Since the time I left Hawaii in 1940 and visited Georgia's "Tobacco Road," where poor whites on sharecropper farms ate clay earth or chewed tobacco to take hunger pain away, I have constantly looked for a solution to the abject poverty of farmers in many lands.
"Tobacco Road" is a condition, a poor man's belt road that crosses international lines, Mrs. Ira S. Caldwell, mother of Erskine Caldwell, who wrote "Tobacco Road," told me.
Her words impressed me deeply for I looked at Georgia's "Tobacco Road" in terms of my own experiences —Kona of my childhood, and the depression years.
When I saw India in 1944, I recalled my discussions with her and of the time the Rev. Caldwell took me into the backwoods of Georgia to visit the sharecroppers. In a recurrent famine, Indians were dying in the streets. And I measured the livelihood of the common people, for instance, in terms of the fuel they used. In a modern city like Calcutta, many people burned cow dung for cooking. And as we went on hikes we saw pancaked dung pasted on house walls and trees to dry.
In Kunming, China, I watched housewives and children with baskets on their backs taking off for the hills early in the morning and returning in the evening with small bundles of kindling material. And in Chungking, I often saw children in rags with baskets, digging holes under a bamboo fence of a rich man's residence, trying to gather twigs and dried leaves fallen to the ground inside the compound, from shade trees.
Sanitation and food of these people were bad, and these also could have been used in measuring their living standards, Instead of fuel which took so much time to gather so small a quantity.
Interviewed Chiang's Deserters
I had one of my best opportunities to talk to Chinese peasants in the early summer of 1945, when I was sent to investigate a civil war front to determine whether U. S. arms had been used by Chiang Kai-shek's forces. When I arrived at Yehtai Mountain, on the border of Nationalist and Communist territory, I found that those in the Communist area lived better. While Chiang's forces enjoyed an initial victory through a surprise attack, their soldiers at the height of victory were deserting at night and going over to the Communist side.
I interviewed many of them and found that the peasants whose farms the Nationalists looted and occupied, told Chiang's soldiers that in the Communist-lad army, the officers did not ill-treat the men, but were rather like big brothers. The peasants also told the soldiers who had been drafted from the farms, that they did not have to pay 50-60 per cent of their crop to the landlords for use 6f the land, as in Chiang's areas.
Chiang's Weakness Lay In Feudalism
To me, this behavior of Chiang's soldiers was significant at a time when China was again on the brink of civil war. With such soldiers, Chiang would be routed, even with total U. S. arms support.
And the key to Chiang's weakness was in his feudal land system and the strength of Yenan lay in its agrarian reform policy. In Yenan's territory the "Tobacco Road" condition was systematically tackled by government—through reduced land rent with a future objective of giving the land to the tillers, better farming methods and pooling labor power to get maximum production.
As a military intelligence officer, these observations were important to me, and a few months later, when high U. S. military officers believed Chiang's forces could crush General Chu Teh's troops in a hurry, I brought out these facts when reporting to General Albert Wedemeyer.
Chu Teh Asks U. S. To Take Back Lend-Lease Weapons
When I returned from the civil war front, Gen. Chu Teh, Chou En-lai, who is the present premier of the People's Republic of China, and Gen. Chen Yi, then the commander ,of the New Fourth Army and now mayor of Shanghai, called on our U. S. Army Observation Mission. Col. Ivan D. Yeaton and I talked to them. Of the numerous questions Chu Teh asked me about my trip, only 6ne or two pertained to U. S. arms. He asked me about the peasants and of the refugees in great detail. He told us about the historic struggle of the Chinese peasants to better their status. China, -he emphasized, is 80-90 per cent agricultural.
He then asked me to report in detail to my headquarters what I saw in the field. He said through us, "We want to ask your government to take back all lend-lease equipment from China, for every bit of it will now be used by Chiang Kai-shek to kill Chinese people."
In Early Hours of Victory for Allies, Chou Maps Out U. S. Plans In China
The atom bomb had already been dropped on Hiroshima a couple of days before and the Russian forces had swept down into Manchuria. The Pacific war was over.
But for China, the end of the war meant the probable outbreak of a civil war. In the early hours of victory for the allies, Chou En-lai mapped out for us how the Nationalists would attack Yenan territory. He said U. S. transportation would rush Chiang's troops from the safe rear where they had been preserved for a civil war, into the Japanese-occupied areas—all surrounded by Yenan's regular and guerrilla forces.
The disposition of Chinese troops at the end of the war revealed how Chiang's and Yenan's forces had fought the enemy. The major part of Chiang's crack troops were hundreds of miles away from Japanese lines while Chu Teh's soldiers were in contact with Japanese forces almost everywhere in North China and in parts of Central China.
Yenan Did Not Get Arms From the "Arsenal of Democracy"
To Col. Yeaton and me, Chou En-lai said: "Will you report to your government to take back lend-lease to prevent civil war in China. Your country was the arsenal of democracy in this war. America supplied the allies. But let me remind you it will go down in history that we who fought most consistently and longest against fascism did not get anything from your great arsenal. We fought alone!"
Col. Yeaton was a regular army intelligence officer He had been the military attache in Moscow, a very important assignment, when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union and the Nazi forces rolled far into Russia. Col. Yeaton was the officer who reported to Washington that Moscow would fall in no time. He was wrong and he explained to me that the early gusts of winter came in August that year and the German soldiers, who had not expected snow so early, were in khaki and were frozen on the vast front. Col. Yeaton was removed after this and kept in the rank of colonel while younger officers became generals. Finally, he was assigned to Chungking and Gen. Wedemeyer sent him to Yenan just as the war was about to end.
Col. Yeaton wanted to know whether Chu Teh knew the Soviet Union was entering the war in early August. One day, for an hour he probed Chu Teh. After I returned from the civil war front, he told me that "Chu Teh's ignorance was pitiful." And he told me of the great excitement in Yenan to get political officers and generals, who were there for a conference, out into the field in a hurry after the A-bombing of Hiroshima and the Russian sweep into Manchuria. They were caught "flat-footed," Yeaton said. The Russians had "not informed Yenan."
The Only Russian-Made Arms I Saw
He asked me if I had seen Russian equipment in the field; I showed him empty rifle cartridges of Russian make which had been used by Chiang Kai-shek's troops at Shin Li-yuan. I had found the empty shells beside an old woman who had been raped by Chiang's soldiers and who was sitting there because she could not walk.
The Russians had supplied arms to the Central Government in the early years of the Sino-Japanese war, but had cut off this supply when Chiang's troops began attacking Yenan's
Coincident with Chiang's sending of his third invitation, the soldiers instead of fighting the Japanese. About this time, the Germans launched their attack on the Soviet Union and the Russians had double reasons for withholding arms supplies from China.
Chiang gave nothing except a few pieces of small arms, to Yenan's forces from the Russian-supplied military equipment.
Chiang Sent Three Invitations To Mao
With civil war imminent, Chiang sent Mao Tse-tung three invitations, one after another, to visit Chungking to discuss differences. By Chinese custom, three invitations pack tremendous pressure and if Mao refused to go to Chungking, he and not Chiang, it was said, would be blamed for civil war. At that time workers, students and intellectuals in Nationalist areas were voicing objections to Chiang's maneuver for civil war. Sino-Soviet Pact of Amity was announced. In the treaty, the Soviet Union recognized the Central Government, headed by Chiang.
In Yenan, there was widespread fear that Mao might be assassinated if he went to Chungking. A foreign correspondent in Chungking asked Gen. Wedemeyer if he would give Ma6 protection should the Communist leader visit Chungking. Gen. Wedemeyer said "No."
After long discussions, we were told, the Chinese Communist Central Government decided to send Mao to Chungking.
I Asked Yenan If Hurley Would Be Cordially Received
Just at this time Ambassador Patrick J. Hurley wanted to jump into the Yenan-Chungking negotiations. We were told that one night at a banquet, he had offered his services to Wang Jo-fei, Yenan's representative in Chungking, 14 times in as many different ways. He had been turned down.
The ambassador went to Gen. Wedemeyer with his problems. It was then that I was asked to find out whether Yenan would receive Hurley with due cordiality if he came to escort Mao to Chungking. The Communists said they would. We asked the ambassador to fly to Yenan, but we felt that it would be out of step for him to yahoo, for he had been blasted for being biased and as an instigator of civil war in Yenan. So we waited for Hurley.