THESTANLEY-WILDER SAGA
1862 - 1962
Letters andPapers from China
by CharlesAlfred Stanley
and
George D. andGertrude S. Wilder
PART FIVE: 1939 - 1962
Compiledby Margaret Wilder Menzi and Theodore Stanley Wilder
Preservedby Elizabeth Anne Menzi
Editedby Donald Wilder Menzi
CONTENTS
Introduction
Prologue
1. Return toJapanese-Occupied China (March - April 1939)
S Aboard the Merchant Ship AIvaran@
S Up the Coast from Shanghai toPeking
S Back Home Again
2. At Home in Occupied Peking (1940)
3. Forebodings of a World at War (1941)
4.AUnder the Protection of the Imperial Japanese Army@****
S Letters (Dec. 1941 - June 1942)and Diary (June 1942 - April 1943)
- AWeihsien, the Test@ GDWÕs Diary(April - Sept. 1943)
- RepatriationVoyage (Sept. - Dec. 1943)
7. ÒLike the Sun at his SettingÓ (1944 - 1946)
8.AIf there is Righteousness in the Heart . . .@ (1946 - 63)
THE STANLEY AND WILDER FAMILIESBFOUR GENERATIONS
** Charles Alfred Stanley TheodoreSmith Wilder**
m. Ursula Johnson m.Francis Durand
| |
____|________ |
| | | | |
Charles Mary Helen Gertrude ====================== George
AUncle Charlie@ AAunt Mame@ |
m. __? m.Charles ___|__
_? Gammon | | | |
| | | | | |
**John Agnes Theodore Margaret Durand Ursula **
m. Mary m.George m.Corinne m. Leonard m. Mildred m. Carroll
Boyd Cameron Burchard Menzi Lybarger Daniels
| | | | | |
| | | | | |
Charles Jean Cynthia Gertrude James Theodore
Judy Elizabeth Richard Sally Anita George William
Donald David
INTRODUCTION
In the early 1860s, two passionately idealistic youngmen, both of them born and raised on farms in Ohio, began journeys that tookthem in totally different directions. Theodore Smith Wilder went as a soldier,by rail and on foot, to a war that was to cut his life short in 1870, when hedied from the delayed effects of an un-removed musket ball. Charles AlfredStanley traveled by sailing ship with his bride, Ursula, as one of the firstAmerican missionary families to reach North China, where he lived until hisretirement in 1904. The two men=s destinies were joined in 1894 when Theodore Wilder=s only son George was married to Charles= oldestdaughter, Gertrude.
The Stanley-Wilder Saga is the story of these twomen, Theodore and Charles, and of their children, George and Gertrude, toldlargely in their own words, in letters, diaries, and journals, over the centuryfrom 1861 to 1962.
Theodore Wilder was an idealistic Oberlin Collegestudent in June, 1861, when Abraham Lincoln issued a call for volunteers totake up arms to defend and preserve the Union. From then until he was severelywounded in the Battle of Cedar Mountain in August, 1862, he kept a detaileddiary, and later wrote the official AHistory of Company C of the Seventh Regiment, OhioVolunteer Infantry.@ Volume I of the Stanley-Wilder Saga combines these two works under the title AThe Praying Company@, the nickname given to Company C because of itspractice of holding regular devotional services twice weekly when it was notactively engaged in battle.
Charles Stanley, having recently graduated from LaneSeminary in Cincinnati, sailed in 1862 to Tientsin, China, where he struggledfor the next 45 years with only modest success, in an often hostileenvironment, to establish and maintain Christian churches in that city and in afar-flung network of villages. His frequent letters back to his sponsoringorganization, the Congregational Church=s American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions,constitute Volume II of theseries.
Volume III tells the story of the combined Stanley-Wilder family, beginning in1894 when Theodore Wilder=s son George married Charles Stanley=s daughter, Gertrude in Tientsin, not long after George had arrivedthere to begin his career as a Congregational Church missionary. After thegreat anti-foreign upheaval of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, George spent thegreater part of his professional career training native Chinese pastors andteaching the Chinese language to new arrivals in the North China Union LanguageSchool. During this time the Wilders experienced disastrous floods, famine,revolution, civil war, and foreign invasions, all of which are described infascinating detail in their weekly letters to family members in the U.S.
Volume IV shifts perspective temporarily to that of the Wilders= daughter Margaret and her husband Leonard Menzi, whom she met atOberlin College and married in 1922, when Leonard began a five year stint asPrincipal of the North China American School in Tungchou.[1]
Volume V coversGeorge and Gertrude Wilder=s post-retirement years, beginning in 1939 when theyreturned from a final one-year furlough to the U.S.
Neither George nor Gertrude Wilder fit the commonstereotype of the missionary as someone primarily interested in Asaving heathen souls.@ George Wilder was an athlete, a scholar and ascientist, as well as a teacher. He was an avid outdoorsman who loved nature,hiking, camping, and hunting. In college he was pitcher and captain of thebaseball team, and both he and Gertrude were still playing a vigorous game oftennis at the age of 70.
Very much a scientist at heart, he studied zoology,botany, geology and mineralogy in college. He had taken an interest in birdsfrom his youth growing up on the South Dakota prairie frontier where, as avolunteer reporter of bird migrations for the U.S. Department of AgriculturesBureau of Biological Survey, he began a life-long practice of recording everyspecies of bird that he observed each day. Later in life he was recognizedinternationally by scholars in the field of ornithology, three species of birdshaving been named "wilderi "in honor of his having been the first to identify them. With his friend, HughHubbard, he wrote Birds of Northeastern China , a 700-page volume published in 1938 by the PekingNatural History Society, of which he was a founding member and its firstPresident.
He also wrote, with James Ingram,Analysis ofChinese Characters , still consideredto be Afar and away the most useful analysis of Chinesecharacters for the beginner or intermediate student.@[2] He was the editor of the Fifth Edition of Fenn=s Chinese-English Pocket Dictionary, published in 1942 by HarvardUniversity Press. On one of his year-long furloughs to the U.S. he took thetime to learn apiculture and trained many Chinese in modern methods ofbee-keeping, which they, in turn, spread widely throughout North China.
Gertrude Wilder, a teacher in her own right as wellas a companion and help-mate to her husband, was also an accomplished amateurartist, responsible for many of the illustrations in the Wilder-Hubbard Abird book@ and numerous watercolor sketches of life in China.
The China to which the Wilders returned in 1939 hadbeen suffering for several years under Japanese military occupation. Japan hadbegun its colonial expansion into the continent of Asia as far back as the1890s with its victory in the Russo-Japanese War, eventually gaining control ofKorea and Manchuria to the north of China proper. More recently the Japanesearmy had encroached on China=s northern provinces in the early 1930s, and begun afull-scale conquest of the rest of the country in August 1937, shortly afterthe Wilders had left China on their last year-long furlough prior to reachingthe American Board=s mandatory retirement age of 70.
By 1939, the leaders of the Nationalist government ofChiang Kai Shek had retreated westward from their capital in Nanking, toChungking, in remote and relatively inaccessible Szechuan province. As theJapanese front had advanced toward the south and west, the Nationalist troopshad fallen back, while Mao Tse-dung=s Eighth Route Army infiltrated behind Japanese linesto organize resistance and harass Japanese troops throughout the countryside,provoking severe reprisals and collective punishment against villages thoughtto be cooperating with the anti-Japanese forces. While the U.S. was officiallyneutral in this conflict and Americans were not being mistreated by theJapanese military authorities, it was a turbulent and uncertain world intowhich the Wilders were prepared to reenter in the Spring of 1939.
AnOverview of Volume V
At the beginning of Chapter One (Return to a War-torn China) we find the Wilders 900miles out to sea on their way back to China aboard the Merchant Ship AIvaran.@ We get our first hints of what they are to findwhen they arrive in the coded warning contained in a letter received fromfriends in Japanese-occupied China that they should be prepared to find Alorspemb@ (problems) there.
Chapter Two (At Home in Occupied Peking) describes life in Peking during 1940 whenthe US was still officially neutral in Japan=s war againstChina. During this time the Wilders experience a form of dual reality, inwhich they themselves are treated with courtesy and respect by Japaneseofficials and friends, while all around them they observe the brutality andterror with which the Japanese army is attempting to control the population inthe surrounding countryside.
Chapter Three (Forebodings of a World at War) contains increasingly ominousforebodings of the coming of a second World War, ending with a letter to aJapanese friend and fellow ornithologist, Baron Kafruda, which is interruptedby news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Chapter Four (ÒUnder the Protection of the Imperial Japanese ArmyÓ) begins with adescription of events immediately following Pearl Harbor. For the next 15months the Wilders= life becomes progressively more difficult, as theirwork is curtailed, food becomes increasingly scarce and prohibitivelyexpensive, and Chinese are forbidden to have contact with foreign Aenemies.@ There are rumors of repatriation, but diplomatictalks eventually break down and the rumors change to speculation about possibleinternment, which turns out to be accurate as they are transported to aÒCivilian Assembly CenterÓ in Weihsien, Shantung province.
In Chapter Five (Weihsien, the Test) describes life in the ÒCourtyard of the HappyWay,Ó a former Presbyterian mission compound converted by the addition ofbarbed wire and guard towers into a concentration camp for 1,500 Westernnationals.
Chapter Six (Repatriation Voyage) describes the Wilders= voyage to the U.S. on the prisoner exchange ship Gripsholm, in the formof a narrative that focuses especially on the various species of birds observedfrom its deck during the two-month trip from Shanghai to New York City.
Chapters Seven (Like the Sun at his Setting) and Eight (When There is Righteousness in the Heart) deal withthe Wilders= last years. George Wilder died in 1946, not longafter a nostalgic visit to Huron and Yangton on the South Dakota prairie, wherehe had lived as a teenage boy in the 1880s. Gertrude lived on with herdaughter Margaret=s family for another 16 years, toward the end ofwhich she dictated ÒRandom Jottings,Ó an engaging memoir of her family=s life in China from 1862 onward.
Throughout the document we hear echoes of events inthe wider world, marking the progress of the ground war in Europe and navalbattles in the Pacific. We can also follow such domestic threads as thecourtship of Gertrude=s cousin, John Stanley and Mary Boyd, theirmarriage, and the birth of their first child, another Charles Alfred Stanley.
While nearly all of the material contained in thisand earlier volumes is in the form of personal letters, diaries and otherdocuments written by (or to) members of the Wilder family, we havesupplemented these texts with excerpts from contemporary newspaper reports andfrom other published accounts that expand on events mentioned only briefly intheir own writings. We have also added brief synopses listing the major itemsthat appear in each letter and in each month of diary entries.
We have been fortunate in being able to create a website (www.weihsien.menzi.org)containing copies of Gertrude Wilder=s watercolors of wild flowers painted during thisperiod and of scenes in the Weihsien camp (both of which were smuggled out inthe bottom of her sewing basket), as well as of the ports at which theGripsholm called on its way back to the US (www.gripsholm.menzi.org). The added dimension that these drawings bring to the text of the narrativemakes it all the more tragic that her earlier depictions of their life in Chinadid not, like these, make it past the Weihsien concentration camp guards= final inspection.
An Epilogue, consisting of letters and first-handreports from friends, and news bulletins received by Gertrude Wilder from 1946to the early 1950s, chronicles the fall of Nationalist China and the beginningsof life in the Anew China,@ told from the viewpoint of the small band ofAmerican missionaries who stayed on in hope of continuing their work, albeitunder difficult conditions. Their hopes for the future, after receiving someencouragement from the new central government, are brought to an abrupt end in1951 with the beginning of the Korean War and the expulsion of the remainingU.S. citizens, bringing to an end the saga that began with Charles and UrsulaStanley=s 1862 arrival in Tientsin.
ATTENTION!
The Japanese Army is coming soon to protect Japanese civilians living in China. The Japanese Army is an army of strict discipline, protecting good citizens. Civil servants must seek to maintain peace and order. Members of the community must live together peacefully and happily. With the return of Japanese businessmen to China, businesses will prosper once more. Every house must fly a Japanese flag to welcome the Japanese.
Japanese Army Headquarters
Translation of a leaflet dropped byJapanese warplanes in February, 1938. Cited in Norman Cliff, Courtyard ofthe Happy Way , p.140.
Location of future home: The Collegeof Chinese Studies, Peking.
Be careful what you write. Don=t use the term AJaps.@
May be war in Europe by the time wearrive.
Franco enters Madrid.
How can a good God tolerate evil? To make it a moral universe.
We must keep doing our part, even ifwe don=t seem to be winning.
See Bosworth=s ASummary of Christian Belief.@
Hope to visit Japanese friends -bird men - in Tokyo.
George D. Wilder
Over 900 miles west of San Pedro
Third day out on the MS "Ivaran"
March 25th, 1939
Dear Margaret and Ypsi folks,
We got your letter in Alameda, Mar, and I answered itin Beverly Hills, sending the copy of the "Gang's" statement. Or wasthat while still in Alameda? On the steamer we were surprised to find about 30steamer letters after we supposed that everything had gone to the agent in thecity. The Captain had them as soon as he arrived Tuesday night and told us itwas the biggest mail he ever saw. But your two last letters were in it and nowwe are trying to answer one or two a day as we go along. So here goes foryours, to at least answer its questions.
Our address hereafter is "College of ChineseStudies, Peking, China.@ You know that it is a fine big lot of Anfu Clubbuildings down east on the first street north of the East Four Pailous[3]near Lung Fu Ssu. But probably that does not mean anything to you. You gonorth from the Hatamen, past Tengshih K'ou, where the American Board is, athird of a mile to the four archways, and then turn right a half mile or less.
We got your statement of the interest on that fixeddeposit, and were interested to see if there was any more. As we hadsaid we could make the amount $500, add the $6.00 from Van Tyne and then thereis about $80.00 more to make it up. We will be interested to know how you usethis, but it isn't necessary for you to say. If you have a really good use forit, such as to prevent paying interest or to pay the doctor you know, why wemay as well send a check for that $80.
Of course you will be careful when you writehereafter not to say too much, or anything about the Japanese, and do not callthem "Japs" or say anything disrespectful of their army or theiremperor. We are their friends, and even if we disapprove of what they do, wedo not tell it or show our feelings.
We neither of us have had any cold symptoms since thefirst three or four days after leaving you. I attribute most of the cure tosimple salt water douches two or three times a day. They must not be toostrong, just taste pleasantly salty, you know.
Yesterday we had some sun and today it is sunny allthe time with blue sea and some swell, but our good ship is so heavily ladenthat we swing up and down the swells very deliberately. It is not at allsea-sickening, especially if we lie in our very comfortable bunks and read.
Our stateroom is the biggest we ever had, evencounting the APresident Grant@ when we came to the U.S. There are twin beds sevenfeet apart with a sofa and writing table between them, a double wardrobe aboutfive feet wide at the foot of one bed, a good heater at the foot of the otherbed and a washbowl of the modern home type on the other wall beside the door. I will have to make a diagram. The room actually measures 11 2 feet each way. Without turning on the heat we are about 70 degrees allthe time. It was too hot with the heat on the first day.
Glad you conquered your cold, Mar, but you would doit better if you would relax every day and get more sleep at night. The sameto Len.
In Frisco I went into the Chinatown papers' officebuilding and bought a daily paper in Chinese. A big headline said that"England Loans Money to Support China Currency" and under it,"Japan Sets the Day to Prohibit Use of China's Currency." Well it isa pity that all the nations are so at cross purposes and that there may be warin Europe everywhere when we get to Japan. Our only news so far is that Francois to enter Madrid tomorrow. The big question is, Will the Italians get out ofSpain and will England give up Gibraltar to Franco?
We must go to tea to be friendly with the other sevenpassengers. We are a nice friendly family.
(Later)
Have had tea with pilot Capt. Fleming, Mr. Murphy andyour Mother, and finished up her mile of walking up and down the 50 yards ofdeck.
You ask "God is just and powerful so why cansuch conditions prevail?" - the everlasting question. The best help I getis from considering the very nature of our moral universe. A world with moral,free agents, is evidently far better than just a machine world with no love ormoral sense. That is the kind of world we have, and if God were to step in andput it to rights whenever we men made mistakes and produced such conditions itwould cease to be a moral world and God would not be just and honest.
Prof. Bosworth's statement of our objective andmethods is very helpful to me in confirming what we ought to go on and do aboutit. Let me see if I can remember it. I have quoted it a few times of late.
"In order to believe in Jesus it is necessaryfirst of all to see what his ideals are and how he proposes to realize them. Theystand out in the Gospels;
- God is a powerful heavenlyfather, near at hand. All men should pray to him and work withhim for an honest and friendly world.
- Men should work together with invincible good will for human brotherhood.
- Men may count with growingconviction on an opportunity after death to continue their work for the commongood."
There we have the objective stated in three forms andthe method of accomplishing it. If one sets out on that program it is easy tofeel secure. Whether we can see the plan winning out or not we have to go onwith "invincible good will" - on our part anyway.
Thanks for the China Journal. Sowerby writes that itis always confiscated in the Peking post office. I lost two before theyarrived and two after, while in the U.S. I am taking them back to China, as Ihave a complete set from the beginning. If you should run across one or twolet me know and save them for me.
I hope that we shall have time so that I can call onone or two of my Japanese friends in Tokyo - the bird men.
That investment does not deprive us of anything nowand probably never will, unless we get down to our last $500.
We did not get the letters from Len and the children,but they might beat us to Kobe if you thought to send them there to the care ofMr. Hackett, the Treasurer of the Japan Mission.
Just started cod liver oil and yeast again.
(To be continued)
Wish you cousins could get to knoweach other better.
Touring Beverly Hills. Visit toAuthors= Club.
Against gambling, even in the ship=s pool.
George D. Wilder
MS "Ivaran" 1,200 miles along the 3 deg.North latitude. to 143 deg. West longitude. Fourth day out from San Pedro, theport of the enormous city of Los Angeles.
March 26th, 1939, Sunday Eve.
(To each one of the four groups of grandchildren inYpsilanti, Penn Yan, Harrisburg and Philadelphia)
Dear Teddy, Gertrude, Betty Ann, Jimmie and Dick,Nita, Billy,
Sally, David, George; and if they can get anythingout of it also Cindy, Judy and Donald.
Just look that fine list over and see if you can putthe right last names on to every one on the spur of the moment and without amistake. I am afraid that you can=t all do it and I wish you could get that wellacquainted with each other.
We had a lot of letters on board the ship from PennYan, and hear that there are some coming from Ypsi to meet us in Japan orChina, as they missed San Pedro, the place from which we sailed. It is prettyhard to answer each one separately and as there are things we want to write toevery one I am making this a general letter and sending a copy to each group.
We have had a daily plan to read Chinese a half hour,study Japanese about the same length of time, then write one or two answers toour over 30 steamer letters, and then read and rest as we please, with someexercise and recreation thrown in here and there. Today we got a deck tennisnet up and played that until tired and have not written any letter at all. Iam starting this late so as not to spoil our regular program today.
We shall have to write a regular account of our wholetrip to the whole family later but there are a few things we have seen that areof special interest to you youngsters.
You know Beverly Hills is a beautiful place close toHollywood, where the screen stars own great estates and have their favoriteresidences. Well, the day after we got to Los Angeles our cousin Eloise droveus all around to see these homes of the famous stars we have seen in thepictures or heard over the radio. They were our neighbors, for the Kingsleys,where we stayed, live right in Beverly Hills. They have bought a house there.
The first place she called our attention to was thehome of Tom Mix. The Penn Yan folks I know like him and his "straightshooters," and probably the rest of you know him, too. Eloise said he wasjust the sort of man he sounds like in the radio. He is rather rough looking,but honest and modest. She has heard him speak and says that he can just quotethe Bible in great long passages if not chapters, and that he makes real goodsensible talks. His home was one of the more modest, plain, neat places. Notfar from that was "Pick-Fair" which seemed deserted, though theremust have been caretakers, as the lawns were in good order. I suppose afterMary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks were divorced the beautiful home had littleattraction for either of them.
She showed us a few others whose names I haveforgotten and then took us B or me, rather B to the Hollywood Athletic Club house, which lookslike an elegant hotel. I was to attend a weekly luncheon there of the Authors= Club at the invitation of Mr. Beaman. An amateur radio message that Ihad gotten from the College of Chinese Studies had told me to let him know whenI was in Los Angeles and he would be of assistance, etc. Well, he was veryhospitable and cordial. The visit to this Author's Club was the first thing hesuggested. He had me sit at the speakers= table and told me who a lot of the celebrities were. There were faces that I had seen in movie pictures and you have too, likeLionel Barrymore and columnists and scenario writers and cartoonists, andmakers of some of the funnies that you see every day, and authors of famousbooks. The President was Rupert Hughes. One of the four speakers referred toHughes= last novel and Mr. Beaman sent me a copy for us toread on the steamer. Your Grandma is reading it now. It is called"Stately Timber." They introduced me B Mr. Hughesdid B and told some things I had done in China and thenasked if I had anything to say in my own defense. As they had a full program Ijust pleaded guilty and said I had nothing to say. The secretary sent me anhonorary membership for a month, inviting me to attend the luncheon each week. Though our ship was four days late in sailing it did not give me a chance toattend another luncheon, sailing the very hour they held it last week.
One of the speakers was the lawyer from New York Citywho helped Clarence Darrow defend evolution in the Skopes case in Tennesseeagainst Bryan some years ago. (And by the way, Teddy asks if I believe inEvolution. Let me say that I certainly do, and do not think that if disagreeswith the Bible at all when we think of the Bible as a historical developmentand mostly the record of history. That needs more explanation than I can giveright now.) Another speaker was Irving Cobb. He tries, in vain, to take theplace of Will Rogers as a column writer and is the homeliest man you ever saw. Mr. Beaman brought him to our car to introduce him to Eloise, your Grandma andme, so we had a good chance to see. His mouth and lips stuck out just like abig monkey=s, and his face was red and rough like some monkey=s. But he seemed a very kindly friendly man in spite of his looks. Youprobably do not read his column anyway, and so are not interested.
We have been going about 300 to 315 miles a day andsome of the eight passengers want to bet on the run, as they so often do onboard ship to pass the time. The Shanghai pilot, Capt. Flemming, asked me if Iwould not like to go in on the "scoop." Each one puts in something B a dollar or less - and then each guesses how far the ship will go in 24hours, announced every day at noon. The one who guesses nearest gets all themoney. Yesterday we ran 306 miles and Capt. Flemming guessed 310 but I did nothear whether anyone else guessed nearer. I guess they had not gotten up thepot yet anyway. As I never gamble I thanked him and said "I neverdo." Of course it is a small affair just for fun and every one can affordto lose what they put in. Still it is the same in principle as betting on thedog races or the horses, or gambling on the stock exchange, or buying lotterytickets. These are often so bad and such an injury to a community that lawshave to be made against them. From the simplest little bet on to the biggestgamble, there seems to be no place to draw the line and the best way to showthat you are against the big evil is to make it a rule not to bet at all andnever stake your own money in the hope of getting something for nothing fromthe other fellow. Working for a prize hardly comes under that rule, but buyingtickets for a prize or betting certainly does. The easiest and simplest way ofkeeping out of the big gambling is to just keep out of it entirely in thesmall. The Abanknite@ prizes, so far as I know, are just as much gamblingas any of those forms that are against the law.
Grandfather
A small ship but a big cabin.
Only 8 passengers. Deck tennis,games, Norwegian cuisine.
Translating Feng Yu Hsiang=s poems.
Gertrude S. Wilder
Pacific Ocean
April 7, 1939
Dearest Margaret and the whole family,
It=sgetting on towards bed time but I am going to make a beginning on a letter toyou before donning my pink nighty and climbing into my berth . . . .
We were supposed to sail from L.A. at11:00 but didn=t leave until 2 o=clock, so after spending nearly an hour on board thefolks left and we began to arrange our things and open up our mail, of which wehad a huge pile. It certainly was lovely to find all those letters waiting forus, and we enjoyed every one of them. It took us most of the afternoon to readthem. The captain was very much interested and asked us more than once how longit took to read them. He said he had never seen such a pile of letters. Inaddition to the letters were books and flowers, and Eloise and Beulah broughtus oranges, grapefruit, figs, dates, a book and a pile of magazines. We feltthat we had been thought of and cared for much more than we deserved.
At this point we each ate an orangeand went to bed B sleeping peacefully.
I must tell you about the boat. Itlooked so small B a midget when compared with one ofthe Presidents= Line ships. Our cabin is larger thanany we have ever had. It is just about 12x12, has three port holes, two infront and one over my berth, two berths, two closets, a sofa, a loose chair, awash stand and a nice table. There are two drawers under each berth and two inthe wardrobe, so we have lots of room for ourselves and our things. There areonly eight passengers and one of them is a dear little seven-months old baby B Phyllis Ann Barnes. She is a model baby -- sleeps allnight and is as happy as a lark all day. She is pretty, too, with curly brownhair and blue eyes. Her mother is also pretty and very nice. She is a youngwife and is going to the Philippines to join her husband, who is an orderly orsomething in the Navy hospital there. Then there is a Mr. And Mrs. Murphy. She is of German extraction and a good deal younger than he. He is anex-service man, dating back to the Spanish War, and now in business in Manila. Mr. Parides, a nice young Filipino, is another passenger. His father is aleader in government affairs and he has been his father=s private secretary, but he is a mining engineer andhopes to go into that. And last comes Captain Flemming -- an Americanconnected with the shipping business in Shanghai. It=s a varied crowd, but we get along beautifully together. Everyone likes to play deck tennis and usually everyone gets in some sets everyday.
In the evening we repair to a smalllounging room on the upper deck and play games. My Lexicon game and theChinese Checkers that Olive gave me have done good service. The captain likesto play the latter. We have books and magazines to keep us busy and time hasnot been heavy on our hands. Father and I read Chinese for an hour everymorning and lately have been adding to that time, translating free-verse poemswritten by Feng Yu Hsiang. I have been trying to write letters, too, and shallhave quite a bunch to mail when we reach Yokohama four days from now.
The captain is the only one of thecrew who eats with us. We eat at one table and are very informal. Our mealsare very good B Norwegian cooking B though breakfast is not the meal that you and I like tolinger over, Margaret. Poor coffee, condensed milk and toast. I drink mycoffee without cream and eat bread and marmalade. Sometimes we have cakes, butthey are not like Len=s (pan)cakes! We have a good dinnerat noon with plenty of vegetables. Our suppers are unique. Everything is puton the table and we help ourselves. There are always four kinds of salad, fourcold meats, two or three kinds of tinned fish such as sardines, etc. and twokinds of cheese and bread, of course. After we have filled up on that, a hotdish of some sort is passed around B curry or a fancy omelette B and then desert, which is usually canned fruit. Thecaptain is a good eater and sits at the head of the table urging us to eat andlooking after our wants. Everything is really very nice and we are taken goodcare of.
We have had fine weather most of thetime. Today is foggy, however, and the fog horn is tooting about once aminute. I don=t like it but that doesn=t seem to help matters.
The steward, who is cheery, and hisassistant are the only ones whom we have anything to do with, except casually. We have a smiling acquaintance with most of the crew. They are all Norwegians,and most of them can=t speak English. They all have smilesfor the baby, and sometimes one or another stops shyly and talks to her aminute or two.
We know practically nothing about whathas been going on in the world since we left. We have been getting newsreports from London but very little news. None at all about China. I=m afraid we shall not be able to learn much in the Avisiting team=s@ domain.
I don=tneed to tell you that I think of you all a lot every day. Our last visit was aprecious one, but all too short. You mustn=tfeel anxious about us. I=m sure you don=t need to. We are both feeling fine. The deck tennisgives us exercise and fun, we get all the sleep we need and are both eatingyeast, cod liver oil and thyroid, so we should be well-fortified for whateverlies ahead. I hope you are having a woman in once a week to do the cleaningand ironing, and that Gertrude, Betty and George are helping as much as theycan. AHere a little, there a little@ helps out a lot and every little counts. I hope, too,that the violin, cello and piano are going strong. Some day George can playaccompaniments and there will be a Menzi Trio. Donald will have to come intothe picture, too, and turn it into a quartet in time.
April 10.
We sighted land early this morning,have already passed the outer forts and will be in the Yokohama harbor beforevery long. The longest single stretch of our journey is over, and it has notseemed long. Time has not hung on our hands at all. Captain Fleming just saidto me that the trip had seemed like only a few days to him. We have been quitea congenial group in that we have enjoyed dong the same things together and Ithink we have all tried to be sociable and make our contribution toward thehappiness of all. It has been a restful journey and part of the restfulnesshas been the informality.
. . . . We are inside the firstbreak-water and will soon be sticking out our tongues at the medical inspector. It takes some red tape before we are finally in dock and ready to go ashore.
Not much of a letter, this, so far ascontent is concerned but it carries a world of love to you all. I hope thegirls will write sometimes B they can practice English compositionon us B and we shall love to hear from them.
Will write again soon,
Lovingly B Mother and Grandma
Staying on the Ivaran to Shanghai.
A letter from China tells of Alorspemb@ (problems) there.
We receive radio broadcasts from ATreasure Island,@ San Francisco.
Ford and GM plants making warsupplies: the MS Ivaran unloaded truck parts from US and took on assembledtrucks for war against China.
Gertrude S. Wilder
Kobe Harbor
April 14, 1939
Dearest Margaret,
We have just let down our anchor inKobe harbor (time, 7:15 p.m.) And the doctor has come on board. We are herefor the night and for a few hours tomorrow morning. Because the Ivaran waslate, we were not able to take the boat on which Mr. Hacket had engaged passageto Tientsin and since everything was full for the next two weeks we decided tostay on the Ivaran to Shanghai and then take a boat to Tientsin. Cook=s agency has already written telling their man atShanghai to get things fixed up for us. It delays us quite a bit, but itseemed the only think to do B or the best thing to do under thecircumstances.
Coming from Yokohama it was prettyrough from the time we got out of the Yokohama bay and all night long, buttoday has been nice again. We had some deck tennis this afternoon and sincethen have watched our progress past the pretty shore, in amongst the fishingboats and through the rather narrow passage into the Kobe harbor. Everythingis brilliantly lighted up. This is the first time I have entered this portafter dark.
I didn=tleave the boat at Yokohama, partly because I had a badly inflamed eye andthought I had better devote myself to treating it. It=s just about O.K. now. I have no special desire to buyanything here so perhaps it=s just as well not to get off and betempted. Father had to go on shore to see about our passage to Shanghai and hetook all of one day to go to Tokyo, hoping to see Mr. Kuruda, Kagawa, and oneor two others. He wasn=t able to locate even one of them B some were away B so he felt as if he had made a gooddeal of effort for nothing.
I have just heard that we are to behere for a day and a half instead of the six hours that the captain had said,so we shall probably go out to Kobe College for a call.
The steward just brought us lettersfrom Uncle Charlie and Aunt Louise and from Harry and Rose Martin in China. InRose=s letter she said that we would find Alorspemb here.@ I unscrambled the word and got Aproblems.@ I=veno doubt there will be plenty of them. That was the only reference to thingsas they are in any of the letters. AThings are going on about as usual@ seems to be a stock phrase. Aunt Louise=s letter said that Billy had sung his third solo inchurch B he has been taking vocal lessons. Good for Billy. I wish Gertrude could take vocal lessons. She has such asweet voice and a real appreciation and understanding of music, it seems to me.
C Morning! Father has gone on shore to call up KobeCollege and arrange about our going out there this afternoon. It=s a good distance from town so we don=t want to go by taxi if we can do it by street car. He=ll be back at 11:00 and then we=ll go on shore again on the 1 o=clock launch. Evidently freighters don=t have the privilege of going up to the piers but do allof their unloading out in the harbor into huge barges. We have to depend onthe launches. For Aauld lang syne@ we must walk up and then down Moto Machi at least once.Both at Yokohama and here, sellers of all sorts of things swarmed on board assoon as inspection was over. But their wares look Atai chien@ instead of Atai kwei@[4] and none of them appeal to me. Beginning with the first of May, passengers passing through Japan must pay tenyen for the privilege of going on shore at the ports, and those who are toreside in Japan pay a landing fee of 20 yen. It seems to me that a measure ofthat sort will keep a lot of people from landing and will do something to thetourist trade, which they are so anxious to get.
The past few nights we have beengetting ATreasure Island@ over the radio. They broadcast at 4:00 a.m. especiallyfor the Orient. The announcer (or whatever he is called) is not very good, sowe had to listen hard for the news, but the music came over very well, and lastnight the news came in well. The poor announcer and performers have to do theirwork at 4:00 in the morning so we should forgive them if they are not letterperfect.
We are not to get to Shanghai untilthe forenoon of the 19th because there was more unloading than thecaptain realized. Last night we got into what we ladies call pretty badweather. I couldn=t sleep because the boat rolled so,and because of the clatter. Suddenly there was a tremendous swell and thingswent flying. Our loose chair came plump against my berth, our tin box of figsetc. banged onto the floor B a dish of apples slid off the tablebut didn=t break. I had been listening to theclatter of dishes in the pantry and nearly jumped out of my skin when there wasa great crash. It woke Father out of a sound sleep, and there was someexcitement. I rushed to the pantry and found the steward already there in notmuch else but short white silk trunks, picking up the pieces. Then I went toMrs. Barnes= room and found her mopping up herfloor between swells. A tray with dishes had skated off the table right intothe baby=s bed. Fortunately the heavy curtainprotected the baby. The captain had the effrontery to tell us that the shipdidn=t roll at all. A That was nothing. It must be at an angle of 50degrees before it is a real roll.@ It calmed down this afternoon but weare beginning to roll somewhat again. Of course we are lighter by severalthousand tons of freight and the ship doesn=tride so steadily. Nearly all of the freight was for purposes that you know allabout. Father can tell you more about that as he looked it over more carefullythan I did.
This brings us up to date and I=ll mail this in Shanghai, where I hope we shall not stayfor long.
Tuesday the 18 th.
We are approaching Shanghai, but as itis pitch dark we can=t see a thing. The captain thinksthat the doctors etc. will be on board before breakfast. We have beenre-packing and trying to make out our customs declarations and are about readyto add the finishing touches and go to bed, so I=llstop my letter at this point, add a bit to Ursula=sand call it a day.
With untellable love to you all, andespecially to you, my dear daughter.
Your loving mother.
P.S. Our ship discharged about 1,000tons of Ford truck parts in cases B over 7,000 of them B 121,000 cu. ft. Then we took on 20all- assembled Ford trucks, ready to run, with spare tires, tools, etc. all on. There is both a Ford plant and a General Motors plant in Yokohama and perhapsKobe. They also discharged 600 tons of copper plates.
Father
Hitler reject=s Roosevelt=s request not to invade B Asent to the wrong address.@
Japanese customs people are politeto us.
US has set a bad example oftreaty-breaking, but not military aggression.
Japanese grateful for U.S. friendlygesture returning body of diplomat.
George D. Wilder
Still M/S "Ivaran" at the
Mouth of the Yangtse River
April 19th, 1939
(Continued from March 25)
The date at the head of this, March 25th, looksrather old but the letter has never been continued until now, when we arepoking along in a fog after having been anchored much of the night. The pilothas come aboard but we are just barely moving and see only here and there theoutlines of other ships in a like predicament and whistling away. The fog bellwas ringing most of the night, too, so that I fear Grandma had little sleep.
You may be surprised to see that we are still on thisship. It was a day late at Kobe, missing the Tikuzen that Mr. Hackett hadbooked us on, and as we would have had to live in a hotel for two or threeweeks if we had gotten off, waiting for another possible booking, we are luckyto get the privilege of staying on the Ivaran for only $10.00 apiece from Kobe,three days to Shanghai.
Capt. Flemming, the pilot for the port of Shanghai,and we are the only ones to get off here at Shanghai, but they had a fineturkey dinner yesterday in farewell.
We have had a perfect voyage until this fog came todelay our landing a bit. The whole roster of passengers except the baby wentinto the deck tennis[5] tournament and we werepretty well matched, but the young Mrs. Barnes and a Filipino athlete and anengineer - also young - ran off with the singles, but were not all in thedoubles finals, I think. Your Mother and I were in most of the finals,however. We got our finger nails pretty badly broken up at it, as some of themen threw pretty fiercely and when the ring was wet it was rather hard.
We got American radio announcements and music evenafter leaving Kobe, nearly 5,000 miles away. The "Treasure Island"at Frisco was the clearest on the whole as they have a wave directed to theOrient, and it is good. The last two or three days a woman announcer inShanghai - English - and a Chinese woman have been pretty clear, and told us ofRoosevelt's attempt to get the dictators to swear off from invasion for 20 or25 years, and of Hitler's rejection and remark that they had sent the proposalto the wrong address. Rather flippant for a proposition of such grave importfor all the world.
We are reading John Gunther's "InsideEurope," which was revised to include the Munich affair of last September,a new chapter VII-A being thrown in, and pages 103.a, 103.b, etc. to 103p. It's good.
Breakfast bell is sounding and I may not get a chanceto say more on account of customs, etc. and our interest in running up theriver, after all the fighting that has occurred since we came down, July 20,1937.
It will take us until noon to get to the Customswharf and we are just through a hearty breakfast, so just a word more. Thefirst page of this letter was to answer your letter, Margaret. Your lettersare in my baggage so I have to drop that part. I remember that a letter fromTheodore spoke of one from you showing your anxiety for us. I hope that youare getting over that as time goes on. It may help you to know that theJapanese were as polite and accommodating as could be to us at both ports. Thecustoms officers passed our passports without any trouble beyond finding outthat we were just passing through. Mr. Hackett said that for the past fewmonths the relations with them had been most congenial. The sending back ofthe body of Ambassador Saito by the cruiser "Astoria" has produced amost profound impression of friendliness and gratitude to Pres. Roosevelt. Ifour country had paid more attention to treating the Japanese as we would liketo be treated ourselves, there would not be so much war talk today. I thinkthat the Japanese would have adopted the policy of extending their culture bypeaceful propaganda rather than by military violence if we had done so, and wecould not complain of that at all. We have given them good reason to doubt oursincerity in talking about keeping treaties and loving peace. We have giventhem the example of treaty-breaking, but I can not quite see how we have donemuch in the line of military aggression, of which they complain.
Did you say that Mr. Plummer had sent back thatpicture? That is too bad. I enclose a card recommending a place in Detroit. If you could place it there on sale on commission it might go sometime. Theproceeds were to go to China Relief which is an easy way to dispose of themoney. You still have the address of the Treasurer, I suppose, James M.Speers, 105 E. 22nd St., New York, as I remember it.
We have already seen land birds - a white-rumpedswift, though still out of sight of land! And a sparrow came on board.
I enclose a couple of pods of the mesquite that growsin the American desert. Suppose you try to make some of the seed grow. I gotit at Los Angeles. I suppose it wants dryness.
With love to you all,
Father and Grandfather
__
P.S. Elim Hotel, Shanghai 3 pm. Here we are safely taking our ease in our inn. There are steamers galore forTientsin, but we =__re not yet sure whether we can get onetomorrow or a few days later. We had use for Theodore's Certificate ofVaccination at once, and it may save us 2 or 3 days delay here.
Shanghai to Peking
Freighter is a great way to travel.
Treated with courtesy in Japan,thanks to return of ambassador=s body.
US should have been more friendlytoward Japan instead of shaking its naval fist at them.
Chinese want to resist. Students,merchants try to demonstrate, put down by French police.
Shanghai=s streets crowded - Chinese sector=s housing destroyed.
Japanese-owned Chinese papers accusemissionaries of stirring up trouble.
Chinese have laws against selling toJapanese.
Shell Oil, Ford and GM war supplieswere on board our ship.
Japanese Christians are unaware ofwhat is happening.
A Japanese says Chinese Christiansare being Apurified@ by fire while Japan is losing itssoul.
Going by American mail means thiscan be written freely.
CHURCHCOMMITTEE FOR CHINA RELIEF
105East 22nd Street, New York, N.Y.
Constituted By:
The Federal Councilof the Churches of Christ in America
The Foreign MissionsConference of North America
China Famine ReliefU.S.A. Incorporated
Rev.George D. Wilder
417Crescent St., N.E.
GrandRapids, Mich.
Phone,8649
Shanghai,
April 21, 1939
Mr. Robert E. Chandler
14 Beacon Street
Boston, Mass. U.S.A.
Dear Chandler,
Happening on this sheet of much letterhead, I use iton you, as you will understand that the addresses mean nothing now, and that weare writing from the Elim Hotel, 382 Joffre Ave., Shanghai, a good place for amissionary to stop.[6]
My immediate occasion for writing is the discoveryamong my letters that I was discarding into the sea, a copy letter that was notto be entrusted to ordinary mails and that ought to have been sent back to theRooms[7] some time ago. It hadchased us up from one place to another as I remember, and we were the last onthe list. I have a chance to get it into the American office here, and to usesome of my U.S. postage.
We are leaving today by a small coastal steamer thatstops at all ports for Tientsin, the "Hoihow," (B&S Steamer). Wearrived here day before yesterday at noon after all but three days of a monthon board the "Ivaran." But say, if you have time, that is the way totravel. It was almost like living at home with only eight in the family. Ihave written to E. Smith, from Japan about all I knew about the ship. So youcan go to him if you want to find out.
Being just one day late for the "Tikuzen"that Hackett had booked, we stayed on the "Ivaran" to here, ratherthan wait in Kobe two or three weeks for their crowded ships. We have had notrouble in getting a sailing from here, as there are one or two nearly everyday in the week.
You are interested in the Customs service. Well,they came on board the "Ivaran," which did not go to the Customsdock, and examined our suitcases before we had locked them up in our cabin. Then they took our keys and opened all our trunks but were evidently notinterested in charging any duties, as what we had declared of our own as new(like typewriter and table cutlery, just bought) was not taxed, and even whatwe had brought for five or six other people they did not examine, and did notcharge anything, unless they are going to do it by mail later. It lookedalmost like they avoided taking anything. They locked up and roped the bigtrunks again carefully. These were all Chinese, of course.
In Japan we were treated with the utmost courtesy, asHackett says they have been doing for some months. The arrival of the"Astoria" with Ambassador Saito's body has touched the heart of thenation, too, as we could see. Why could not this country of ours have beendoing more of that sort of thing instead of shaking our naval fist in Japan'sface?
We find the will to resist strong among the Chinese,but there are "hard boiled" pessimists like Mr. E.G. Tewksbury whothink that China has no chance for getting her independence again. One oldmissionary here said at once, however, that China is coming on of late and has muchhope.
A patriotic organization of youth tried to get up ademonstration for the new spiritual movement by hanging out the Republicanflags at their shops in this French concession. The police made them take themdown (French Police), arrested about a hundred agitators and put up verycommon-sense proclamations in Chinese urging people to remain quiet and to helpthem drive out agitators ("tao luan fen tzu ").[8] There were armored policecars in evidence and groups on the streets, which are packed with humanity inthis most crowded city in the world. Probably there are 3,000,000 here still,and all these square miles of Chinese sector residences destroyed. Many shopswere closed, some said "in protest against the police taking down theirflags," some thought, "to be safer in case of disturbance." Last night's papers were full of it.
Yesterday's North China Daily News had two columns ofquotations from Japanese-owned Chinese papers with most severe attacks onBritain and also on both British and American missionaries, accusing them ofall sorts of things long since out of date. I tried to buy the "Hsin ShenPao" that had the original, but failed. The Chinese clerk at thenewspaper office remarked as he was trying to find the right issue, "Nako! Mei Jen 2 Hsin4 na2 ko." There is a strong demand in the Japanesepapers and by their military that the foreign-owned Chinese papers like the oldShen Pao, I Shih Pao, etc. be suppressed.
There is a Chinese law against all sorts of "t'ung'ti 2" crimes, i.e.selling to the enemy, etc. Peter Ch'uan last night replied to our question asto what he thought of America's selling so much to Japan. "Why not? It'sall in the line of business. We have no hard feelings." "Would you sell?" we asked him. "No. I do not sell my oil goods to them, andbesides it is now against the law. It is t'ung' ti 2."
The Ivaran was smothered in barrels of all sorts ofvolatile, poison, and inflammable aviation materials. Also 1,000 tons of Fordmilitary truck parts in boxes, 121,000 cu. ft. of them. And at Yokohama, afterdischarging them, we took on either ten or twenty finished trucks ready to runfrom the Ford assembly plant in Yokohama. General Motors also has such a plantthere. The oils were mostly Shell, etc., from Los Angeles.
You will be interested in this. "A youngChinese Oxford girl went to Japan to see the Christians there, having access tothe Christian wife of the second ranking official below the Emperor. Beforegoing she saw a Japanese friend, a pastor here, who was giving her a letter ofintroduction to help her get past the police, etc. He said she would be askedall sorts of severe questions like "Are you loyal to the new government?@ "Why," she exclaimed at once, "No self-respectingChinese can say that they respect that government." He threw up his handsin amazement that she should say so, but continued his good efforts. She wasreceived very coldly until the letter to the high-up Christians in Tokyo tookeffect and they came down to Yokohama to greet her, and then she was verycordially received, allowed to land, etc. The high-up lady listened to all heraccount of what has gone on in China and was deeply moved. She was told aboutMadame and Gen. Chiang and was astounded. She said that no one in Japan knew theywere that kind of people and the only hope was for the Christians of bothcountries to keep together and tell each other the facts unflinchingly.
Then there was the case of two Japanese pastorscoming here. They had had no idea that they could meet the Christians sofreely as they did. When they came in and saw or felt the atmosphere, oneexclaimed, "I can see that Japan is beaten already. Japan is fast losingher own soul. China is gaining hers through suffering." Gardner told ofthese things through personal knowledge.
Shao Wu, who told us other things, said that hethanked the Japanese for what they are doing to China. He said that professedChristians under Kung had been most corrupt, but the present situation isburning them out and compelling a change. He has an oil business at Peng Pu,and is continuing some here, but will not trade with nor cooperate with theJapanese as they have invited him to do, and have also threatened him. Hiswealthy partner in Peng Pu also avoids them, though they have taken the plantand have squeezed him out of some money. He did not say "torturedhim," though.
The chance to get through the American mail hasloosened my tongue, or my fingers. Give my regards, which is too cold a termby far, to Helen, and they are from both Gertrude and me.
Sincerely yours , G eo. D. Wilder
Chinese still same good-naturedpeople.
Shops more full of goods than inJapan, where only war goods are imported.
Chinese sector of Shanghaidestroyed, people crowded into foreign concessions.
Universities, high schools in upperfloors of commercial buildings.
Gardner Tewksbury B childhood friend of Durand andMargaret B is in Shanghai.
George D. Wilder
Elim House, Shanghai,
April 23rd, 1939
Dear Grandchildren,
You had better count this as another letter and readit some other day than that long one or I am afraid you will never read allthrough. I did not even sign it or mail it when we had a chance in Japan. ButI must tell you how we got here.
Everyone is afraid of the Customs officers whoexamine your baggage and make you pay duty on anything they think is new andliable to be sold. But here they came on board before we had closed oursuitcases, etc., and examined them, then opened all our trunks and closed themand roped them up again for us, and would not charge us any duty even for thethings we had for other folks and had "declared" on the blanks as"dutiable." So that was that.
This great city looked just as it always did, onlythe people are three times as thick everywhere. They say there are threemillion here and all crowded into the foreign concessions, and business isgoing on not only as usual but even more rushing than usual. And they were thesame good natured jolly Chinese. As soon as we got to the hotel and settled inour rooms your Grandma and I went out on the streets just to be among theChinese again, and we bought fruit, etc., here and there just for the fun ofbargaining with them. In the evening we went out again, remarking that anywaythere would not be so many children on the streets, but we were mistaken. There were a-plenty, playing everywhere, even among the throngs of jikshas,bicycles and even motor cars.
On one beveled corner where there was about twentyfeet of clear concrete pavement there were half a dozen lively boys of Billy'ssize turning cart wheels, hand-springs, etc., and having lots of fun. Theywould roll right out into the traffic as "cartwheels."
And yesterday afternoon on another little empty spacethat was like a back eddy in the stream of passers-by there was a sort ofkindergarten circle holding hands and having one blindfolded in the centergroping around for some one of the others to feel them all over and say who itwas. They were as merry and full of fun as though there was no war.
At another enormous seven-story building we went into see the acres of Chinese-made goods on display and for sale on the secondfloor, nice big shops on the lower floor fronting on three streets, thebuilding was so big. And in the four top stories there were 5,000 students intheir recitation rooms belonging to three Universities and two High Schoolsthat are working together to keep their schools going with all the studentsthat are left to them. When they let out classes at noon and the students wentto get lunch at restaurants, many of them carrying their books back to theirboarding places, the streets were sure jammed, and it was right in the busiestpart of the city. It is said that near there is the busiest street corner inthe world. Your Grandma and I strolled through it, constantly blocking thetraffic as we stopped to window shop or watch some interesting thing we saw inthe shops or eating-places right on the street. It looked like far morewholesome, sound business that what we saw in Japan, where shops were largelyempty and nothing but war business going on.
Then Gardner Tewksbury drove us in his little Austinfor miles among the ruins of the Chinese city around. Nothing but broken downwalls was left all the way to Woosung, 13 miles away and we could see why theforeign settlements were so crowded with the people whose homes were destroyed. How they can seem so smiling and well dressed and busy is beyond me. Therewere some miserable and sad looking ones but we saw only a few beggars. Wewere asked for money only five or six times only in two days, and gave it, too,in spite of our principles against it and where beggars are really thick, thedanger of being swamped by them if we start giving at all.
But this letter must stop, and I haven't said howmuch I love you all, and Grandma, too, sends love. We sail for the north - afour-days trip - this noon.
Lovingly,
Grandpa
Unloading paper for funeral Amoney@ at the dock inTsingtao, where cousin LlewellynDavies is.
Now at Chefoo, where Ted, Durand,and Thornton Wilder went to school long ago.
Three port cities look fine, exceptfor devastated Chinese sectors of Shanghai.
Went shopping for the fun of it. Saw Pygmalion, the movie.
Shanghai department stores bombed byaccident.
Watched children playing, despitewar.
Universities and schools carryingon.
A visit to Salvation Army refugeecamps.
Enjoy watching coolies loading ship.
George D. Wilder
SS "Haihow" At anchor in Chefoo OuterHarbor
April 27, 1939
Dear Grandchildren,
From Shanghai I sent you several sheets of a copyletter that I fear was pretty dry, as dry as the Mesquite seed pods that Ienclosed to each group, hoping that you might plant them somewhere and see whatthe bush is like.
Perhaps some of you remember the superstition-moneythat is scattered at funerals for the use of the dead. Well, yesterday we hadproof that that superstition has not died out, when they were unloading ourship with their big steam winches at Tsingtao, in Shantung, where cousinLlewellyn Davies lives. They had in the hold great stacks of oblong-packagesabout two feet long and a foot or more square and they lifted out in a rope net- sort of huge basket - dozens of them at a time. I could not make out whatthese packages covered with bamboo strips for protection could contain. Finally one of the packages rolled out of the net when it was dangling high upin the air and dropped so hard that it burst open and a lot of little bundles,each with a few hundred each such sheets of silver and gold paper fell out. Some of these bundles broke, and the wind blew them from the dock where theyfell clear back on to the boat where we stood. I gathered up a few samples foryou, and one of our seven Hong Kong Police who are on board with their riflesto protect us from bandits, or pirates rather, showed me what they were for. He folded several into the shape of silver shoes, which they do before sellingthem. I will enclose one each, but they will be pressed flat; they have to beswelled out to look like a shoe of silver or gold. They use two sheets to makeone and perhaps you can study out how they fold them. Several sailors standingaround did it quite fast. There were tens of tons of them unloaded at that oneport. It will be some work to fold them all.
We are now lying at anchor in sight of Chefoo, theplace where Theodore and Durand and Thornton Wilder went to school long yearsago. We got in too late for the doctor to come out and see if we have anyinfectious disease on board, so we lie here all night. A half dozen nuns andas many school children who got on at Weihaiwei to come back to school aftertheir Easter vacation, expecting to get off here tonight, have to stay onboard. All of us who are passing through are not allowed to go ashore by theJapanese, either here or at Tsingtao. There we stayed two days and a night,having to wait for a German ship to get unloaded before there was room at thewharf for us and another vessel that came in at the same time we did. All thattime we had to stay aboard, reading and writing and playing Chinese checkers. Two of the fifteen French soldiers just out from France, who share our secondclass deck with us, joined in. Though they speak only French and we speaknone, they caught on to the game by watching us and one of them won the veryfirst game he played with us. Then a Russian who is in charge of our Hongkongpolice took my place in the game. This PM he invited me to a game of chess. It was my first game in years but I managed to make a draw of it after he hadtwice gallantly let me take moves back. He was very nice and of course Iconceded him the game, playing it out to the end as an interesting experimentwith the interesting positions we had.
For all we can see of things in these three portcities one would not think there ever had been any war, except when we went outfor a ride through the miles of devastated Chinese residences, where now no onelives and there are only a few ruined walls still standing. If we had stayedaway from that we would have simply thought that the cities were more busy andcrowded than ever. We had great fun going out to walk through the crowdedstreets, stopping to bargain with the peddlers for sesame candy and apples andoranges. Prices seemed awfully high as compared with olden days but the moneywe use now is worth only half as much in U.S. coins as when we went away. Small oranges were 12 cents apiece and apples a little more. The peddlers alsohad California oranges and apples from America at higher prices. But we boughtfor the fun of talking with these splendid Chinese once more. We remarked thatwhere there are so many people there are bound to be food shops and childrenplaying. And there certainly were. When we went again at night we thoughtthere would be no children, but they were still thick, and I wish you couldhave seen them in a slightly clearer place of less dirty concrete pavement. Adozen very lively and athletic boys were practicing standing on their heads,turning hand-springs and cart wheels, often rolling right out among bicyclesand autos passing on the street. They were full of fun and we stopped to watchthem.
In the P.M. we went to a good movie -"Pygmalion" by G. B. Shaw. The movie theater was just such as wewould find in America, and full of well-dressed people. On the streets therewere lots of the same, and in walking six or seven blocks to get to thattheater we passed two others. There are plenty of them.
We knew that the big department stores where weshopped the last day before we left China nearly two years ago -"Sincere's" and "Wingon" - had been hit by bombs and manykilled. A bomb in one store killed a lot of people in an elevator in the otherstore that was clear across the street. But now they are running, and I guessfrom the crowds that business is heavier than ever, Those bombs were anaccident and they did not get any more. In another new one, the Sun Store,said to sell still more modern and foreign goods, they were having on the 4thfloor a charity exhibition of about 350 old Chinese paintings and writings. Wewere glad to go and pay our dollar admission, knowing that it went to ChinaRelief. There we met an old friend who lives in Peking, Dr. Ferguson. He,like us, was on his way back to China from America. He is a real art studentand told us many things about the pictures. On the way there, in an eddy inthe traffic, we saw another group of children who had made a ring taking holdof hands. One inside the ring had his eyes blinded with a dirty oldhandkerchief and they were playing blindman's bluff just like any kindergartenschool. They were as jolly and rosy as could be. We just had to stop andwatch them. It was so surprising to see them in war times playing.
Then in the busiest part of the city on Nanking Roadwe went into the 3rd to 6th stories of a building covering a block. There were5,000 students from three universities and two high schools having theirrecitations and offices. At noon they just jammed the busy streets when theycame out to lunch.
Sunday morning, as the ship was supposed to sail atnoon, we could not go to church but went out to the outskirts to see theSalvation Army camp for refugees. We found them just going to their church inthe middle of the camp, and boys and girls also out playing ball. Once in awhile the ball would go into the open sewers that ran along all the streets ofhuts. It was as clean as could be, though, outside the sewer ditches. Theysaid there were 7,000 there and 50,000 in all the twenty odd refuges around thecity. Whatever you contributed to China Relief went into this sort of work andit was well worth while. The refugees looked well fed and happy (with someexceptions) and they are doing everything they can to keep any disease fromspreading among them. The workers among them were as happy as could be, forthey knew they were doing a lot of good. I presume this Salvation Army Refugewas one of the best.
I wish you could have seen the coolies loading theship with tons of sacks of flour. I never get tired of watching them. Therewere barges stacked high with 50 lb. bags of flour ground in Shanghai loadingour ship and two others near by, for two days. The coolies took two bags eachand went up a gang plank and had to take a high step and throw them down on toa board that slid them down into the bowels of the ship. We were already pastthe hour for sailing and they hustled. One stocky fellow always carried fourbags stacked up on his back but did not get anything extra so far as I couldsee, as they worked by the gang. One gang put in 26 bags a minute, two tripsper man. When the last bag went in the man who carried it laughed and shoutedin glee and waved his hands to us as if to say, AWell now youcan go, all owing to our hustling.@ When I waved to him as the barge was moving away heshouted again and took off his hat and waved it to me.
April 30th, Sunday
We have been a day and a half along with 25 othersteamers waiting for a doctor to give us a clean bill of health and a pilot totake us over the bar five miles to Taku and the river, 20 miles from Tientsin. The Chinese doctor came yesterday and looked at all our vaccinationcertificates. We had those that Theodore gave us and they have saved us muchtime at Shanghai and here, for we could not buy our steamer ticket withoutthem. They are so afraid that small pox will get started in these throngs ofpeople.
Yesterday a Chinese passenger had a poor littlebrambling, very pretty, tied with a string, and it was almost drowned fromfalling into water. He untied the string and put it in the sun to warm up. Inits wet condition I thought it was a new species and asked him for it. He saidhe was goin g to let it fly if it recovered. So I measured it and took itsdescription and warmed it up in my hand until it could fly around the room. But it would not eat. This morning I opened the porthole and let it out but itwas too weak. It flew lower and lower until a wave wet it and it went down stillin sight from the ship. We felt bad about it for if we had put it out on deckit would have ridden in to land and been saved.
Grandma is packing up and I must help her. We havebeen on this ship eight days and I guess this is the last, if we don't draw toomuch water for the depth of the river.
Grandfather
Shanghai shops were full, comparedto Yokohama and Kobe; Japan importing only war goods.
German Jews in Shanghai were putinto the ruins of the Chinese city. Chinese are taking care of them, notJapanese. 5,000 students in makeshift classrooms learning English, trades,etc.
Japanese are obstructing Britishboats.
Cousin Llewellyn Davies resistedJapanese takeover of AY@ buildings in Tsingtao.
Japanese are taking over control ofmines, factories.
In Tientsin, saw shiploads ofJapanese soldiers unloading, and of Chinese being sent to Manchuria for forcedlabor.
In Peking, a visit to the ForbiddenCity.
Father=s work will include editing Dr. Fenn=s Dictionary - fifth edition.
Frightful things happening. Japanese terrorize by brutality, while the U.S. helps them with war supplies. Story of Chinese guards beating Japanese posing as Chinese smuggling guns.
Police arrest a Bridgman schoolstudent for something said in a letter; torture those they arrest.
This is going by Embassy mail, socan be more open.
Gertrude S. Wilder
College of Chinese Studies, Peking
May 5, 1939
Dear Children and Grandchildren,
And here we are! I am starting out onthis big paper, but shall probably not do anything very big, simply bring youup to date. However, I am going to say first what I must say as this will besent in the Legation mail bag.
As we wrote last week, we stayed onour nice freighter all the way to Shanghai where we had to wait four days for asteamer to Teintsin. We spent a good deal of time on the street mingling withthe people and trying, sometimes successfully, to use our northern dialect. Shanghai was a revelation to us. The streets were crowded with people of allgrades of society, the shops were apparently doing good business and theatmosphere wasn't depressing. Such a contrast to Yokohama and Kobe, where theshops were empty and business seemed at a stand still. They are importingnothing but war materials, and the foreigners in Japan are beginning to feelthe pinch of not being able to get groceries (butter, etc.) from abroad. Ourship was packed entirely (I think) with war materials. I don't suppose wecould have found an East- bound ship that wasn't. Between three and four millionpeople are in the International settlement (in Shanghai) safe for the timebeing.
Mr. Lewisburg and Gardner took Georgeout to see Ch=a Pei - what's left of it, that is. It is nothing but a vast expanse of ruins - no Chinese living there at all. Thereare a few partially wrecked buildings left, which are being fixed up for GermanJews - a dreadful place to put them, but there is no room in the concessions. I talked with one young Jew who said that there were one hundred of themsleeping in one room. I forgot how many thousands of them there are now inShanghai, an added problem. It's the foreign concessions and not the Japanesewho are taking care of them. I hear it is the Chinese who are taking thisresponsibility! They are having classes in English language, in trades,foreign customs, etc.
We went to one of the refuges run bythe Salvation Army and were impressed by the order and cleanliness of theplace. There were 7,000 refugees in this one and they were gradually reducingthe number - but very gradually. The Chinese are helping in this work. Overthe doorways of two of the sheds (I don't know what else to call them) therewere characters saying that these two were taken care of by the Chineseemployees of one of the British shipping firms in Shanghai. They each have ahundred or more people. Another shed was the care of a certain church.
We also went to a large buildingoccupying most of a block and fronting on three streets. The first floor wastaken up by shops of all kinds of goods, the second floor was one hugeexhibition for the sale of Chinese-made goods of all kinds - very interesting -and the four upper stories were occupied by three universities working togetherand two middle schools, 5,000 students in all! The place was teeming withstudents. While we were there Chiang Kai Sheck broadcast that he had heardthat students were leaving school to enter the army. He urged them not to, butto stick to their studies and prepare themselves for future service. Themovies were drawing large crowds and we fell in line and saw Pygmalion -enjoyed it too. We (or I) couldn't resist the sesame candy - and wasn't itgood! We bought fruit and candies, often more for the chance to talk Chineseand haggle than to get it.
After four days in Shanghai we tookthe "Hai Kou" (Sea Mouth) for Teintsin, going second class. We couldhave eaten in the first class dinning room if we had wanted to as there were norestrictions and the food was exactly the same, but our cabin was next door tothe dining saloon and very convenient, so we stayed below with two otherpassengers and fifteen French soldiers, bound for Teintsin and Peking. Therewere delays everywhere and it took nine days to get from Shanghai to Teintsin. The Hai Kou is an English boat and just now the Japanese are obstructing theEnglish whenever and wherever they can. We had to wait for the doctor, thenthe customs officials, or the pilot would take his time to get out, or therewould be no docking space. All the functionaries are Japs now. We stopped atT'sing Tao where Llewellyn Davies is holding the fort in the Y.M.C.A. Wecouldn't land - not even the captain and officers were allowed to - butLlewellyn managed to come on board. He stayed for lunch and a nap and we had anice, long visit. It was interesting to hear him tell about the way he hadheld the Chinese Y.M.C.A. after having been asked by the committee in charge todo so. The Japanese wanted the buildings for their soldiers and tried over andover again to get Llewellyn to leave and let them have it. He pointed out tothem that there were plenty of vacant buildings that would suit their purposeas well or better, that he had been put in charge by the Y.M.C.A., had a uniquefunction to fulfill and that he would never consent to turning it over. Healso told them that he would not think of resisting if they wanted to carry himout, but that they could never get his consent. It has been months since thenand they have not troubled him again. In fact, one at least of the customsofficials is now living at the Y and is apparently nothing but friendly. He(Llewellyn) was absolutely fearless, perfectly polite, and absolutely firm. Ithink his attitude awed them. At any rate, they gave him up as a bad job.
At T'sing Tao we saw how the Japaneseline the Chinese up and search them for Chinese money and other things. Theyhave to unbutton all their clothes and submit to being pawed over. TheJapanese are trying to force their Federal Reserve Bank notes on the people andit is a capital crime if even a dollar of old Chinese money is found on yourperson. They don't search foreigners. The day we were in the Chefoo harborthe Chinese compeodore of one of the British ships went on shore with $100.00in the old bank notes. It was discovered, the money taken from him, and theysaid he was to be shot. The Jap money is going down in value all the time, butthey are trying desperately to enforce its use. It is causing all sorts ofmoney trouble. The Japanese merchants themselves are afraid of it and don'twant it, but have to take it. The foreign banks won't look at it thus far, yetare ordered to pay out nothing else.
We sat on the bar for two days forsome of the reasons enumerated above. Fortunately the master was fine. On theway up the river to Tientsin more and more evidence of Japanese aggressionappeared. They have taken over two huge, modern salt works, big chemicalworks, coal companies etc., etc., and they are spending all sorts of moneyputting up new factories, building up the river bank with iron plates andreinforced concrete and just digging in as fast as they can.
Mr. Pettus had written ahead to theAmerican Express Co. to meet us and when we sailed up to the wharf at Tientsina nice young Chinese with the American Express cap on called to us. He tookcharge of everything - getting our tickets, having our trunks checked, etc., -and the next morning came to the boat to get us. We stayed on board all nightas it was by far the most comfortable way to manage, but went to see Mr. Grimesafter we had had dinner - 7 o'clock. He also came to meet us but was a littlelater than the American Express man. Tientsin made us feel despondent, for theJapanese are so very evidently in control of everything except the foreignconcessions. It made me feel sicker and sicker. The things one doesn't seeare still worse. Ship loads of fresh Japanese soldiers were unloading atTangku, and other ship loads of Chinese raw recruits going out to serve Japanin Manchuria.
The railroad journey to Peking wascomfortable and quick. Mr. Pettus met us with an auto and brought us right upto the little apartment that we are to occupy for about six weeks, and freeboard goes with the suite. We washed and then went down to lunch with Mr. andMrs. Pettus. Our temporary quarters are very nice - the AFaculty Suite," consisting of a good-sized bedroom,a sitting room, large closet and bath. Mrs. Ray Moyer and her three girls areoccupying the apartment we are to have. We found flowers galore in our rooms,sent by different people, mostly potted plants in beautiful bloom - also a bigplate of chocolates and another one of fruit. We shall eat in the hostel whilewe are here - at the school's expense, Mr. Pettus said. We told him that wasmaking guests of us for too long, and I hope he won't insist.
During lunch Mr. Pettus asked if wewould like to join a party to go to a part of the Forbidden City that is rarelyopened to visitors. It was too good a chance to pass by so we went. Theothers were Lucius Porter (Lillian couldn't come) Will Ament and his wife,(visiting prof. to Yenching from Pomona) and Prof. and Mrs. McNair, a visitingProf. to Yenching from Chicago University. It was a most interesting trip. The part we went to was a large section that Chien Lung retired to after hisreign of sixty years. It is in the northeastern part of the Forbidden City andit was through its back gate that the Empress Dowager and her entourage madetheir get-away in 1900. In a tiny courtyard just after entering the gate, isthe well into which the Empress Dowager forced the Pearl Concubine, Kuang Hsu'sfavorite. There is a big stone drum over the mouth of the well, padlocked inplace, and on the wall directly over it is a wooden placard telling the tragicstory. At one side there is a shrine to the Pearl Concubine - a little templeerected by her sister - and over the doorway hangs a tablet written by KuangHsu - four eulogistic characters. The big red seal is the sister's but the writingis by Kuang Hsu. The enclosure is crowded with buildings of various kinds -living rooms, temples, pavilions and very intricate rock work (rockeries) withunderground passages. The gardens are grown up to weeds but must have beenlovely when kept up, and the trees are beautiful. The doors were all lockedbut we could see through the windows any amount of carved furniture, cushionson throne chairs, paintings, bundles of hangings and some bric-a-brac. Thereare many very beautiful pieces of furniture - all catalogued, or at leasttagged, but all thickly covered with what looked like years of dust. In thegardens there are handsome bronze vases and huge bronze bowls for lotus plants. And there are a number of very large jade carvings and other stone carvings. The floors of the verandas and passages are all white marble with blackmarkings and the balustrades are white marble. I'm so glad we had theopportunity to see it.
After that we went to see Mrs. Ingramand had a long visit with her and Miriam. The Japanese are trying to persuadeher to sell them her house and she is doing her best to put them off. Theypester her once or twice a week. She is really in two minds about it, notwanting to sell and yet wondering if it would not be better to do so and buyherself a small place rather than having to endure this worry all the time. One trouble is that they want to pay her in the new Jap money the bottom ofwhich may drop out any day.
John Finley, who is teaching in thePeking American School, and making splendidly good, came to see us that firstevening. He is to be librarian here next year, giving us half time andstudying half time. We should see a good deal of him. The P.A.S. hates tolose him.
Yesterday afternoon we met theLanguage School students at tea, this noon had lunch with the Gaileys and Hayesat the Pettus home, and tomorrow meet some people at lunch at the Gailey'sapartment - Father Mack and Dr. Braisted. We have already had a number ofcalls from Chinese friends in Peking, and day after tomorrow we are going toTungchou for the day. We have not done anything but get settled so far, butFather is to begin to help revise Dr. Fenn's dictionary, which seems to besupplanting Dr. Goodrich's.
This compound is lovely and once insidethese walls one would never know that there was anything but peace in theworld. But there are frightful things going on in Peking and more frightfulthings going on in the country wherever there are Japanese. Their aim is toterrorize the people by deeds of brutality and they are thinking up and usingmore brutal methods all the time. And we in the U.S. keep right on serenelyhelping them with all the things that make this inexcusable war possible! Whathas happened to the conscience of America and what has happened to the businesssense of big business? Can't Ford and the rest see that after they have taughtthe Japanese all there is to know about autos and air planes they will lose thetrade of both Japan and China after Japan wins the war, with their help ,and can tap all the natural resources of China. She may have to still importoil but she will be able to manufacture the rest.
We saw something like 35,000 newJapanese recruits disembarking between Tangku and Tientsin. There may not havebeen that number tho' that is the number they are adding to the North Chinagarrison. They just swarmed!
Uncle Charlie arrived today to attendthe council meeting. I must find out and arrange a meeting. We have a lot ofthings that Alfred sent out by us. We have enjoyed the things that were givenus, flowers, steamer rug, life savers, gum, dried fruits, writing case, booksand magazines.
I had no idea 'till I first turnedback to number my pages, how much I have written. Excuse me this time. I promisenever again. I will however, go on to another page to draw a rough plan of ourfuture apartment which we think will meet our needs perfectly. Father willhave a study in the main building so we don't have to use a special room forthat purpose. The rooms face south so get all the winter sun and in the summerthey put up a peng (awning). The bedrooms are rather small but we can have oneapiece if we please and still have a guest room. So far as living isconcerned I don't see how we could be more comfortably or conveniently fixed. Each bedroom has a good closet. I have seen the apartment only once so haven'tadded those details, but they are there. This is just to give you an idea. Weshall be on the second floor.
The hall is somewhat narrower thanthis makes it out to be C also the stairway C but not much narrower.
I have just come back from tea at Mrs.Pettus' home to meet the seven women teachers in the school. In fact, I wassent for to see Mrs. Galt, who had come in from Yenching. She was overjoyed atthe direct word - and good word - that we brought from Lawrence and his wife. She hadn't heard from them for months and was worried. Mr. Galt is takingLeighton Stuart's place at Yenching while he is making a trip to the new capital, Chung King, via Hong Kong, Indo China, etc. Reuter's news said thatChung King was badly bombed yesterday.
Here's a little incident that happeneda few days ago. The Japanese began to suspect the Chinese guard at one of thePeiping gates of allowing guns to be smuggled in. The Chinese would stick theguns down their trouser legs and up under their arms and the guards would givethem the once over ("massage" them as the Yenching students say) andlet them by. So a number of Japanese dressed as Chinese came to the gate totest the matter - all carrying guns concealed in that way. The Chinese guardsomehow got wind of it and after discovering the guns they took the Japaneseoutside the gate and beat them up until the Japanese began to squeal that theywere Japanese and beg for mercy. So far as I know the Chinese guards were notpunished for their misplaced diligence.
Three or four days ago the policeentered Bridgman Academy and took away a girl because of something that wassaid in a letter that came to her. They have not heard from her since but herfather, who knows some one in the "New Government," hopes that he canfind out where she is and get her released. They torture the people theyarrest so terribly.
Dearest Margaret and All,
Father has made type -written copiesof this too , too long letter tosend to the others and an extra one to send perhaps to Mrs. Gibbons. So I amsending you the one written by hand. We have been so busy since coming that wehave had little time to do much besides getting this one letter written. I'lltry to get it off tomorrow through the Embassy. Mr. Pettus sends quite often.
Council meeting is going on at TengShih Kou so we are seeing some of the mission people from everywhere. But Imust leave everything else to tell you next time.
You are in our thoughts and heartsconstantly, in spite of all the other distractions. I mustn't do anything morenow, just send our deepest love, for I want to get these letters into Mr.Pettus' hands to send off as soon as possible. With loads of love.
Mother & Grandma
Mail is opened so can=t tell all.
Mission work still carried on.
Visit the Crosses, Martins andHunters in Tungchow.
German Jewish doctors in Tungchouand Tehchow.
9,000 Jews in Shanghai, and 2,000arriving every month
Yenching campus is beautiful.
American Association luncheonspeaker says Philippines don=t want independence now.
Reckless Japanese army trucks killmany civilians.
Gertrude S. Wilder
(Re-typed by GDW)
College of Chinese Studies
Peking,
May 19, 1939
Dear Families, In this case the Menzi's,
It has been some days since I wrote the longepistle to you all and this will be another general letter to bring you up todate and to enclose the plan of our apartment which I omitted in all butMargaret's letter. This will go by ordinary mail, so you will not get anythingbut our own daily doings. The opening of letters and the banning of certainpublications is the order of the day.
I'll tell you first about some of our socialaffairs, the first of which was a noon meal at a Chinese restaurant given bythe Yu Ying faculty members to the people gathered in annual meeting, bothChinese and foreign. There must have been seven or eight tables with ten ateach table -- a very jolly crowd. The food was delicious and the meeting withpeople from all our stations was most pleasant. Everyone was very muchheartened by the spirit of this mission meeting. Every branch of mission workhas been carried on throughout the year with courage and determination andgreat patience. There has been a great deal of real facing of danger, too. But every one was cheerful and hopeful, facing the new year in the same spirit,and with high hopes. There didn't seem to be any thought of letting down.
Our next party was a dinner in one of thehostel (private) dining rooms given by two Chinese friends, all the guestsexcept ourselves being Chinese. They were mostly friends that dated way back,like John Sung of the Y.M.C.A. and his wife. The hostel cooks outdidthemselves and gave us a first class dinner such as the students without doubtwould like to see every day. It was a foreign meal, of course. After dinnerwe adjourned to one of the smaller reception rooms and just talked until wedispersed.
I think it was the very next evening that LiJu Sung, head of the Yu Ying School, asked us to go to that same nicerestaurant for dinner. There were ten of us, Mrs. Frame and the Shaws beingthe other foreign guests. That time the group was smaller and we had anespecially nice time. I was able to eat without any qualms and the food was sogood. I have never tasted better. Two of the delicacies were orange andwalnut -- what? -- soup, I guess, for want of a better name. In Chinese onewas "keng" and one was "lou." I must send you the recipesfor them when I can get them. They would be good substitutes for fruitcocktail at the beginning of a meal and would be something different.
All of us foreigners assembled at missionmeeting, had an outdoor supper one evening and a good time afterward. We spenta weekend in Tungchou, partly with the Crosses and partly with the Martins. The place looked lovely and life was going on about as usual. To be sure, wecouldn't use the "hole in the wall" as that had been closed up withbrick and mortar by order of the authorities, but had to go the long way aroundby the south gate. That was no great hardship, however. Father preached inthe morning, a large choir led by Ch=en Ch'ang You sang well, and after church agood number of folks gathered in the Sunday School room to greet us and todrink tea. We were pleased to see how well our last home had been kept up bythe Crosses. They were getting good returns from fruit trees and berries andeven from our English walnut tree. I was especially glad to find the wildthings that I had brought from Kuan Tso Ling[9] flourishingsplendidly.
In both Tungchou and Techow they have securedthe services of refugee German Jewish doctors, a man and wife in Tungchou and asingle man in Techow. Both men are from Vienna, both are well up in theirprofession and all three so grateful for a place where they can live withoutfear. One of the men had been under arrest and had been very badly treated. Just think - Shanghai, the most crowded city in the world has nine thousandJewish refugees now, and they are coming in at the rate of two thousand amonth, all available steamers being booked until December. It is a really terrifyingproblem. The people in Shanghai are afraid of food riots. Each refugee isallowed only ten marks when he leaves his native land!
Last week we had a perfect weekend with theGalts. They had the Porters and the Aments in for lunch and we spent a goodchunk of the afternoon playing Lexicon. Yenching is, I am sure, one of themost beautiful university campuses in the world, and with its wealth of treesand shrubs, grass and flowers, it grows more beautiful all the time. Thebuildings are all in the same style so there is harmony throughout. Father hada chance at some good tennis while Mrs. Galt and I looked on. We have sinceinvested in racquets and have played twice. At the present rate of exchangethey cost about a dollar gold and they are pretty good. The Aments arereturning to the U.S. soon He left China when he was only nine years old andthis trip has been a great experience for him.
One day last week Mr. and Mrs. Pettus triedto take us to a movie but the program had been changed so we went to the parkpart of the Forbidden City, where we enjoyed the flowers and birds, among theman albino peacock, pure white, who strutted around displaying his beautifultail as if he were on parade. Before leaving we sat at a wicker table and hadtea and delicious pastry stuffed with rose leaves. Something new.
In the meantime, Father has commencedteaching and lecturing and I have attended one committee meeting, talked to agroup of Union Church women and spent one afternoon calling on Chinese ladies. When the visiting is over and the newness of our arrival has worn off our dayswill become more regulated.
This noon, May 20, we went to a luncheon atthe Wagon Lits given by the American Association in honor of Gov. (is it?)McNutt who is on his way to the U.S. from the Phillippines. All Americans wereinvited whether members or not at $7.00 Japanese money a plate. There musthave been nearly three hundred people there. After things were cleared away welistened to a very good talk about the Philippines, past, present and future. He bore out what our Philippine traveling companion said, that the greatmajority of the people do not want independence now, and told us a number ofreasons why. It was good, though he made the eagle screech a little more thanwas necessary. Mr. Galt called it a good Fourth of July speech. He is a finelooking man with a good speaking voice.
Father has gone to Tungchou to speak to agroup of students, so I am alone tonight. He comes back tomorrow morning andhas to go straight to the Teng Shih Kou church where he is to preach.
...which he did - I walking to church fromhere, joining him after the service was over. Walking on the streets is nofun. There are as many rickshaws and bikes as ever and many times as manyautos and trucks, mostly belonging to the visiting team, which whiz all overthe place with no regard for anyone nor anything. Two days ago one of thestudents here saw a girl killed by an army truck at the entrance of our alley. It happens often. We'll be careful.
We are going to Union Church in a littlewhile and then home with Mrs. Ingram for dinner to meet Miss Mullikan and someothers, and I think this is a good place to stop.
My head and my heart are full of morethings to say but I mustn't make this any longer. There will be another lettersoon. Another one from you, Margaret, came a few days ago. Such a joy to getit. You certainly must be careful how you experiment on allergic littleDonnie. I'm glad you got a substitute for the play. Your chances will comewhen Don is a little older and your time can be counted upon.
Love to each of you - and loads of it.
Mother
Living is cheap here withgold-backed US dollars.
China Relief is falling short offund-raising goal, but is doing much good work, e.g., in Shanghai.
Guerilla warfare all along4,000-mile battle line, but quiet here in Peking.
Teaching six groups of 4 or 5students each; also revising Fenn=s Dictionary.
Japanese friends staying here.
George D. Wilder
Peking,
May 23, 1939
Dear Mar and Len,
I guess there is room in this letter foranother sheet and I have a few minutes. There have been things I thought Iwould say for a long time, and interesting events, but they have gotten farahead of any possibility of writing. Just rest your minds for us. We are ascomfortable as possible except for having nothing but hard water and Iam told we can get softening fluid for $1.00 a kerosene tin - only 12 centsgold you know. Really for us who get gold salaries living is too dirt cheap,and there are all sorts of funny things. Lyman Cady asked me to get him aHistory of Philosophy by a Chinese, translated by Derk Bodde. The U.S. priceis $6.00, the China dollar price $18.00. I buy FRB dollars and get the book atthe China price for only about $2.40 (U.S.).
Has Mr. Van Tyne sent you the $6.00 for thetwo volumes of the Birds of Hopei that I sold him? Well, the price in U.S.money now is doubled, but if I use it to buy FRB notes, which are being forcedinto circulation now, the book costs me $3.00 U.S. or only half what it wasbefore the price was raised to meet exchange! - the dollar price being raisedonly to $24.00 (from $20.00 that I paid), or to about $3.00 U.S.
Also, I wonder if that picture is in yourhands or in the hands of any other dealer. It need not worry you as MissMurphy has long since given up any expectation of getting anything out of itand only hoped that it would bring something for China Relief.
China Relief will now be falling off from the$10,000 a week that it maintained through the winter, less than half what theyaimed at and yet doing a tremendous lot of good, as we saw in Shanghai. I hopeyou will not give up giving or soliciting as opportunity offers.
You do not see much in the papers, but theguerilla warfare goes on all along the line, as some say the longest line ofbattle in history, over 4,000 miles. But we along the coast are all peacefuland see nothing of it. It is astonishing how orderly and quiet we are.
We have several Japanese friends staying hereat our hostel off and on for a few days at a time and the pastor here, Mr.Shimidzu, brings Christian friends often. We have known him for several tensof years. A Japanese missionary in Jehol, acquainted with friends of mine upthere was here when we arrived and we talked easily in Chinese only. With himwas a Methodist minister who spoke good English, so we got along pretty well asfar as language went.
I have six groups of four or five each in thethird term to help with English, each once a week a half hour at a time. Ifill in the rest of my time revising Fenn's dictionary and correcting proof. It is just the kind of work I need to refresh my Chinese, and is good fun. Ihave his former teacher, Mr. Chin, who helped him make it from the first. Heis fine and we get along together first rate. I could not have more congenialwork. The old church friends are after me and my Sundays are pretty well takenup. We close school for two weeks on June 9 and then we shall go to Tehsienand see what remnants of our things are left there.
Love to you all,
Father
Tungchou compound=s small gate in the city wallblocked up, preventing villagers from getting good water.
Cook tells how Japanese terrorizenearby villages B collective punishment.
Chinese punished for contact withforeigners.
Villages caught between guerillasand Japanese army.
Japanese use Chinese soldiers toattack own people=s villages.
8,000 reportedly died in bombing ofChungking.
New un-backed paper currency isbeing forced on people.
George D. Wilder
College of Chinese Studies, Peking
May 29, 1939
Dear Folks,
Before I forget all about it let me tell youabout yesterday and the day before.
Saturday was devoted to a meeting ofthe standing committee of the North Church, which is three or four blocks northof us. Both of us are elected on it but Gertrude was away in the ForbiddenCity for luncheon and could not go, so I had to stand it alone for over twohours. It was interesting enough, only slow. I had my reward by getting intoa pretty good set of tennis, or two sets, and helping a good partner to winthem both. We had a terribly hard server and hitter and fast man against us,handicapped by another very tall English partner.
In the evening we had dinner at MiriamIngram's with her mother and the Steve Pyles as guests. He was interested tohear about all of our family. We had to leave at 8:30 to go to the formerlyLondon Mission, now Independent Church of Christ in China not far south of the Ybuilding, for a rehearsal of a very complicated program in which I was to havea lot of Bible reading, etc., mingled with a lot of choir work. We did not gethome >til after eleven and in a much needed rain -or no, the rain was last night, after the real thing on Day of PentecostSunday.
Sunday morning I woke up too late toget the train, so had breakfast and went to the Tung Ssu P'ai lou, near us hereto wait for a bus that they said goes to Tungchou about every hour, providedthey have a load. I waited 3/4 of an hour holding down my seat and gossipingwith folks who knew me all around. When I went in to buy a ticket quite a lotof folks sitting there waiting for the bus talked in surprise that I couldspeak Chinese. Some were Japanese. One spoke up "Oh, he must be amissionary. All who can speak that way are." Then he said, "Why,that is Wan Mushih. Everyone young and old in Tungchow knows him. They allwant him to come back." Then he said to me, "If you had only beenthere you would have kept them from blocking up the little gate through thewall." Of course I told him that I could not have done any more than anyone else with the new conditions. He said that the people all over the westpart of the city missed terribly the chance to get our water.
I went down to talk on "Nature" atthe church. The boys and girls of the school had charge and there were over400 there with birds and flowers galore. It was very well gotten up. When Igot back about 5:00 P.M. I had to study the seven pages of the script that Ihad to read at the "Grain Market Church." It was grassily writtenand it took me a straight two hours to study it out and correct it so that Icould read it with some smoothness. I did have a time of it when the time came,but got through better than I expected to after all. It was a beautiful,carefully prepared, but not much practiced, service in a church that had beenredecorated most beautifully with the altar in the center. That was not a dayof rest, and I took Monday off. In the evening, though, we had a treat. Dr.Loucks, head of surgery or something at PUMC, an old hunting companion, had usand the Pettuses, Mrs. Ingram, and Dr. Houghton's Secretary down to dinner andthen to hear Brahms' Requiem and other pieces of instrumental and vocal musicat the Hotel de Pekin.
I have let a whole week go by and haveforgotten what all I was going to write. I guess it was to tell you what newsI heard down at Tungchow, but we have been getting more news every day that makesone sick. Guess I will send this by Legation mail and just cut loose.
Our cook was up to find out when we would beready for him a few days ago and told us a lot about his village and thesurrounding country. Our boy that we had several years at Techow and thenfired three months before we went to America, taking the cook's wife in hisplace, lived near the cook out 70 li east of Tungchow. He went to the Japs asa spy and was telling on his neighbors but it was not long before the neighborswent over one night and killed him.
In that vicinity 16 of the best citizens havebeen put to death just for no reason but to terrify the populace. He said hisvillage was faring worse than others because when they first sent their twoleading men, they were promptly executed and so since then no one has dared torepresent the village and the Japanese suspect them all the more and have beenharder on them than on those who sent representatives to take orders. Theyhave a system of making each village responsible for all outrages they sufferfrom the guerillas. When they lose one or more Japanese soldiers the nearestvillage is exterminated or its leading men put to death by slow torture. Therehave been two such affairs right near the compound at Tungchou, in one case sixmen were taken from the nearest village to where they found two headlessJapanese soldiers who had gone into the village for some deviltry, and been"done to death." In the other, seven families were burnt out ofhouse and home - I do not know how many if any were killed. Those were nearthe city wall east of us, and the former just south of the railroad.
For several days we heard bombs or artilleryabout 20 miles southeast of Peking and southwest of Tungchow. We kept gettingword about it. First that the four counties of the region had agreed to fightand not give up their arms when demanded. So when a small force of Chinesemercenaries and a few Japanese went out to take up arms they were almostannihilated, a few Japanese getting away. Then the artillery went out andfirst it was three villages and finally 17 reported as destroyed and the peoplekilled so far as possible but some escaped to the city and told the Shaws'servants about it. We have just learned, too, that the guerillas had orderedthe people not to give up their arms on pain of attack by them.
In many places the more the people have to dowith foreigners the more they are punished. One missionary reports that at achurch meeting the soldiers came in and took all who had no badge of churchmembership and took them outside and shot them. When the missionary asked whatwas the charge they told him simply, "The guerillas must be putdown."
One of our social workers at the hospitaltells of a man coming to take his convalescent wife away. He broke into tearsto say that he could not bear to tell her but their whole village had beendestroyed since she was sick and he had no place to take her. They had beentaxed 4.00 per mou, a huge tax, and could not raise it so they were cleaned outand he had accidently been able to escape.
Another countryman who did not know that thesound old Chinese currency must be replaced by the pure paper money with nopromise on it to pay anything came in to the city with $4.00 in the Chinesemoney. The Chinese guard searched him and as he had made no effort to concealthem they were confiscated, he was led over to a tea shop and a kettle ofboiling water poured over his head to run down his person. He was brought infor treatment. This was done by Chinese guards at the gate, but they say ifthey refuse to do it it will be done to them, or worse. When I went toTungchou all the Chinese passengers in the bus were searched three times on theway and the same coming back. There were school girls dressed as policesearching the women and they were much less polite than the men, who werepretty decent. The Yenching boys call the search "taking massage." But proud Chinese certainly feel the insult bitterly.
The way they are enrolling Chinese soldiersto terrorize their own people, or at least to go in front ranks attacking theirown people=s villages is simply terrible.
Well, this is enough of this kind of story. We do not actually see anything of the cruelty and things seem quite quiet andorderly, except for the dashing trucks. A lady came in the other day and saidshe had seen a girl killed by one at the mouth of our alley and it quite upsether, but that is the only one I have heard of so close. Some say that theyoccur every day. I have not gotten used enough to turning left to feel safe ona bike as yet and have not bought one.
We have been having some good tennis lately. "Laddie" Scott, the brother of the Betty Stam who was killed by thecommunists a few years ago, is the best player here. Hubbard said Scott beathim, but I doubt if he would consistently when Hub is in form. He is good,though. Do you remember Ted Romig? He and Moyer, who is also in Hubbard'sclass, played Scott and me three sets the other day. We got them all but byonly a margin of two each time. Saturday they got one from us by the samemargin. They are all hard hitters, and like to play. Your Mother and I haveplayed the Romigs, too. Mrs. R. and your mother beat a couple of big huskyEnglish girls the other day, too. When I saw the girls slamming the ball I didnot think they could do it, but their slams were too inaccurate.
All the Phi Beta Kappa folks have beenelected into the Phi Tau Phi at Yenching and went out last Thursday to beinitiated. I was to have gone to help initiate, as I was taken in last yearbut had to attend a Missionary Association Committee representing the AmericanBoard at exactly the same hour. The rest went out to Yenching to Pres.Stuart's house for it. Pres. Stuart has just come back from West China. Hewas in Chungking during two of the five bombings, the worst of the war, withover 8,000 civilians killed. He says it was worse than any of the accounts ofit. He came in to our Tuesday prayer meeting last week to tell us about thetrip out and back. He tried to be objective and avoid wishful thinking, butwas tremendously impressed with the morale there. There were false reportsthat they were planning to move the capital again. He said it was notmentioned and all plans were to stay. The day after the bombing the officialswere in their office as usual and taking the bombings as all in the day=s work. They simply expressed regret that his visit hadhappened to come at so inconvenient a time. He thinks the Japanese will leaveSouth and Central China in a year or two but that North China will be held,unless something big happens in Japan. A Russian this afternoon at thecelebration of Bishop Norris' 50 years in China said that he expected them toleave in a year as there are deep underground movements going on. So it goes.
We could not be in a more congenialsituation. Several welcomed us back this P.M. About 40 Chinese friends aregetting up a celebration of my 70th birthday on the 26th of this month andPettus says they are doing the same thing here at the College for noon of thesame day. The welcome here among the faculty and students, about 60 of theformer and 117 of the latter could not be more kindly and cordial.
So far I have had little teaching to do. Thethird term class of 27 is divided into six sections for me to give them a halfhour personal aid each week. They all come on Wednesday and Thursday mornings. Tuesday, Thursday and Friday I work with Mr. Chin correcting proof, etc., onFenn's Dictionary, which we want to get out for next fall. We have about 48pages of the 650 set up but have not gotten the format fixed so as to beginreal printing yet. Pettus has invested $1,400 in paper for it and has madesome stipulations about the form of the page, which delays us another week andwill require re-reading those 48 pages. And it's an awful job to get any prooffree of errors in this country. Correct five or six times and then you willfind that they have disarranged places that you had correct in second or thirdreading.
June 6.
You know this currency trouble is because thepure paper notes without backing are being forced on the people against theirwill and they have to give up all their sound old paper Bank of China notes. They were supposed to be exchanged at par, good money for worthless, but nowthey just confiscate wherever found, and punish folks for having them. Still Iam buying tennis balls at $5.00 (instead of $9.00, now reduced to $7.50 in thenew money) because I can draw checks on Tientsin H&S Bank in the oldcurrency, which the shop keeper can use in paying his bills to the foreignfirms. I get them for the others in the College. We use British balls andthey figure out about 28 cents apiece our money. It remains to be seen ifbayonets can force this money on the people generally. It is in common use inthe city and I suppose wherever the Japanese soldiers are.
Today's paper, Japanese-controlled as all arenow, tells of the death yesterday of Hsu Shih Ch'ang, the ex-President whomUrsula once went to call on and wrote up when she was in school. They tried invain to get him to head up the new government recently. I will enclose toUrsula the clipping and his picture, all in Chinese. She always remembers him.
We sent a radio message to Durand and toldhim we were going to Techow, and Tsinan, soon. It will be the morning of the8th. Miss Disney is up for a visit and we shall go back together, fortunately,as she knows the ropes.
We went over the Moyer apartment this morningto show Mr. Yuan the repairs we want. The school certainly tries to treat usright. Yesterday Mr. Pettus heard that we had paid our way out. He hadsupposed that the Board did it. He said that if we were at all pressed to doit the school would do it still. We can keep that in mind for a returnsometime. We are just preparing an invitation to Dr. and Mrs. Fenn to come outand live here on the same basis that Gailey and I do. The school will do wellto have them here. As further evidence of good will, we have not been able topay any board or wash bills so that our living is very cheap. We hardly spendanything except for rikshas and clothes. The riksha fares are way up infigures but dirt cheap when reduced to U.S. money. Our men at the gate haveregular rates and we pay by fare or by time, according as to which is highest. We never have any fuss and they always seem pleased. It is very pleasant forall concerned, and as it should be.
With love,
Father
REPUBLIC OF CHINA
HEADQUARTERS OF THEGENERALISSIMO[10]
Chungking, Szechwan
China
May 3, 1939
Mr. O. G. Starrett
Detroit Michigan
United States of America
Dear Mr. Starrett,
I have just received your letter of March 21in which you sent a bank draft for US$100.00 for relief work. I am sending thereceipt herewith.;
I wish to thank you and Mrs. Starrett for theactive sympathy you show in our cause. I also wish you to convey theappreciation of the Generalissimo and myself to the Chinese in your communityfor their patriotism and helpfulness. The Overseas Chinese have made valuablecontributions to relief and other causes connected with the war.
When you get this letter we will be in the23rd month of our resistance. The people of our country who have suffered somuch are splendid in their endurance and in their determination to keep onresisting despite their losses. The soldiers are fighting as Chinese soldiersnever fought before.
The Japanese, by virtue of their superiorartillery and air force, have been able to burst their way into the interior ofour country, but they have not occupied the regions they have traversed. Mostof them are still under our control. Warfare is being conducted from theseaboard inwards. There are no front or back lines for the Japanese. Whereverthere are Japanese there is fighting. This will go on until they are clearedfrom our country.
Just now our troops are fighting valiantlyeverywhere, causing the Japanese great losses and obstructing their advance onChangsha and Sian despite their superiority of equipment.
However, the Generalissimo states that thisis not the Chinese offensive. He knows that concentrations of artillery,mechanized units, and bombing planes can burst a way through Chnese lines. Sothe big offensive will not take place until the Japanese have shot their bolt. In the meantime, they will be
harried wherever possible, and it is hopedthat they will not be able even to carry out their intentions at the moment.
Spiritual mobilization is now under waythroughout the country and everywhere there is energetic work.
You would not know Chungking. Industries arespringing up everywhere, and so are houses. The same thing is happening inKunming and in other places. Sikong has been established as a province, andthroughout all this western region there is the liveliness that has theappearance of boom days in the settlement of the American West. Here, nodoubt, are being laid the foundations of quite a new China.
Japanese bombing planes range this way, butthe clouds of Szechwan do much to protect the province from constant raiding. Every effort is being made to protect the people of Chungking. They hate toevacuate the city, but the authorities are doing their utmost to compelevacuation in order to reduce loss of life in case of raids. Dugouts are beingblasted into the solid rock but that is a slow job. We are hoping that theJapanese will not be able to get through, but now that fine weather is coming,the danger is great.
Will you please convey this to the members ofyour Chinese Church School, and tell them that their countrymen here are layingdown their lives and are prepared to make all sacrifices to safeguard theheritage which our ancestors have handed down to us? We are sure that victorywill come to us sometime. If this generation cannot defeat the Japanese, thenthe next generation will.
In the meantime, we are praying that thegreat countries who are supposed to be sympathetic with us will not continue tohelp Japan to desolate our land and slaughter our helpless people. Rivers ofblood have run in China, and much of it has been made with munitions made fromAmerican scrap-iron and other materials. It is a terrible and tragic thing tohave to realize that such a situation is possible in this year of grace 1939.
I would like to make it known to all Chinesecommunities in America how deeply the Generalissimo and I appreciate thei quietboycotting by Chinese and our American friends of sships loading scrap-iron forour destruction.
Yours sincerely,
Mayling Soong Chiang
Mayling Soong Chiang
(Madame Chiang Kai Shek)
P.S. Since dictating this letter thismorning, twenty seven planes raided Chungking. I have just returned from aninspection of the ruins wrought by the enemy. Sections of the city are stillin flames, for incendiary bombs were used. My staff escaped unharmedCthis time anywayCbut the buildings adjoining ouroffice were gutted. Maimed bodies, charred limbs, bleeding human wrecks andcorpses were strewn over many of the streets, while emergency corps workedheroically to save all they could. Many hundreds are grieving over the deathand suffering of their beloved ones. What have these people ;ever done to theJapanese to deserve such treatment from them?
MSC
Theodore H. White=s description of the May 3, 1939bombings of Chungking, alluded to in Madame Chiang=s letter and in GDW=s letter of May 29..
**The Bombing ofChungking[11] **
Chungking was bombed onMay 3 and again on May 4 of 1939. Those bombings are now forgotten milestonesin the history of aerial terror, but at the time they marked the largest massslaughter of defenseless human beings from the air in the rising history ofviolence. And the Japanese began it.
The Japanese hit once,in early afternoon of May 3, but our office dugout was far from the trail oftheir bombs. They came again the next evening; they outwitted the Chinese airdefenses by circling the city for almost an hour until the Chinese pursuitplanes had run out of gas and landed for refueling. Then they came, and performedmassacre.
I was with my group ofinformation ministry friends that day and we had left our dugout, which hadbecome stuffy with the long wait inside, and descended to the banks of theChialing River to watch the sunset until the all-clear would sound. Then,droning through the cloudless sky, came a formation of twenty-seven Japanesebombers, a serene and unbroken line of dots in the sky. The Chineseantiaircraft reached up through the gathering dark, and the tracer bullets,like pink and orange puffballs, made fireworks as they pointed to the Japaneseformation. The shells burst in instant flashesCshort, however, visibly short,impotently short of the line above. Then we heard the thudding from behind theridge inside the old city, and the Japanese were gone, untouched.
I made my way back tothe office, then began the four-mile walk to the Friends Mission, deep insidethe walled city, where I was then lodging. By this time it was full dark, and whatI was seeing was the reaction of a medieval city to the first savage touch ofthe modern worldCwhich was total panic.Behind the slope, as I climbed up, was the red of spreading fire; and from thered bowl beyond the rim, people were fleeing. They were trudging on foot,fleeing in rickshaws, riding on sedan chairs, pushing wheelbarrows; and as theystreamed out, an occasional limousine or army truck would honk or blast its waythrough the procession, which would part, then close, then continue its flightto the countryside. They carried mattresses, bedrolls, pots and pans, food,bits of furniture. They carried babies in their arms; grandmothers rodepiggyback on menÕs shoulders; but they did not talk: in the silence one couldeven hear the padding shuffle of their feet.
At the crest, where onebegan the descent into the old city, I could get a larger view. The electricpower lines had been bombed out; so, too, had the trunk of ChungkingÕs watersystem, which ran down the main street. There was no light but that of thefires, no water to fight the fires, and the fires were spreading up and downthe alleys of old Chungking. One could hear the bamboo joints popping as thefire ate the bamboo timbers; now there was noise, women keened, men yelled,babies cried. Some sat rocking back and forth on the ground, chanting. I couldhear screaming in the back alleys; several times I saw people dart out of theslope alleyways into the main street, their clothes on fire, then roll over andover again to put out the fires.
I reached the room I hadoccupied in the Friends Mission those first few weeks, and knew at once I couldstay there no longer. The mission had been shattered by a close hit, and in myroom I saw a dead body. It had been thrown in by a bomb blast, and concussionhad blasted off its face, crushed its rib cage; I could tell the body was awomanÕs only by the skin-stripped flesh of her breasts. I would not sleep therethat night, or ever again, and continued walking, and finding by some chancethe companionship of Martin of the UP, went on walking until four in themorning.
There was all throughthat night, as I walked with Martin, the bewildering contrast of the old andthe new. Along the main street, with which I thought I had become familiar in afew weeks, the slopes had until now been hidden by bamboo-and-mud buildings. AsI came to a blazing slope where all the buildings had already been burned off,I saw a Buddha. It was cut into the side of a cliff wall, and its temple hadburned away so that the huge bronze cross-legged figure glowed with thereflection of the flames; and I could see its benign countenance softlysmiling on a city that wept and wailed.
Chungking had reactedafter the first dayÕs bombing with what must have been the old communityÕsnormal response to danger. That first night between the two bombings, the towncrier, clanging his bell, had paced the streets, warning all who could hear hischant not to pick up cigarettes. The Japanese bombers, he called out, haddropped poisoned cigarettes over the city and to smoke them was to die. That samefirst night had been the night of an eclipse of the moon, and while the smokewas still rising from the afternoonÕs bombing, the priests had been exorcizingthe eclipse. Chinese folklore held that when the moon is eclipsed it is becausethe Dog of Heaven is trying to swallow it. That first night, the priests hadbeaten their bronze gongs, as was their duty, and sung the incantations tofrighten off the Dog of Heaven. But now, the second night, after the terrorbombing, there were no priests about, and nothing to defend the people of theold city from the killings of the new age.
Statistics oftenmislead. This time they did not. The official figures reported that betweenthree and four thousand people were burned to death that night by Japaneseincendiary bombs; how many more or less may have been killed is almostirrelevant in retrospect. More people were killed that night than ever beforeby bombardiers. But what was important about the killings was their purpose ofterror. Nanking and Shanghai had already been bombed; those, however, weremilitary bombings. There was no military target within the old walls ofChungking. Yet the Japanese had chosen, deliberately, to burn it to the ground,and all the people within it, to break some spirit they could not understand,to break the resistance of the government that had taken refuge somewhere inChungkingÕs suburbs. I never thereafter felt any guilt when we came tobomb the Japanese; when we bombed, we bombed purposefully, to erase JapanÕsindustry and warmaking power; no American planes swooped low tomachine-gun people in the streets, as had the Japanese.
I had not yet learned,as I was to learn later in Vietnam, that senseless terror is worse thanuseless; senseless terror denies even the craven, the submissive, thepotentially cooperative, the incentive or compulsion to yield. The senselessterror bombings of Chungking had a result that was immediate and primordial inmy thinking on politics.
What I learned was thatpeople accept government only if the government accepts its first dutyCwhich is to protectthem. This is an iron rule, running from bombed-out Chungking to the feudalcommunities of the Middle Ages to the dark streets of New York or Romewhere the helpless are so often prey. Whether in a feudal, modern, imperial ormunicipal society, people choose government over nongovernment chiefly toprotect themselves from dangers they cannot cope with as individuals orfamilies.
Thus, then, within daysof the bombings of May, with no political protest from anyone, the Aguest@ government, the Anational@ government,abolished the old municipal government and proclaimed Chungking a ASpecial@ municipality, a ward ofthe central government. They chose as the appointed mayor one of theAmericanistsCK. .Wu, a one-timePrincetonian, an aspiring novelist and short-story writer (in English). K. C.Wu did not depend on votes, as do mayors of American cities, so he performedarbitrarily and superbly. He cleared fire lanes, organized fire-fightingsystems, repaired the water mains, and did all those things Americans do mostefficiently. He was the very model of a modern American mayor, but he could notspeak the dialect of old Chungking.
For the next two years,his town echoed to the muffled booming of excavations, as old-fashioned Chineseblack powder was used to hollow dugouts. The government, which had brought thenew world to Chungking and tempted the Japanese to pursue it by bombing, wasresponsible for protection. So, slowly, the people of Chungking and their governmentgrew together, and the two years thereafter, as I observed both groups, wereamong the happiest of my life. There were no more panics; people old and newlearned to live together.
Alarming situation of Britishlegation at Tientsin blockaded by Japanese.
AMERICAN BOARD OFCOMMISSIONERS
FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS
June 14, 1939
Mr. George D. Wilder
College of Chinese Studies
Peiping, China
Dear Wilder,
Thank you for writing us from Shanghai.[12] Ellen and I were, of course, terribly interested in all the details you gaveof the trip. We totally agree with you as to the joyful comfort of travelingthat way on a freight boat. You see, our last trip over to New York from Kobewas all the way on the Grete Maersk of the same line. I understand the Danes arenow hiring more steamers from the Dutch. I am writing to Harold Hackett today. If we cannot easily get a prompt sailing from Kobe, we should like very muchto do as you did, and go on to Shanghai.
We note what you said about variousexaminations.[13] I suppose you cannottell which will be difficult, and which may be superficial. Your commentcoming from the present oil merchant was very interesting. We like, too, yourother stories about international visits.
The news these several days from Tientsin israther alarming. It must be pretty tense in the concessions there. Perhapsthere is some special advantage to living in the Chinese city just now. Wehate to think of the inconveniences for not only concession people, but thosewho must go through the port and travel and do business thee. There will, ofcourse, be a way out somehow. We do not forget our splendid friend who was theprincipal of the British school.
How will you occupy yourself this summer, Iwonder. Will there be any chance for birding or other hunting? Helen and Iexpect to have a grand time ranging across the country. Possibly we=ll stop in once more at Yankton. Glacier Park is a high pointwhich we want to reach. We shall leave here on June 30, take a two months= holiday in Marco Polo, and sail September 8 from San Francisco. So some time in the Fall we shall see you.
Yours until then,
Robert Chandler
Robert E. Chandler
American businessmen visiting Japanto study opportunities to invest in development of China.
Attending church at North Chapel B had bought site for them in 1902.
70th birthday feasts; receivedtraditional porcelain figure of old man.
Fighting in Shansi province. Japanese failure to progress is causing new roughness.
Comfortable in our compound. Daily tennis.
George D. Wilder
College of Chinese Studies
Peking, China
June 25th, 1939
Dear Folks,
Two weeks ago I sent you all a four-pageletter and a week before that another of the same size. A week ago I cut loosein the same way to Clark Firestone, of the Cincinnati Times Star. I wasstimulated to write him because I saw in the Oberlin Alumni Magazine for Maythat he had been on a trip to Japan with business men studying theopportunities for investments in the development of China. I wish he couldhave come on over here. It is the second time that he has come almost toChina. The other time it was from the East through Russia. But myunconscionably long letters ought to warn me against trying it again so sooninstead of encouraging me to do it again so soon.
For two Sundays I have not had to preach, aswe had expected to be in Techow, Lintsing, and Tsinan, Shantung and preachthere, but I think I have written that owing to a flu bug that kept Gertrude inbed a few days we did not go and have put off going to gather up the remnantsof our things until we return from Paitaiho early in September. This morning Ihad the service at the North Chapel, where we are attending and helping out nowdays, it being the nearest church. I spent much time buying their property in1902, and trying to get the occupant out. It was a good buy even when Dr.Ament - after I gave it up - paid a second $2,000 to liquidate certain justclaims that I had known nothing of, but which served to keep the occupant, who hadpaid no rent for years, in possession. It is a good plant and was full thismorning. There is a six-year primary school there, at whose Commencement I amto speak next Wednesday.
The Board of managers of this school, whichnumbers nearly 260 scholars, had a feast at a nearby restaurant last night forus two in honor of my 70th birthday, which comes tomorrow. They called it a"Double Joy" meeting, being a welcome back and also a birthdaycongratulation. There were about eight present at the feast, most of thembeing my former students, orphans or acquaintances, and it was a very pleasantinformal affair. They gave us a little porcelain old man in colors with awhite beard, big smile and regular balloon of a white bald head, under a glassabout a foot high.
My old age mementos have been coming in, twofrom Tungchou, two from Paotingfu and this from Peking. This was celebratedearly because the lunch hour tomorrow is to be occupied with a celebration hereat the school to which foreign friends are invited, and the evening is devotedto Chinese celebration at Tengshihkou, where 40 or 50 are to get together theysay. They have an old folks society, to which we become eligible tomorrow, andMeng Mushih is getting up some sort of an initiation into that. If you thinkthat these feasts are poor affairs on account of the war you have another thinkcoming. All those we have had so far have been unusually tasty, abundant,clean and wholesome in every way. Last night they gave their brains a rest byjust leaving it to the restauranteur to get up his ideal of a good feast, andit was very successful. The heartiness of the welcome in these affairs iscertainly justification for our coming back to the country where our friendsare numerous and loyal.
Monday, July 3rd
Since I started this the birthday celebrationhas come off and I see that Mother has written you all about it. I have beentaking most of my spare time to answer the letters and telegrams ofcongratulation. Two of the latter were handed to us as we got home from theChinese celebration at Tengshihkou a week ago tonight. They were from theLanguage School students we had gotten acquainted with lately who have gone toPeitaiho for the summer term.
We suppose that you get more reliable newsthan do we about the blockade of the foreign concessions at Tientsin ever sinceJune 14th. You may be doubtful as to who tells the truth when one party tellsof indignities against British, stripping in the presence of a crowd - even,once, of a woman - and the other party denies it, saying it is impossible asthere were orders to treat all alike with courtesy. The army refuses toinvestigate because their orders make it impossible. There are plenty ofstatements by Americans and others as to what they have seen and it seems to becertain that the indignities were much as described. Two of our friends tellus what they saw, not the worst, but bearing out the worst that has beendescribed by British sufferers.
The statement was made that they did notprevent foodstuffs passing the barriers, but the electric charged wire and thepatrols of boats on the river and the shooting by the Japanese sentry in thedistance of a couple of farmers who were trying to sell vegetables over thewire have discouraged the bringing of food into the concession just as much asif it had been done at the barriers, where the Japanese admit that the work ofexamining for contraband slows up the entrance of foodstuffs.
We have a number of missionaries stayinghere, some of whom have been forced out of their stations and their hospitals,etc., seized in such a way as to make it look as though they are beginning toeliminate British missionaries from the country fields at least. It juststarted about the middle of June, previous to which date some of these samemissionaries report that they had been well treated by the Japanese garrisons. A lady from south Shansi who came to have dentist work done tells of makingcake for the Japanese captain and being helped on her way after having been insultedand roughly refused any pass not long before, and that too just after they hadbeen promised full freedom to go where and when they wished.
This lady this evening has been telling us ofthe constant fighting in southern Shansi, where she says the Japanese have madeno advance for almost a year and are constantly losing men, so that every trainbrings in wounded in numbers, and they have been absolutely unable to get intothe mountains at all. She thinks that a lot of their new roughness is due tothe constant attrition getting on their nerves and they have to find a scape-goat and someone on whom to vent their spleen. They lay all the unrest anddisorder of China on the British now. The paper I take just today started out,AEver since the British broke down the peaceand order of East China, compelling the Japanese army to set up the blockade ofthe Tientsin concessions and the southern ports in order to bring back peaceand prosperity to the 200,000,000 Chinese people, etc.@ Then they claim that all those Chinese are rising-up inindignation against the British and demanding the return of the concessions. They have mass meetings against the British in all the big cities, made up ofcompulsory attendants from the schools, and do not seem to perceive that themore they agitate and attack the British the more the Chinese take the side ofthe British privately.
All this tension of feeling does not muchaffect our daily lives here in these beautiful grounds and I wish you could seehow comfortable we are. Ever since the very hot weather came on about themiddle of June, Pettus has had his air conditioning ice boxes operating so thatthe dining rooms and parlor where the newspapers, etc., are kept for readersnever goes above 74 degrees. Now that we have moved into our flat we do nothave it quite so cool but he orders ice cubes sent to us every meal. *** I told you that they did not charge us forboard and washing while we were at the hostel. We sit out on the lawn in thecoolness of evenings, surrounded by trees, bamboos and shrubbery. The walls ofthe buildings are mostly covered with ivy so that we get very little heatreflection and storing through the day. The roofs and doorways are heavilyscreened from the sun by mat sheds. From our garden we have sweet corn,lettuce, etc.
A young fellow came in yesterday to call totell me that I baptized him over twenty years ago at the North Church, that heand his wife and four children now live near the Presbyterian Church and havejoined there, and that for 18 years he has been librarian of the MedicalCollege. Just came to let me know that he had not back-slid.
We have a few new students, or rather oldstudents of many years ago returned to brush up in the summer term. Fortunately several of them are good and enthusiastic tennis players so that wehave daily tennis with about eight to play besides the few ladies. Gertrudehas made up a four with the men a few times and has picked up and played in herold state.
As you can see, our life in Peking you see isfar from the distressing things we hear about, and not having any newspaperthat we can believe we are left free to believe what we wish to. We do get UPand AP dispatches mimeographed before they are edited or printed anywhere,which is pretty good and reliable news after all.
It is bed time and having had a rain we lookfor a cool and refreshing night's sleep, which we hardly had last night.
With love to you all as always,
Father
- The school has electric refrigerators. We have to keep our own ice chest full of course. Mother
__
__July 6. Just a line of __A Howdy @__to all of you in Penn Yan and Ypsi. Thank Sally for her two interestingletters of May 19 and June 5 in one envelope -- and the nice photo of theschool play. It must have been fine. I can =__tbelieve that my little swimming companion has almost forgotten how to swim asshe says she has. She is getting to be a speaker.
Theodore H. White =s description of the war in southernShansi Province in the Fall of 1939.
- Japanese army mired in mud, cutoff in small pockets of troops.
- Looting, rape and ravagingvillages.
TheWar Front in Shansi[14]
...I had come to coverthe war, and I had chosen Shansi because it was the only active front in China. Had the Japanese broken all the way through in the Summer and Fall of 1939,they would have held the dominant heights of the Yellow River, could haveclosed easily on Sian and, quite possibly, have cut China in two, cuttingNationalists from Communists for good. The Japanese victory would have beenstyled an epic one and achieved a grandeur in the retelling. The fact that theChinese held, however, wiped out the narrative value of the Southeast Shansicampaign for any history of war. Tens of thousands of men died to hold thelines exactly where they had been before the summer of 1939 and where theywould remain until 1944. In the eyes of history they died uselessly, unworthyof record. For myself, it was the first real battlefront I had seen, and agiant step in education.
The scene of action wasthe Chungtiao mountain range of Southeast Shansi province, the province thatsnuggles into the elbow of the Yellow River. In the summer the Japanese Armyhad mounted a three-divisional offensive to clear the mountain range and reach,then cross, the river. But the fall rains had come early, mired their trucksand artillery, and given the Chinese foot soldiers time to gather and to cutoff the Japanese in garrison pockets. Isolated thus in villages and towns,trying to extricate themselves, the Japanese went absolutely berserk beforethey were driven out.
The action I saw in theFall of 1939 was in the ChÕin River valley, where imperial road markers datingback to the Manchu dynasty still flagged the stone-paved carters= trace. I was followingthe Chinese soldiers forward, and they moved on foot, fifteen to twenty miles aday, crawling up and over and through mountain gaps, their officers ahead onhorseback. Whatever they needed they carried C each soldier toting his bedding, hissausage roll of rice, his ammunition and grenades, some doubling up to carrytelephone wire, machine gun parts, cartridge boxes, medical supplies. Mulesbrayed under dismantled pieces of artillery. Sick soldiers straggled backfrom the front, hobbling with staves, on the five- or ten-day hike to thenearest aid station; beggars clustered pleading as the columns trudged throughvillages; sometimes one could see peasants impressed to carry those too sick orwounded to walk; flies buzzed over the stretchers where men in coma, orgroaning, were carried on with undressed wounds. And then I caught up with thepath of Japanese retreat through the villages they had savaged. I have sinceso often exaggerated in retelling what the Japanese did that perhaps it is bestto restrain memory to the text of my original dispatch.
Village after villagewas completely destroyed C houses shattered andburned, walls fouled, bridges torn up. Houses were burned by the Japanesesoldiers both out of boredom and deviltry and because they were cold and neededfire and warmth.
The Japanese lootedindiscriminately and efficiently. Everything of value was stripped and takenaway. Telephones, wires, clocks, soap, bedding, collected for transfer to theirown supply department. On their own, the soldiers went in for simpler forms oflooting. Clothes and food were what they wanted, and they were not verydiscriminate in their tastes; womenÕs silk garments, peasant cotton trousers,shoes, underwear, were all stripped off the backs of their possessors wheneverChinese were unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of Japanese detachments.
The Japanese soldierswere caked in mud, chest high; their beards were bristling with two weeks= growth; and they wereravenously hungry. The peasants, in fleeing before the approach of theJapanese, had taken their pigs, cows, grain and other food with them into thehills where the Japanese could not follow. All through the valley, tinyJapanese garrisons were mired in mud, unable to communicate with one anotherand slowly starving.
. . . The names of thevillages (Liushe, Wangchiachuang, etc.) are meaningless 100 miles away, but insome, every single woman without exception was raped by the soldiers inoccupation. In villages whose occupants had not fled quickly enough, the firstaction of the Japanese was to rout out the women and have at them: women whofled to grain fields for hiding were forced out by cavalry who rode theirhorses through the fields to trample them and frighten them into appearance.
Male villagers werestripped naked, lashed to carts and driven forward by the Imperial Army asbeasts of burden. Japanese horses and mules were beaten to death in the mud;and on any road and all the hills of the valley, one can see the carcasses of theiranimals rotting and the bones of their horses whitening in the sun. TheChinese peasants who were impressed to take their places were driven forwardwith the same pitiless fury until they collapsed, died, or were driven mad.
This mail not censored. It must bedreadful to live being watched all the time.
AP and UP reports are very differentfrom Japanese-controlled local press.
Japanese spies everywhere. AlsoChiang=s spies within puppet government.
Japanese blame British for alltrouble in China.
Hear sounds of artillery now.
Father=s 70th birthday celebration.
Gertrude S. Wilder
College of Chinese Studies
Peking
July 3, 1939
Dear Families,
There will be mail going again thisweek which will not be tampered with so I can write as I please without havingthe feeling all the time that I must be careful what I say. How dreadful itmust be to realize that you are being watched all the time. The Chinese arelearning to be very careful when they are not sure of the crowd they are in,for there are many spies about. It works both ways, too. Mr. Pettus says thatthere is not an important department of the new government in which there arenot one or more loyal Chiang K'ai Shek men. He knows a good many of them andbecause of that we get the United Press and Associated Press news as it comesin every day, before it has been expurgated, and don't depend on the controlledpapers for our news. There is a great difference between that and the Domeireports. In some way someone is paid for getting the daily news sheet to us.
To go back, Father's seventiethbirthday was very much celebrated. It came on Monday the 26th but the Board ofManagers of the North Chapel School had us out for a restaurant meal theSaturday evening before. After we had eaten there was some speechifying andthey presented father with a "Shou Hsing", the old man with a hugebald head that appears so much in embroideries and paintings used as birthdaygifts. This one, 10 inches high, is porcelain.
On Monday, the real day, things beganto come in before breakfast. They were mostly scrolls and flowers, twobeautiful pots of gardenias, full of blossoms. Mr. and Mrs. Pettus (Presidentof the College of Language Studies) engineered a wonderful luncheon for us. Forty two of us sat down together. We had supposed that the guests were to bejust the friends in our own mission. They were all invited but there wereothers, too. Among them were Mr. Ferguson and his daughter, Mrs. Johnson, ourU.S. Ambassador's wife (and she is charming) and some others whom you wouldn'tknow. Mrs. Pettus arranged the table, which was in the shape of an"H", the cross piece being the longest. At each place there was ared "Shou"[15] character and the rest ofthe decorations were in line with the Chinese traditions, pretty artificialpeaches, graceful figures of the Aeight worthies,@[16] and flowers. Isabel and her husband,"Bill" Mayer were also there and they brought a beautiful basket ofgladiolas. We had a delightful time. I sat between Mr. Ferguson and LeightonStuart and enjoyed talking to them in turn. Their views on the questions ofgreatest interest here are just opposite, Dr. Ferguson's being all wrongaccording to my ideas. The Japanese are said to consider him a good friend. So am I, of the Japanese people but not of their military bunch. After we hadreached candy and coffee there were the usual gracious after- dinner speechesto which Father replied gracefully and soon after that the party broke up. Itwas a very lovely occasion and everyone seemed to enjoy it.
The same evening at seven thirty camethe big doings at Teng Shih K'ou. There was quite an elaborate program, duringwhich we had to sit on the platform with the chief speakers, and after theprogram came the presentation of gifts from various groups B the Teng Shih K'ou church, the Tungchou church, theofficers of the mission B and among the gifts was a verybeautiful banner, a handsome, deeply carved red lacquer tray and a pretty, thinporcelain vase fourteen inches high. So, our accumulation of things hascommenced again in spite of ourselves. You would have been as happy as I wasto hear the many expressions of love and appreciation of Father's life andwork.
We moved over to this apartment fourdays ago and are as settled as we can be until we go to T'ungchou and then toTechou for a few things. We hope to do the former in a few days but shall notgo to Techou until we return from Peitaitho, the end of August. What mayhappen before then no one knows. The situation in Tientsin stays about thesame, with the Japanese military so incensed against Tokyo for taking thediscussion there that they are muttering a lot about what may happen. Youprobably know about as much as we do. The Japanese claim that Great Britain isto blame for all the trouble in China, because she has not cooperated with her,Japan, in bringing in the new order, which means peace, prosperity andeverlasting joy to the people of China who are longing for the Japanese to takefull control. They can't see that every time they strip and insult a Britisherhe goes way up and they keep on going down in the estimation of most Chinese.
July 6
I am sending a copy of mine to Ur, whichshe will forward to Ypsi. Just want to ask again if Van Tyne has sent his $6.00for the books. You are to keep it, you know. The author has given me a copyof the bird book free.
We hear light artillery this morning, thefirst time in weeks. It is either practice or punishment of some village, wesuppose. No signs of anything inside the City.
Love, G.D.W.
Frequent bombing of the WesternHills, which are still AFree China.@
Need garters.
Currency exchange now 13 to 1.
Perpetual frog in throat.
The Wilder family and tennis.
Entertained by acrobats andjugglers.
George D. Wilder
College of Chinese Studies, Peking
July 23, 1939
Dear Margaret,
This fairly cool, cloudy Sunday morning,while we wait for the 8:00 a.m. breakfast hour, I am going to try to give apersonal answer to your delightful, pencil-written letter of June 22nd, whichcame yesterday to break a drought of home mail. Our letters have been comingin about a month just as yours from us did, excepting the two-months one youmentioned, April 4 - June 4.
We have been sending you pretty long copyletters through Legation mail of late, and this one will probably go throughgeneral mail. I think we have kept you informed of the latest developments,which have been going on steadily but without any added inconveniences ordangers of any kind for us in this favored spot of Peking. We see nothing ofwar except the many kakhi-colored trucks, sometimes with soldiers in thestreets, and the planes that go over every day, we know not where to or on whatmission bent. For two days last week they were going over every quarter of anhour, and sometimes 11 together in formation, straight for our Western Hills,which are free China still, and the scene of frequent fighting we are told.
Your account of your trip to Oberlin atCommencement (or rather Baccalaureate) Sunday time was most interesting. Iought to be writing to some of those friends like Dr. Richards. That book,"Union Now," that he recommended so highly we have seen described insimilar terms already and would like to read it. It will probably get out herebefore long. Our College Library gets everything that concerns China but I donot know as that book does. If you can buy it at discount as we can at Bostonyou might get it, read it yourself if you have time, and send it on to us,instead of sending that $6.00 that Vantyne sent you for the Bird book. Andthat reminds me, I was going to ask Len or you to use a little of it to get mea good pair of Boston Garters, wide ones and keep the rest, as we never made upthe full $500 we were going to loan you, you remember. We are still ready tomake up the full amount when you need it. But the garters, I would like byreturn mail as mine are on their last legs and by the time a Gum Ward[17]order gets to us the season will be over for me and I will be wearing balbrigans[18]without garters. I got some Shanghai made ones the other day that areunusable, too tight, and the metal bends all out of shape and digs into myflesh. I ought not to complain, however, as they were only $.35 in thisdepleted currency, now at 13 to one. What could you expect for less than threecents?
I had forgotten what baggage problem EmmaBates solved but will never forget how, by telephoning to her former pupils nowin the railway business, she stopped one of those tremendous through expresseson the Pennsy railroad for us two with our suitcases to get aboard. The firstdivision of the train thundered by us, a most impressive demonstration of themomentum of one of those trains, and then the next one five minutes afterwardstopped for us. I think we have written to her since we set out from SanPedro.
I have forgotten what the long letter was allabout that you loaned for the class dinner. Your letter has gotten Motherstirred up to write one to Alice Jones, answering one from her.
We would like to have seen the High SchoolPageant. It is good for the young folks to find out the difference between themeasure of freedom we enjoy and that of the fascist states. Fine that yourGertrude is getting so well into the choir work. It will always be asatisfaction, the chorus singing, and she can enjoy it to old age, unless shegets a sort of perpetual frog in her throat, as I have. Sometimes I can't singat all and then again I can a little, but the memory of the Oberlin choir andMusical Union and some later choruses in Peking is and will be a joy for ever. She may not realize it now, but let me tell her to take every opportunity shehas to get into good chorus singing. It is worth while. Quartet singing hasits fun too.
And so with Betty Ann's orchestra work. Itmay seem drudgery now but the playing with many others later is splendid.
As for the picture in Mr. Plummer's hands,there is no hurry about it if he has any chance to sell. You might ask him ifthere is any hope of it. The money goes to China Relief, you know, and the newdrive for that might find someone who would put it up at auction in the cause. There is no need of seeing the Detroit Institute of Arts about it so long asthere is a chance through Plummer or some relief committee.
Your letter was the first that we had heardof Bob McCann being searched. It is probably so but he ought to be in the goodgraces of the searchers as he sells countless trucks to them. They havetreated all Americans finely so far. We never have to answer questions or showpassports except on the train, where a polite young Russian asks to see it andmakes a note of its number in his book. When I went down to Paoting for aweekend with Hubbard a while ago, I was the only one on the train that he hadto ask for passport, not a very big day=s work for one man.
Day before yesterday Steve Pyle came up atlast for some tennis and we had two sets, good and interesting and we brokejust even, 4-6 and 10-8 as I remember. Yesterday I had three sets again, closeand interesting the same way. John and I generally win. He has a hard servebut is somewhat erratic and drives out a good deal. I find it is better for meto stop with two good sets and not get quite so tired as to make me feel a bitstiff the next day, but it is hard to stop with only two. Twenty-five yearsago Steve Pyle was tennis coach at Oberlin and I played one set with himagainst the first team, Amos Wilder and Brick Bissell. That was a 10-8 game Iremember. After it he told the Talcott Hall girls that the Wilders in towncould get up a winning team against all the rest of Oberlin, and I guest hesaid right. Remember when the Wilder family made up a team to play Tsing HuaCollege, disappointed because our International Club could not send out itsteam that day? I think we broke even with them that time, mixed doubles thatwould have decided it not being played out, as we had to run for the train,Theodore and his mother being the pair for us.
A week from tomorrow we shall probably be onour way to Peitaiho for a month. Hubbard wants me to take my gun that he gaveme and do some bird collecting, but I think that a tennis racket and a bathingsuit will be all that I want for sport.
We had a splendid team of six acrobats herethe other night. A fine exhibition was enlivened by clown work and jokes bythe performers, a splendid human exhibition of humor and goodwill. Then anight or two later we had a fine old juggler and his children and apprentices.I sat at the side where I could see the bowls of water come out from hisin-drawn abdomen. They played out on our cool, green lawn under our electriclights. There were 60 or 80 foreigners out to see them. We often sit outthere for the coolness, visiting with the summer guests from all over China,Manchukuo, Korea, and Japan. It is a great chance to check up on the news.
Well, I=ll mail this on the way to North ChapelChurch. Rowland Cross preaches at Teng Shih Kou, and comes to us for lunch.
With love to all,
__
Father
Peitaiho, 1939
Floods worst in 45 years. New gov=t did nothing to help, untilJapanese told them it was ok.
Bandits attack village next toTungchou compound, kidnap people for ransom, but let women go.
Most of Japanese army has left.Manchukuo soldiers used as police, etc. encourage banditry.
Japanese are taking over Chinesebusinesses by force, torture, and excessive taxes.
George D. Wilder
Peitaiho, China,
August 4th, 1939
Dear Folks,
Here we are at the seaside among the coolbreezes after several days of 96% humidity and about 95 degrees F temperature. We had planned to come on Tuesday, Aug. 1st but Sunday morning at church we hadnews through Miss Kao Mu I, a school teacher there, that made me so concernedabout the safety of the people around Tungchou that I decided to go down andsee for myself whether there was an immediate need for help. She said thatdykes above Tungchou had broken, or been opened purposely in the night,bringing a wall of water down from the north on Tungchou, entering the Eastgate for the first time since I came to China, 45 years ago, flooding over ahundred villages, drowning over a thousand people and rendering homeless manymore thousands. That happened the preceding Wednesday night and she had notyet heard what had become of her own parents who lived outside the East gatewhere the water was eight feet deep and the force of the current at itsfiercest.
I phoned to my old friend of 40 years, theprincipal of Jefferson Academy, and over a poor phone was told that the factswere as stated, that the school and church members were not affected, but thatI might well go down and investigate whether relief measures conducted by thefour or five organizations were adequate. As it was a stifling hot afternoon Idecided to consult Cross who was coming in from Yenching University to go downto Tungchou the next day, and who was the natural one to take up any reliefthat the church people might be called upon to do. When I reported the news tohim on arrival in the City he asked me to go down with him and stay over a day,at least long enough to organize relief if needed. The church still has about$2,000 available for this very thing.
So we went down and found Hunter back fromescorting Bobbie to Tangku to board his ship for America, and ready to relieveCross for his Summer vacation at the seaside. We three went out the East Gate,through very inquisitive Japanese sentries and found about one house in tenstanding where the water had passed. The rest were piles of soggy bricks androof timbers with owners digging them over for what grain and bedding theycould salvage. Miss Kao's mother, who had escaped to the church, was one ofthe salvage workers and she told me that no one in the family was hurt. Infact, only three or four in the East suburb and nearest village were hurt, butmany more had been drowned or buried in the ruins of their homes. The rest hadbeen rescued by the numerous boats in the suburb. The estimate of thosedrowned in the villages beyond runs as high as 2,000. The largest flood in 45years and coming unannounced at 11:00 p.m., even these people who are used tothis sort of calamity were caught napping and unable to save themselves.
We went to one of the two main refuges, theCh'eng Huang Miao, City Temple, where we found nearly three thousand refugeesthat had been brought in by boats and were being given cholera inoculations,two meals a day, and shelter. Some were from villages I know 13 miles away andthe flooded area extends three or four times as far and is still extending, sothat the area of ruined crops in this province is becoming most appalling,though the crops on high lands are fine.
It was said that under the new regime atfirst nothing was initiated until the Japanese authorities came to the Board ofTrade and to the "New Peoples' Society" saying, "Those areChinese that are suffering and you are Chinese, get busy and save them." In some places the military had refused permission to use any boats at all forfear of their getting into the hands of guerillas, and the Chineseorganizations were afraid to start anything here until reassured by theJapanese governing authorities. The Red Swastika Society, the "JapaneseHeaven Doctrine Sect," were also cooperating with the Board of Trade and the"New Peoples' Society," so that there seemed to be nothing neededfrom the church at present. All its resources for aid will be greatly neededas time goes on and it is found that the crops are a total loss, not even fuelbeing securable, as they were just planted and had not grown stalks to standabove the flood.
If this emergency relief work were not beingdone we would not think of leaving for the seashore, but we left word that Mr.Hunter would remain in Tungchou and be ready to assist whenever the need came. Several with whom I had worked in relief years ago sent me word they would liketo have me stay and help, but there appeared to be no necessity for it.
So Cross packed up and we three came up hereon Wednesday, only a day later than we had planned. On our way down, all theway from Lofa to Yangtsun, this same flood water was gathering as it alwaysdoes, only this time the villages were invaded by the water and houses on theedges were falling as I had never seen before. In ordinary floods, though thewater extends over the fields to the horizon on both sides of the track, yetthe villages are higher and usually the adobe houses do not get soaked so as toslump down, even though the village is surrounded and boats have to be used fortravel, often for weeks at a time. Today, North China Star says that theYangtsun dykes have now broken 20 miles above Tientsin, and Tientsin is indanger. All this connected with the earlier floods in almost every rivercoming down from the mountains across these plains, which have broken therailway south from Peking to Hankow in many places means that there will beneed for famine relief in most parts of this province of 28 million people.
Tell every one you know who can do anythingthat the Church Committee for China Relief has done well to keep theorganization and plan for continued help. You will need to keep oncontributing if you want to show friendship for China.
The night I spent at Tungchow with Cross, Iheard a shot in the night not long after I got to sleep but dismissed it withthe thought that the night watchman had been allowed a gun again as in old. But no. In the morning a messenger came to say that for the first time in itshistory bandits had dared attack our Fu Hsing Chuang, the village adjoining ourcompound. Their guns had all been taken from them as everywhere and thebandits B somewhere from 40 to 60 in number, all armedB had come in and taken samples from nearlyall the wealthy families in the village, without firing a shot or waking up therest of the people. When I left at 9:00 a.m. they had checked up and found 17missing, but were not yet through. The shot I heard was fired by the JeffersonAcademy police and the robbers kept away from that end of the village, whereseveral rich families live. They may pay their respects to them later if theysucceed in getting good ransom for these. When they got the captives out twomiles and allowed them to talk, one of our men took them to task for taking twogirls from a family from which they had already gotten one person. He asked,"Are you after money, or revenge, or women? If the former you have nobusiness to take any women." "That is so," said the chief,"Let them go back." And they came back safe.
The people had phoned in the night to four orfive police stations in the city and they had promised to send help at once,but none had come when I left at 9:00 a.m.
One of my hunter friends who is familiar withthe new regime said that all but six or seven of the real Japanese had left,leaving only Manchukuo soldiers as police, etc. Those dare not go outside thecity without about 40 Chinese soldiers as guard, for fear of meeting largerbodies of guerillas. He and most people, think that the Japanese policy is toencourage banditry, hoping that the bandits will make it so hot for good peoplethat they will gladly accept Japanese rule. They enforce the rule also that noone shall redeem anyone captured by bandits, on pain of death. Those whoredeem their friends will be treated the same as bandits, is the rule. The FuHsing Chuang people expected to hear from these bandits before night as totheir demands and then try to find some way to evade the Japanese regulations.
The Japanese are really not numerous enoughto control all the Chinese, and we certainly hope that they will give it up asa bad job soon. Of course that is not probable, for their face and almost theexistence of their army in the support of their people is involved. Everyorganization they have set up has in its makeup spies of China=s Central Government, and some of them are double-crossing theirJapanese masters all the time. Some indeed are known to the head of the puppetgovernment but he dares not touch them, if indeed he wants to do so. It cannotbe said definitely who is a traitor and who is a spy. One friend of mineremarks on hearing various stories, "Well, the Japanese were not born soonenough to get ahead of the Chinese.@
But they are succeeding in getting themonopoly of various kinds of business away from the Chinese, by force, and theyare getting their property by hook and crook, and torture. The school teacherI told of tells us things she gets from the families of the children in theNorth Chapel School. A distressed mother of two or three scholars had her inher home several times and revealed this story. Her husband was taken on somecharge and she was allowed to go and see how well he was being treated bylooking through a window at him but was not allowed to talk with him exceptbriefly in the presence of the guard. Later she noticed his face swollen andfound out that he was subjected to a water cure every night at 11:00 P.M. Hehad to struggle all night to keep from drowning in a trough in which he wasbound, and repeatedly allowed to become unconscious B drowned, so far as his sensations went. Finally he died butthe authorities did not report it. They sent word to the wife that her husbandwould be released on payment of a fine of $500. She borrowed and scraped ittogether, paid it in and was given his corpse. When she protested that shewould not have paid if she had known he was dead they told her she was lucky toget his corpse.
We are here where all is peace and beauty,with swimming and good tennis and lectures, etc. But from the looks, as soonas the Japanese government is organized better, it may become impossible tolive here. The military refuse access to sand and many other building andrepair materials, and they put a high tax on all industry, $1.00 for everychair a cabinet maker makes, $5.99 for a jiksha man's license, $2.00 for thebarber, etc.
Geo. D. Wilder
Worst flood in anyone=s memory.
Japanese withdraw barricades fromBritish area of Tientsin.
George D. Wilder
Peitaiho, East Cliff
Aug. 15th, 1939
Dear Ypsilanti Folks,
We had letters from Mar and Theodore by thelast mail and I started to answer Theodore's privately. After the first page Ifound that I had so much of common interest that I put in a couple of carbonsso as to send to you. All the pages but this are copies of what went to him. When I said "Mar" above I should have said Betty and George, fortheirs were the real letters and only the envelope was written by Margaret. Inthe case of George's letter even the envelope was in his hand-writing. Weshall have to answer them personally later but this is a general letter of hugedimensions. We were pleased to hear of Betty's tennis victory. I guess thecopy letter has said more than enough about our tennis out here. John and MissLogan are still in the ring, as their lady opponent had a sun headache andcould not play. John and Ted Johnson were put out by the two Taylors fromManchuria, whom they should have beaten, but were off their game.
Yesterday was American Board Day for meetings,baseball, swimming, picnics, etc. Hubbard and I had arranged to take the 20odd folks out again for birds on the sand flats "if it did not rain." Well, it poured by the bucket-full most of the night but it had almost stoppedat 6:30 and did stop before seven so I went over and found eight ready to go. We got back to breakfast and a good morning session in the Cross-Gilbertcottage across the road from our back door. DeVargas led a fine discussionthat took all the morning after the devotional exercises.
The evening before we had had a good meeting. It rained some before we retired and then it poured, as I said. Uncle Charliehad started for Tsinan on Friday, but a washout just beyond Tientsin turned himback and he blew in just before the fun began here Sunday night. The nexttrains were stopped at Lanchow but are through now. It is the biggest floodsince I came to China, and more widely extended. Eight inches more will floodTientsin and they have already drowned out innumerable farmers by cutting dykesto save the city. The starving refugees are drifting into town. The cityfolks had better turn to and feed them now that they have drowned them out.
John Hayes last night in from Peking saysthat the flood in Tientsin has ruined all but one bridge B the International, where the principal anti-British barricadeis. As all have to use that, or boats, the Japanese have withdrawn thebarricade there without loss of face.
We called off the baseball owing to wetgrounds, but had the swimming, which I did not attend. The picnic was to havebeen on our lawn but fear of wet made us go into the church, which is on top ofthe hill and open all around on three sides. The benches really made betterseats than rocks and ground for our supper. There was a most glorious sunsetwhile we were eating, too, visible all around, lighting up the brilliant redroofs and the ships and the pure white gun boat at Ch'ing Wang Tao mostwonderfully. After eating we had a funny stunt put on by some of the oldsterswho had a committee meeting to get up a funny stunt and then turned it over tothe youngsters, all on the stage of the church. Then they had a good showshowing us how to "get back to work." Rosamond Frame was the leaderin it and John helped a lot. We had to be through by eight so that the churchcould be fixed for a Chinese evangelistic meeting at 8:30. Most of us wentover to a lawn fete reception to a Mr. Caughey (pronounced ACoy@) on Leynsy's fine lawn. That is the waythat things go here in Peitaiho, only yesterday was a most exceptional day. Iwill have to get busy on the Dictionary now and enclose the copy letter insteadof answering Betty's good one in this.
Description of views from Chandler=s cottage.
A tennis tournament.
A staged anti-British demonstrationcalled off after being exposed.
The army is expelling foreigners,yet Japan needs US and others for war materiel.
Foreign concessions are now abenefit to the Chinese.
Chinese people reject the puppetgovernment.
COPYLETTERBto all of you.
My last copy letter told you about coming uphere and the first few days in East Cliff. You know this is all built up hereclear up to Eagle Rock, the old Korean watch tower, at the north end andanother settlement at Lighthouse Point and another at the British Legationplace between Rocky Point, where we lived, and the lighthouse point. We in theChandler house have a fine view across the bay to the northeast, eight miles toCh'ing Wang Tao, with its fine line of electric lights along the docks and mainstreet. To the north is the fine mountain horizon line along which I havetramped, with North Heaven peak beyond the Great Wall, East and West Heaven andBuddha's Tooth coming down toward the west with Pei Niu Ting, with its laddersto reach the temple on its rounded and notched summit. About as long a linethat I have explored further west from Poiniu Ting(?) to Dragon Pool is justhidden by Eagle Rock and houses. Nestling west of Eagle Rock among otherhouses is Hubbard's, which you remember, looking off to this whole mountainline across the sand flats and sand dunes. The streams across the flats arenot so deep as they used to be and I have tramped them barefoot twice, leadingbird students for an introduction to the waders. We got along with trousersjust above the knees. Had about 20 boys and girls and men and women the firsttime. We will go again next Monday for a short tramp before the 9:00 A.M.American Board meeting (informal) to hear Philip DeVargas, a Swiss Professor ofHistory at Yenching, talk on Athe Church and Ecumenical Christianity B should we, the Kung Li Hui,[19] emphasizethe Church more or less than we do?@ He remarked when the subject was given himthat if we could not have a fine discussion on that subject it would simply bebecause of his poor leadership. He is fine, and gives an annual New Yearsresume of the year at the PUMC that has become a Peking feature.
Did I tell you that two persons had asked meto join them to enter the tennis tournament? Pyle was the first one, and itwas tentative because of the chance of Hubbard's wanting him, as they hadalready mentioned the possibility. In the meantime, Blackstone had askedHubbard by mail and Hayes had asked me. We fixed it up that Hub andBlackstone, Pyle and I and Hayes and Dr. Young double up. Pyle and I drewHayes and Young for the first round. I had seen big John Hayes play far betterthan I can, but he was off his game when we met and Dr. Young has one stiffknee that hampers him a bit so we took it easily, 6-1 and 6-2. That wasWednesday and yesterday, Saturday, we had our second round and for us the last,as we lost by the skin of our teeth. It was against "Laddie" Scott,brother of Betty Scott Stam, who studied at Tungchow along with others of herfamily, you may remember, and Paul Abbott, also a long-ago student there. Scott is fine. He beat Hubbard in singles, and Hubbard is better than ever. Paul Abbott, however, is a rather lackadaisical player and after a servicebreak or two he plays as though he did not care at all. Well, we lost thefirst set before a big crowd of rooters yesterday, 6-4, and then surprised themby taking the next, 6-1. Then the third set we lost by the same score. Pylefelt the heat and the pace rather more than I did, and when we started a newset I served in his place. But Scott had a new plan of campaign and put Abbottclose up to the post when he served and played the whole court for himself. Almost every game was long but they won out, as I said, 6-1. It was a very goodsport, for in getting a set and scaring them a bit we did all we expected todo. Pyle says he has not had enough, and suggests that the men over 50challenge the rest. That means Hubbard, Cross, and perhaps one or two more. Young Scott and Stuckey are both about Hubbard's equal, so we could hardly winout. That's more than enough for tennis.
American Board Day is now a thing of thepast. As Miss DeFrost, president of Kobe College is here for a few days andgoes to Peking with her sister Mrs. Pettus, I may as well entrust this to herto take to Peking for the Legation mail bag, and cut loose a bit.
Saturday afternoon there was to have been agreat anti-British demonstration in Peitaiho. The principal point of thesedemonstrations is that they are supposed to be spontaneous uprisings of theChinese people against the British, who alone are supposed to be the enemies ofpeace in China. The Japanese army is supposed to be the sole means of keepingthe demonstrations within bounds and preventing riots against the British. That army is simply giving the British a few days of grace in which to escapethe rising wrath of the Chinese. Of course it is perfectly evident to us thatthe demonstrations are all instigated by the said army and the demonstratorsare often paid by them.
After this Saturday demonstration wasannounced, the officers on the American gunboat here sent around a request thatwe Americans should keep off the street and stay in our cottages or on the moresecluded beaches, just in case there might be trouble. You know the atmosphereon the gunboats, where it is apparently thought that their presence is all thatprevents the Chinese from destroying us. Some of them have learneddifferently, however. Still, just to be obliging we called off an American teafor that afternoon when we were going to meet the three ladies from KobeCollege, two of them delegated by their mission to give us a friendly visit. We were going to hear what they had to say to us at that time, as the wholeAmerican Board body meeting there would in itself be something of ademonstration, but it was given up.
It proved however to be a needlessprecaution, as the anti-British demonstration was also called off by theJapanese authorities themselves! It came about in this way. The consul forthe British at Mukden was here on purpose, or for a rest, but anyway he waswide awake and went around to the storekeepers and leading Chinese here to findout why they were so down on the British, and this is what he found. Some ofthem explained that they would not have taken part in the first demonstrationtwo or three weeks ago had they known what it was for, but the Japanese hadinformed them that it was a procession to pray for rain and after they gottogether they found it to be against the British, and were ashamed ofthemselves, and many indeed backed out and left the parade to children andhired folks. They said they had no idea of going to this one, knowing its realpurpose, but they could not prevent folks being hired to march.
They had been asked to add $5.00 to everyitem in their bills against British subjects, or not to sell at all to Britons,and had refused. When asked why they put up the posters against British intheir stores they explained under their breath, Chiu shih chiao wa wa hsihuan (AJust to please the babies.@) One case was reported of a hand writtennotice "Britons, respect your personalities and get out. Do not come tomy store to trade." On inquiry the storekeeper had no idea of the meaningand indignantly denied any such purpose on his part. It was in English, whichhe could not read.
Well, after getting first-hand information asto the real attitude of the Chinese, the Consul went to the powers-that-be andtold them what he had discovered, and said that if they put the demonstrationacross he would radio the information of the facts to all the world. It is apity that there is not more real publicity that can't be branded as purepropaganda manufactured for the purposes of the manufacturers.
You are interested in knowing how we areaffected by the army's evident intention of getting all foreigners out. It isreported that here and there Americans are included with the British andoccasionally the French are just mentioned. All British in Taiyuan, ShansiProvince, have at last left and the only foreigner is an American woman. Theyare trying to drive her servants away from her, which is a first move in manycases. Then they prevent sales of food, etc. Still what the government mostfears is getting America and England on their hands both at once. They andFrance, and one or two smaller democracies, supply 86% of all their warmaterials and over 90% of the essential ones. Stoppage of trade with themwould be disastrous to Japan. But apparently the military do not appreciatethis, and our big business people also will do their best to prevent stoppageof the lucrative wartime trade. So there is the danger that they may expel uslater.
For a year or two the British Bible Societyman, Toop, formerly of Tientsin, has been running the American Bible Societyhouse in Peking, as it is now a Union scheme. It is a fine, big building southof the YMCA on Hatamen St., and the J=s want it. His servants were warned to leavehim, and the Bible Society staff, too. He at once moved into our Collegehostel, and old Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham, of Paotingfu, retired like us inPeking, moved into the Bible Society building. As they are Americans, theBible Society staff were allowed to stay and go on with the business. TheBible Society's business has increased since the war, we are told, but I havenot the figures. Pettus writes that the two hostels are full and many moreBritish refugees will likely apply for admission. Fortunately many stay onlytemporarily.
We are quite willing to suffer with theBritish if it can help bring the Japanese army to its senses in the matter. Ofcourse we have long advocated giving up extraterritoriality and theconcessions. Although we believe in the principle, it is fortunate for theChinese that they had not all been given up. We would have them given up tothe Chinese, however, and not to the Japanese. The latter, of course,camouflage it by saying that they too give up theirs to the Chinese. But thepuppet government is really Japanese, not Chinese. The efforts to form a realChinese puppet government break down repeatedly. Wang Ching Wei, advocatingpeace and cooperation with Japan, has lost the Chinese following on whichJapanese depended for getting a real government of Chinese started.
Well, this is enough for the present. Spreadthis sort of news where it may do good to the American business man, etc., whothink the Japanese can run China better than the Chinese and wants to help themdo it. I have made enough copies of the last three pages to send to Ypsi andPenn Yan, as I found I was getting to things of more common interest to all thefamily. Love to all who are with you. We are taking care of ourselves and areunusually well, and liable to be kept here a week or two into September by thewashed-out bridges. We had a fearful downpour Sunday night here. UncleCharlie had to return from Tientsin, as the line to Tsinan was broken, and hegot through back here just in time to avoid a brief break at Lenchow, nowrepaired.
Love to all,
Father
Floods, downed bridges prevent UncleCharlie (Stanley) from leaving for Tsinan.
Swarms of children here. A partyfor Gladys Hubbard.
Gertrude S. Wilder
East Cliff, Peitaiho
August 15, 1939
Dearest Margaret,
Father has written a long copy letterwith most of the news and I want to send a word along with it, though there isnot much left to tell about.
Uncle Charlie left on Friday forTsinan, stopping off for a couple of days at Tientsin. Imagine our surprisewhen he arrived in the rain late Sunday night. When he went to buy his ticketfor Tsinan he found that bridges were down and that he couldn=t go for several days (the travel bureau said two weeks),so he beat it for Peitaiho. There have been hard rains, numerous breaks inrivers, some of them made on purpose, and bridges out of commission here andthere. There was plenty of water this side of Tientsin when we came nearly twoweeks ago. Some little hamlets, surrounded by water, were completely abandoned. Other larger villages had people in them but many of the houses weresubmerged or collapsed with the water encroaching and washing more walls awayall the time. It seemed to have fallen a few inches, but with more rain andrivers rising I=m afraid conditions are worse ratherthan better. Crops are drowned out, of course, and we are going to have famineconditions in parts of Hopei and Shantung. No rain until it is too late forany but the latest crops, and then broken dikes and floods. For so many of thepeople it means the loss of everything.
You should see the swarms of childrenand young people here. How I would love to have all of our grandchildren here,swarming with the rest. There are crowds of children of every age. Mrs.Hubbard had 50+ of High School age at a party for her daughter, Gladys. Itmakes me think back to the time when you were young and we used to have suchgood times even with the few. The young people certainly have the best oftimes here B all dressed so comfortably in shortsfor most of their parties and picnics, though they do have a more formal oneonce in a while. John finds a nice big crowd of young people his age. Rosamond Frame has just come back to teach in the North China American Schooland one of the Whittier boys is to teach in the Peking American School. Fineyoung people.
We are planning to go to Techow fromhere for a few days to gather up what is left of our things. From what theothers say there isn=t much, but we must go to attend toit.
Our American Board day was a grandsuccess. It really began Sunday evening and lasted all day Monday. Because ofthe weather we couldn=t have the usual baseball game, and wehad to have our picnic supper and stunts in the meeting house instead of on ourlawn, as planned. There was the most beautiful sunset, wonderful cloud effectsand brilliant colors.
Tell Betty Ann and George that we were very glad to get their letters and that they will hear from us beforelong.
With love to all you dears B
Your loving mother.
Effects of the flood.
Now having worst typhoon in 70years.
Foreigners (except Japanese) arehelping refugees.
Japanese are taking men for slavelabor in Manchuria B kill them when they are done withthem.
Dangerous to travel on high seasnow.
Gertrude S. Wilder
East Cliff, Peitaiho
Sept. 1, 1939
Dearest Margaret,
This is the day that we were planningto be on our way to Peking, but for two weeks now the going has been bad and wemay be delayed for several days more.
I wrote to Ted and Ursula about thedreadful Tientsin flood and you have probably read about it in your papers B the worst flood that anyone can remember. The nativecity and the settlements are under water for the most part, the water beingover 12 feet deep in places. One-story shops and houses are submerged and inthe settlements people have had to move up to their top floors. You canimagine the conditions that exist. Refugees everywhere, local ones andthousands flocking in from the drowned-out villages, sewage going the wrongway, smells , no electricity and for a while no running water. They havewater now but the food problem is an acute one. Our Hopei place has not beenflooded yet, as it seems to be on higher ground than the rest of the places. The railroad is badly cut on both sides of Tientsin and there is a host ofpeople impatiently waiting to get home. If we had gone last week we could havemade it, but we are now in the midst of a regular typhoon B the worst that the natives here have seen in 70 yearsand we fear that the gale and the heavy rain have worked havoc with the roadbetween here and Tientsin that they have been trying to repair.
Uncle Charlie and Harold Robinson leftfor Tsinan over a week ago. They had no idea how they were going to get beyondTientsin but there was no break at that time between here and Tientsin. Theywent to our compound at Hopei and for several days were busy trying to getpassage on one of the small launches that the Japanese were running fromTientsin to the first place where they could take a train. They finally gottickets and a telegram announces the fact that they reached Tsinan, so we arewaiting for a letter telling us how. Some people have managed to get toTientsin going part way by boat and we were hoping to go today, not knowingthat this typhoon was coming to complicate matters. It=s a hard trip.
The foreign communities in Tientsin(all but the Japanese) have tackled the refugee question in spite of their ownterrible fix, and are giving out food to the hundreds and hundreds that aregathered at various spots. School buildings, godowns,[20]etc., are full of them. Churches are not, because they are full of water! Thepretty Anglican church is submerged up to its eaves. The Japanese concessionis badly hit and the authorities are sending their people to Peiping in greatnumbers. Many of them are returning to Japan. But the Japanese, who are incontrol and are the ones who should be doing something, don=t seem to be doing a thing towards helping the Chineserefugees. They sent nearly 500 to our Hopei school compound, then at two a.m.ordered them all to be ready to leave in half an hour. They were herded ontoopen freight cars headed for Manchuria, and we are told that the women andchildren were dumped off along the way and the men taken on for forced labor inManchuria. That tallies with the stories told us by Manchurian missionaries.When they are through with the men a firing squad puts on the finishing touch. I suppose such stories should not be passed on, but should not people knowthese things?
This flood has been or will be thegreatest set-back that Japan has had yet. Acres of supplies are deep underwater and there must be thousands of trucks, lorries, etc. mired. There havebeen two explosions of munition stores in Tientsin, though I don=t see how they do it in water.
Sept. 2.
This is the third day of the typhoon,with no sign of a let-up. The wind is not quite as furious as it has been ,butit drives the rain through every crack and cranny. We are fortunate in thehouse we are in.
No one came to sell vegetables or meatyesterday and I doubt whether anyone ventures out today, and we are down tonothing in some things, but can get along. We cannot get coffee or margarine(we don=t use butter any more) but have somePostum and are making peanut butter. When we think of the poor Tientsin peopleand of what this typhoon may be doing to them we are thankful for everything wehave. If we are marooned here much longer, clothes will be a problem B also bedding, as we brought very little of either.
Father=sback is troubling him where he strained it shoveling snow at Penn Yan, and heis stretched out in a long chair, wrapped in a blanket with a hot iron at hisback, trying to work on a sermon.
There were no trains yesterday and nomail. Probably there will be none today.
Peking, Sept. 7
P.S. I=msending a letter to Ted this a.m. telling about our return trip. He is toforward it to you, and you to Ursula.
So sorry that I didn=t get a letter off on your birthday. We thought of youand remembered the day, but failed to put it down in black and white. I boughta little turquoise jewelry for you and some other kind Avery cheaper@ for the girls, which Jessie Paynewill take and send to you. She may possibly drop in and see you. She is tosail from Shanghai on Sept 18. This is not a good time for travel on the highseas. When will people like Hitler and his kind learn that war is theworld=s worst way?
Lovingly B Mother.
Back in Peking
Moved to new quarters.
Sending Yenching luncheon set(napkins). Moon gate pattern.
Japanese are taking over allavailable housing in Peking. Chinese can=t even rent single rooms.
Railroads torn up in ShansiProvince.
British here are confident they canhold out and win the war.
Whatever happens in Europe willdetermine the outcome here.
Gertrude S. Wilder
College of Chinese Studies
Peking Sept. 8, 1939
Dear Margaret,
We have been back in Peking forseveral days now and the worst of our moving is over. We have slept in our newhome for two nights but are still in a good deal of a mess as some wall-makinghad to be done and our things are not all in their right places. But ourliving room and dining room are in order and look very well and our bedroomwill be done tomorrow. In the meantime we are sleeping in two small adjoiningrooms. We have been eating at one of the hostels until this morning, when wehad waffles Aunder our own vine and fig tree,@ so to speak.
Before I forget it I must mention theparcel we sent you from Tientsin. It is the Yenching lunch set I bought atPeitaiho and had mailed from Mr. Grimes' office in Tientsin, as it is such anuisance to get parcels mailed in Peking. We found that the Yenching people arehaving such difficulty in getting materials, and prices have gone up so highthat they are soon going to raise their prices 50 percent, so Aunt Louise and Iloaded in something for Christmas gifts for our various "hai tzus." [21]
You may consider it a family Christmasgift, though I probably won't be able to resist sending some oddments later on. If the Yenching industries can't get materials they may have to stop work,which will be tragic, as their work helps so many people. Your lunch set isthe gayest one. I love that moon gate pattern and I hope you will enjoyedusing it. I thought it would appeal to Gertrude's artistic taste, not tomention the rest of yours=.
We are going to enjoy our new houseand grounds. It seems so nice to be able to step right out onto your own lawn. We may have to share our blessings later on, as there is a man who may comeout for a few months to lecture in the College. He has a wife and a small son(6 or 7) who will come too, and we shall give them two rooms (one pretty small)on the second floor and perhaps one on the third-floor for the small boy=s bedroom and playroom. Our guest room will then have tobe on the third-floor. The rooms are nicely finished but must be hot in thesummer -- too hot to use I should think. These people (Mr. and Mrs. Fahs) maynot come at all, but if they do I'm sure that we can make them comfortable. They would take their meals at one of the hostels.
Of course we had to take along someplants when we left Peitaiho and I=m sorry we did not bring more. I wasmiserable the day before we left and it rained all day besides, so it put adamper on the digging. But I managed to get roots of three kinds of wildflowers and we bought 70 strawberry plants and some lovely iris roots. I amwatching over them tenderly, hoping they will all flourish. Peitaiho was atthe height of its glory when we left. We really should have stayed on anotherweek to enjoy the wonderful Fall weather. The wild flowers were gorgeous, too,so many of them, and so many that I had never seen before and I added about 20to my collection of 84 and could have kept on indefinitely. We had a verypleasant month, but I don't think I rested up very successfully. Our familywas congenial and easy to provide for, but just a little too large. The cookdid well and I worried as little as possible, I guess, but meals etc. were onmy mind a good deal of the time. We couldn't have had a nicer family.
Sept. 9.
It is now Monday morning and thecalciminers have not yet arrived. They will finish their work today and we canthen put the finishing touches on ours.
After thinking about it for a longtime I finally told Mrs. Studley that I could not teach in the Bible schoolthis year. Giving it up makes me feel like more or less like a shirker but Ihonestly do not feel equal to the task. I have promised to do a little moresupervising of the cook and I still have time and strength for some of thethings that I wanted to do and couldn't last year.
Sleeping in one of the little backrooms last night I discovered that our nearest neighbors are not Chinese. Froma small, high window I could look down into ever so many courtyards just fullof people wearing kimonos. Of course that thing repeated thousands of timesexplains how almost impossible it is for the Chinese to rent houses, or evensingle rooms. And you should see the huge school buildings that have gone andare going up, and the hordes of school children of all ages. It certainlylooks as if they had all come to stay.
There is much confusion in Shansi. The Hemingways, Mary McClure, and others are here waiting for torn -uprailroads to be repaired. It may take some time.
I wonder how to you are all going tovote. With conditions as they are it=s the pretty serious question. Idon't know enough about what is going on to express an opinion. Plenty ofmistakes have been made, but that is nothing new. People don't say much aboutthe election in letters. I'm glad that peace time conscription did not gothrough. The British out here have no doubt whatever about Britain's abilityto hold out and finally win out. What happens in Europe is going to make allthe difference in the world with what happens here.
My last winter's clothes are allpretty shabby, so much so that I am almost afraid to get them out forinspection. But I mustn't put it off too long.
We enjoyed Betty=s letter so much. She didn=tmention her cello but I suppose she is still working away at it. It was toobad that she had to miss the tennis match because of mumps.
Gertrude is third year high schoolisn't she? And where is Betty? It is hard for me to keep track of where the12 school-going grandchildren are as to grades. Donald will be starting beforewe know it.
You have done a lot of sewing. How doyou manage it all? Len's gardens must be fine and must help a lot.
I must stop now. With love to eachone of you --
Lovingly, Grandma.
Proofreading Fenn=s Dictionary
Heavy work schedule.
How to catch a swarm of bees.
Identifying 3 types of swallows.
Uncle Charlie (Stanley), his sonJohn (librarian) and John=s girl friend Mary Boyd.
George D. Wilder
College of Chinese Studies,
Peking
Oct. 8th, 1939
Dear Betty Ann,
I can't finish this letter before we go tochurch at 11:00 a.m., but if I do not get it started at least today, it will goall the week and no one knows how much longer. It seems as though I must havereplied to your letter of two pages of typewriting, July 7th, but have norecord of it, and find your letter now among a lot of unanswered ones that Ibrought back from Peitaiho. I had in mind what to say about the bees and allfor so long that it seems as though I must have written. It will not hurt,even if I have, to write again.
This is a very busy week for me. In additionto the proofreading of the Fenn's Dictionary that we hope to have out beforeXmas, which has to be done every day, tomorrow afternoon I have an executivecommittee meeting of the Peking Missionary Fellowship that I am president ofthis year. Tuesday 10:00 A.M. I have a sort of opening lecture for thestudents of Chinese character writing here Breally the whole school. Some time in the day, not yet decided, I have to takecharge of a question hour in which the Bible School girls ask whateverquestions they like; in the late afternoon a weekly lecture of about two hours= length by Grabau that I want to attend and the weekly AmericanBoard prayer meeting in the evening. Thursday afternoon beginning a volunteerclass of about 15 church members who are helping preach at the street chapel. Friday P.M. my regular class in Public Speech and then the opening lecture forthe years= series of the Peking Society of NaturalHistory, and Sunday I preach at Tungchou. Well, it is enough to prepare forall at once, and I am going to say "no" more often in the future. But you see that I will not be taking very much time for letters, and so thiseffort today to write what should have been written long ago.
To answer your letter -- you said you hopedwe were as well as could be expected, and we are. As a woman doctor said whenasked if she were well, "Of course. That is my business to be well, and Iam." But really it seems to me that I feel more like work, and am ablebetter to play several sets of tennis than I have in years, and the same withyour Grandmother. You were tired from the Fourth of July, but we had nonewhatever. We had some very fine Chinese acrobats give us an evening exhibitionon our own lawn, lighted by good electric lights about that time, however. Your Grandmother drew some for Billy's delectation. I wish you might have seenthe pictures, if not the real thing.
As for those "gobs of bees" thatswarmed off from somewhere and entered your chimney, if it is the chimney thathas fire under it they will be destroyed, I suppose, when the furnace is firedup. That is too bad. The only way I know to get them out is to get a hive,with three or four frames of wax comb foundation in it. The hive must be putup so that its entrance is within a foot or two of the hole where the bees gointo the chimney. If there is more than one hole you have to plaster them allup but one. That one you plaster up small enough if it is not already, so thatyou can put a little tin bee-escape over it. They can come out through theescape but cannot get back. You will have at once within a day all of the oldbees on the outside unable to get back and they will go into the hive. If youcan get a queen cell or a queen to put in, it will hasten things, but you leavethe hive there until only the queen and a few of her attendants are left in thechimney. It may take two or three weeks, as the young bees that are hatchingout after three weeks from the time they got started laying eggs in the chimneywill continue to hatch that length of time and the young bees will not come outfor a week or two after they hatch at the earliest. After a month you can movethem anywhere. You must keep them shut in for a few days or they will go backto the chimney and die there.
Of course if the chimney was one that youcould tear open a bee man could open it and take out the combs and the bees andput them into a hive. When this letter gets there it will be pretty late inthe fall for handling them. If it is a cold chimney let them be over winter.
Did I not guess that the animal you told meabout might be an opossum? I am glad you know now.
I do not know of a scientific dictionary butthe Century Dictionary, if of recent date, is fine for scientific terms. Itwas up to date 30 years ago and I presume there are recent revisions. Youprobably can't afford that. Any good unabridged, like Webster's, is goodenough and the great Oxford Dictionary is fine. You can find them in thelibraries. Make a note of the words you want to look up and take the list tothe libe.
I would like to know what that sparrow wasthat you found nesting so far south of its known range. You ought to havenoted the fact in the margin of your book, if the sparrow is described there. Ask your Biology teacher Mr. Golczinski what it was.
You ought to know at least the three commonswallows by sight, that is the Bank Swallow, duller black all over the upperparts; the Barn (or House) Swallow is more shiny steel blue black all over theback, and has long outer tail feathers in spring and summer; the Eave Swallow,with a yellow rump that shows off when flying so that you can see the back. They all are the most graceful of flyers.
Well it has been Aafter church@ for a long time and I am going for a nap. Uncle Charlie Stanley came last night and kept us up late so we need it. John,his son, who rooms in the East hostel across the lawn and pretty shrubbery fromthis the West hostel, is sick with some sort of infection in his neck glands. We go to see him often. He is librarian here. His girl has just gone and thatwill give John time for more rest and sleep. She was at Peitaiho all summer,here all last year. She is one of two pretty blonde Boyd sisters B Mary Boyd.
I have letters from George and from David toanswer. Tell George that I will do it later, and give him my love for now. Have you heard how your Uncle Durand won the tri-county championship in tennis? Ursula sent us a clipping with his picture in the paper, and a long account ofit. Said he was an old veteran who learned in China and had been off thetournament courts for 20 years.
With love to you all,
Grandpa
Airplanes fly over to bomb AFree China@ in the mountains.
Armored cars made from Ford trucks.
Less bombing since the floods.
George D. Wilder
Peking
October 8th, 1939
Dear George,
I have just answered Betty Ann's letter ofJuly 7th, and on looking at your letter to me I see that it was written the daybefore hers was. That was July 6th, two days after the Fourth. You said that youthought the Fourth of July was very nice but did not tell me much or evenanything about it. Probably you have forgotten by this time what did happen onthe Fourth. But I was very glad to hear from you and to get a letter that wasaddressed by you yourself. I suppose some one told you how to do it, but itwas nice to see that you had written the address on the outside. I wonder ifyou bought the stamp yourself. Of course it was easier to get one from Dad oryour Mother.
You said that you were having a nice time insummer school and I wonder what you studied.
Yesterday or the day before we saw a lot ofbig aeroplanes going over us. I counted four groups of planes each, flying inthree groups of four each. But I noticed that there were only three in oneformation, all the rest of the formations being just alike and of four flyingso: 
Can you figure up how many planes there werein all? Your Grandma was not quite sure and thought there were 48 but when Iwent out in a riksha I asked the man who had been out on the street all themorning how many he saw. He said at once 47. They were flying off to the westtoward the Western Hills. Sometimes they come back after a while but we havenot seen these. There is a big airfield at the foot of the hills about five orsix miles from the city but I do not think they landed there. I am afraid theywent to Free China, which is in sight, to bomb cities and armies out there inthe mountains.
This morning we saw on the street a regulararmed car made out of a Ford or some such truck like this:
It had a sort of square cupola on top with amachine gun pointing out of it. Could not see a man on it. The other day Ialso saw about ten tanks on big caterpillars, on the paved street, tanking upwith gasoline or air or something. We have not heard any guns or bombs for along time, though, as we did the first part of our stay here, before we went toPeitaiho by the sea. I think the big floods have destroyed a lot of theirmiserable trucks, planes, etc., and ammunition, and the roads they run on, sothey have not been fighting so much since the floods came. As the land driesoff down around Tientsin though, I am afraid they will go at it again. It isterribly hard on the poor farmers. We in the cities do not fear anything,however.
Well, I hope that you will have somethingmore to tell us and write again.
With love, and thanks for your letter.
Grandpa Wilder
Gift of painting of AThe Three Blessings of Old Age.@
Trains running again on repairedtrestles
Margaret=s letter-writing campaign.
George D. Wilder
Peking, China
October 8th, 1939
Dear Margaret,
I am devoting today to getting some of my oldletters answered and have just written to George and to Betty. It has seemedas though there were special things that I wanted to write to you for a longtime.
You spoke of mailing the garters with thelast letter but they have not yet shown up. Being merchandise, I suppose theytake longer than your letter. It was a letter of July 16th, that I haveunanswered, wishing me a happy birthday. I suppose you have the letter tellingabout it and the days before and after, during which the friendly Chinesecelebrations continued. I think I failed to mention one of the gatherings bythe Chinese in my letters and I know I did not mention a nice picture that theornithologist Tseng Huang Shaw gave me. He is the author of the big work onthe Birds of Hopei that I reviewed for the Auk , and he gave me a copy later, the same Isold to Van Tyne, for which I hope that you got the $6.00. The picture waspainted for the occasion, showing three blessings of old age for a 70thbirthday present. It is an old man, surrounded by grandchildren (No. 1)carrying a peach symbol of old age (No. 2) and a couple of bats symbolic ofwealth and official employment or happiness, I forget which(No. 3), and thepicture is labeled the san to ,or Athree muchnesses.@
By the way, the garters will be in time, forthe old ones are still good. I had thought they would give out before thesummer was over, but I had them washed and they are still good.
You were waiting to hear of the safe returnfrom Tehsien, and now I presume you know that your Mother took sick the nightwe were to leave and after we had bought our tickets, second class, with athree day limit. They only fined us 20 cents when we took them back the nextday. Then we were going on a return ticket from Peitaiho and the flood made ittoo much of a good thing to go by boat, seeing we did not have to go. Now atlast the railroad is put through the floods on trestles. Uncle Charlie ishere, having just come over it, and he says he hands it to the Japanese for agood job at seeing that difficult job through. Aunt Louise keeps talking ofour being there in Tsinan at Thanksgiving time, and I need my things fromTechow, if they are in existence all this time, but we have no vacation thenand now we may wait until the holidays.
We were glad to get the class letter withyours, and wonder why you thought necessary to cut it. You were just going tosee Thornton Wilder's play on the screen. I wonder if it was good. We arehoping to see Boys Town today and may do so, though Uncle Charlie's train isjust a half hour too early for us to take him as we planned. I now rememberthat I have a committee meeting at 4:00 which prevents me from going and UncleCharlie says he will stay over a train and take Mother, or she take him, to theafternoon show.
I am glad to hear of all your activity in theletter writing line. Can make no comments just now however. Glad ofGertrude's outing and Bette Ann's visit to the Johnsons. Fine for George andLen to get together so much in the wilds, etc. I regret that we did not domore of it in the earlier years. Ursula got more later.
With love hurriedly,
G. Wilder
Oberlin-in-Shansi moves further intothe interior to escape bombing attacks on Sian.
Two students in Peking, yearn to beat scene of the struggle.
Mrs. L.LDAVIS, executive sec. W.F. BOHN, Chairman H.B.THURSTON,Treas.
The Oberlin-ShansiMemorial Association
MIDWINTERBULLETIN, 1939
DEAR FRIENDS:
Ming Hsien (Oberlin-in-China) has moved again, forthe fourth time. A two-weeksÕ trek on foot over the mountains intosouthwestern Shensi. They Atook it in stride C no great excitement C more or less of an old story C a prolonged picnic!@ Such is the spirit of the 190 men and 15girls, with their teachers, who made this trying journey.
Of the 205 students, about 125 were ofthe original group that left Taiku (the home of our school) a year earlier. Theothers paid each a hundred dollars and found guarantors for further expenses,in order to share the hardships C and opportunities C of our wandering school.
The first six weeks of the first term hadbeen completedC with examinations C before official orders came to leave Sian. Bombings in thevicinity Agave point@to their decision to go, but they had not been attacked.
Their present location is Mien Hsien,near the city of Hanchung. It is a retired, sheltered spot, where they hope tocomplete the next six weeksÕ work before moving on into Kansu. HerbVanMeter writes December23:
AIÕve just plowed through the last of 45 Senior II compositionson >The Differences between North - and SouthShensi.= ItÕs surprising to note the number ofthings theyÕve pointed out C good proof that traveling about thecountry is an educational experience, which may be some compensation forinterruption and inconvenience. The contrast between this place and Sianis great. The people here are frightfully poor and backward. They donÕtseem to know about the war. The city was burned by Communists four years ago.It is interesting to note the not-yet-faded words exhorting the Reds to give uptheir arms and join the National armies, overset by newer ones saying thatUnited China will give her last drop of blood to drive out the invaders. Noquestion, China has come a long way In the past few years.@
The letter ends with a cheerful accountof Christmas preparations C including Santa Claus and a dinner atthe English Mission school Aif Cliff (Domke) can get a couple moreducks!@
Herbert VanMeter is the only one of ourthree represntatives now in China, who has reached the interior. CharlotteTinker , in Peking sinceAugust 1937, counts herself Alucky to be taken in by the AmericanBoard and given a position in their girlsÕ school (Bridgman Academy) C one of the finest in North China.@ This year she has a full schedule with four classes andsome advisory work. She says:
APeking life continues all too smoothly and mundanelyfor those of us who yearn to be on the scene of struggle, in the interior. Somuch of our energy goes into vicarious suffering for those whom we arehelpless to aid. News is limited, of course, but we get enough to convince usof the tremendous need. I have been hoping to serve my final year with those Icame out for, and whom I have never ceased yearning to join. Although thingshave worked out far differently from what I had planned, I am profoundlygrateful for every experience which has come. Even in war-time, itÕs a greatprivilege to live and work and learn in this part of the world for two years.The Orient has a way of getting under oneÕs skin. If I felt I should neverreturn, I doubt if I could leave. But . . . now that IÕve discovered how nearChina is, IÕm sure IÕll find my way back again.@
Mel Kennedy , also in Peking, studying Chineselanguage and history in Yenching University and making a bibliography ofWestern sources and authorities on the history of Chinese cultural relationswith the West, is increasingly enthusiastic about his work, but is readyto drop it and go into the interior to join our school if it seems best. He tellsof practicing AThe Messiah@in the Yenching chorus, which compares favorably with Oberlin choruses.The bass soloist, a private pupil of MelÕs in English, did superblyC@Pinza himself couldn=thave improved on it!@
In Taiku , the original home of the school, PeiLu primary school, onceconnected with Ming Hsien, now has 250 studentsCsome of them Ming Hsien students left behindCwith two additional grades, fifth and sixth, and a fewmiddle (high) school students, and double its former teaching staff. Ray Moyerurges opening a primary school on the Ming Hsien campus, so as to retainoccupancy of the buildings. The agricultural work has been kept up, and a mostgratifying report of last year has come from Ray.
Here in Oberlin, the Student Shansi Committee again tookthe initiative in voting for sending another representative this year, in whichthe trustees supported them. Application blanks have been given out and ShansiDay is set for February 24.
Our Part
__
Can we do less than furnish financialsupport to those who are giving their lives?
__
Our fiscal year began September 1st. Our aim for the year is $3,000.00. Nearly half of the year is gone. We havereceived less than five hundred dollars, only one-sixth of our aim.
We know you will not fail them.
How soon may we expect your gift C if you have not sent already?
W. F. BOHN, Chairman
[1] Margaret=s sister, Ursula, has written her own memoir of growing upin China, under the title, AThe Willow Wand: A Childhood in China at the End of the Empire.@
[2] From the end-note to the 1974 Dover edition.
[3]* Pailou:Chinese pai(tablet) + lou(tower). In Chinese architecture, a decorative or monumental gatewayconstructed of beams and lintels, usually with three openings, the central onehigher than the others. Here it has four arches.
[4] ???
[5] Deck tennis: a variety of tennis played usually on the deck of a ship, in which a ring,generally of rubber or manilla rope, is thrown and caught, using only one hand,between opponents standing on opposite sides of a net.
[6] In Hebrew, which GDW would have studied in seminary, elim is the plural of el , meaning Agod.@
[7] Theheadquarters of the American Board in Boston was always referred to informallyas Athe Rooms,@ perhaps short for ABoard Rooms.@
[8] ???
[9] A location in the Western Hills where friends of theWilders owned a cottage which they sometimes visited during Summer Ahealth breaks.@
[10] Copied from the original byMargaret Menzi.
[11] Theodore H. White,In Search ofHistory , p. 80.
[12] See GDW letter dated April 21, 1939.
[13] The writer is disguising his meaning here to getpast the censors.
[14] Theodore H. White, In Search ofHistory , p. 89.
[15]?
[16]?
[17]i.e., Montgomery Ward, amail-order catalogue retailer.
[18]Plain, knit cotton hosiery orunderwear, named after Balbriggan, Ireland, where they were first made.
[19]Chinese name forCongregational Church. Literally ?
[20]AGodown:@ A warehouse or other storage place.
[21]?