CHIANG KAI-SHEK

The collective denial of the Roosevelt administration about the reality of Chiang’s regime received a bad jolt in May when the well-known journalist Theodore White blew the lid off the Kuomintang in an article in Life. Describing the KMT as “a corrupt political clique that combines some of the worst features of Tammany Hall and the Spanish Inquisition,” he argued that it was madness to give the regime a “prolonged kiss of death” by continuing to prop it up. This was an open endorsement of what Stilwell had been saying for years. Perhaps encouraged by the new mood in the USA, from the beginning of September onwards Stilwell’s diaries became full of sombre reflections on the nature of the Kuomintang and its leader. Why were the Allies fighting the Nazis in Europe, with their one-party system, use of terror and the Gestapo, yet backing to the hilt the selfsame fascist system in China?

Why had Roosevelt never demanded a quid pro quo from Chiang for the Lend-Lease supplies that flooded into his country? The choice between the Kuomintang and the Communists was a classic “no-brainer,” the contrast between corruption, neglect, chaos, heavy taxation, hoarding, the black market and trading with the enemy on the one side, and the reduction of taxes, rent and interest and an increase in production and the standard of living on the other.

The Communists practiced what they preached; the KMT utterances were mere meaningless words. Above all, there was the personality of the generalissimo. “I have never heard Chiang Kai-shek say a single thing that indicated gratitude to the President or to our country for the help we were extending to him. Invariably, when anything was promised he would want more. Invariably he would complain about the small amount of material that was being furnished. Always complaints about the vast amount going to Britain and the trickle to China…The cure for China’s trouble is the elimination of Chiang Kai-shek.”

Even Stilwell’s promotion to de facto field marshal was problematical, for the Chinese army—or at least those portions that had not been trained at Ramgarh—was seriously deficient. On paper it contained 324 divisions plus another 60-odd specialist brigades and 89 so-called guerrilla units, which should have made it by far the most formidable army in the world. Unfortunately the paper strength masked the reality. Chinese divisions, supposed to be 10,000 men, rarely had more than 5,000, casualties were never replaced, all the officers were place men and political appointees, the troops were unpaid, unfed, sick and undernourished, training was non-existent and equipment antiquated or unserviceable, and there was no artillery, transport or medical corps worth the name.

This was to say nothing of the fact that Chiang habitually kept at least 20 divisions as reserves, facing north to deal with the Communist menace, and refused to release them to any other theatre. Above all, Chinese culture itself worked against military prowess. Taoism taught one to go with the flow, accept fate and never take risks, for if you did nothing, you couldn’t be blamed for whatever happened.

Frank McLynn, The Burma Campaign: Disaster Into Triumph, 1942 – 1945 (The Yale Library of Military History) 391-392). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

ROUSSEAU

 …Rousseau was thus, in effect, an only child, a situation he shared with many other modern intellectual leaders. But, though indulged in some ways, he emerged from childhood with a strong sense of deprivation and–perhaps his most marked personal characteristic–self-pity. Death deprived him quickly of both his father and his foster-mother. He disliked the trade of engraving to which he was apprenticed. So in 1728, aged fifteen, he ran away and became a convert to Catholicism, in order to obtain the protection of a certain Madame Françoise-Louise de Warens, who lived in Annecy. The details of Rousseau’s early career, as recorded in his Confessions, cannot be trusted. But his own letters, and the vast resources of the immense Rousseau industry, have been used to establish the salient facts. Madame de Warens lived on a French royal pension and seems to have been an agent both of the French government and of the Roman Catholic Church. Rousseau lived with her, at her expense, for the best part of fourteen years, 1728–1742. For some of this time he was her lover; there were also periods when he wandered off on his own. Until he was well into his thirties, Rousseau led a life of failure and of dependence, especially on women. He tried at least thirteen jobs, as an engraver, lackey, seminary student, musician, civil servant, farmer, tutor, cashier, music-copier, writer and private secretary. In 1743 he was given what seemed the plum post of secretary to the French Ambassador in Venice, the Comte de Montaigu. This lasted eleven months and ended in his dismissal and flight to avoid arrest by the Venetian Senate. Montaigu stated (and his version is to be preferred to Rousseau’s own) that his secretary was doomed to poverty on account of his ‘vile disposition’ and ‘unspeakable insolence’, the product of his ‘insanity’ and ‘high opinion of himself’.…

…Since Rousseau was vain, egotistical and quarrelsome, how was it that so many people were prepared to befriend him? The answer to this question brings us to the heart of his character and historical significance. Partly by accident, partly by instinct, partly by deliberate contrivance, he was the first intellectual systematically to exploit the guilt of the privileged. And he did it, moreover, in an entirely new way, by the systematic cult of rudeness. He was the prototype of that characteristic figure of the modern age, the Angry Young Man. By nature he was not anti-social. Indeed from an early age he wished to shine in society. In particular he wanted the smiles of society women. ‘Seamstresses,’ he wrote, ‘chambermaids, shopgirls did not tempt me. I needed young ladies.’ But he was an obvious and ineradicable provincial, in many ways boorish, ill-bred. His initial attempts to break into society, in the 1740s, by playing society’s own game, were complete failures; his first play for the favours of a married society woman was a humiliating disaster. However, after the success of his essay revealed to him the rich rewards for playing the card of Nature, he reversed his tactics. Instead of trying to conceal his boorishness, he emphasized it. He made a virtue of it. And the strategy worked. It was already customary among the better-educated of the French nobility, who were being made to feel increasingly uneasy by the ancient system of class privilege, to cultivate writers as talismans to ward off evil. The contemporary social critic, C.P. Duclos, wrote: ‘Among the grandees, even those who do not really like intellectuals pretend to do so because it is the fashion.’ Most writers, thus patronized, sought to ape their betters. By doing the reverse, Rousseau became a much more interesting, and so desirable, visitor to their salons, a brilliant, highly intelligent Brute of Nature or ‘Bear’, as they liked to call him. He deliberately stressed sentiment as opposed to convention, the impulse of the heart rather than manners. ‘My sentiments,’ he said, ‘are such that they must not be disguised. They dispense me from being polite.’ He admitted he was ‘uncouth, unpleasant and rude on principle. I do not care twopence for your courtiers. I am a barbarian.’ Or again: ‘I have things in my heart which absolve me from being good-mannered.’

Paul Johnson, Intellectuals (5-6; 11-12). HarperCollins e-books. Kindle Edition.

WILLIAM SLIM

On 20 May [General William] Slim handed over all his troops to 4 Corps and the old Burma Corps ceased to exist. He said goodbye to his close friends Scott and Cowan and then took an emotional farewell of his troops, receiving an accolade that would have heartened a Marlborough or a Wellington and induced in him the irrational feeling that he was deserting them. As he said: ‘To be cheered by troops whom you have led to victory is grand and exhilarating. To be cheered by the gaunt remnants of those whom you have led only in defeat, withdrawal, and disaster, is infinitely moving—and humbling.’ Already Slim had won hearts and minds by his common touch, his utter simplicity and his complete lack of pretension and humbug. With a deep understanding of human nature, he possessed in abundance common sense, the soldier’s bluff humour and a down-to-earth wisdom. In many ways he was the very finest kind of Englishman, tough, blunt, unflappable, but sensitive and insightful too.

The affection in which he was held by his troops was remarkable and bears further examination. Patrick Davis, a Gurkha officer, had this to say: ‘We trusted him not to embroil us in a major botchery. We accepted the possibility of death, and the certainty of danger, discomfort, fatigue and hunger, provided that our fighting was constructive and with a reasonable chance of success. Moreover, Slim had been weaned with the 6th Gurkhas, so we had an extra reason for liking him.’ Slim’s salty humour was another reason for his popularity. Later, when the British in Burma became known as the ‘Forgotten Army’, he caused riotous laughter in the ranks when he poked fun at the sobriquet: ‘Forgotten Army. They’ve never even heard of us!’ A similar sensibility is evidenced by an anecdote from the dark days after the retreat, when Slim and [General Joseph] Stilwell shared a joke while sitting dejectedly on a wall. Stilwell said: ‘Well, at least you and I have an ancestor in common.’ ‘Who?’ said Slim. ‘Ethelred the Unready,’ replied Stilwell. Slim’s laughter reinforced Stilwell’s conviction that he was the only ‘good Limey’. Given his almost monomaniacal regard for fighting generals, it is no mystery why he should have so prized Slim. This explains the rare homage Stilwell paid his British counterpart when he presented Slim with an American M11 carbine—which Slim ever afterwards carried as his personal weapon.

Frank McLynn, The Burma Campaign: Disaster Into Triumph, 1942—1945 (The Yale Library of Military History) (93-94). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.