CHINA’S LEADER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 January 1942, Page 4

CHINA’S LEADER

GENERALISSIMO CHIANG KAI-SHEK ONE OF WORLD’S BUSIEST MEN. SPECIAL INTERVIEW GRANTED. Visualise Chiang Kai-shek the ironhard lean-joyled leader of Free China’s millions; recall the occasional photographs you have seen of Asia’s most potent general; ponder on the man who has survived war, rebellion, intrigue, emerging like some indestructible core to the freedom of a renascent people. Then meet the same man sitting in an armchair beside a fire in a parlour that has a thousand duplicates in Vaucluse, write the “Sydney Morning Herald's" correspondent in Chungking. A red setter dog frolics in the room; there are etchings on the walls and ornaments on the mantelpiece and the Generalissimo is smiling and chatting with an amiability that would be incongruous if it were not so completely courteous. I almost feel a twinge of conscience as I report that this was my first impression as I met the Generalissimo after I had been granted one of the interviews which he gives—very rarely—to a foreign Pressman. General Chiang is one of the world’s busiest men. He urges on his subordinates that it is the duty of each one of them to do the work of two men. And he sets them an example of prodigious industry that extends his own working day into the early hours of the morning. All of which means that he is naturally not very accessible. ATTEMPTED BOMBING.

Before I met him I had seen him occasionally at a military parade with his eyes glinting hawk-like at his men, or dashing through the streets of Chungking in a guarded car —and I had even scampered into the rice fields of Kwangs! as the Japanese tried to bomb my train which they thought was his. I had hoped to meet him on that occasion, for he was travelling just behind us en route to the same battlefield, but the fortunes of war and the vagaries of the Japanese retreat from Changsha rather led us apart. I My own idea was that I would meetthe Generalissimo at some huge desk flanked by armed guards and impassive A.D.C.’s and I went in to see the leader of Free China. TALK BY FIRESIDE. He was standing at the far end of a typically suburban lounge-room, with the light coming in from a window on to his left profile. Madame Chiang was patting the . red setter dog, and between them was a charcoal fire. Before I could really begin to readjust my ideas they had me sitting down on a sofa beside the fire telling them how much I enjoyed life in Chungking. (I might say that a little later I regained enough equilibrium to tell them that I thought in reality the climate in Chungking was shocking, whereon the Generalissimo promised very cheerfully that he would endeavour to have the capital moved back to Nanking, if not Peking, as quickly as possible.) Most pictures give the impression that General Chiang is taller than he actually is, but I discovered that his height is approximately sft Bin, with his slim figure creating the suggestion from a distance that it is several inches more. He has the firmest chin I have ever seen in a Chinese, and I came to the conclusion that, like many of us, he considers one profile more satisfactory than the other.

Whether unconsciously or deliberately, he sat with the light shining on < his left profile in the manner in which it can be seen in the famous picture of himself in uniform which adorns the wall of every house of consequence and every Government office in Free China. When the afternoon light grew dim and the electric power refused to i function, as it occasionally does in i Chungking, a candle was brought and ■ placed on his left side. PENETRATING EYES. Curiously enough, rarer pictures showing the Generalissimo’s right profile —I saw one such of him directing a battle from a field headquarters —give an amazing impression of hardness, a sort of tigerish alertness that was absent as he sat smiling and talking on this afternoon. Yet perhaps it was not quite absent, for even in the most comfortable of armchairs he sat stiff-back-ed. His head moved from side to side with sharp abruptness. He very rarely used his hands to gesture with—another unusual trait in a Chinese —and when he spoke it was without declamation or rhetoric. His eyes, which are dark and penetrating, hardly leave the face of any person to whom he his talking. All his answers, given through an interpreter, were first pondered, and then delivered precisely and without circumlocution.' He was perfectly capable, too, of giving a tactful replj 7 to a difficult question without committing himself. EXTRAORDINARY CHARM. During the interview and afterwards, when the whole foreign Press of Chungking were assembled to hear the Generalissimo read a statement on world affairs, I detected no sign of the brusqueness and impatience with which rumour had it he was well endowed. On the contrary, he displayed a quite extraordinary charm, frequently turning to me with a sudden vivid smile as the interpreter translated to me something which he wished to endorse.

He is absolutely impertubable in a crisis, according to his staff officers and others who have observed him during some of China’s darkest hours over the past four and a half years; and when a crisis of a minor nature arose during the presentation to him cf 30 foreign correspondents, we had quite an interesting glimpse of his poise.

We had just crowded into his room when all the lights —and they are connected to a special private circuit —went out. There was a stir amongst the guards outside the building, and for a moment we were all a little on edge. I was looking through the darkness towards the Generalissimo, and I saw that his silhouette did not move. Moreover, when the lights came on, I saw he was actually laughing. I wonder if Hitier or Mussolini would have been able to laugh!