The Vigil of a Nation by Lin Yutang

Author:Lin Yutang [Yutang, Lin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Asia, China, Religion, Taoism, Buddhism, Zen, Central Asia
ISBN: 9781789122145
Google: jb9sDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2018-09-03T03:05:41+00:00

The question of civil war is on every American’s mind whenever the question of China is brought up. Therefore I have to write about it here. Moreover, it is essential to an understanding of the whole China situation. So far the public abroad has had a decidedly one-sided picture. American commentators talk as if, first, the Chinese government were deliberately discriminating against the Red Army and were seeking a civil war for the pleasure of it; second, as if the Chinese government were not fully determined to avoid a civil war and solve the Communist question by political means; third, as if the government ought now to give the Red Army supplies with which to fight its own National Army; and fourth, as if help given to Chungking would be used in fighting the Communists rather than Japan. These are untrue and uncharitable assumptions unworthy of a great ally.

If I were an American hearing only the Communist side of the story, my sympathies would be entirely on the side of the Chinese Communists. I would be hearing that the Chinese Communists were the only people fighting Japan, and that for no reason whatsoever the Chinese government started “blockading” these heroic fighters, that these Communist troops were not paid by the government, that certain parties in Chungking were “fascist, pacifist, and pro-Japan,” etc. But I would remember one fact: that, in the entire seven years of war, the Chinese government publicity has not let out one unkind word about the Chinese Communists, and that there cannot be found in the entire American press a Chinese government story of the six-year-old conflict. When the question of the Chinese Communists comes up, the Chinese government shuts up like a clam.

It is possible for a Chinese to take an objective view of the situation and see it from the Communist side. The Communists did not hesitate to sabotage American supplies for Chungking by telling the world that if supplies were given Chungking, they would not be used for fighting Japan but for fighting them. Who else could have invented such a baseless rumor? But in their position, Chungking’s strength is their weakness, and Chungking’s weakness is their strength. Brooks Atkinson pictured the situation correctly when he reported that, in the negotiations between the government and the Communists, the Communist position had become stronger because the Central troops had suffered recent reverses in Honan and Hunan. This explains why they did not derail a single train when they saw for a month Japanese troops pouring down the Peiping-Hankow railway to destroy the Central troops in Honan through at least four hundred miles of their famed guerrilla territory. The truth is bitter, but the Americans must hear it. Naturally the Communists would fear nothing more than five hundred airplanes and three tank divisions for the Chungking forces. By the logic of their circumstances, they must combat it. Whether in this they are acting as patriots, however, is another question. The Communists have merely drifted into a

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