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.

TRUMAN ON THE FARM

As it was, he had plenty to think about. He felt the responsibility of the farm keenly and “gave it everything he had,” as his sister later said. “I almost got done planting corn this evening. . . . I was in the field at six o’clock [AM] and quit at seven [PM]. Nearly a day’s work,” he informed Bess in April 1915. “. . . I’ve simply got to make things come across this year if I have to work night and day.” He worried about the weather. He worried about his debts. He worried that the men would never work for him as they had for his father. He kept on as road overseer for another six months, until a rival faction took over at the Independence Courthouse and he was out. From February to August he also served as postmaster in Grandview, though in name only, since he left the work to an assistant, a widow, who he thought needed the money more than he did. He was up with the sun every morning, still, even with Papa gone. 

Early morning was the best time for “solid thinking,” he liked to say. He was thirty years old. He had been on the farm eight years, or more than a quarter of his life. He had lost none of his devotion to the family, or his determination to win Bess Wallace, or his good humor. (She must send him another picture of herself soon, he said, so he could have one downstairs as well as up. “It’s right unhandy to chase upstairs every day to see how you look”).

Yet his restlessness was greater than ever. He hated his “slow progress” at home, even with the rise in farm prices. He had reached a point, in fact, where he might have gone off in any of several directions with his life, given the opportunity. With Uncle Harry in tow, he traveled to Texas hoping to entice him into some land speculation. The trip, like his earlier ones, came to nothing. Involved next in a zinc mine in Oklahoma, he told Bess, “There’s no one wants to win half so badly as I do.” He pictured the two of them in an ideal country house and the thought made the delays nearly unbearable. “Then I wake up and see our old house going to wreck for want of paint and repairs because I must pay interest on a debt I had no hand in making and my dream has to keep waiting.” When the suit over his grandmother’s will was settled at last, after six years, his mother wound up no better off than before. She won the case and kept the farm, but what money came of it was consumed in lawyers’ fees. Even before John Truman’s death she had been forced to put another mortgage on the land. To pay off doctors’ bills and funeral expenses, Harry had to sell some Black Angus cattle he had only recently acquired.

David McCullough, Truman. Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

IMPERIALISM

Keith Windschuttle
“The Burdens of Empire”
in Lengthened Shadows
Editors: Roger Kimball and Hilton Kramer
San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2004, 9

....Moreover, in the past decade, some good historians have made a number of important reevaluations of imperialism and have contributed to a greater maturity of discussion about the subject. The contribution of imperialism to advancing the human condition can now be acknowledged. It is not hard to argue that, throughout the course of human history, the absorption of many smaller communities by larger polities has been the major single force for the evolution and progress of human culture. Imperialism can be seen as the ultimate form of this process. The Romans, for example, gave the forest tribesmen they conquered in Gaul, Illyria, and Germania the gifts of literacy, books, and all that the Latin language opened up. Roman notions of law, property, and government were established where few existed before, as were the habits of living in towns and using coin for exchange. Along with this came Mediterranean tastes in food, drink, and clothing as well as new concepts and forms in architecture and artistic expression. Much the same can be said for the early emperors who united the people of China. In short, history shows imperialism, rather than being a force of oppression, has often been the engineer of civilization.

Moreover, far from being a major cause of racism and racial discrimination, imperialism has usually pushed in the opposite direction. Emperors who have governed diverse peoples have often found it in their own interests to ensure the protection and status of their different tribes and races, including those of racial minorities. In the mature Roman Empire, a non-Roman ethnic origin was no barrier even to ascending to the purple robe of Caesar. The Austro-Hungarian Empire of the Hapsburgs created a multiethnic society that guaranteed the civic, cultural, and property rights even of alien minority groups such as Galician Jews. Throughout history, it has been smaller, self-governed communities and nations, organized around kinship or ethnicity, which have most frequently regarded other tribes and peoples as sub-human, and therefore unfit to live.

GIBBON ON WRITING

 ...But all this well-laboured system of German antiquities is annihilated by a single fact, too well attested to admit of any doubt, and of too decisive a nature to leave room for any reply. The Germans, in the age of Tacitus [56-120AD], were unacquainted with the use of letters; and the use of letters is the principal circumstance that distinguishes a civilised people from a herd of savages incapable of knowledge and reflection. Without that artificial help, the human memory soon dissipates or corrupts the ideas intrusted to her charge; and the nobler faculties of mind, no longer supplied with models or with materials, gradually forget their powers; the judgment becomes feeble and lethargic, the imagination languid or irregular.

        Fully to apprehend this important truth, let us attempt, in an improved society, to calculate the immense distance between the man of learning and the illiterate peasant. The former, by reading and reflection, multiplies his own experience, and lives in distant ages and remote countries; whilst the latter, rooted to a single spot, and confined to a few years of existence, surpasses, but very little, his fellow-labourer the ox in the exercise of his mental faculties. The same, and even a greater difference will be found between nations than between individuals; and we may safely pronounce that, without some species of writing, no people has ever preserved the faithful annals of their history, ever made any considerable progress in the abstract sciences, or ever possessed, in any tolerable degree of perfection, the useful and agreeable arts of life....

Edward Gibbon
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [1776]
London: Everyman’s Library, 1993
Volume I, pp. 242-243

THINK

 

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue and if there be any praise, think on these things.

Philippians 4:8