Kazu replied formally that while he appreciated the hospitality of the people of Hankow, he could not accept food from the enemies of China. These words, which were clearly audible to the entire city, were greeted with cheers by the throng below. The General took this in, thought about it a moment, and then made a neat about face.
"General Soo," said he stoutly, "was communist when he believed communism only hope for China. You have changed everything. General Soo now faithful Buddhist!"
"May I," said Baker with a grin, "be the first to congratulate General Soo on his perspicacity."
AS THE General had promised, there was a great banquet spread. In spite of Soo's protestations, Baker insisted on sampling each course rather extensively for sleeping potions or poison, but either the idea had not occurred to the communists, or there hadn't been enough time, or poison available.
For the most part the civil government of Hankow joined with General Soo in a loudly declared conversion to Buddhism without communist trappings. In spite of Baker's skepticism, I believed that most of them were quite sincere. At least, they sincerely wanted to be on the side with the most power, and for the time being at least, Kazu seemed an easy winner. General Soo, in particular, insisted on making a long speech in which he declared the Russians to be the true "western imperialists", now unmasked, who since the days of the first Stalin had sought to enslave China with lies and trickery. Baker shook his head over this, and privately opined that Soo was a very poor fence straddler: such remarks went beyond the needs of expediency, and would probably completely alienate him from the Kremlin. However, the crowd thought it was all fine.
Kazu replied with a short, and generally well planned statement of his policy.
"Those who follow me," he concluded, "have no easy path. They must be strong, to throw off the yoke of those who would enslave them, but they must be merciful to their enemies in defeat, even to those who but a moment before were at their throats. For though we win the war, if we at the same time forget what we have fought for, then we have indeed lost all. I proclaim to all China, and to her enemies both within and without our borders, that the faith of Buddha has returned, and that interference in China's affairs by any other nation will not be tolerated."
Colonel Faulkner had landed at the Hankow airport and now, with his crew, shared our private banquet on the terrace of the city's largest hotel, only a few hundred feet from where Kazu squatted. Under cover of the cheering and speechmaking, he relayed to us some news which he had heard on the radio, which was not quite so rosy.
It seemed, first, that the Chinese III Army, under General Wu, had declared itself for Buddha, and was engaged in a pitched battle with the Manchurian First Army north of Tientsin. The communist garrison at Shanghai, where there was a large population of Russian "colonists", had holed in, awaiting attack by a Buddhist Peoples Army assembled from revolting elements of the II and VII Corps at Nanking. A revolt at Canton, far to the south, had been put down by the communists with the aid of air support coming directly from Russia. The most ominous note, however, was a veiled threat by old Mao himself that if mutinous elements did not submit, he might call upon his great ally to the east to use the atomic bomb. Mao spoke apparently from near Peking, where he was assembling the I and V Armies.