Home > Work > Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45
1 " Between policy-makers in the capital and realities in the field lies an eternal gap whitened by the bones of failed and futile efforts. "
― Barbara W. Tuchman , Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45
2 " It is a feature of government that the more important the problem, the further it tends to be removed from handling by anyone well acquainted with the subject. "
3 " Would the fate of China have been different if Stilwell had been allowed to reform the army and create an effective combat force of 90 divisions? ... This assumption might have been true if Asia were clay in the hands of the West. But the"regenerative idea," stilwell's or another's, could not be imposed from the outside. The Kuomintang military structure could not be reformed without reform of the system from which it sprang and, as Stillwell himself recognized, to reform such a system "it must be torn to pieces."In great things, wrote Erasmus, it is enough to have tried. Stilwell's mission was America's supreme try in China. He made the maximum effort because his temperament permitted no less: he never slackened and he never gave up. Yet the mission failed in its ultimate purpose because the goal was unachievable. The impulse was not Chinese. Combat efficiency and the offensive spirit, like the Christianity and democracy offered by missionaries and foreign advisers, were not indigenous demands of the society and culture to which they were brought. Even the Yellow River Road that Stilwell built in 1921 had disappeared twelve years later. China was a problem for which there was no American solution. The American effort to sustain the status quo could not supply an outworn government with strength and stability or popular support. It could not hold up a husk nor long delay the cyclical passing of the mandate of heaven. In the end, China went her own way as if the Americans had never come. "
4 " The fervor of the Kuomintang’s youth had passed to the Communists leaving Chungking with history’s most melancholy tale: that every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed. Madame Chiang Kai-shek in a rare moment left a brief acknowledgement. When a number of journalists returned from Yenan with enthusiastic reports, she invited them to tea, though disbelieving, to hear what they had to say in person. After listening to their glowing tales of the Communists’ integrity, idealism and sacrifice for a cause, she said it was impossible for her to believe them. Walking to the window she stared out across the river in silence for several minutes and then turned back to the room and spoke the saddest sentence of her life: “If what you tell me about them is true, then I can only say they have never known real power. "
5 " On February 12, 1912, the Empress Regent abdicated on behalf of the dynasty. China was now a Republic. As such she was welcomed by Joint Resolution of the United States Congress: “Whereas the Chinese Nation has successfully asserted that sovereignty resides in the people” and whereas the American people are “inherently and by tradition sympathetic to all efforts to adopt representative government,” therefore the United States “congratulates the people of China on their assumption of the powers, duties and responsibilities of self-government” in the hope that under a republican form of government “…the happiness of the Chinese people will be secure and the progress of the country insured.” It was not to be that simple. Yuan Shih-kai remained in control of north China, which he withheld from accession to the Republican regime. He maneuvered and waited. Lacking united support or firm authority or a reliable military arm, Sun Yat-sen could not prevail. More negotiations ensued with unavoidable result. On March 12, 1912, Dr. Sun retired as President in favor of Yuan Shih-kai, who reestablished the Government at Peking. In this unstable mongrel resolution China’s modern age began. "