2 The Generalissimo Is Arrested

Whatever we may say against its motives, or the political energies behind them, it must be admitted that the coup de thêâtre enacted at Sian was brilliantly timed and executed. No word of the rebels' plans reached their enemies until too late. By six o'clock on the morning of December 12 the whole affair was over. Tungpei and Hsipei troops were in control at Sian. The Blueshirts, surprised in their sleep, had been disarmed and arrested; practically the whole General Staff had been surrounded in its quarters at the Sian Guest House, and was imprisoned; Governor Shao Li-tzu and the chief of police were also prisoners; the city police force had surrendered to the mutineers; and fifty Nanking bombers and their pilots had been seized at the airfield.

But the arrest of the Generalissimo was a bloodier affair. Chiang Kai-shek was staying ten miles from the city, at Lintung, a famous hot-springs resort, which had been cleared of all other guests. To Lintung, at midnight, went twenty-six-year-old Captain Sun Ming-chiu, ^[*] commander of the Young Marshal's bodyguard. Halfway there he picked up two hundred Tungpei troops, and at 3 A.M. drove to the outskirts of Lintung. There they waited till five o'clock, when the first truck, with about fifteen men, roared up to the hotel, was challenged by sentries, and opened fire.

Reinforcements soon arrived for the Tungpei vanguard, and Captain Sun led an assault on the Generalissimo's residence. Taken by complete surprise, the bodyguards put up a short fight——long enough, however, to permit the astounded Generalissimo to escape. When Captain Sun reached Chiang's bedroom he had already fled. Sun took a search party up the side of the rocky, snow-covered hill behind the resort. Presently they found the Generalissimo's personal servant, and not long afterwards came upon the man himself. Clad only in a loose robe thrown over his nightshirt, his bare feet and hands cut in his nimble flight up the mountain, shaking in the bitter cold, and minus his false teeth, he was crouching in a cave beside a great rock.

"Sun Ming-chiu hailed him, and the Generalissimo's first words were, 'If you are my comrade, shoot me and finish it all.' To which Sun replied, 'We will not shoot. We only ask you to lead our country against Japan.'

"Chiang remained seated on his rock, and said with difficulty, 'Call Marshal Chang here, and I will come down.'

"'Marshal Chang isn't here. The troops are rising in the city; we came to protect you.'

"At this the Generalissimo seemed much relieved, and called for a horse to take him down the mountain. 'There is no horse here, ' said Sun, ^[*] 'but I will carry you down the mountain on my back.' And he knelt at Chiang's feet. After some hesitation, Chiang accepted, and climbed painfully on to the broad back of the young officer. They proceeded solemnly down the slope in this fashion, escorted by troops, until a servant arrived with Chiang's shoes. The little group got into a car at the foot of the hill and set off for Sian.

"'The past is the past, ' Sun said to him. 'From now on there must be a new policy for China. What are you going to do? …… The one urgent task for China is to fight Japan. This is the special demand of the men of the Northeast. Why do you not fight Japan, but instead give the order to fight the Red Army?'

"'I am the leader of the Chinese people, ' Chiang shouted. 'I represent the nation. I think my policy is correct.' "^[*]

In this way, a little bloody but unbowed, the Generalissimo arrived in the city, where he became the involuntary guest of General Yang Hu-ch'eng and the Young Marshal.

On the day of the coup all division commanders of the Tungpei and Hsipei armies signed and issued a circular telegram addressed to the Central Government, to various provincial leaders, and to the people at large. The brief missive explained that "in order to stimulate his awakening"the Generalissimo had been "requested to remain for the time being in Sianfu."Meanwhile his personal safety was guaranteed. The demands of "national salvation"submitted to the Generalissimo were broadcast to the nation——but everywhere suppressed in the Kuomintang-censored newspapers. Here are the rebels' eight-points：

1. Reorganize the Nanking Government and admit all parties to share the joint responsibility of national salvation.

2. End all civil war immediately and adopt the policy of armed resistance against Japan.

3. Release the[seven]leaders of the patriotic movement in Shanghai.

4. Pardon all political prisoners.

5. Guarantee the people liberty of assembly.

6. Safeguard the people's rights of patriotic organization and political liberty.

7. Put into effect the will of Dr. Sun Yat-sen.

8. Immediately convene a National Salvation conference.

To this program the Chinese Red Army, the Chinese Soviet Government and the Communist Party of China immediately offered their support.^[*] A few days later Chang Hsueh-liang sent to Pao An his personal plane, which returned to Sian with three Red delegates：Chou En-lai, vice-chairman of the military council; Yeh Chien-ying, chief of staff of the East Front Army; and Po Ku, chairman of the Northwest Branch Soviet Government. A joint meeting was called between the Tungpei, Hsipei, and Red Army delegates, and the three groups became open allies. On the 14th an announcement was issued of the formation of a United Anti-Japanese Army, consisting of about 130, 000 Tungpei troops, 40, 000 Hsipei troops, and approximately 90, 000 troops of the Red Army.

Chang Hsueh-liang was elected chairman of a United Anti-Japanese Military Council, and Yang Hu-ch'eng vice-chairman. Tungpei troops under General Yu Hsueh-chung had on the 12th carried out a coup of their own against the Central Government officials and troops in Lanchow, capital of Kansu province, and had disarmed the Nanking garrison there. In the rest of Kansu the Reds and the Manchurian troops together held control of all main communications, surrounding about 50, 000 Nanking troops in that province, so that the rebels had effective power in all Shensi and Kansu.

Immediately after the incident, Tungpei and Hsipei troops moved eastward to the Shensi-Shansi and Shensi-Honan borders, on instructions from the new Council. From the same Council the Red Army took orders to push southward. Within a week the Reds had moved their "capital"to Yenan city and occupied virtually the whole of north Shensi above the Wei River. A Red vanguard under P'eng Teh-huai was located at San Yuan, a city only thirty miles from Sianfu. Another contingent of 10, 000 Reds under Hsu Hai-tung was preparing to move over to the Shensi-Honan border. The Red, Northeastern, and Northwestern troops stood shoulder to shoulder along the Shensi border. While these defensive arrangements proceeded, all three armies issued clear-cut statements declaring their opposition to a new internal war.

Steps were taken at once to carry out the eight points. All orders for war against the Reds were canceled. More than four hundred political prisoners in Sianfu were released. Censorship of the press was removed, and all suppression of patriotic (anti-Japanese) organizations was lifted. Hundreds of students were freed to work among the populace, building united-front organizations in every class. They toured into the villages also, where they began to train and arm the farmers, politically and militarily. In the army the political workers conducted an unprecedented anti-Japanese campaign. Mass meetings were summoned almost daily.

But news of those happenings was suppressed outside the provinces of the Northwest. Editors who dared publish anything emanating from Sian, as even the highly respectable Ta Kung Pao pointed out, were threatened with instant arrest. Meanwhile Nanking's propaganda machine threw out a smokescreen that further confused an already befuddled public. Dumfounded by the news, the government at Nanking first called a meeting of the Standing Committee (of the Central Executive Committee and the Central Political Council) of the Kuomintang, which promptly pronounced Chang Hsueh-liang a rebel, dismissed him from his posts, and demanded the release of the Generalissimo, failing which punitive operations would begin.

For three days few people knew whether Chiang Kai-shek was dead or alive——except the Associated Press, which flatly announced that Chang Hsueh-liang had described over the radio how and why he had killed him. Few people knew exactly what the rebels planned to do. Nanking cut all communications with the Northwest, and its papers and manifestoes were burned by the censors.

Hundreds of words were deleted from my own dispatches. I made several attempts to send out the eight demands of the Northwest——which might have helped a little to clarify the enigma for Western readers——but the censors let out not a word. Many of the foreign correspondents were themselves completely ignorant of recent happenings in the Northwest. While real news and facts were rigorously suppressed, the Kuomintang and its adherents released to the world some puerile lies which made China appear much more of a madhouse than it really was：The rebels had nailed the chief of police to the city gates; the Reds had occupied Sian, were looting the city and flying Red banners on the walls; Chang Hsueh-liang had been assassinated by his own men. Almost daily it was stated by Nanking that riots were taking place in Sian. The Reds were abducting young boys and girls. Women were being "communized."The entire Tungpei and Hsipei armies had turned bandit. There was looting everywhere. Chang Hsueh-liang was demanding $80, 000, 000 ransom for the Generalissimo.^[*]

Many of the wildest rumors circulated had their origin also with the Japanese press in China, and even with high Japanese officials. The Japanese were especially fertile with imaginary "eyewitness"reports of the "Red menace"in Sian. The Japanese also discovered Soviet Russian intrigue behind the coup. But they met their masters in propaganda in Moscow's press. Izvestia and Pravda went so far in their official disclaimers of responsibility, denunciations of Chang Hsueh-liang, and hosannas to Chiang Kai-shek that they invented a story showing that the Sian affair was jointly inspired by the former Chinese premier, Wang Ching-wei, and "the Japanese imperialists"——a libel so antipodal to the facts that even the most reactionary press in China had not dared to suggest it, out of fear of ridicule. "Prevarication is permissible, gentlemen, "it was Lenin who once exclaimed, "but within limits！"

After the first week of Chiang's captivity Nanking's efforts to cork up the facts proved inadequate. Leaks occurred, and then big gaps. The eight-point program was widely published in the surreptitious press, and the public began to realize that the Northwest did not mean to make civil war, but to stop it. Sentiment slowly began to change from fear for the safety of an individual militarist into fear for the safety of the state. Civil war now could not save Chiang, but it might ruin China.

Intrigue for seizure of power had begun in Nanking with the news of Chiang's capture. Ambitious War Minister Ho Ying-ch'in, closely affiliated with the pro-Japanese "political-science clique"of the Kuomintang, then in high office at Nanking——and against whom the eight-point program was primarily directed——was hot for a "punitive expedition."In this General Ho was fully supported by the pro-Fascist Whampoa clique, the Blueshirts, the Wang Ching-wei (out-of-office) faction, the Western Hills group, the "C.C."faction, ^[**] and Nanking's German and Italian advisers. Their enemies said that they all saw in the situation an opportunity to seize power, relegating the liberal, pro-American, pro-British, pro-Russian, and united-front groups in the Kuomintang to political nonentity. General Ho mobilized twenty Nanking divisions and moved them toward the Honan-Shensi border. He sent squadrons of airplanes roaring over Sianfu, and made tentative thrusts at the rebels' lines with his infantry. Some of the Nanking planes (anti-Japanese "fiftieth-birthday gifts"to the Generalissimo) experimentally bombed Weinan and Huahsien, inside the Shensi border, and reportedly killed a number of factory workers.

The big question now became this：whether Chiang Kai-shek could, even from his seat of captivity in Sian, still muster enough support in Nanking to prevent the outbreak of an exhausting war which was likely to mean his own political, if not physical, demise. In Nanking and Shanghai his brothers-in-law——T. V. Soong, chairman of the Central Bank of China, and H. H. Kung, acting premier——and Mme. Chiang rallied Chiang's personal followers and worked frantically to prevent the more reactionary elements in Nanking from initiating an offensive in the name of an "anti-Communist punitive expedition."

Meanwhile, swift changes of heart were taking place in Sian. Soon after his capture the Generalissimo had begun to realize that perhaps his worst "betrayers"were not in Sian but in Nanking. Contemplating this situation, Chiang Kai-shek must have decided that he did not choose to be the martyr over whose dead body General Ho Ying-ch'in or anybody else would climb to dictatorial power.

^[*]See BN.

^[*]Part of an interview with Sun Ming-chiu by James Bertram, who was acting for me as correspondent in Sianfu for the London Daily Herald.

^[*]See Chiang's diary.

^[*]Seven of the above eight points corresponded exactly to the program of "national salvation"advocated in a circular telegram issued by the Communist Party and the Soviet Government on December 1, 1936.

^[*]Mme. Chiang Kai-shek, deploring such rumors, wrote that "no question of money or increased power or position was at any time brought up."

^[**]The two "C's"were Ch'en Li-fu and Ch'en Kuo-fu, brothers who controlled the Kuomintang Party apparatus.