Status Updates From Stilwell and the American E...

“His reputation as an expert was growing. Colonel Lynch, on returning to Washington from the 15th Infantry, reported that Stilwell “knows China and the Far East better, in my opinion, than any other officer in the service.” His explorations through the country “have given him a background that no one else possesses.””

“ Stilwell had been learning what he could about the Communists for some time and evidently sharing his information with fellow attachés. A note from the British Embassy in February 1936 thanked him for “a most interesting brochure on the Chinese Communist situation.””

“ After locating and identifying army units he was able to report, “No evidence of planned defense against further Japanese encroachment. No troop increase or even thought of it. No drilling or maneuvering.””

“…took him back in memory to his first arrival in Peking in 1920—“the cool crisp days of fall with a breeze in the trees…the newness of everything. The kids were little and we had a lot yet in front of us. Not so good now….What made up that feeling? The newness of things?…No worries; promise of strange and interesting things to come…” Stilwell was fifty-three with but ten years to live.”

“He traveled not by the direct rail route but through the interior by bus, car, riverboat, ferry and foot. After a 30-mile hike from one remote country town to the next on the way to Kweilin, an acquaintance wrote, “You are probably the only one in the American Embassy who ever travelled over that part of the country.””

“In so far as military preparedness would supply a clue, it was the military attaché’s function to find the answer. As in the past, Stilwell undertook to see for himself on a series of journeys that ranged from south China to Manchuria. The first one in April 1936…”

“Alarmed at American quiescence, China made anxious inquiries, even suggesting that she might be forced into alliance with Japan. Her hint evoked no reaction…The act that twisted the course of events came from the people of China, or a vocal segment of them in Peiping. The arrogant Japanese presence in north China had brought into being the one thing that could frustrate the Japanese plan—an active nationalism.”

“…society was not Stilwell’s forte; he avoided the Peking Club and was not felt to be “one of us” by its frequenters. But he was agreeable to a Chinese aristocrat like Mme. Dan, a Manchu princess, former lady-in-waiting to the Empress Dowager, and one of the most distinguished and educated women of the old nobility, who was often entertained by the Stilwells. He cultivated other Chinese acquaintances…”

“ Stilwell’s final comment showed him possessed of that unusual talent—the capacity to understand a historical process while it was happening. “Paradoxically,” he wrote, “each successful encroachment will be accepted more and more as inevitable and the foreign powers will be less and less inclined to call a halt.” This was a classic definition of the appeasement era before history gave it a name.”

“Now was the vital time to resist, otherwise it would be too late, but Chiang Kai-shek showed no signs of being willing to risk an open break with Japan. “He knows that he would be defeated which would mean that revolt would break out behind him. Therefore he will sit tight, hold on to what he can and count on foreign influence to help him retain Shanghai where so much foreign business centers.””

“ On board ship for China in June 1935 Stilwell drew up his estimate of the situation under the title “Future Developments in China.” Revealing how closely he had been studying events, it was an analysis of sound strategic and political judgment. He recognized that Japan’s goal was to be “the major power in the Far East”…”

“ Receiving his appointment from Secretary of State Cordell Hull in January 1935, Stilwell found himself, of all things, a diplomat, but that misfortune was bearable for the sake of return to China. “How intensely interesting the international situation is in the Orient at this time,” a fellow-officer wrote in a letter of congratulations. “No one can tell how soon we may be mixed up in that situation.””

“ At a low point for Stilwell, the opening came. Previously he had never thought of himself as eligible for the post of military attaché because it had always required a private income. But in 1934, in order to extend its choice of qualified officers, the War Department added an expense allowance to the post.”

“ In the gloom of the depression, however, the outlook was dim and held him back from taking the plunge into retirement precipitously.”

“Privately Stilwell was bored and discouraged. He felt that if the War Department thought no more of him than to put him in this kind of job, he could not, at fifty-one and not yet a full colonel, look forward to a military career of much promise… Many times “disgust with the machine” had brought him to the verge of retirement and he now began to discuss the possibility seriously with his family.”

“During the two years while he was at San Diego Stilwell did his best in another teaching job to transfer the principle of realistic field exercises to the Reserves. In a time of isolationism, enthusiasm for military training was not high. Men from office and salesroom on two-week duty did not offer Stilwell the most professional material but he knew they were the country’s resource in war…”

“ After a period just short of four years at Benning, from which Marshall had departed in 1932, Stilwell had grown restless, to the point of describing his own departure as “Escape from Bondage.””

“ Some periods breed greatness, others feebleness. The Manchurian crisis was one of the causative events of history born, not of tragic “ifs,” but of the inherent limitations of men and states.”

“ The effort of the Western powers to deal with the situation over the 17 months from the Mukden Incident to the adoption of the Lytton Report was crucial for the twentieth century. It brewed the acid of appeasement that gutted the League, encouraged further aggression and opened the decade of descent to war.”

“Modernization…was pushed in the form of roads…improvement of agriculture, codification of law, new schools with modern curricula and that basic requirement for all modern organization—a logical method of arranging the language to make a filing system possible. The absence of an alphabet in China was probably as disabling as the absence of roads…There was so much that China needed and the age allowed so little time.”

“ Against the Japanese he could use China’s eternal advantage, her infinite room to retreat, while concentrating on his aim of uniting the country under Kuomintang rule. When this was accomplished China could cope with the Japanese; meantime Manchuria, presumably, would satisfy them. History is the unfolding of miscalculations, and Chiang had made several.”

“ Chiang had made up his mind that “pacification” must come before everything; before social and political reform or resistance to the invader. If there was one thing that could qualify Chiang for greatness, it was the fixity with which he gripped and held a conviction, once formed.”

“…Chiang Kai-shek ordered Chang Hsueh-liang… “resolutely” to follow a policy of “non-resistance.” Though his troops were numerically superior, he knew they were no match for the Japanese…and he preferred a strategic retreat to a military showdown with Japan. His guiding principle was to let nothing deter him from his main purpose of eliminating internal rivals.”

“ When the attack came Chiang Kai-shek’s military energies were absorbed in the third of his extermination campaigns against the Communists. Moreover, the country was suffering from a disastrous flood of the Yangtze which left thousands of square miles inundated, two million dead and countless destitute.”

“…he read—though disappointingly without comment—the historic document that marked the beginning of China’s new travail…Report of the Lytton Commission of the League of Nations on the Manchurian crisis, the event whose train of consequences was to engulf the world. On September 18, 1931, the Japanese Kwantung Army…seized Mukden in “self-defense,” and spread out swiftly to the military occupation of Manchuria.”

“ Discussing the Oriental concept of “face,” he said enough to show that his future mishandling of Chiang Kai-shek was not from ignorance: “Dignity, then, is their most prized possession and he who strips them of it makes bitter enemies….In dealing with Chinese don’t take their face from them unless you want to humiliate them and unless you do not care if you make enemies.””

“This puritanism of Stilwell’s about promotions…continued to leave patches of resentment behind him in his future service as commanding officer and theater commander. It was not surprising that Marshall’s rating for Stilwell’s tact went down a point in the second year at Benning. A faint note of long-suffering was detectable behind his further comments: “High principles. Too hard-working. Nervous temperament….””

“ Stilwell was always writing things down. In addition to diary, letters, essays and sketches, he wrote what he called “Random Notes” or “Odds and Ends” on sheets or scraps of paper dealing with thoughts, dreams, stray ideas, jokes, anecdotes, remarks, quotations or anything that was passing through his constantly ticking mind.”

“The rich and the snobbish he especially excoriated, often with what seems superfluous vigor. From some hidden source in his nature or past experience he had acquired a chip on his shoulder about the rich. Having been brought up himself in comfortable circumstances, he had as a result of a certain rigidity on his father’s part no private income of his own as a mature man.”