nationalists and Communists as well as Chinese who were pro-Japanese.

I had always to have one reliable man on the coolie staff. When a change in the shift was coming he would advise me, and then on the first day of the change, while the old crew and the new crew worked together, my reliable man in the outgoing group would evaluate all the new ones for me. Before the day was out he always passed the word along to the right man and to me, and again I had someone I could trust. My "office" was a small lavatory near the kitchen, away from the others, which I could close off for as much as an hour while we talked and made plans and exchanged messages.

The second important particular concerned the guards. The

Japanese used three teams of guards. One group came on duty on Monday and had two days off; the second group worked Tuesday and had two days off; the third group took over on Wednesday and had Thursday and Friday off. Then the first team took over again for one day on and two off, and so on. By means of this rotating system the guards were on a continuous twenty-four-hour duty, so often times they were not as alert and careful as they were supposed to be.

We had to watch and study the three teams, and after a bit we learned that two teams were faithful and strict one mean was careless. The lazy team would go to the watchtowers and stay on guard for an hour or so and them sneak off for a cup of tea or a smoke. We charted their behaviour, and when we were sure of its regularity we had then to fit this item into the moondarkness element and make certain that the careless team was on duty on the escape night, with the moon at full at precisely the right hour after we had taken off.

The third point was to be sure the Chinese Nationalist guerrillas could move with safety and be waiting at an agreed-upon point, about two miles from camp, a cemetery plainly identifiable by its fir trees and grave mounds.

Three members of the governing committee in camp knew we were going over the wall, and I had confided also in Father Rutherford, one of the American Franciscans. He had been troubled about it for a long time and had calked to me at length about it. But I had been so busy with preparations, my mind had been so intensely preoccupied with arranging all the details of our safe gateway, that he had never carried the discussions to any lengths that might have upset the scheme. However, as the day came Father Rutherford begged me not to go, for fear of reprisals against the innocent people in camp. He was so persuasive, so greatly concerned, that I could not with clear conscience disregard his earnestness and flout his wishes. On the other hand, I did not feel that I had right to prevent Tipton's leaving or his taking someone else in my place, and another young man volunteered. He was Arthur W. Hummel, Jr., who had been an instructor in Fu Jen Middle School in Peiping until the outbreak of the war.

I gave them my Chinese clothes and helped them over the wall, and then I retired to pray for their safety. They were over the wall, true; but they had to clear the live electric wire before they could make a safe getaway. They were prepared to do this by going through one of the sentry watchtowers. The Japanese had installed these live wires at all the sentry boxes in such a way that the guards could come and go in safety. A safe getaway depended on the sentries' absence from their post, and this is why we had had to study their habits and time the escape for a night when the careless team of guards had the sentry duty and would be sure to sneak away for a few minutes to have a smoke and a cup of tea.

Tipton and Hummel had promised that if they succeeded in getting to the guerrillas they would work out a code and send it back so we could keep touch with each other. Just before I said good-bye to them in the darkness we decided on an identifying word I would use to find the coolie who would bring in the code.

Those first moments after Tom Wade and Roy Chu and I boosted Tipton and Hummel over the wall and heard the soft thud of their feet on the other side were anxious ones. Many times before I had done this with the Chinese

The hour of darkness passed and the moon's rise foun me breathing easier; by the time the moon was riding the heavens in full glory I was content. I knew that Tipto and Hummel were well on their way to the guerrillas' hide out.

The Japanese did not notice the men's absence at roll call, but Mr. McClaren reported them as missing. We had agreed on this plan beforehand in order to avoid reprisal and trouble for the other internees. Since only a few cus had known the plans, the amazement of the other internees was genuine and complete, and this fact alone made thing easier. The Japanese soon accepted the inevitable. Two men had made their escape. The noise and uproar inside the camp soon died down.

My natural impatience kept me on tenderhooks and I worked every day with the lavatory coolies, but no single hint was forthcoming from any one of them that he had any message for me. Two, three months went by. And then one day, as I was mumbling "fifty-six", the identifying word, a new coolie sidled over to me and whispered that he had something for me. When we could get into my "office", which I insisted needed this man's special attention he brought out a small tightly rolled paper he had secreted inside the padding of his trousers.

My excitement was twofold, for this was the first concrete evidence I had had that the men had managed to get away safely, and now we had a means of communicating with them and, through them, with the National Government

"Send us latest news," we wrote, restraining ourselves until we could be sure the code would work. Somehow, the fact that two men had got away and were now free and able to get word to us and receive news from us made our incarceration less binding and onerous. Tipton and Hummel were on the Shantung peninsula with the guerrillas, and the underground message system was working so well that very soon we had a reply to our first code message. They had established radio contact with Chungking and were able to tell us the progress of the war. The tide had begun to turn and we grew more hopeful daily.

Oddly enough, though, it was from the inside, and from the Japanese themselves rather than from the outside, that we learned the war was going against them. One day the Japanese brought in a group of Italian prisoners. They were arrested because they were anti-Fascist, anti-Mussolint, violently and passionately so, as only Italian dissenters can be. The Japanese put them in separate quarters near the main gate because they thought that, despite their strong views which jibed with the British and American sentiments, there might still be trouble if they were all quartered together. Among these new inmates was a Signor Gervasi, who was married to a Belgian woman. Naturally, we made friends quickly, and from them I learned there was a Japanese guard who was always hanging about their house, forever complaining about the war and declaring bitterly he was fed up with it.

He and two other camp guards were very young idealistic men who had been inflamed by the propaganda of their own militarists and induced to throw themselves into this "great

Since we would be included in the Peiping grouping, we would inevitably go to Mukden. I knew it would be extremely bad for us if this move went through, particularly for the women, because Mukden is a rugged place at all times and devastatingly cold and bleak in winter. I realized we would have to do something, and so did the committed in whom I confided my news. We made emergency contagnith the guerrillas and inquired how long it would take them to bomb the railway from Tsian to Tsingtao, the road through which we would have to be evacuated. The word came back quickly, and it was cheering. They would need only one day's notice. Knowing we could always count on that, and that we need never have to move, we relaxed.

It was not just messages like this that came to us regularly, but medicine when we needed it, flown all the long way from Chungking, a thousand miles south-west, over enemyheld territory, to the Shantung Peninsula, where it was dropped by parachute to the guerrillas. The guerrillas sent the package to old Father Chang in the Catholic mission in the city of Weihsien. Word of this went over the "bamboo wireless", as the underground was called, to Swiss Consul Egger in Tsingtao, who represented the International Red Cross. Mr. Egger was permitted to visit the camp every month with "comfort parcels", which were the gifts of the Red Cross. He delivered the medicines at these times. Some of these medicines were so new—the sulfa drugs, for instance—that the doctors in camp had not even heard of them and didn't know how to use them. We had to get directions for their administration by code the long way from Chungking.

The Japanese knew we had some contact with the outside. They grew increasingly suspicious, and the coolies became more nervous and frightened as the search of their persons became more frequent and thorough. The authorities now assigned a special guard to each coolie who worked in the camp. The fact—which we knew—that the Japanese were losing the war made them more cautious and at the same time more fearful themselves.

It got so that we could no longer send out any messages to the guerrillas on silk or paper or anything else that could be secreted inside a coolie's clothes. Once again we had to find a new way to keep our "lines of communication" open. I bored small holes in the walls of the lavatory, small and irregular enough to escape detection, unless you knew exactly where to look for them, but large enough to hold little pellets. We typed the messages on very small pieces of silk and wrapped each one in a chewing-gum wrapper, and I poked these messages into the small holes I had bored. I suppose discarded chewing-gum wrappers were never put

up and dawn to signify yes. Then I would follow along. When he had none, just for double check, he always wagged his head negatively from side to side. I took advantage, too, of the Chinese penchant for expectorating and urged the coolies to spit a lot to get the Japanese used to the idea that these men were more addicted to this unpleasant habit than most. When the right opportunity came the coolie would spit out the message and I would pounce on it.

It is comic now, in retrospect, to reflect that all war news came to us in the Weihsien concentration camp this way. It is even more comic, I suppose, that I distributed the news after decoding the typing by pasting the bulletins on the walls of the toilets, and had soon to discontinue because people stayed there too long to read, and we had complaints. It was just a matter of too many people and not enough toilets. I tried the washrooms next, but since the laundry had also to be done there and the avid readers lingered too long and got in the way of women with piles of family wash, I had to give this place up too. I had finally to resort to word-of-mouth news distribution, but even here I had to dissemble because by this time we had learned that there were two or three internees who had turned stool-pigeon for their Japanese Captors in order to win a few privileges for themselves. To confound these few, I started wild rumours—that the Japanese Emperor had been assassinated; that two hundred thousand Japanese had been killed in one battle alone, rumours like that—and in those rumours I mixed the items of real news. Those in the know could distinguish the true from the false.

For quite a while in a Weihsien we had no contact with any Communists, something new for me who had been dealing with them, living under them, for nearly seven years. But soon I became aware that there were Chinese Communists among the coolies, who began to smuggle in Communist literature. It didn't take the Japanese long to find this Red propaganda, and they punished all the coolies and changed crews frequently. And of course as soon as the Japanese had discovered the source, the Communists quit trying to propagandize us with literature.

However, one day a man who couldn't read Chinese received a long letter whose contents were addressed to all the people in camp. The letter came from the Communist commander of the "Chinese Communist Government of Shansi, Hopeh Shantung, and Honan" and got to the addressee through a coolie. Had it come in through the mail the Japanese, of course, would have destroyed it. The man who received it took it to McClaren, but since he also couldn't read it, he brought it to me to translate for him and the committee.

The letter was the usual artful Communist propaganda couched in the most polite terms and expressing sorrow for our "sufferings in camp". Their sympathies were with us in the common struggle against imperialism, they said, and they had a plan to release us. They suggested that we revolt inside the camp, and they would attack from the outside, during the night. They would then evacuate the whole camp to Yenan, they continued and we would no longer be oppressed by Japanese imperialism.

When Mr McClaren read my translation to the camp's administrative Committee, they all listened with something less than wild enthusiasm. The letter constituted a minor problem, really. The committee quite naturally didn't want to risk offending the Communists, who were all around us, nor did they want to stage any kind of revolt. If the revolt was unsuccessful, everyone in camp would suffer, and if the revolt and the Communist attack succeeded and we were evacuated to Yenan, we would be even worse off. Finally after a great deal of thoughtful discussion, the committee concocted a letter which thanked the Communists for their thoughtfulness and kindness, and explained that since only three hundred of the seventeen hundred internees would be

#### August 15th 1945

And it didn't take the Americans long to get to us. Less than twenty-four hours after the Japanese surrender we heard of it in the most glorious and spectacular way possible. There was a vibrancy in the air on the fourteenth. Everybody sensed something big had happened, but we were afraid to speak our thoughts, afraid to mention the word "victory". The tension and excitement mounted through the day and night, and on the morning of the fifteenth we knew the dejection in the Japanese officers' attitude could mean only one thing—that the war was over and they had lost it.

And suddenly in the sky, a fine clear blue summer sky, over the camp there appeared a big American bombing plane, a B-25. It flew low enough for us to see painted on its side the words "Flying Angel", and never, we thought, was anything so aptly named. All the internees began to sing "God Bless America". The plane circled and flew around us a few times, and the whole camp poured out onto the grounds shouting, singing, waving. The Flying Angel disappeared to gain altitude and presently came back, and we counted our saviours literally dropping out of the skies. When the parachutes opened, the camp cheered and stamped and roared and hoorayed and went wild with joy. People cried and laughed and hugged and kissed each other and slapped one another on the back, and then the camp moved en masse to the main gate to greet the American fliers.

The Jap guards were still on duty, but they made little if any effort to stop us, and men, women, and children streamed out through the gates, tasting freedom for the first time in two and a half years.

The paratroopers had come down in the sorghum fields and, since the grain was very high, we had to go in and find them and guide them out. The joyful shouting and calls of "Where are you?" and "Here right over here!" went on until we had collected the team of which a young American major named Stanley Staiger was in charge. He had arms for the camp in case the Japanese proved difficult, but we assured him we didn't need them. The fight was out of the Japan here in Weihsien.

Major Staiger was hoisted to the shoulders of a few of the strongest men, and that was the way he entered the camp. On all sides the Japs were saluting him and bowing in deference. The young major returned their salutes with military punctiliousness from the shoulders of the men who such a little time before had been the Japs' despised enemy inferiors. They were now free men again, superior in their victory but with commendable restraint and sportsmanship not showing it or taking advantage of it, except to see that authority was shifted at once to them from their erstwhile captors.

As the major waited for the Japanese officers to assemble, an old woman ran up and kissed his hand. He blushed a fiery red, but he suffered her expression of gratitude rather

#### CHAPTER XIX

#### THE VICTORY THAT FAILED

IT WAS no fault of Colonel Weinberg's that the evacuation of the camp took almost two months instead of one day. I suppose he was among the very first American military officers who saw the Chinese Communist tactics of harassment and destruction which began in our area almost as soon as the Japanese surrendered in the field, and were going full speed while the world was celebrating glorious victory that in no time at all was destined to turn into a tragic failure. The Japanese surrendered on August 14, 1945; the Communists began open warfare against their own government within the month.

He figured he could evacuate the entire camp in three trains in one day. He believed, of course, that he would have all the rolling stock he needed and could commandeer as much more as was required when he called for it. A few of us who were more familiar with the state of the Chinese railways at this point and anticipated less than 100 per cent co-operation from the Communists remarked that it was not a question of how many cars and trains he needed but how many would be left. But the colonel, I am sure, marked us down as chronic pessimists whose morale had been undermined by our long imprisonment. Besides, we were foreigners who had lived so many years in the slower-moving Orient that he could be excused for thinking we would not understand the swift efficiency of American methods.

But whereas before this Colonel Weinberg had been in such a hurry that we had had to slow him down, now, because of the emergence of what seemed to him manifold complications, he was proceeding with such caution and method that we knew he could never get the camp cleared in the fifteen days the Communist general had allowed us.

We were in a poor position to argue with him now about the necessity for hurry, and since he didn't know the Communists and their methods as we did, he paid no attention

Here, then, in September 1945, was ample, demonstrable proof that the Communists were destroying government property wilfully and that the whole promise of collaboration was, and always had been a farce.

The war with Japan was over now; they could no longer hide behind that to create havoc and commit crime. So they came out into the open. And along with the open warfare went the propaganda. All the wheels began to turn furiously to put over the idea that the Chinese Communists were just simple, patriotic "agrarian reformers" intent on rescuing the Chinese people from their "evil and corrupt government." To a war-weary world which had defeated the Fascist enemies in Europe and the Pacific, the "civil war" between the Chinese Communists and the Chinese Nationalists was a family fight which the average Allied soldier and sailor believed was no business of his All he wanted to do was go home and get on with his life, return to his job and his family. This normal natural clesired was exploited to the fullest by the Red propagandists. As time and the tragic facts have since revealed, they had their agents everywhere, steaming up the "we-want-to-go-home" movement.

It was good to be able to move about freely again, and I made Peiping my base now because my bishop had asked me to remain there and help take care of the refugees

#### A Review of Recent Events

In September the Russians had taken Manchuria (in violation of the August 14 Sino-Soviet treaty pledges) and formed a common front with the rebel Chinese Communist government, which they had never abandoned in spite of their pledges to Chiang Kai-shek.

In October the Chinese Communists had triumphed over the American Admiral Daniel E. Barbey, at Chefoo. Then Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai broke off the peace talks which were being conducted with Chiang Kai-shek for the National Government and departed from Chungking.

a conference with Soviet representatives ashore and after viewing several thousand Chinese Communist troops digging trenches under Russian protection. His launch was fired on by Communist riflemen in Hulutao, and he was forced to retreat from that Manchurian port. The Russians were occupying Manchuria's two main ports, Daire and Port Arthur, thanks to the Yalta agreement. Little by little we heard of all these portentous incidents and delaying tactics which made it necessary for the Chinese Nationalist forces to undertake a long march north to Manchuria, only to find it occupied by Chinese Communist forces armed by Russians and in prepared positions.

It was on December 11 that Generalissimo and Madar Chiang Kai-shek arrived in Peiping for a ten-day visit. They came back to this lovely, ancient city for the first time in ten years, and their triumphant return was symbols of the victory over Japan. The people of Peiping who had suffered so much under the eight long years of occupation and oppression cheered the Generalissimo in a gay, colour ful parade through the streets to the east section of the city where his aides had prepared a house for him.

The Generalissimo was staying in a house which had been occupied formerly by the Chinese puppet head of the city. He had been arrested when the Japanese surrendered and the house had been taken over by the government as an official residence. It was an ugly stucco house, with no more integrity architecturally than its former puppet tenant had had personally. They had chosen it for the Generalissimo, Mr Shen said as we came upon it after turning into a small hutung off a main street, because it

1 Mr Shen is currently the Chinese Nationalist Government's official Spokesman in Formosa.

was in a quiet section, easily guarded, and quite comfortable inside for working and living.

It was eleven o'clock when we were shown inside, and the house was comfortable and spacious, as Mr Shen had said. The Generalissimo was in a military conference and had left word for me, begging my indulgence while he finished this essential business. Mr Shen and I talked while we waited, exchanging experiences, he of wartime Chungking, I of my own life under the Communists in Hopeh Province and my two and a half years in the Weihsien concentration camp. Presently an aide came in and told us the Generalissimo had finished his conference, and Mr Shen and I followed him down a corridor and into a big room overlooking the front gardens and the hutung.

Mr Shen presented me to the Generalissimo, who shook hands with me warmly and drew out a chair for me. Although his features were all familiar to me, on this my first meeting with him, I saw details not readily apparent in his photographs: a tenacious strength of purpose and will, high lights of humour, a simplicity that is neither ascetic nor austere but composed of elements of each in the proportions his life had prescribed. He wore the chung shen fu, or Sun Yat-sen uniform, without a single military decoration. This is a plain uniform, half foreign, half Chinese, Western-style trousers and Chinese-style coat with high hooked collar. This was made of some dark, coarse khaki cloth.

#### The Generalissimo Pays a Tribute

The Generalissimo served tea immediately. As a rule, he told me, he doesn't drink tea, just hot water. The big room was quiet, and in contrast with all the Communia headquarters I had been in, dignity and orderliness reigned there, and old-fashioned Chinese politeness; there was not a trace of the roughness, the blatant military quality that pervade every Red headquarters. I have never seen a Red general who was not always flanked by his guards and his guns, his political commissar and his guards and their guns.

The Generalissimo began by thanking me for what I

had done during the war for China.

"I have heard of your work from many persons," he said. "And I am grateful for the work Father Lebbe did," he went on, adding with the most profound feeling, "he sacrificed his life for my country and my people." I couldn's speak for a moment and the Generalissimo was silent, too, thinking as I was, of that noble old man who had been my inspiration from my boyhood in Belgium, my mentor and guide and friend.

I would have told the Generalissimo a little of this,

"We have a hard time ahead of us in China," he said, "Many people think that this victory has brought real peace, I hope so," he said, and I echoed his hope.

"But there is a big obstacle ahead of us," he went on.
"A big obstacle." We exchanged glances of understanding.

"Yes, reconstruction is going to be difficult because we will have to meet and overcome the obstacle somehow, some way. To rebuild China I shall need the collaboration and help of all."

The Generalissimo was silent for a second, and I reflected on how he had put the least shade of emphasis on "all". I hoped with all my heart that a miracle would give him what he needed; that the great strength of the United States of America, the courage and idealism of her people would be matched with wisdom and sagacity in the mediations that would begin soon.

In the half-hour or more that we talked and visited, neither the Generalissimo nor I mentioned the word "Communist" or "communism". We didn't have to, really, for I knew what he meant when he said "obstacle", and he knew that I knew. It was obvious that the Generalissimo would have considered it tactless to a degree to discuss the Communists with me or any foreigner, European or American, when General Marshall was en route to China to try to bring about collaboration between them and the National Government, a result that Chiang Kai-shek must have known was doomed but which he would strive for so long as the United States thought there was hope.

He brought the conversation back to Father Lebbe.

He meant my friends also, of course. In the Chinese way, he spoke of the elder man only but included me and my followers, assuming, as a matter of course, and correctly, that the aims of one would be the aims of all. Father Lebbe was a Chinese national hero and had an enormous following, for he had lived in China nearly forty years and had travelled the country from one end to the other, on foot, muleback, by sedan chair, any means that would take him. And he was known and admired from one end of China to the other. His followers and friends were not just the men and women of his own faith, but Protestants and pagans who respected and loved him for himself.

The Generalissimo smiled and thanked me. He was touched and pleased and, characteristically, he became instantly practical and asked me what I thought might be done first in the rehabilitation of the country. He settled himself to listen with the utmost attention, and I leaned forward in my own earnestness to convey my ideas to him.

"There are two main courses to be followed, I believe," I told him, "one among the intellectuals, the other among the farmers. And there should be further improvement of agricultural and organized help for the farmer."

#### A Model Farm

selves on the brothers' land the fine results of the newer methods.

I explained that the model farm was the development of an experiment we had tried at An Kwo. We had brought in some foreign advisers who had had excellent experience with modern farming methods, and they tried to teach the peasants in the area the value of chemical fertilizers, improved new seeds, and many other innovations. We met great resistance, however.

"It is not that the Chinese are so conservative as that they are *practical*," the Generalissimo said smiling.

"That is what I discovered," I replied. "They came to me and said, 'These new ways of yours are interesting, Father, and they seem good, but the way we plant and cultivate our land now we are sure of our crops. If we try the new way and fail, we'll all starve."

"What did you do? How did you convince them?" he

"Did you grow any other crops for demonstration purposes?"

"We can accomplish everything if we all work," he said as I took my departure, "and if we can overcome the obstacle. It is important that we do not underrate its strength—or its ramifications."

#### Even the Intellectuals Got Fooled

But everywhere in Peiping, among the intellectuals especially, the "obstacle" was not understood. Its power and strength was two-thirds concealed, like an iceberg, and the portion that one saw on the surface was a glittering negation that anything dangerous could lie beneath so pure and bright a face. It was about this time that I received an invitation to dinner from Mr Robin Strong, a member of the American Board Mission in China, stationed in Peiping. Mr Strong had been in concentration camp with me for six months until he and his wife and their infant child had been repatriated and gone home on the Gripsholm. He had come back to China and his old job as soon as the war was over. Often in camp we had talked about the Communist situation in China, and he knew that I had had a long experience with the Chinese Reds.

When he telephoned to ask me to come to dinner, he said his aunt, a journalist and author, was coming to China and would be staying with them at the mission for a few days.

"There's been an incident," Mr Strong said.

Chinese Communists had ambushed American marines between Peiping and Tientsin. The Americans at the dinner were indignant over the incident and amazed, too, that the Communists would allow anything like this to happen while the Marshall mission was in Peiping and mediations were going on.

Miss Strong was the guest of honour, and after the usual generalities one of the colonels asked her why she had come to China. It was plain that he had a natural curiosity and concern, because very few travellers and no tourists were being allowed into China. Travel between the States and the Pacific areas was still mostly under military supervision, and only persons who could prove they had pressing legitimate business could get passports and transportation.

"I am disgusted with what I've been seeing and hearing in the States," she said, slicing into her meat with a vipour that threatened the plate. "The American people believe Chiang Kai-shek won the war, when any informed, intelligent person knows it was the Communists!"

Miss Strong looked up from her plate and fixed Colonel

Kight with a withering glance.

"I said it was the Communists who won the war," she repeated with sharp emphasis, and launched into a long discourse about the "glorious" exploits of the "agrarian reformers".

"My book will prove the Chinese Communists won the war", she finished triumphantly. "I'm on my way to Yenan now to get the material for it."

Colonel Kight turned to me.

"Father de Jaegher, I understand you've had some personal experiences with the Chinese Communists. Do you agree with Miss Strong?"

"How long was it you lived among the Reds, Father?

Was it five years?"

and said, smiling disarmingly, "Father has lived among the Reds for six years. Don't you think, perhaps, he may know more about them than we do? After all, most of our knowledge has come from newspapers and hearsay."

What Colonel Kight was indicating so diplomatically was quite true, that the intellectuals' source of information very often was only the extremely effective Communist propaganda.

Miss Strong, however, was so insistent that the Chinese Reds had won the war that I had to answer her.

She was not convinced on any point, I could see. As a matter of fact, she was angry; and when the dinner party broke up later, she shook hands with all the others but ignored me quite pointedly.

She left Peiping for Yenan soon afterwards in an American plane, and I had almost forgotten about her until I came to America. In the months that I was studying the methods, the Communists had used to influence American opinion in those fateful first years after the victory, I came upon a speech made on the floor of the Senate by William F. Knowland of California on September 26, 1949. In this long documented review of American policy in China in those years, Senator Knowland introduced a letter and a memorandum written on the letterhead of the Communist party of

The Congressional Library in Washington shows that this book was published in New York in 1948 by the Committee for a Democratic Far Eastern Policy, an organization listed by the United States Attorney General as a Communist "front" group in a letter from Attorney General Tom Clark to the Loyalty Review Board, released April 27, 1949. The California Committee on Un-American Activities in its 1948 report, page 198, says: "The Communist party line shifted after V-J Day and Communist fronts started pressure on the administration in reference to its foreign policy in Clina in order to clear the way for Soviet expansion. A 'new front' in this field is the Committee for a Domocratic Far Eastern Policy."

Indeed, a major task of the Cominform at that time was to see to it that all pro-Communist writings about China were not only published but favourably, even extravagantly,

reviewed and widely read; and, conversely, that anything critical of China's Communists or tending in any way to show their ties to Moscow and the true nature of their aims in China was ridiculed, the writer vilified, and the work condemned as "fascist" and "reactionary". The log-rolling technique of the Reds, on behalf of the writers who deliberately or ignorantly followed the Communist party line, was as effective in selling their works to the public as their smearing tactics were useful in burying the writings of the courageous and well-informed minority.

The last four months of 1945, after V-J Day, set the course in Asia. Like the all-enveloping yellow fog of a dust storm from the Gobi, conspiracy and confusion, deceit and trickery settled in one heavy layer after another on that dearly bought and shining victory, dimming its brightness even as the desert dust dulls the golden tiles on the upturned roofs of Peiping. It was a victory that was doomed to fail.

#### CHAPTER XX

#### FAILURE OF THE MARSHALL MISSION

IN NOVEMBER 1945, it became known in Shanghai that General George Catlett Marshall, former United States Chief of Staff, would come to China as President Truman's special ambassador. His mission would be that of mediator—to bring peace to this vast land which yearned for it and needed it so desperately. The general arrived at the Kiang-wan airport in Shanghai in December, and all along the route from the airport to his quarters in the luxurious Cathay Hotel on Hanking Road, near the Bound, he was cheered to the echo. The cheers and shouts of the crowds of students, shopkeepers and coolies, the plain citizens and the officials drowned out for a time the ominous murmurs and rumours that were rife in the city, that the peace following the eight-year war of resistance against the Japanese was already lost.

No self-respecting government would yield to this kind of blackmail. Naturally, the Chinese Government didn't. It must have been a foregone conclusion to the Russians, too, because they were prepared and fell instantly upon the

factories and arsenals, the mines and the mills of this great rich area like packs of wolves on defenceless prey. They ripped out installations, carted off whole factories, dismattled mills piece by piece, and with lightning speed looted the area of \\$800,000,000 worth of industrial equipment. Huge amounts of arms which they captured from the Japanese they handed over to the Chinese Communists, whom they had not only "allowed" to enter but had welcomed heartily, since they apparently had had their orders from Moscow to be there for just this expected contingency. When the Red Army finally withdrew in their own time, the Chinese Communists were in possession of Manchuria and enough captured arms to hold the territory.

Westerners may wonder, perhaps, that this outrage could be committed without general knowledge and widespread indignation. China is so vast, Manchuria so removed from contact with the outside, that even in normal times news of events followed long after their happening. Manchuria had been in Japanese hands fourteen years; North China was largely Communist-controlled and the Communists made sure the news didn't get out. Railway lines which had been repaired after the Japanese surrender were destroyed again and again by the Communists, who were determined to hold and extend all the territory they could grab.

The Sino-Soviet Treaty plainly stated that Russian troops in Manchuria must be withdrawn by November 14, at the latest. But November and December passed without any slightest indication from the Russians that they intended to comply with repeated Chinese-American attempts to furnish information on their actions and intentions. Moscow would not discuss Manchuria with Chungking or Washington. The rumours of looting increased daily, however, and so did the concern for this territory and the apprehension about what might be found there when, as, and if the Reds condescended to let Chinese or American representatives in for a look. There were National Government military officers

and observers in Chinchow, a Chinese border town about two hundred miles south of Mukden, and some news and more rumours filtered through, but the extent of the Russian looting of Manchuria was not generally known until impatient American and British newspaper correspondents tired of waiting for permission to enter and went North on their own. They had nobody's permission, but they had the silent blessing of Chinese and American officials. They brought back stories of the Russian occupation, of terrorism of the population, of the wholesale destruction of property and removal of machinery and supplies, and of Russian and Chinese Communist co-operation.

#### The Charming Chou En-lai

General Marshall proceeded to Chungking, where he met with the Generalissimo and with Chou En-lai, representing the Chinese Communist party. The intelligence and charm of the Communist, long a legend among his friends and foes, were not lost on General Marshall who, apparently, from the first, never really understood the true nature of communism or the dualism of Communists like Chou En-lai who can assume at will whatever intellectual posture the exigencies of the moment demand. In fact, the tragedy of the Marshall mission was that so many of the policy makers either deliberately or unconsciously regarded the Chinese Communists as true "liberals" and "agrarian reformers" interested only in bringing "democracy" to China. As a matter of fact, included as part of General Marshall's instructions was a memo to the United States War Department from

In Chungking, General Marshall arranged a truce between the two warring Chinese elements, and a Committee of Three was set up consisting of a representative of the Chinese National Government, one from the Communists, and an American. The order for the cessation of hostilities was signed on January 10, 1946, and called for the immediate establishment of an executive headquarters in Peiping for the purpose of carrying out the cease-fire agreements. Mr Walter Robertson, American charge d'affairs, was appointed American commissioner of the headquarters, General Cheng Kai-min represented the National Government, and General Yeh Chien-ying the Communists. There was an Operations Section under Brigadier General Henry A. Byroade, and the general gave the Chinese an object lesson in American efficiency. He went to Peiping on January 11 to set up the headquarters, and he had it functioning on January 14.

The Operations Section began to organize truce terms composed of one representative of each of the three branches which were to be flown in American planes to areas of conflict or threatened conflict to halt or prevent hostilities. Each representative had equal powers of dicision, and all questions had to be settled back in headquarters by the unanimous consent of the Committee of Three.

Chou En-lai had seemed to be "dragging his feet" on the integration of the armies, the general opined. He had concluded then, he went on, the Communist's slowness might have been due to the fact that Chou was fearful of "losing face" by having comparison made between the smartly uniformed, well-equipped, American-trained Chinese Nationalist soldiers and his raggle-taggle Chinese Communist troops. General Marshall, once this notion had seized him, had figured out a way to protect the pride and sensibilities of Chou En-lai, which he assumed where in danger of painful and damaging laceration. He had told Chou En-lai, he said, that the United States might establish and conduct a school at Kalgan for training Communist staff officers. The

American officers would not only teach American military staff methods to higher-echelon Communist officers, the general told the quartet of correspondents, but they would also instruct them in the use of American weapons. Obviously they would have to be furnished with some such weapons if they were to learn how to use them.

An interesting coincidence that went unremarked until the story came out was that the reluctant Chou En-lai had signed the agreement for the integration of the armies on February 28, directly after General Marshall had proposed the establishment of the military training school for the Communists. After General Marshall told the four correspondents how he had "won over" Chou En-lai, one of the correspondents, who was either unwilling to be bound by any off-the-record considerations or had honestly not understood the general's prohibition, cabled the story home to his paper. For some reason, however, the "little West Point" for the Communists was never set up, although the American colonels who were to staff it began arriving every day in Peiping until by early summer there were at least thirty of them installed in a wing of Executive Headquarters.

The headquarters occupied three floors of the Rocke-feller-endowed Peiping Union Medical College, the famous hospital-school which through the years has meant so much to China. The Japanese had occupied it during the war as a military hospital, but since they had stripped it of most of its equipment and supplies, a vast amount of repairs had to be done and great quantities of new equipment and supplies put in before it could be operated as a hospital unit. The modern buildings, however, were the most suitable in Peiping for the work of the Marshall mission headquarters. The American branch occupied the first floor, the Communists were on the second floor, and the Nationalists on the thir 1.

When the colonels began to arrive in Peiping en route to Kalgan to teach the Communists American methods, they had not expected to linger long. But as their numbers in-

The truce teams began to run into trouble almost at once. The American officers soon learned that the work of the teams in the field could be hampered and investigations actually blocked when one Chinese member of the team vetoed any proposal which might be disadvantageous to his side. The United States proposed a revision of the requirement of unanimity in order to break these deadlocks. The Chinese Government agreed to this, but the Chinese Communists said no.

There were many incidents in the field, too, as the teams moved about through the countryside. In at least two instances, officially noted, Chinese Communist forces fired on and killed Chinese Government team members and in another case the United States member of a field team was wounded by a Communist sniper's bullet.

#### The Reds get "Marshall aid"

18, he exerted pressure on Chiang Kai-shek to cease fire and let the Communists keep the part of Manchuria they then occupied.

The Chinese Nationalist forces, after months of waiting in Chinchow on the borders of Manchuria for the Russians to live up to their pledges and get out, had moved into their own territory, only to find they had to fight the Chinese Communists to recover it for the country. Their victorious offensive was halted when Chiang Kai-shek yielded to General Marshall's pressure.

The general's action, coming almost immediately upon his return from the States, brought consternation to informed persons who understood, of course, that he was carrying out official United States policy. What made this policy and his actions incomprehensible at the time was the almost daily revelation of Chinese Communist trickery.

One particularly shocking instance came to light in a dispatch from Mukden dated May 6, 1946. In it George Weller, correspondent of the Chicago Daily News, revealed a secret agreement between the Soviet high command and the Chinese Communists pledging five thousand Russian men and officers to help the Communists fight the Nationalists, and obligating the Chinese Communists to subordinate their army to the Russian command. The date on this document was January 19, 1946, just nine days after the Communists had signed their truce agreement in Chunking.

The Communists were able to make great headway during the period of the Marshall mission and to lay the foundation for their subsequent take-over of China because they were officially recognized enjoying equal status in the Executive Headquarters with the government representatives and with the Americans. They worked especially hard to influence American army officers, inviting them to parties continuously and talking always against the Nationalists. One of the American colonels who had been singled out for special

1 The China Story, by Freda Utley (Regenery, 1951).

attention, much to his amusement, since he saw through them, kept me informed about their manoeuvrings and machinations. I had told him of my experiences with them in Hopeh, and he urged me to see General Marshall and give him a full account of those six years. I was reluctant to press myself forward, but the colonel convinced me that my information would be welcome, and I went next day to the Executive Headquarters to try to make an appointment to see General Marshall.

I talked at length to Captain Jimmy Grant whose brother, Buddy Grant, had been in concentration camp with me in Weihsien. The Grants were sons of a famous PUMC doctor, a specialist in tropical diseases, and they were real old China hands. They both spoke Chinese fluently and were at home anywhere in North China.

I went away and spent some time assembling notes I thought would be of particular interest to the general while I waited to hear from Captain Grant. Two or three days passed and I heard nothing. Then I read in the newspaper that General Marshall was leaving Peiping soon. I decided to visit headquarters and see what had happened to the appointment.

#### The Spy Who Knew too Much

Captain Grant was at headquarters, and I learned that he had been sent to Mukden on an emergency mission within an hour or so after I had seen him earlier in the week. He had just had time to catch the plane after getting his orders and had had no time at all to send any word to

me. I was shown into the anteroom to General Marshall's offices. There I found a Chinese civilian, brusque and discourteous in his manner, with nothing of the usual Chinese traditionalism about him and all the ear-marks of uncivility and rudeness that characterize the Chinese Communist, especially one who has wormed himself into an important post. But apparently he was the man I had to deal with here, so I told him that Captain Grant had intended to make an appointment for me to see General Marshall but had been called away so hurriedly he had been unable to do it. On the other hand, I explained, he may have made the appointment and been unable to get word to me about it. I'd like to see the general before he left Peiping, I told him, at the general's convenience, of course.

The Chinese looked me over with curling lip and patronizing air.

"The general is very busy. He won't be able to see you," he said with the faintest shade of contempt on the you. "Besides," he added, "he knows whatever it is that you think you can tell him!"

This gratuitous observation made me quite angry.

He made a sarcastic rejoinder and we had a small argument, but I soon saw that he had no intention of checking on any appointment Captain Grant may have made for me or making any slightest effort in my behalf. I made no further attempt to see General Marshall at this time, since he was leaving Peiping almost at once.

Generally it was easy to see any American official, something I had learned in my pleasant contacts after I had come to Peiping from concentration camp and had had to deal almost exclusively with them in my refugee work. I found it hard to understand the officiousness of this Chinese civilian in the American offices of the headquarters, even assuming he

was a Communist, until sometime afterwards when I mentioned it to the charming and distinguished commissioner, Mr Walter Robertson, the No. 1 American in Peiping. It was at a reception given by the Chinese Cardinal Tien, who had just been made Archbishop of Peiping and had come to take up his residence there. The Archbishop was new to the city; I had helped him with the guest list of foreign and Chinese officials and residents whom he wanted to greet. Mr Robertson and I found a quiet corner removed from the press of guests and had a long talk. He, too, was greatly interested in my experiences with the Communists and said earnestly, "You know, you should see General Marshall." It was then that I told him of my earlier efforts in that direction. Mr Robertson frowned and shook his head.

"I have had many complaints from others along these same lines—other persons who have had the same experience that you had, Father," he said. "Perhaps some of the staff around General Marshall are deliberately keeping certain persons from seeing him."

We did not pursue the discussion further because it was obvious that Mr Robertson was distressed by my story and its implications; and of course it is well known by this time that General Marshall's most important Chinese staff member, his translator and general secretary for all Chinese matters, was the Chinese Communist Ching Nu-chi, a returned student from Chicago. Ching wrote a book which was published by the New People's Publishing Company in Hong Kong in April 1949. It was titled Secret Report on the United States-Chiang Kai-shek Conspiracy.

I had fled from Communist China earlier that year and had taken temporary refuge in Hong Kong, and it was while I was there that I read this book in the original Chinese. After I arrived in the United States early in 1950 I received one day a copy of California Senator William F. Knowland's speech on American policy in China which he

delivered in the Senate on September 26, 1949, and had incorporated the Congregational Record for that date. In that speech Senator Knowland told his fellow members of the United States Senate and the American people that he had proof of the basic change which took place in the American anti-Communist policy in China at the December 16-26, 1945 Moscow Conference. He had found the missing link in his chain of proof of the change in Ching Nu-chi's book, he said. He showed the senators a photostatic copy of the booklet I had read earlier. Senator Knowland described the document as "the Chinese equivalent of the Hiss-Chambers 'pumpkin papers'", which, he added, "have baffled and greatly concerned the people of the United States." He continued:

Appendix I of this booklet contains the top-secret memorandum C.62-7, 10 November 1945, from Wedemeyer to Chiang Kai-shek. This is the message General Wedemeyer was delivering to China. Wedemeyer, having recently gone to the United States for a conference with the President, with the Secretary of State, and with the General Staff, is coming back and is making his call upon the President of China, a friendly ally, and this is what he says:

"Conference with the President.

"C. He guarantees to continue to support you and the Nationalist Government."

Now here is a vital piece of information. For the first time there is disclosed to me, as a United States senator, the fact that as late as November 10, 1945, after Word War II had ended, the present President of the United States (Truman) had sent a message to Chiang Kai-shek in which "the guarantees to continue to support you and the Nationalist Government". That is a piedge with no reservations.

It is a vital piece of information that should have been included in the China White Paper if the American Congress and the country were to be dealt with frankly. Or was the White Paper only meant to whitewash the State Department's record of tragic error?

He, like other Chinese Communists working secretly and in the open, had had fair notice, from the United States policy announced in December 1945, that the Chinese Communists could go on with the civil war with all the advantages they had recently gained and without immediate fear of equal gains for the Kuomintang. For it was on December 15 that President Truman had made a public statement insisting on a "fair and effective representation" for the Chinese Communists in a coalition government. Coalition to a Communist does not mean fusion into a whole, or even a temporary combination between parties. It means an opportunity to infiltrate and invade and eventually to take over completely, destroying all free and democratic elements and creating an iron totalitarianism.

Consider, for instance, the way the Communists behaved when UNRRA came to China. It was the Chinese National Government that was the signatory to the United Nations pact and a member nation, but there was no thought of withholding UNRRA supplies from people in the Communist areas of China, or of inquiring whether they were Communists or not before giving them the supplies that were so urgently needed in the relief and rehabilitation programme.

The Chinese felt that more good could be accomplished faster by a combination of Chinese, Americans, and United Nations, so UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) became, in China, CNRRA (Chinese Relief, etc.).

A few clergymen of all denominations, Protestant and Catholic missionaries, all foreigners, and some Chinese converts to Christianity, as well as many Chinese elergymen, joined UNRRA and CNRRA. The Communist CLARA would not accept any of these men, passing them off with various excuses, and made certain that their organization was kept entirely Communist.

One of these Chinese ministers, however, was sent by the parent organization into central Hopeh to make a survey for UNRRA. He returned to headquarters with the

When the two men came to the border of the area the CLARA representative said he had to have a little talk with the UNRRA man.

"What about?" asked the UNRRA man.

"You must tell all the people who will receive these supplies from us that all these fine goods come to them only from the Soviet Union."

"Why must I tell them that?" the non-Communist objected.

"Why?" repeated the Communist, "Because the Soviet Union is a member of the United Nations. UNRRA is a United Nations organization. Therefore, Russia is the supplier of these goods."

The UNRRA man objected to this dialectic sophistry. His Communist companion tried to make it perfectly plain that it wasn't healthy to argue with a comrade. The UNRRA official was clever and after some moments he shrugged and appeared to accept the inevitable. The Communist then went about the district, rounding up the people for a big speech on the origin of the blessings they were about to receive. At the appointed time the people assembled near the sheds where the goods had been unloaded and were invited by the clever-talking UNRRA Chinese to inspect this largesse from their foreign friends.

Just because these goods are stamped 'Made in America' it does not mean the goods come from America. No indeed. They come from Soviet Russia, a country always greatly concerned about the people."

Here he raised his eyes to heaven, unobserved by the gratified, smiling CLARA man, and repeated this with sarcastic emphasis not lost on the people although, happily for him, its true meaning was not understood by the uneducated Communist. The people understood well what the speaker was trying to tell them. They were Chinese who had lived under the Communists all through the war years and they had reason to know to their sorrow just how little concerned the Communists were about them, and they could read in the devious talk of the UNRRA man exactly what he intended to tell them.

This kind of things went on all the time, with the Communists resorting to every trick and device to torpedo all the honest efforts being made to bring peace to their unhappy country.

It will be remembered that they gave notice on April 15, 1946, of a state of war in Manchuria and that General Marshall, on his return to China from the States of April 18, had put pressure on Chiang Kai-shek to let the Communists keep the territory they then occupied there, and that Chiang once more, with victory in sight, had yielded. General Marshall persisted in his efforts for a domestic peace until early in 1947, and so indeed did Chiang Kai-shek. It was the Communists who were the stumbling blocks. They talked peace to the world and waged war even as they pretended to negotiate honestly.

#### CHAPTER XXI

#### ESCAPE FROM CHINA

WHILE I was working among the refugees in Peiping I was trying desperately but ineffectually to better our economic situation in An Kwo. Our central mission, twice pillaged by the Japanese, was entirely overrun by the Communists when the Japanese surrendered, and from past experience I knew how difficult it was to get anything back from the Reds once they had taken possession.

Very little is known about Dr Hatem since he concealed his identity for a long time behind his Chinese name. Early in the war a Polish woman, Ilona Ralf Sues, visited Yenan and became an apologist for the Communists in her book, Shark's Fins and Millet, published in 1944. In it she recounts some details of her meeting with Communist leaders in Yenan, Mao Tse-tung, Chou En-lai, and others, including Dr Hatem.

"People dropped in from the various departments," she says, "to have a talk and help us with our schedule. One of the very first was Dr Ma Hai-teh, a foreigner, notwith-standing this Chinese name. He was a man in his thirties, not tall but mascular, and bent slightly forward when he walked, as though headed against a storm. He had an energetic, handsome tanned face and deep-set, kindly forget-me-not eyes under fierce black and shaggy brows. He -poke English like an American, French like a Frenchman, Chinese like a native, and some Near Eastern languages. To our puzzled question he replied with a smile that we could take him for an American Turk or a Syrian Yankee, but that—like Lohengrin—he would prefer that we did not ask whence he came or what his real name was. 'I was a young good-for-nothing until I came to the Eighth Route (Army),' he told me once...

"'You have the run of the place,' he advised us. 'You can do and see and photograph everything you like, except three things: take no photo of any landscape because it might inadvertently fall into enemy hands; and take no photo of me and Li Teh. We put you on your honour.'"

Dr Hatem is a curious case. He is an American physician from Greenville, North Carolina, the son of American-Cyrian parents. He was on a world tour in 1937 and stopped off in China, going almost directly into the interior, where he settled right in with the Communists,

Dr Hatem was in Kalgan in the spring of 1946 when a group of American correspondents went there to interview my old Communist acquaintance, General Nieh Jungcheng, commander of the Chahar-Hopeh-Shansi border regions.

The Soviet Air Force had bombed Kalgan on August 15, the day after the Japanese surrender, and on August 23 the Chinese Communist Eighth Route Army entered the city, creating such chaos that the Mongol and Russian forces chased them out temporarily. The Russians were busy dismantling the arsenal and factories and removing large stocks of Japanese ammunition and they wanted no interference with that important activity. But after the Russians left in November the Eighth Route Army returned and the Communists began to rebuild Kalgan as their provisional capital.

#### Forcing the Missionaries to Leave

The mission at An Kwo, with its bishopric, seminary, and orphanage, as well as its monasteries and convents housing Christian brothers, seminarians, and nuns, numbered about 270 persons. The seventy acres we owned, therefore, were totally inadequate under Communist regulations to support us. In order to prevent our getting additional land the Communists declared we were all parasites, except our few orphans; and as our lands were greater in extent than the orphans themselves were entitled to own, the Reds confiscated the rest. This was the method by which they seized most mission property. Another favourite method they used to smash the missions was to assert that the salaries paid were inadequate. They fixed a wage scale and then tabulated the arrears owed under this formula.

They found it easy to prove that tax exemptions granted at the end of the Boxer Rebellion were illegal, and under this formula "strict justice" required that the mission reimburse the Communist state. It was only right, they held, that interest should also be paid. To this sum they added a formidable fine and demanded immediate payment, a grand total that always exceeded by far the value of the church properties, so that it was impossible to cover their bill even with all the resources of the mission. By this means and others that were equally crafty, the Communists hoped to wreck the credit of the missionaries and wipe out their means of existence and prevent them from carrying

out their work: in a word, to force them to leave the Communist area.

It was the confiscation of our land that I discussed first with the Communist official Ku and Dr Hatem. Long before I had finished my case I knew what the answer would be.

"You are really not so badly off", Dr Hatem said. "Actually, we could suppress the Catholic faith if we wanted to. Instead, we allow you freedom of religion."

I answered this in my own way.

"A militant Communist requisitions part of our building as a matter of course," I said. "I protest to him. 'Don't we ourselves have a pressing need of these building?' I asked him. 'Certainly,' he will reply. 'But perhaps the honourable father may have noticed this revolver?'

"Of course I have noticed the revolver," I told Ku and Dr Hatem. "And in such cases," I added sarcastically, "we recognize the extreme necessity of the Communist over our own. He has the entire Red Army behind him ready to intervene. We can only rest on justice and right, those beautiful, meaningful words which impress the Communists so little. That is what you call equality?" I asked.

"But why do the fathers run away?" I asked. "And the Protestant missionaries too? Why do they leave their missions, their work, everything they've spent their lives on? There must be a reason, yes? Could that reason be the Communist armies?"

Both men admitted that yes, this might be sufficient reason for the missionaries' flight.

#### What's Five Years to a Communist?

met some years before in the headquarters of the Red General Yu Chuen-chen, who assumed all Catholics were French because he had met only French missionaries, these men, knowing only Spanish Catholic missionaries in Yenan, assumed all Catholic priests were Spaniards. Ergo, all Spanish priests were spies of Franco because he was fighting communism and the Catholic Church is against communism. This reference to Franco is especially interesting because in 1931 the Spanish Civil War was five years in the future and Franco was only another army officer.

At the instant I was thinking of challenging him he said, "It would have been quite different had they been Americans."

I couldn't help smiling at this blatant proof of the Communist wooing of the United States. It was obvious always to the experienced old hands in Peiping that the Moscow directives had ordered the Chinese Communists to use every means to impress the Americans favourably, sell them on the idea that Chinese communism was the greatest blessing ever to come to China. The line never changed during the time of the Marshall mission—curry favour with the Americans; show them the Communists are really fine, upright people. Why these two important men were wasting the line on me, I couldn't imagine, but I seized the advantage.

"And if it were a Chinese bishop? You'd show even more consideration to a Chinese, wouldn't you?" I asked.

"Of course," Dr Hatem said, a trifle too quickly.

"Then why, since the victory, do you occupy the mission of a Chinese bishop at An Kwo?"

The talks always ended like that, in complete frustration

In that part of China, so far north on the high plateau of Mongolia, the weather is already very cold in October. Kalgan lies east and a little south of Kweisui, and I went by train to Tsining, a short part of the trip, joining, a military truck caravan for the rest of the way. These trucks had come from Burma to Mongolia, almost impossible feat, but they had accomplished the impossible in their necessity. The Communists had blocked the supply line from Kalgan east to the coast, and no supplies or munitions could be got to the fighting armies of the National Govern-

1 Kweisui is two cities in one, the old city called Kweihua and the new city, about two miles to the northeast, called Suiyuan.

ment from the accessible ports and places just a short distance to the east. This convoy of eighty enormous trucks, loaded with supplies, had come from Burma to Kunming over the Burma Road, crossing the high Himalayas. Then they had toiled up over the mountain trails to Chungking in far west Szechwan Province, north to Chengtu and Sian. At Sian they were forced to make a big detour to the west and north because the Yellow River could not be crossed there, looping down to Lanchow, thence in a northeasterly direction to Kweisui. This journey of some thirty-four hundred miles or so took perhaps four or five months. Most of the way was up and down and across mountains, high, rugged, virtually impassable mountains. Frequently the drivers had to stop to break through and make their own roads, for while the southwest part of China had been developed during the Japanese war and roads built where none had been before, the saga of these eighty trucks is an extraordinary example of Chinese perseverance, ingenuity, and resourcefulness—and is a prime example of the difficulties the government met and overcame in fighting Communists even at this early stage.

It was in Tsining that I saw the convoy and heard the story. Since I could go no farther by railroad, all communications having been cut by the Communists, I called on Inspector General of the Army Huang Wei and asked his permission to travel with the convoy. He was going along to Kalgan with it himself, he told me, and readily agreed to my accompanying them. It had started to snow a while before, and the snow was coming down hard as I stood talking to the general in the great open square where the trucks were parked. This had been the centre of the city, which had been levelled and destroyed, and the trucks had been directed to this open area for greater protection. They could be guarded more easily grouped together than if they had been strung out one by one along the road.

While the general and I were talking together in the

swirling snow we heard ominous cracking and creaking noises, and even as we began to look for their source we saw the trucks sinking slowly into the ground, their great wheels dropping by inches before our startled eyes.

Instantly there were shouts and yells from everywhere and the greatest concentration of mass energy to pull the trucks out of the perilous mire. No one stopped to inquire what had caused this; everyone jumped to get the convoy moving to safety under its own power and, where that wasn't possible, to push and pull and heave and shove the trucks to firmer ground. The men who had come the thousands of miles from the steaming Burmese jungles, across the high, rugged mountains, all this long way, were not going to be defeated almost at their journey's end. In no time the entire convoy, all eighty trucks, was moved up and out along the road. When order was restored and all the sentries were posted, the tired men were rewarded with the knowledge that not one truck had been lost.

I returned with the general and the staff officers, and in the churned-up earth, sodden with snow, we saw the grisly reason for the near catastrophe. The open space which had been selected as a safe parking place was, in reality, a great mass graveyard where the ten thousand Communists killed in the nine-day battle in September had been buried in one enormous shallow grave as the Red Army retreated before General Fu's victorious troops. The soft smothering snow had caused the freshly disturbed ground to yield under the weight of the heavy trucks.

When the convoy got under way to Kalgan I had a taste of what the intrepid drivers had gone through in the long journey up from Burma. There was no suitable direct road from Tsining to Kalgan and we just ploughed on over the Mongolian hills and through the high grass on the plains. We had our worst times when we had to cross the many small streams en route. The ice was not yet frozen thick enough to support the weight of these big trucks. For-

tunately, though, the streams were shallow for the most part and could be forded, and when we couldn't ford one we got the trucks across with cables.

## Three Days to Do the Impossible

When my business in Kalgan was finished I went on horse back farther north of Siwantzu, a village whose chief importance lay in the fact that it is the centre of the diocese which bears its name and embraces the whole of northern Chahar Province. The village is the county seat of the district of Chungli and is nearly all Christian. It is the most important Christian centre in North China and the oldest, its establishment dating back about 250 years. With

the exception of one or two families, there were no wealthy men in Siwantzu and only about ten families could be regarded as "first class" or "Ta Hu", a designation for those who owned more land than the others.

I arrived in Siwantzu the last week in November and found the people living in fear. Siwantzu had been taken over by the Communists immediately after the Japanese surrender, and from the start of their occupation they began a capaign of excessive cruelty against this Chinese Christian stronghold. For fourteen months, until National Government troops arrived triumphantly from Kalgan and drove the Reds out, Siwantzu's people had not had a peaceful moment. They told me they felt they were going to have only the briefest kind of respite, because while the Communists had withdrawn they had split up into bands and were sneaking in at night, bayoneting anti-Communist villagers, brave men who had resisted all manner of tyranny and cruelty. There was a strongly held belief that the establishment of the armed militia which General Fu Tso-yi had authorized as a measure of self-defence would soon have to fight to the death.

The belief became reality all too soon. On December 6, just ten days after I left, Communist troops surrounded the village and others stationed themselves at a point half-way between Siwantzu and Kalgan on the strategic road by which the government reinforcements were expected to come. Three days after the first encirclement began the Reds launched their attack. The terrorized people fled up the mountainside, and although the thousand brave but untrained cavalrymen from the village garrison did their best, it was not enough. The invaders over took the fleeting population and herded them back as prisoners. The gallant defense of Siwantzu went on through the day despite the burning of the town, but by nightfall the systematic destruction of the village and organized massacre of all the inhabitants were well under way.

The whole district of Chungli was plundered; hundreds of soldiers and civilians were slaughtered and hundreds of others taken prisoners. The massacre and burning of this Christian centre was widely reported in China and abroad as the "bloody tragedy of Chungli," and everywhere decent people who heard the story were shocked and incredulous. But to those of us who were familiar with the pattern of Communist action, the butchery and incendiarism committed by the Communists at Siwantzu were but the logical sequel to its occupation.

Organized insurrections and uprisings of the people are planned and staged for just the right moment, and the "occasion" outside is the signal for the uprising inside the city. It always seems to be spontaneous, a true demonstration arising from the people's rightcous anger over a real grievance or injustice. Actually, the "spontaneous" uprising, has been prepared for months, years somtimes, by the Reds' secret agents.

There are two striking examples of this technique in two towns taken by the Communists. Shihchiachwang in 1947 and Tsinan, key city of Shantung Province, in 1948.

I had been in Shihchiachwang in January 1947, and when I concluded my business there I boarded a train for Tinghsien, but the train never arrived there. The Communists had fixed land mines at a point along the route. The train and rails over a long distance were wrecked and many passengers killed or wounded. The Communist programme was concentrated on destroying the lines of communication in such a way that a stretch of track out here, a locomotive

disabled there, would call for continuous patching and replacement until the National Government's none too lavish supplies in spare rails, ties, locomotives, and cars had been exhausted, and large areas of the country would be isolated from each other because the railroads could not run.

#### ... and of Isolating Their Opponents

They followed this programme undeviatingly and almost continuously, isolating one city from another and then capturing the city and its continuous territory with a sudden thrust of overwhelming strength, forcing Nationalists into a smaller and smaller area. When the train I had boarded at Chihchiachwang was blown up I noticed that all around us were the Communist fortifications. They would stand firm, but the trains on the patched-up tracks would always be under their fire at this point, as at many similar points on the route, until one day there would be no railroad going through there.

That winter of 1947 was full of depressing forbodings for me, for it seemed to me the National Government was working against time and treachery, and in their fatalistic day-to-day programme there was no guarantee that time would win over the treachery. Wherever a railroad bridge was blown that winter the Nationalists merely ran the tracks down the banks into and across the bed of the frozen river and up the banks on the other side. When the spring thaws came they would have to figure out something else. They were too harassed and busy just keeping the railroads going to take time and energy to worry about a problem still a few months off.

In February, I was in Shihchiachwang again, and again I boarded a train, this time for Taiyuan, the capital of Shansi. This train was the last one to go between these two key cities. The line had been interrupted many times before in the manner I have described, and service restored here and there, so that travel was possible if one went partly

by rail and partly by foot, but now, we were told, this was the last train that could be operated over any part of that line.

If I had been depressed before, I was full of despair now, a strange heaviness of spirit that was with me all through the month I was in Taiyuan and which grew heavier through the summer. Then in September Shihchiachwang fell, and it fell because the Reds had a deadly efficient fifth column inside the city, working on the unsuspecting people so that they would be involuntary agents of their own destruction when the Reds created the "incident" outside their walls.

The importance of all this was thoroughly understood

Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist troops took over the city and the surrounding territory from the Japanese in 1945, occupying all the country within a radius of one hundred miles. The Communists were dispersed all over the country-side, within the radius and outside it, but they sprang up again like thistles in small or large contingents, depending on how conditions favoured them. From the areas outside the radius and the farthermost points inside, they began to come together little by little; and as the Nationalists retook the area after the Japanese surrender the Communists infiltrated and captured one village and town after another. This was the period when the government troops had to be spread thinly over all China, and when Chiang's government was hard pressed to restore and maintain order in an area ravaged and depleted by eight years of intensive warfare. It was impossible for the government to keep soldiers everywhere, so the smaller cities were manned by small, tight garrisons of a thousand soldiers, say, and a few hundred local men

The Communists followed a definite plan here, too, in observing the size of a garrison and acting accordingly with action that couldn't miss. When they found a thousandman garrison they would simply organize their secret hidden forces, throw five thousand men into a quick surprise attack, and capture the city. Since the Nationalist forces were strung out all over China, they could not be marshalled and organized and moved long distances over blown-up railroads to meet these guerrilla tactics. It took time for the Generalissimo and the government to realize the situation and see the inevitable end—that they could be eaten up in small bites by the Communists and left with

#### A Communist Can Play Many Parts

Nothing was left to chance, every detail was planned and worked out. Many small cities, cut off entirely from supplies, despairing in the hollow victory after all the hardships of war, could not be blamed if they wondered bitterly why there must be continuing warfare, and not between Chinese and Japanese but between Chinese and Chinese. There was no one to tell them their Communist countrymen planned it that way. On the contrary, the Communist agents were busy continuously in these cities, propagand-

izing from day to night, extolling the benefits of Communism, painting a wonderful picture of life under the Communists, telling the people how bad the Nationalists were, piling lie on lie and promise on promise. They behaved circumspectly and even generously and gracefully as part of the act.

The noise and smell of war were never out of the people's senses, and the Reds exploited the struggle as they always had, with old basic tricks and some new ones. They kept the slightly wounded captured Nationalist soldiers, the ones who would recover and could fight again. They sent the badly wounded men back to the cities, drafting the peasants living near the fighting and making them carry the wounded men to the outskirts of the city. Too, they gave these soldiers a present of money, enough to keep a man for a month or two, and they told them this was a gift freely made in the name of justice and humanity because the Nationalists had "deceived" them. They bought the gratitude and good will of these simple men with a cynical disregard of the fact that in a month or so, when the pittance of a gift was used up, the badly wounded soldiers would become a real burden on the city and there was no way to get them back to their own family and village. That concern for the people's welfare which the Communists were always proclaiming was never enough to induce them to hospitalize a prisoner of war if he could become an instrument to achieve one small part of one small aim.

The slightly wounded prisoners they kept they educated in communism, making them earn their right to convalescence and recovery; or they returned to their homes as propagandists, especially when their native places were greatly removed from the Red areas in the North, places which had had no firsthand experience with communism and had scarcely even heard of it. These young soldiers were the advance guard of propagandists. Other slightly wounded men from neighbouring provinces and districts nearby which

"We'll give you a chance to rehabilitate yourself," the Communist officer would say, adding quickly as the men brightened eagerly, "but you must be brave and fight for us." And with no more ado they would order the wounded men into the very front lines to do the double duty of drawing Nationalist fire and wasting Nationalist bullets and eliminating themselves conveniently instead of using up Communist energies and ammunition in disposing of such non-Communist nuisances.

All these tricks and more constituted a major part of the strategy the Communists used around Shihchiachwang and in that city itself. The factories had closed down after the Japanese left, and the half million population dropped considerably. Then, as the Communists approached and began taking over the cities in the area, gradually drawing nearer Shihchiachwang, the trek of the war-weary people began again and the population was increased by 100,000 refugees.

#### The 3 Red P's: Propaganda—Panic—Plunder

The Communists had planted many agents among these refugees, and they worked first among their companions, complaining bitterly about their lot, railing against Chiang, the government, "foreign imperialism", anything that would embitter an already embittered, exhausted people. They tried to create real discontent among these refugees and they succeeded more often than not.

Then they began to work among the local troops, and these, of course, included the men who had escaped from the garrisons beaten by the Communists in earlier fighting. They spread doubt and created discontent among these men, smarting from defeat, worried about their future.

The Communist agents even responded to the government's call for local replacements and joined the National Army. They did this in large numbers in Shihchiachwang. They behaved well at first and then began their subtle undermining of government soldiers from South and Central China. It was always "What is the use of Chinese fighting Chinese?" that was the powerful opening gambit; and from that the secret agents moved quickly to make invidious comparison between the Nationalists and the Communists. They worked so skilfully that the general morale of the National Army was greatly lowered, a factor which contributed to the rapid deterioration of all the Nationalist armies once the debacle set in and the tide began to turn against them.

The strength of the opposition astonished the Communists but, as always, they had a second trench to fall back to, and they brought a military trick into play. They made a feint in the direction of Paoting and actually began to attack that city in such a way and from such a direction that it seemed they were abandoning the attack on Shihchiachwang and were concentrating on Paoting. Soon the city appeared to be in serious danger, and General Sun Lienchung, Nationalist commander in Peiping, ordered a part of the garrison at Shihchiachwang to Paoting to relieve the troops under Red fire there.

As soon as the vanguard of the Communist army had entered Shihchiachwang the Communists' fifth columnists revealed themselves and rejoined their units. The resistance continued, but the fight was a losing one and Shihchiachwang

soon fell. So effective had the propaganda been inside the city, so completely had the fifth column done its work, that before the end, when the civilians went to the Nationalist general and begged for arms to help defend their city, he could not bring himself to trust anybody and he refused to give up any arms for fear they would be used against the city. But if these anti-Communists ate bitterness, the general's tragic portion was greater—he had soon to destroy the arsenals they needed so desperately so that the arms would not be captured by the Communists and used against the people. Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek was obliged to remove General Sun from his command. More than two thousand officers and officials were on the inside of this vast Communist plot.

The fall of Shihchiachwang demonstrated with tragic clarity the importance of the city, for, with the Reds in the Middle Capital, the Nationalist troops in the west and east were isolated from each other and from their base of supplies. The Communist tactics of encirclement continued until by the end of 1947 there were only a few cities in the north still under Nationalist control. And in 1948 Tsinan, the capital and key city of Shantung Province, fell. Similar tractics, adopted to fit the somewhat different circumstances that obtained there, were used by the Reds with the same success they had had at Shihchiachwang.

#### A Judas in the Ranks

I saw Kalgan again eighteen months after I had been there when General Fu Tso-yi had entered it in triumph with the victorious government troops. It was summertime in Kalgan and I was heartsick when I saw the deterioration of the 1946 autumn victory there. When Mukden fell to the Reds in November no one doubted that it was not only a terrible blow for the government but that it was a turning point in the war between the National Government and the Chinese Reds. Mukden represented the loss of all Manchuria, and that treasure house of natural resources so necessary to the economic recovery and industrial development in China, so long denied China by Japanese exploitation, was now again in the hands of the enemy.

Into his startled ears came the voice of the Communist speaker outlining Fu's master plan for the battle, giving the names of all the participating generals, the units cach would command, the strength of the units, all the details of the strategy.

General Fu Tsoryi knew he had been betrayed by one of his closest associates, and he was almost broken by the revelation. He had to change signals at once, revise his

#### "One of You Is a Traitor!"

"There are twenty of you," he said to the generals, "and all of you have been with me, my brothers-in-arms, my trusted colleagues, through these past seventeen years. We have been linked together in our lives and careers in the service of our country since 1931; all through Japanese treachery, all through the long years of war, we have experienced setbacks and defeat and we came through everything to victory. Here you are, all men of the Thirty-fifth Army, which has had such an honourable record. And now one of you, one of my brothers, is a traitor. I have thought and thought and I cannot bring myself to name any one of you even to myself as the traitor to his country and my personal betrayer that this day has disclosed. I say to each of you now, all assembled here, examine your conscience. Think of what the guilty one has done and let him confess; or if one of you know who he is, this betrayer of me, of all of you, of his country, tell me who he is before it is too late."

"For the first time in my life I wept before others," he said. "I wept not for personal loss or grief, but for the defeat of a plan and all that the defeat meant. The papers on my desk were wet with my tears."

But the guilty man did not step forward, nor could any of the other generals speak, for they no more knew who the traitor was than their commander did. As for Fu, he could no longer trust any of the twenty generals since any one of them might be the traitor.

The danger was so greatly enhanced that he had immediate need of the American arms which had been promised to China. Time was of the essence, and General Fu decided the situation was so urgent, the danger so imminent, that the case should be presented to Vice-Admiral Oscar C. Badger commanding the United States fleet at Tsingtao, in the hope the arms could be rushed to him earlier than scheduled.

It was at this point that he sent for me. We had been friends for years, and I suffered with him as he told me the whole terrible story, omitting nothing.

"If I go myself to Admiral Badger," he said, "I must deputize one of my generals to take over in my absence, and he will be in command. If I pick the one who is the Communist traitor, all will be lost. And if I stay to protect the command, how can I decide who should go in my place? Whom shall I choose? Nineteen of my twenty generals are honourable, but one man is a traitor. How can I know how to pick the right man? If I should be so unfortunate as to pick the Communist general among us to go to see Admiral Badger for me, all my further plans and negotiations with the admiral will be made known instantly to the Communists. Will you go for me, my friend?"

I accepted at once, grieving for the general. He was no longer the strong, assured leader he had been. Some vital force had drained out of him. He briefed me on all the facts it was necessary to give the admiral, and I made the two-hour flight to Tsingtao and told him the entire story.

Admiral Badger went immediately to Nanking to consult with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, United States Ambassador Leighton Stuart, and General David Barr, head of the American advisory group in Nanking. The decision was made at once to divert the major part of the expected supplies to General Fu in the emergency.

It was all too late, though. I flew back from Tsingtan to Peiping in the admiral's plane on December 11, but we couldn't land because the two airfields there were under Communist fire. We didn't know the battle was going on until we were over the city, ready to come in. The control tower was silent and the radio operator tried Tsingtao. Headquarters there ordered us back and then we could see for ourselves where the bombs were dropping. We tried Tientsin, and the control tower there answered and told us we could proceed. I asked the Navy pilots to drop me at Tientsin. They were reluctant to let me go, urging me not to take any chances but to return with them to the American naval base a Tsingtao. I had just ten minutes to think it over. I decided to take a chance, and the pilots landed in Tientsin and were off again almost at once as soon as they had dropped me.

I tried to get to Peiping by train, but the Communists destroyed it with sixteen land mines. That was the last train. I made my way back to Tientsin from the wreck, and when I learned the airfield bombing was over I tried again to reach Peiping by plane. But no more planes were leaving, and on the third day of waiting Tientsin, too, began to be encircled by the Reds. I didn't want to be there when the Communists came in, for I had been warned I was on their "wanted" list. I managed to get a seat on the last plane to Shanghai.

## Marked for Quick Liquidation

I was in Nanking when Peiping fell on January 23, 1949, and although Peiping was now in the hands of the Reds I was cofident that Central and South China would remain free and that I could continue my work among the people in the country which was my adopted home and where I had spent almost twenty years of my life. But Nanking fell the end of April, and once more I was a passenger on one of the last planes out.

In Shanghai an old and trusted friend found me.

I asked my friend no questions. I took for granted that he was a counterespionage agent inside the Communist ranks and that God in his mercy had put the list of "traitors" and "war criminals" with my name on it in his possession. I knew I could no longer be in any district where the Communists were. And suddenly I knew too, that soon, all too tragically soon, all China would be a Communist district. I flew out of Shanghai as soon as I could get transportation. I strained my eyes as the plane roared up into the overcast for a last look at the curved roofs, the zigzag of narrow streets, the irregular pattern of this teeming city. I sensed rather than saw through the swirling dusk. The dull silvery gray of the Whangpoo River and the snaky course of Soochow Creek winding north under the Garden Bridge were the last I saw of Shanghai; and as I watched China disappear in the darkness I could think only of that gentle martyr, Father Lebbe, who was sleeping there in the country he, too, had adopted.

![](https://samisdat.in/user/pages/03.books/1967%20-%20Enemy%20Within/read/_page_328_Picture_0.jpeg?g-16018011)

Fr Raymond de Jaegher spent 19 years as a missionary in China; he lived among the Communists from 1937 to 1943; he was put into a concentration camp py the Japanese army in 1943 till the American army liberated the prisoners in 1945. Before and after this period, he had worked for the Chinese people under Communist domination, in constant threat of imprisonment and even death; finally, he was forced to leave China in 1949, being warned that he was listed by the Com-

As friend, confidant and minister of the people, Fr Jaegher has won the trust and confidence of the Chinese to such an extent that they eagerly elected him as their District Magistrate, to control half a million inhabitants in An Kwo in the Province of Hopeh in 1937, when the Nationalist Government officials fled from the district; and by a strange irony, a few years later, the Communists offered to make Fr Jaegher a Red Army General if the priest would go to their side.

Fr Jaegher does more than that. Through his personal experience and keen observation, he has provided in this book several methods of counter-attack, by means of which the battle can be carried into the camp of the enemy.

The propaganda methods of the Reds, their systems of training recruits, and forming cells are explained in vivid detail.

In spite of the grim tale to be told, the authors have through humorous incidents and a racy style, made the book so readable that you are not likely to put it down before you reach the last page.

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## Navigation

- Parent: [The Enemy Within - An Eyewitness Account Of The Communist Conquest Of China (1967) by R. J. De Jaegher & I. C. Kuhn](https://samisdat.in/books/the-enemy-within-the-communist-conquest-of-china-1967.md)