"CHINESE DONALD"

New Zealand Listener, Volume 15, Issue 390, 13 December 1946, Page 6

"CHINESE DONALD"

Salute to an Honest Man

oe | Written for "The Listener’ |

by

JAMES

BERTRAM

HERE is something strangely final about the death of W. H. Donald, the veteran Austra-lian-born newspaperman who was for many years the friend and advisor of leading figures in modern China. It marks the end of a period: to those who knew him it seems almost a portent, like the death of Falstaff. Not that Donald was ever rejected at the end by these he had served. He died in the Country Hospital, Shanghai, at the age of 71, brought back with every care and attention to die in China

as he had wished. But his death was certainly hastened by his long internment in a Japanese

prison camp in the * ee eee Philippines. And- just as certainly his personal influence-so valuable at a number of critical points in recent Chinese history-was sadly misssed in China after 1941. No "Mystery Man" A lot of nonsense has been written at one time or another about China’s "foreign advisors" and "men of mystery" -legendary heroes of the type of "OneArm Sutton," General Morris, "TwoGun" Cohen, and the rest. Undeniably China has always attracted picturesque and colourful adventurers from all over the world, and they are fair copy for the gossip-column. But to one of the most experienced American journalists in the Far East-Randall Gould, editor of the Shanghai Evening Post and Mer-cury-we owe the most effective debunking of the whole "foreign advisor" legend. "Any writer," says Gould in his recent book, China in the Sun, "finds it a distressing task to dispel romantic illusions. But the hard fact is that most of ‘what they say’ concerning men of genius and figures of mystery « guiding Chinese destinies is so much unmitigated bosh. The truth is that in keeping with the nature of this hard, primitive land and its imperturbable inhabitants, events have worked out mostly on. the™basis of earnest effort. Trial and error, not inspiration, have been responsible for practically all the progress China has made." Down to Earth Donald was no mystery man of genius spinning webs of policy, no _ lonely idealist "following the gleam." He was a hard-headed, practical working newspaperman who got his first job on the China Coast because he was -a teetotaller and a member of the Y.M.C.A. He had integrity, sobriety, and a Christian conscience; he had also remarkable energy and an amazing flow of conversation. He worked on various newspapers and Information Bureaus from Hong Kong to Peiping, and first became wellknown through his close. association with the "Young Marshal" Chang Hsuehliang, whom he succeeded in curing of the drug habit that had threatened that amiable young spendthrift with disaster. When the Young Marshal "went abroad" efter the loss of Manchuria, to

return a very different man,» Donaid stayed on in China as a family friend and unofficial advisor to Mme. Chiang Kai-shek. The part he played as a private negotiator jn smoothing out the celebrated "kidnapping" of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek by the Young Marshal at Sian in 1936 is familiar to any reader of the newspapers; it had much to do with the growth of his personal legend. To the newspapers he now became "China’s Number One White Man." For four more years Donald remained with the Chiangs-years of war. strain

and. considerable physical hardship. He was with Mme. Chiang in the motor--car accident at the

' Shanghai front in 1937 thaf was the beginning of her protracted: illness; he was through the long months of bombing in Hankow and Chungking. In those war years Donald flew thousands of miles in all types of planes over all sorts of country-and he was a very tired man by 1941. His complete fearlessness. and outspoken criticism of graft and inefficiency: made him many enemies in Chungking; and he began to think longingly of retirement. ~ Donald Leaves China Throughout 1940 Donald made several trips to Hong Kong, where he was fitting out the yacht in which he hoped to make a cruise of the Pacific. In 1941 he got away, with a young Chinese secretary, Miss Ansie Lee of Hong Kong, who was to help him with the writing of his memoirs. By-passing his native Australia-which he refused to re-visit in view of the appeasement policy of the Menzies Government towards Japan in the years before Pearl HarbourDonald touched in on New Zealand, and then made his way to Tahiti. But he could not break away so easily. From Chungking repeated cables assailed his island retreat demanding his return; and his abiding loyalty to the Chiangs proved stronger than his wish for peace and quiet. Late in 1941 he began the return journey, via Honolulu and the Philippines. He was in Manila, on the last stage back to China when the Japanese struck at Pearl Harbour. A Prisoner of Japan During the first weeks of the fighting, General MacArthur offered him air transport to Australia; but Donald refused any special treatment.. With other Europeans he was arrested at his Manila hotel, and transferred to the Santo Tomas concentration camp. Contrary to stories later current, Donald was registered as a prisoner under his own name, "W. H. Donald, born Lithgow, N.S.W., Australia, age 66. Occupation, journalist." Though there was a price on his head of 100,000 pesos‘ (about £15,000) the Japanese kempei-tai never caught up with him. Jack Percival, the Australian war correspondent who was interned in the same Santo Tomas camp, has described how once a Japanese gendarme came looking for Donald and was shown his

registration card. ‘Too old," the Japanese officer said regretfully, when he read Donald’s age. But after that narrow escape the Australian volunteered for a draft to another camp, Los Banos, which was in the malaria belt. Here he lay low until the finish, Movie Rescue "In the camp I did not worry," Donald later wrote to Randall Gould. "I was protected by the fact that no China Japanese came to Manila, and also by the loyalty of fellow internees who maintained my secret. Time went swiftly for me. a "I was rescued from Los Banos camp. A swell rescue. Like a movie, with paratroopers landing and co-operating with guerrillas, who

swarmed into the camp from the jungles, firing upon the Japanese guard boxed around the camp. Over 100 Japs were killed, and 2,146 white people were rescued and on the lake in amptanks in two hours, with the camp in "flames behind them. "I lost everything I had, and am now reduced to one handbag. Enough for any man. My trials and tribulations with baggage have disappeared. Why aggravate life with lots of encumbrances?" American Censorship Immediately after his release, Donald sat down on an empty ammunition case and wrote a statement for press release. Tt was the old theme-to him so familiar, from those pre-Pearl Harbour days when China fought alone-of what the Allies owed to China, And if a tinge of bitterness appeared in the language that he chose, who could blame him? "The question of the moment," Donald wrote, "is the equipment of China. as the foremost nation in the Far East, of rehabilitating her and setting her upon her feet to undertake her new responsibilities. Here is where the Allies will be called upon for heavy financial loans or credits, and for expert technical assistance. It should be forthcoming liberally and spontaneously. Without it China will flounder for innumerable years and in increasing confusion. "The Allies have much to repay China, have much forgiveness to ask, and they have paid bitterly for their betrayal of her between 1937 and 1941. The only way out now is for them boldly to shoulder their obligations." The statement was censored by General MacArthur’s Headquarters, which returned the comment: "We cannot pass such controversial statements by Mr. W. H. Donald."

Donald made one quick visit to the United States; and with Ansie Lee was present at the San Francisco Conference in 1945. But he found little comfort in the uneasy birth of the United Nations; and his tough frame, weakened by long years of Japanese internment, was beginning to crack. The rest of the story is best told in his own words-in a letter written to Rewi Alley six months ago, which I am allowed to publish here. To me there is something curiously appropriate in this final exchange of greetings between an Australian and a New Zealander who had both devoted their lives to China-one to become known as "China’s Number One White’Man," the other as "China’s Number One White Coolie." Country Hospital, Shanghai, June 18, 1946. Dear Rewi,-I have just received your letter of June 2, and I am glad to see your signature once again, I have wondered for a long time where you are, and it seems to me that you’ve got about as far westward as you can go. However, that you are still above ground is something. I have been flirting with the minions from the other side for some time. After escaping from the internment camp at Manila, I arrived in San Francisco in May, 1945; and I escaped from America in October, going to Tahiti. I was chasing the warm weather. I arrived on the 8th of November and by December 20th, I could scarcely breathe. I had a fluoroscope taken and the doctor told me I was "in a very serious condition.’’ I asked him what he meant and he said there was something serious the matter with my lung. He told me to go to the hospital at once. I went. They aspirated me, kept me in the hospital a week, threw up their hands and confessed that they could do nothing.. "You must go to America at once," and that meant that I must get an airplane some way or other. So I telegraphed Madame Chiang and, fortunately for me, the Commodore at the Naval @Hospital in. Honolulu was a doctor I used to know at Pekin, Dr. Wilcutts. The plane came to me at Tahiti, flew me to Honolulu, and three days afterwards the doctors were (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) ready to give me their diagnosis. Three of them stood at the foot of the bed and told me gravely that I ‘was past their help; that my right lung had collapsed, that the tissue was disintegrating, that there was no treatment and, of course, no cure for the malady. "You are too late by a year in coming to us," they said. They told me I ¢ould. stay there as long as I liked, which they thought would not be long, and so I settled down to enjoy what was left! of life. In time they began to say they would send me to Shanghai if I wanted to go and look at China, and on March 18th they gave me one of the admiral’s four-engine planes, the head doctor from the hospital, a nurse, and Hollington Tong, and away I went, thinking that in about two weeks’ time I would wiggle my toes and say farewell. P But what is the situation? To my disgust and my surprise, I began to sit up and take notice of things and now I find myself getting ready to stalk about the landscape. I used to be aspirated once every two weeks. It is now six weeks since I was done and the doctors scratch their heads in puzzlement and I am feeling like getting up and walking around. However, I’ve got to take it easy. And that is my story. I would. like to hear’ more about your troubles. China is in a helluva mess and I wonder if it is worth while getting better to poke my nose into things again. I find myself thinking of distant landscapes. I shall shut up for the time being, with my best wishes to you. I hope you are well and comfortable. Good luck, God bless. As Ever, DON. To this Rewi Alley wrote back: Bailie School, Sandan, Kansu, | July, 1946, Dear Don,-Thanks for yours of June 18th. You are certainly a man of surprises. Guess you will be able to do some good with your shrewd common sense for a while yet. Heaven only knows, there is a big enough need for it to-day. But I had not realised that you were so close to being promoted to the House. of Lords. It’s really much better that you stay around with the world of mundane men for

a while yet--you have so very much experience to help out with over these months that mean so very much to so many millions. Thanks very much for your kind wishes for the Industrial Co-operatives. Keep on taking an interest. You have no idea how your letter encourages. . . . Yours.

REWI

ALLEY

But the end was nearer than they thought. On November 10 Donald, after the brief rally that had astounded the doctors, died of cancer of the lung and stomach. He was buried in the International Cemetery of Shanghai in what again, at last, is Chinese soil. The Manchurian Problem He will not be forgotten. And there will be many besides Rewi Alley who will regret that Donald did not recover for long enough to poke that truculent, outsize Australian nose into things again. What one man can do in any complicated political situation is always limited. But there is no doubt that Donald’s practical common-sense and longstanding familiarity with key figures in the’ Chinese scene might have been of the greatest help in tackling one of the most complicated regional problems in China to-day-that of the North-east. For Donald’s part in helping to resolve the Sian crisis did not end with the return of the Young Marshal and his former captive to Nanking. It was, Donald who first exposed-in a couple of articles in the North China Daily News-the plot by certain militarist elements in Nanking to bomb Sian during the Generalissimo’s enforced stay there, with the intention of getting rid of their own chief: It was Donald who

fought indefatigably for the release of the Young Marshal, when he in his turn was made a prisoner by those same reactionary cliques (despite the pledges given in Sian). It was Donald who would frankly tell the Generalissimo what no one else dared tell him-the real motivation of some of his own political associates. The Young Marshal-the one man who might command the loyalty and friendly co-operation of all the conflicting elements in Manchuria and China’s North-east-is still a prisoner; North China is already a battleground. And there is one voice the less to be heard in private counsel in China’s capital: the raucous, insistent, firmly antipodean English of one of the best foreign friends that China ever had, who never learnt a word of Chinese, could not stomach. a Chinese dish, and wore the complete armour of an "Old China Hand" over a passionate loyalty to a people and a country not his own. "The Superior Man,’ Confucius said, "takes as much trouble to discover what is right as lesser men take to discover what will pay." Donald’s outstanding characteristics ‘were loyalty without selfseeking, complete honesty, and fearlessness. He had not many of the stock Confucian virtues; and in tact-normally regarded as the first essential in a private advisor-he was conspicuously lacking. But so long as he was around the Chinese capital, there was always someone to remind China’s leaders of another saying of the Master that is in danger of being forgotten in Nanking to-day: "To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage."

The Music The music to be heard from 2YA comprises four interludes and the longer Passacaglia. The first piece »recedes Act I, and suggests the gloom of a grey morning before the inquest. The second (being the introduction to Act II) suggests the mood of a brilliant, sunny morning, with church bells ringing for the Sunday service. The third is the Prelude to Act III, setting the scene of the town and harbour lying tranquil under a moonlit sky. The fourth piece (in this recording) goes back to Act I. It is played between the first two scenes, and predicts the storm whose fury acts as a stimulant to the disordered mind of Peter. Finally, there is the Passacaglia, which is a kind of centre-piece to the whole opera, reflecting the conflict in Grimés’s: ‘mind-his desperate loneliness conflict‘ing with his affectionate instincts; the pitiful workhouse apprentice sending his thought back’ to his own childhood and contrasting them with his present condition. Interwoven with the development of the Passacaglia is a desolate wandering motif, depicting the innocent workhouse boy Grimes himself once was. It is heard first as a viola solo accompanied by the Passacaglia theme, and \later it develops to an orchestral climax, and is then reduced to a ground bass. The Passacaglia Comes before the second ‘scene of Act II, and leads up to the rise of the curtain on Peter’s dwelling, an upturned boat on the edge of a cliff, its dark and _ squalid interior crowded with nets, rope and tackle, The music is played by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult.