AN AUSTRALIAN WHO DISLIKES AUSTRALIA

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 121, 17 October 1941, Unnumbered Page

AN AUSTRALIAN WHO DISLIKES AUSTRALIA

| | A" Listener" Interview |

by

Sydney

Brookes

din = i ee -_- NTO Auckland one Sunday recently came a ship. Off the ship came a man whose life’s work has concerned the destiny of four hundred and fifty million people. In figures: 450,000,000 people. When a man takes a liking to a job as large as that it may be imagined that his dislikes are liable to forceful expression. This man, W. H. Donald, has taken a dislike to the Government of his own country and feels so strongly about it that he flatly refuses to go home again unless he has toto catch a ship away. How he managed to get off the ship et Auckland, hide himself in a private hotel, and reach. Wellington still unheralded, can only be explained by assuming that such an event happened on a Sunday in a country which reserves its seventh day to other pursuits than welcoming great men, But manage it he did, and, in Wellington, maintained his incognito with equal efficiency until The Listener finally caught him. Once discovered, he gave in sportingly, and even made the meeting the interview of the year by saying, in plain words, and without reserve, that he would NOT go to Australia. When an Australian says that, he must have a pretty good reason for it. W. H. Donald’s reason consists of 90,000,000 people homeless and unarmed, of Australian coal and iron sent to arm the nation that sacked their cities and towns and villages, looted their possessions, drugged them with opium and cocaine,

plundered their art and their treasure, grabbed their country, and called the grab an "incident," and ravaged their women. Those are a few of W. H. Donald’s reasons for taking a very evident satisfaction in an extreme and pointed and publicly-advertised disapproval of his country. The Change In China For 38 years he has been in China. Now’'the confidant and adviser of Chiang Kai-Shek, Generalissimo of the Chinese Armies, leader of free China, Donald has watched China grow from a land of polite and prehistoric confusion to the status of a huge nation, slowly welding itself by painful processes into a modern state. He was with Chiang Kai-Shek when the Generalissimo decided that feudal control of land by feudal lords with feudal armies must be replaced by national control.

With an army trained on bases laid down by an expert German military mission, Chiang KaiShek forcibly created a semblance of unity in China, and drove the errant Communist armies into the north and west after making such a show of strength and organisation as effectually subdued the private armies in the other provinces, He was on the way to getting down to the real work of social organisation when Japan created the Manchukuo "incident." Armed by _ supplies from America and Britain, and that Australia which Mr, Donald dislikes so much, Japan swept over China. When they stopped, the Japanese destroyed. What they did not destroy they stole. The Chinese that remained within their control, they put to forced labour, and paid them in drugs. They reintroduced opium as a plague to dull the oppressed senses of their victims. Wherever they touched China, they despoiled China, and the great and magnificent result of their policies of grab, rape, and corruption, was that China suddenly became a nation. "The Japanese were fools," says Mr, Donald, If they had been content to settle and govern the areas they won by war, he believes that the acquiescent Chinese

might have left them free to adventure further south. "But when they burned and stole, and finally made the big mistake of going after the Chinese women," the Chinese discovered that a spear or a sword or a bullet would penetrate even a Japanese body. Unarmed, and without the means of buying arms or munitions from the creditor nations, China yet contrived to make of herself a bulwark which kept Japanese imperial ambitions confined above the latitude of 20 degrees north, just 30 degrees safely distant from the wide open spaces of Australia, which Mr. ‘Donald says, "‘industriously supplied materials to the nation which was threatening her." "If China had not been holding Japan so long she would have travelled south," he said. "Are you absolutely certain of that, Mr. Donald?" Mr. Donald became almost more emphatic than when he said he refused

to return to Australia: "I am absolutely certain," he replied. China did receive small credits from Britain and the U.S.A. These were granted on condition that they should not be used for the purchase of war materials, or for war purposes. Not until late last year did China receive substantial credits to help her maintain the war against Japan and thus save the democracies from using the materials themselves for their own defence. Now, Mr. Donald reported, more goods were becoming available, although China was still greatly outweighed by Japanese mechanised land forces, and air force, Russia, who had continuously helped her, was now forced to keep everything for her own needs, and the traffic on the Burma Road was still in process of reorganisation by American experts. However, what China had done with so little assistance before, she could con» (Continued on next page)

ADVISER TO THE GENERALISSIMO

(Continued from previous page) tinue to do until the volume of assistance swelled anew. She had made herself self-sufficient in the manufacture of small arms and ammunition. Until recently, Russia had sent quantities of supplies by road from the north-west. A good deal of material had even been sent by sea from Russia or through the Japanese blockaded coastal inlets to the Chinese hinterland by the simple means of bribing Japanese officers, With these small means, China had shifted inland in order to hold and harry the Japanese armies. The country had been goaded by Japanese methods of conquest to make itself unconquerable. Into The Interior Into the roadless interior Chiang KaiShek had taken his armies and built a new China round the Capital of Chungking. In the rear and along the flanks of the Japanese remained the awakening peasantry to exact what vengeance they could for the atrocities perpetrated on their land and its inhabitants. Even had they been more politic in their treatment of what they regarded as a subject race of slaves, Mr. Donald said he thought the Japanese could never have been successful conquerors. Within their own ranks graft and cor- ruption spoiled all their chances. They settled on the land only for the riches they could get out of it. Meanwhile, Chiang Kai-Shek was gathering his forces to drive them all out. He was now holding an army of 5,000,000 men ready for this task. The Burma Road To improve the traffic on the Burma Road-that miracle of engineering, built in four months by volunteer labourthe U.S. had sent experts to sit on a committee of control, with more transport experts to control the traffic itself. If he could get enough material in by this route between this month and next May-months during which a permanent cloud-covering makes bombing impos-sible-Mr. Donald said he thought the Generalissimo would attack. He wanted air support, but would probably go without it if necessary. The Japanese were able to maintain an air force of about 2,000 ‘planes for all their operations, These were not comparable to the machines being used in Europe — the Japanese build from a now out-dated German model-but were superior in speed, weight, and especially in numbers, to anything China had so far been in a position to operate. Force to be Reckoned With But China’s army was becoming a force to be reckoned with. Unable to meet head-on with Japanese armoured forces, they enveloped them, surrounded them, and descended on them in their own time. By this means, they were quite capable of inflicting 12,000 casualties in a single battle, with the Japanese fleeing in a rout. Behind the organised armies were the guerillas, and supporting them with arms and ammunition were about seven small factories working on the lines of Rewi Alley’s co-operatives. If they had to make machines of wood, they still managed to weave cloth for army uniforms or wool for army blankets, One

factory had all its machinery made from metal salvaged from Japanese aeroplanes. The Co-operatives Mr. Donald spoke with admiration of the work of the co-operatives and of their leader. They were officially blessed by General and Madame Chiang KaiShek, Chiang Kai-Shek’s Kuomintang party, he said, was trying, in spite’ of the war, to organise Chinese national life on broadly socialist lines. The co-opera-tives, therefore, were approved. Tenure of land by the people who worked it was approved, and it was planned to perpetuate this by banning the sale of land. These ideals, although they could not be realised while the war took up all the Chungking government’s energies, promised well for the future of a free China, and, he thought, made the position of the Communist elements untenable. China’s Communist Armies "Rag-tag and bobtail," was Mr. Donald’s comment on the Communist armies. "I was with the Generalissimo when he chased them into the northwest. They want freedom of action, and a definite sector to hold against the Japanese. The point is, of course, that they want to beat the’ Japanese and then hold the land for themselves. Chiang Kai-Shek is quite definite that they can be given neither power nor supplies unless they recognise the authority of the Kuomintang." Mr. Donald said he had suggested they be given a province in which to confine themselves and make whatever experiments they liked in Communist methods. But Chiang Kai-Shek had said he could not do that because the Communists, given so much, would want more. As for the potential nuisancevalue of the Communists, Chiang KaiShek had told Mr. Donald that he was holding five divisions of troops to keep an eye on them. It remained to be seen what effect on their relationship would be made by Russia’s entry into war with the Axis,

To Mr. Donald it was pointed out that a rather glowing picture of the Communist Eighth Route Army had been given by such a writer as Edgar Snow. "Oh yes, no doubt,’ he replied. "Those writers," he said, "we call the armchair Communists. They write from a pro-Communist point of view." Time For Dinner Now, Mr. Donald has a secretary, a Chinese lady very beautiful to look upon. Largely because of her that is all that can be said about what Mr. Donald said about many other things of interest and great importance to a country which shares the Pacific with China and Japan and Mr. Donald’s vituperated Australia. In short, he was snatched away to be taken to dinner. In Wellington he had been in consultation about Pacific affairs with the New Zealand Government. Soon he expected to return, and his greatest worry, apart from the anxious secretary and The Listener representative, was whether he could get by ship to Honolulu. If not, he would have to make a connection at Australia "and I don’t even want to go there to catch a boat."