"We Must Try to Forgive"

Wellesley College's most famed alumna went back last weekend. Mei-ling Soong. honor student, class of '17, went to see how the campus had changed since her last May Day hoop rolling and June step singing. For Madame Chiang Kaishek, the woman Mei-ling Soong had become, the Wellesley visit was a brief recess in her U.S. tour.

Madame Chiang drove through Wellesley village; it looked "just the same--only more painted." In Tower Court dormitory, where she lived as a senior, a suite awaited her. She held an informal reception for 80 classmates of 1917, who laughed and gossiped like schoolgirls. After she had strolled over the campus, in a pair of navy blue slacks, Wellesley's president conceded: "Her slacks have ruined our anti-slacks campaign. The faculty has suddenly reversed its stand. . . ."

She addressed the student body: overcome with emotion, she clung to the lectern, nearly collapsed. Then, after two days as Meiling, she continued on her mission: to Chicago, to San Francisco.

The potency of the charm and mind of the Madame had already made her mission a tremendous personal success. If her slight, hard-driven body could keep up with her iron will, the tour might become as dramatic a personal triumph as Hero Lindbergh's 1927 tour, Candidate Wendell Willkie's 1940 train ride.

Last week's high point came before 20,000 people, jampacked into New York's Madison Square Garden. Behind her on the crowded stage spread a vast grey-blue cloth backdrop, on which was emblazoned a huge red Chinese ideograph meaning victory. In a long black dress, gold-trimmed, wearing green earrings, black gloves, she looked more like next month's Vogue than the avenging angel of 422,000,000 people.

On this night, Madame Chiang revealed the world ideal that drives her. She spoke of two concepts, expressed in Chinese as ho-tsung (concerted effort), and lien-heng (imperialism), called up from China's tapestried past a lesson for the world of tomorrow.

More than 2,000 years ago in feudal China, the powerful state of Ts'in dominated six weaker kingdoms. Ts'in conceived the principle of lien-heng, and moved to swallow up its neighbors. The weaker kingdoms gave only lip service to their pledges of ho-tsung, failed to band themselves together for mutual protection. One by one they were attacked and destroyed by the kingdom of Ts'in.

Madame Chiang's question: Do we want history to repeat itself?

Her answer: "Never again must the dignity of man be outraged as it has been since the dawn of history.

"All nations, great & small, must have equal opportunity of development. Those who are stronger and more advanced should consider their strength as a trust to be used to help the weaker nations to fit themselves for full self-government and not to exploit them.

". . . There must Le no bitterness in the reconstructed world. No matter what we have undergone and suffered, we must try to forgive those who injured us and remember only the lesson gained thereby.

". . . In order that this war may indeed be the war to end all wars in all ages, and that nations, great and small alike, may be allowed to live and let live in peace, security and freedom in the generations to come, cooperation in the true and highest sense of the word must be practiced.

"I have no doubt that the truly great leaders of the United Nations, those men with vision and forethought, are working toward crystallization of this ideal. Yet they too would be impotent if you and I did not give our all toward making it a reality."

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