T.V.

(See Cover)

China was deadly tired. Since 1911 she had been going through a convulsive social revolution. Since 1937, almost singlehanded, she had been holding off the Japanese invaders from without. At the same time she had held off the Communists from within. To win against overwhelming Japanese odds, she had retreated from Peiping, from Shanghai, from Nanking, from Canton. To seal off the Communists, she had maintained a blockade against Yenan. Time, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek had reasoned, would give his Allies a chance to come to China's aid. So he had traded space for time. But after seven years of unflagging resistance, tired China was running short of space as well as time. At that moment Japan struck again, had cut China in two.

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek had been fighting from the days when, as a young officer, he had helped Sun Yat-sen organize China's democratic revolution. He had fought the war lords, he had fought the Communists, he had fought the Japanese. When it was no longer possible to hold against the Japanese, he had organized the retreat. In Chungking he had organized the resistance. By an act of inflexible will, which could brook no opposition because it must remain inflexible, the Generalissimo had held together China's battered, wasting strength. He knew there were abuses--there are always abuses. He knew there was incompetence--there is always incompetence. But reforms must wait until the more urgent purpose was achieved--victory, victory which will make reforms inevitable. But victory had always been predicated upon real help from the Allies.

Last month it became clear to tired Chiang Kaishek, as to tired China, that reforms could not wait. for victory--that Allied help, until then too little, would be too late, that China, as usual, must rely upon China. Somehow China and Chiang found the strength. Chiang gave his armies a new, energetic Minister of War--young, able General Chen Cheng (TIME, Nov. 27). Just as important, Chiang had reorganized his civil administration. To China's No. 2 job, Acting President of the Executive Yuan, he appointed China's ablest administrator, his brother-in-law, Foreign Minister Tse-veng ("T.V.") Soong. The crisis -- military, economic and political -- was now at hand. On its outcome rested not only the future of Chiang Kai-shek's Government, but the future of China's 400,000,000 people. The crisis had brought T.V. his biggest, hardest task, for which all others had been the training.

It had also turned the Generalissimo to personal direction of the armies again. For the administrative reorganization had freed him for what he was most gifted--the organization of military victory.

The result showed at once at the front. Last week, with the Japanese armies 250 miles from Chungking, a Chinese army stopped the Japanese drive (see WORLD BATTLEFRONTS).

Historical Education. The Chinese upon whom so much of China's salvation depended was as much like an American as an Asiatic could, or would care to be. But his life read like a series of dramatic chapters from modern China's history.

T. V. Soong was born the year (1894) of the Sino-Japanese war in which Japan took the Liu Chiu Islands and Formosa from China. His father, of Hainanese trader stock, was Charlie Jones Soong, who as a boy (9) came to the U.S., be came a Christian and returned to China to father one of the world's most distinguished broods of children. T.V. is the brother of the famed Soong sisters, China's three first ladies-- Ching-ling (Madame Sun Yat-sen), Ailing (Madame H. H. Kung), Mei-ling (Madame Chiang Kai-shek). Of Soong's three sons, only T. V. has rivaled his sisters in place and prestige.

In the first year of T.V.'s life, his father's great friend, a dour little local doctor named Sun Yatsen, performed a historic act. He sent a petition, as was the right of every queued Manchu subject, to the viceroy of the Dowager Empress Tzu-hsi -to grant China western reforms.

Dr. Sun's act conditioned the rest of T.V. Soong's life. The Soong children called Dr. Sun Yat-sen "uncle." But they were too busy climbing garden walls, studying Confucius, learning Chinese nursery rhymes, Jesus Loves Me, and the story of George Washington to know what the little revolutionist would mean to China and to them. T.V. was a weedy adolescent (he outgrew his clothes every three months, and Sister Mei-ling wore his hand-me-downs) when the Revolution of 1911 broke out. "Uncle" Sun was not even around. He was in a Denver, Colo. restaurant, collecting funds from Chinese sympathizers in the U.S. But by November 1911, he came back to China. Two months later, he took the oath as the Republic's first President.

Exile's Education. But the new Republic died practically in its swaddling clothes. Within a year, ambitious Yuan Shih-Kai, a former Manchu general, had taken over. Again Dr. Sun fled abroad. This time the Soongs, who were deeply involved in his political schemes, went with him. For almost two years they lived the life of fugitive revolutionists, under assumed names, in Japan. But even in exile Charlie Soong and his wife never gave up one ambition: a U.S. education for their children.

They succeeded in sending "Scholarly Son" to St. John's (missionary) School in Shanghai. Then he went off to Boston--but unlike Charlie Soong, T.V. went on to Harvard. A tall, slender undergraduate, he majored in economics, earned a B average. From Cambridge, T.V. went down to New York, for further study at Columbia. On the side he clerked for the National City Bank, then suddenly chucked it all for a business career in China. He was 29, a middling success as a coal-&-iron merchant, a young family man married to a former missionary-school belle, Lu-Yee Chang, when history knocked at his door again. As usual, history had the face of Dr. Sun Yatsen.

The revolutionary doctor was no longer "uncle." He was T.V.'s brother-in-law. At the age of 48 he had married earnest Ching-ling Soong, then 21. In Canton he and the general of his revolutionary army, brilliant young Chiang Kaishek, struggled with a problem that T.V. and Chiang were to struggle with the rest of their lives--finances. Revolutions are expensive. Chiang wanted funds for a march north. Who could raise the silver bullets for him? Young Madame Sun Yat-sen suggested her "kid brother--he knows something about money." In two years, T.V. upped revenues from one million to ten million dollars, filled Chiang's war chest.

When Dr. Sun died (1925), Chiang Kai-shek became the leader of the Kuomintang (Nationalist) Revolution. As he moved up from Canton on his famed Northern Expedition, the young general was accompanied by his young financier. A lean, brusque, owlish revolutionary, T.V. brought his monetary reforms into every captured city. He had become China's Alexander Hamilton.

Education in Communism. On the brink of success, the Revolution threatened to fall apart. A rift developed between Chiang and the Kuomintang's Communist wing, guided by Russian Advisers Michael Borodin (an ex-Chicago dentist named Mike Gruzenberg who now edits the Moscow Daily News) and General Galen (the late, purged General Vasili Bluecher). To Shanghai, financial heart of China, hurried T.V. There he talked long and earnestly with the city's worried bankers, won their unstinted support for the Kuomintang's right wing. Then Chiang broke with the Communists, set up a new Nationalist Government in Nanking. T.V. had played a crucial role in steering China from a Communist revolution.

That year General Chiang and his financier became brothers-in-law. In the resplendent ballroom of Shanghai's Hotel Majestic, a western orchestra played Here Comes the Bride. Under a portrait of Sun Yatsen, Mei-ling Soong and Chiang Kai-shek were married. T.V. gave the bride away.

Financial Reformer. In the following years, T.V. labored over China's finances. He undertook solid, long-needed reforms: a standardized currency, a revamped tariff and tax collection, a centralized banking system and even (in 1932) a balanced budget. All Asia began to speak of T.V.* as Asia's most promising and competent, as well as its most irascible, statesman.

As treasury watchdog and implacable foe of "squeeze," T.V. antagonized innumerable silk-clad officials, angrily upset innumerable cups of green tea. He snorted at circumlocution and the flowery approach. He believed in plain talk, a minimum of red tape. He had American ideas on efficiency. He was determined that his cycle of Cathay should be a motorcycle. One of his favorite tactics was to order his subordinates to "stand by for an emergency," which meant that they could not leave their desks for China's traditional dawdling lunches or social chitchat, or other timehonored, Celestial varieties of the slowdown.

On no issue was T.V. more outspoken than Japanese aggression in Manchuria and Jehol. But the Generalissimo believed that China was not yet ready for full resistance. Soong was for fighting the Japanese at once. The brothers-in-law no longer saw eye to eye. In 1933, T.V. was relieved of the Finance Ministry and the Vice Presidency of the Executive Yuan. His successor was another brother-in-law, suave Shansi Banker H. H. ("Daddy") Kung, who recently retired from the Finance Ministry, but is still Vice President of the Executive Yuan and now in the U.S. T.V. went abroad to represent China at the London World Economic Conference and to negotiate a $50,000,000 commodity loan in Washington.

Education by Kidnapping. Later he came back to Shanghai, serving as chair man of the powerful Bank of China, building up a personal fortune, collecting rare Chinese paintings, bronzes, jades. One day history knocked dramatically on his door again. This time history had two faces --the face of the "Young Marshal," War Lord Chang Hsueh-liang, whom the Japanese had driven out of Manchuria, and the old familiar face of Communism.

It was December 1936. In a high-walled temple at Sian, in far-western China, Chiang Kai-shek found himself surrounded by the troops of the mutinous "Young Marshal" Chang Hsueh-liang. The "Young Marshal"-- like the Chinese Communists --demanded that Chiang make open war on Japan. Clad in his nightshirt, the Generalissimo tried to escape. He fell down a 30-ft. wall, hurt his back painfully -- an injury from which he still suffers. The "Young Marshal's" soldiers closed on him. Chiang cried: "I am the Generalissimo. Don't be disrespectful. If you regard me as your prisoner, kill me, but don't subject me to indignities." The mutineers answered: "We don't dare."

No one could say what the impetuous "Young Marshal" might not dare. The indomitable Generalissimo scolded his kidnapper for disobedience, sought com fort in his Bible, made entries in his diary. In dazed Nanking, Madame Chiang summoned T.V. "He'll never get out alive!" cried T.V.'s friends as he hurried to the plane waiting to carry him to Sian.

T.V. flew to Sian twice -- once with Chiang's famed Australian adviser, William Donald, the second time with Mad ame Chiang. In that tense, life-&-death atmosphere, Madame soothed the Generalissimo by reading the Book of Psalms. T.V. strode from parley to parley, patched frayed tempers, allayed fears, argued, suggested, promised. Suddenly the "Young Marshal" called off the mutiny. Leaning on his wife's arm, the Generalissimo walked from the house of captivity. Behind him strode the penitent "Young Marshal"* and jubilant T.V.

Within seven months the Japanese invaded North China. Chiang decided that the nation could no longer delay, led it into full resistance.

The Go-Between. The Japanese conquest of the Yangtze valley drove T.V. from his Shanghai headquarters. He set up shop in Hongkong. Until that outpost of the British Empire fell to the enemy, he operated an extraordinary outpost for Fighting China. He was the link between his country's strangling economy and the U.S. and Britain, which were not yet awake to the fact that Japan's invasion of China was also a threat to them. High above Repulse Bay, in an immense house guarded against Japanese gunmen by British police and his own bodyguard, T.V. and an indefatigable staff of cable decoders carried on. His living room was a symbol of his outlook: amid exotic Oriental brocades and dragon rugs were an occidental short-wave radio, an autographed photograph of Franklin Roosevelt and a modernistic terra cotta head of the Virgin Mary.

In 1940 T.V. flew to Washington again, this time to negotiate an urgently needed loan. Americans called him the "symbol of Chinese cooperation with the West . . . most businesslike Oriental between Aden and Korea." He talked with Franklin Roosevelt, played poker with the RFC's Jesse Jones, the Treasury's Henry Morgenthau. Someone told T.V., "A little lobbying in Congress won't hurt." T.V. snorted. He had come with a business proposition--take it or leave it. For $100,000,000 worth of supplies China would continue to pin down 1,125,000 Japanese troops. By saving China from collapse, the U.S, could buy time to prepare for war with Japan. T.V. drove his bargain. Pearl Harbor proved his point.

On Dec. 7, T.V. was still in Washington. A fortnight later the Generalissimo cabled his appointment as Foreign Minister. Like all China, T.V. had soaring hopes of quick, substantial aid from the U.S. He became a peripatetic global emissary shuttling between Chungking, Washington, London, Quebec, New Delhi. He signed the Declaration of the United Nations, treaties to abolish extraterritoriality in China. He attended important Allied conferences. He arranged his biggest loan yet ($500.000,000) from the U.S. Treasury. He set up China Defense Supply Corp. (CDS) to expedite Lend-Lease. But, like all China, he soon found that the priorities of Allied global strategy made Allied aid to China a dribble and a distant thing.

Last October T.V. went home, leaving beautiful Madame Soong to manage the big house on Washington's Woodland Avenue. Over a Chungking tea table, frustrated Chiang Kai-shek upbraided his brother-in-law for the meager trickle of foreign aid. Hot words passed between them. According to one story, the Generalissimo ended the angry conversation by smashing every teacup on the floor.

For a year T.V. lay low. He lost his Bank of China post. When the Generalissimo and Madame Chiang went to Cairo, T.V., though still the Foreign Minister, stayed in Chungking. But many an old China hand knew that T.V. would come back in China's next crisis.

The Big Job. In effect, T.V. last week was China's Premier--though his every action as chief of civilian and foreign affairs must have the Generalissimo's watchful approval. In the task of coordinating and streamlining government, stepping up production, promoting constitutional reform, healing the breach between political factions. T.V. would need every shred of his talent for administration, negotiation, compromise, and plain getting-things-done.

He had few illusions. "People must not expect miracles from me," he says. But, ever mindful of China's vital relationship to the U.S., he urged the need for ever closer Chinese-American cooperation. He regretted that Donald Nelson (China's new WPBoss, now in Australia arranging for suplies) had not come to Chungking a year ago. Of U.S. Ambassador Pat Hurley and Major General Albert C. Wedemeyer (Chiang's chief of staff), he says: "We are on intimate terms. They see the main issues and they see them clearly." For T.V. still believes what he used to say in pre-Pearl Harbor days: "The wars in Europe and Asia are parts of one great struggle--the struggle of democracy against totalitarian aggression. In this struggle China fights on the side of the democracies."

A Big Problem. It would not be an easy fight. One of the main problems confronting T.V. was a settlement of China's civil war. Last week a truce between the Chungking Government and Communist Yenan seemed in the making. Communist envoy Chou En-lai had delivered Yenan's latest demand for a coalition government. Chiang Kai-shek still shook his head; he was "still opposed, as the head of any independent nation must be, to an armed state within a state. But he had made a counteroffer. Its details not disclosed, Chungking said authoritatively that the Generalissimo's plan did not exclude Communist participation in the Government. If this meant what it seemed to mean, it was sensational news. Said T.V.: "If a settlement is not readied, it will not be because of lack of an honest desire on the part of the Government."

Meanwhile T.V.'s appointment had given China and China's friends a new burst of hope. In a full summer and autumn of battle, the Chinese had been defeated at Hengyang. They had been defeated at Kweilin. The first break in their successive defeats was last week's victory in Kweichow. The road to victory was still up the sharp sides of mountains. But with T.V. at work again, there was a new faith that China would one day get over the hump.

* But T. V., holding an honorary doctor's degree from Shanghai's St. John (later from New Haven's Yale), preferred to be called "Dr. Soong."

* Presumably he is still serving a ten-year (1937~47) expiatory confinement somewhere in China. The confinement is called "rusticating," includes in its routine golf, tennis, bridge.

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