The Japanese have not yet succeeded in making much impression on the Chinese farmers, except to anger them with cruelty and rapine. In Manchuria, where the Japanese have had undisputed sway for ten long years, thousands of bandits, a Chinese version of Minute Men, are still fighting. Ten, five, even three miles from the great fortified centers of the Japanese army in China, Chinese irregulars, peasant volunteers, spring up in the night. In the darkness there is shooting, sudden flames, perhaps an airplane burning or a gasoline storage tank set on fire; when dawn comes there is nothing to be seen except the patient quiet coolies working in their little fields.
At the present time the war has reached its quiescent stage. The Japanese army has done what in most other cases would be called winning a victory. The battle is accordingly a battle between the Chinese government in the West and the Japanese in the East of China, not with guns or ships so much as with words and with price levels—not for strategic territory, but for the support of the Chinese masses.
The Chinese must make it possible for their own people to live successfully and happily. But they have the world's greatest farm problem, a problem of over-indebtedness, sharecropping, soil exhaustion, prices and markets. Japan wanted to prevent the creation of a united China strong enough to take Manchuria back, and to drive the Japanese off the Asiatic continent back to Japan. Japan accordingly took the disastrous and painful step of conquering the world's greatest relief problem—the millions of underfed, undernourished, desperate Chinese farmers. Now she has them.
In this light, the Far Eastern conflict takes on a different appearance from the usual picture of China versus Japan. It is a conflict, not merely of one nation against another but of competing governments within the same territory. China is trying to build one way; Japan, another; but they are both building for the same end, control of the Far East, and on the same foundations, the Chinese people. Both Japan and the independent Chinese government are struggling for the mastery of an area which is in the grip of a tragic farm problem. The key to power is the mastery of the problem, not the mastery of the men. The Chinese farmers would welcome Communism, capitalism, or almost any kind of leadership which could guarantee them a good livelihood in return for their long and patient labor. The basic issues are social, technological, and economic, as well as political and military. The Japanese failure in China is not a failure of the economic resources; Japan could have been a weak but adequate economic partner to China. The failure of Japan now leads China to look elsewhere for help.
The United States in Chinese Politics
The American Lease-Lend Bill, designed primarily to extend effective aid to Britain, also applied to China. The United States executive was clearly aware of the purposes of Japan, and displayed a temper to thwart them. Secretary of State Cordell Hull, presenting a statement in support of the Bill to the House Foreign Affairs Committee on January 15, 1941, stated:
It has been clear throughout that Japan has been actuated from the start by broad and ambitious plans for establishing herself in a dominant position in the entire region of the Western Pacific. Her leaders have openly declared their determination to achieve and maintain that position by force of arms and thus to make themselves master of an area containing almost one-half of the entire population of the world. As a consequence, they would have arbitrary control of the sea and trade routes in that region.
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It should be manifest to every person that such a program for the subjugation and ruthless exploitation by one country of nearly one-half the population of the world is a matter of immense significance, importance and concern to every nation wherever located.
On March 15, the President's speech to the White House Correspondents' Association included a ringing promise to give help to the Chinese people, who had asked for aid through Chiang K'ai-shek. The United States moved toward a more definite policy in Asia as well as giving more aid to Britain in the North Atlantic area. The lease-lend program might upset the entire balance of power in the Far East even more readily than in Europe; but immediate evidence of such large-scale application was not forthcoming.
In his message to President Roosevelt, March 18, 1941, Chiang K'ai-shek said:[2]
The people of China, whether engaged in fighting the aggressor or toiling in the fields and workshops in the rear in support of the defenders, will be immeasurably heartened by your impressive reaffirmation of the will of the American people to assist them in their struggle for freedom from foreign domination, and in the resumption of their march towards democracy and social justice for all.