China's wartime history revealed in English books
By Li Xing (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-07-07 06:27

New books abound nowadays to satisfy the public's craving for better reading on the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-1945) and World War II (1939-1945) as China and the world commemorate the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Japan and Germany.

A span of six decades allows people to look back and reflect upon the war in which some 38 million Chinese died or were wounded. Yet even more Chinese picked up arms and united to fight back against Japanese aggression.

Authors of new books try to provide more detailed and vivid accounts of the war, often accompanied with photos and illustrations.

But for those interested in gaining a more direct insight into the history of more than 60 years ago, they could do a lot worse than search out three old English books, which have been reprinted by the Beijing-based Foreign Language Press.

They are "China Fights Back" (1938) by Agnes Smedley, "The People's War" (1939) by Israel Epstein, both first published by Victor Gollancz Ltd in London, and "North China Front" (1939) by James Bertram, first published by Macmillan and Co, also in London.

Published in 1938 and 1939, before World War II broke out in Europe, the books, penned by authors who were journalists by training, offer documentary accounts of the first critical two years of the war.

From the books, we hear the voices of Mao Zedong, Zhu De and Zhou Enlai as well as that of Kuomintang generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and follow in the footsteps of the authors into China's towns, villages and mountains.

In his book, Israel Epstein (1919-2005), a Jew who grew up in China, tells of how an ordinary family in North China established what Epstein called the first people's anti-Japanese allied army. Readers can marvel at the composure of an elderly woman as she uttered "a few well-chosen words" when passing sentries at the West Gate (Xizhimen) of Old Beijing, with two pistols securely-strapped around her waist.

This was just a few weeks after the July 7 Marco Polo Bridge Incident, when Japan started its all-out war in an attempt to subjugate China to its rule.

Agnes Smedley (1892-1950), an American woman and war correspondent for media in Germany, Britain and later the United States, visited Chinese resistance units under both Communist and Kuomintang leaders in the war zone from November 1938 to April 1941.

Some historians consider Smedley's visits the longest tour of the Chinese war by any foreign correspondent, man or woman.

From Smedley's letters during her travels, readers find themselves in cities suffering daily air attacks in North China, or in villages where she discussed the war with and learned about Chinese determination from leading commanders such as Kuomintang General Fu Zuoyi or Zhu De, commander of the Eighth Route Army led by the Communist Party.

Given to her by the Chinese, she was able to share diaries left behind by young Japanese soldiers or officers.

"One passage (from a petty officer) told how a Japanese unit entered a Chinese village. He had gone into the homes of some of the peasants. They did not have more than a handful of rice, and no other food whatever. After speaking of their desperate poverty, he had added, 'It is indeed terrible to be men without a country'," Smedley recounted.

James Bertram (1910-1993), a British journalist, travelled in Japan and China for a year after the war broke out. He spent the winter with Chinese forces in the northern hills. He trekked on foot, rode on horseback or in military truck while covering what he called "a fair section of the interior of North China."

"It was an interesting experience, and convinced me as nothing else could have done of the inner strength of the Chinese resistance," Bertram wrote in the preface.

On October 25, 1937, Bertram conducted an extensive interview with Mao Zedong, chairman of the Communist Party of China, who expounded in detail the Japanese objectives and the strategies the Chinese must adopt in order to defeat the Japanese invaders.

"I would say that Mao Tse-tung (Mao Zedong) has in an unusual degree the subtlety and flexibility characteristic of the Chinese mind at its best: this is what makes him a successful political strategist" Bertram wrote.

All in all, the three international journalists tried to bring home to the West the Chinese War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and its link to the brewing World War II.

"But it was hard to see China clearly, and most of us have to see a country before we can feel for it. Spain is also Europe, part of a familiar world; and the agony of the Spanish people has burnt in upon our European consciousness. For too many Westerners, the battlefields of Asia remain un-visualized, remote and out of mind," Bertram wrote.

In fact, before Epstein wrote the last lines of his book, the League of Nations had shelved the latest appeal by China in the hopes this world organization could take some action to condemn and stop Japanese aggression in China.

"The proposal was blocked, and Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary of a democratic nation (Britain), has again offered to China the gratuitous insult of empty words of sympathy coupled with a refusal to even consider the possibility of collective aid," Epstein wrote.

All these journalists hoped was for their reports to make the world aware of the war in the East.

"The war of the Chinese people against the Japanese invaders is the fight of one-fifth of the human race for national independence for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," Anna Louise Strong (1885-1970), another American woman journalist, wrote in her introduction to Smedley's "China Fights Back."

"For the peoples of all countries China's struggle holds rich meaning and a message of hope," Epstein stressed at the end of his book.

"China is fighting Fascism There is no need to enlarge on the significance of this fact

"To help them against the common enemy is the responsibility of the world's free peoples," Epstein wrote.

(China Daily 07/07/2005 page13)

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