We Chinese women
A speech at the reception in honor of Madame Chiang Kai-shek by the All-India Women's Conference at the Lady Irwin College, New Delhi, on February 12, 1942. Mme. Chiang spoke in reply to an address of welcome by Mrs. Ranjit Pandit, president of the Conference and sister of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.
Words are inadequate to express my hearty appreciation of the kindness that has prompted you to hold this meeting of welcome in my honor. The opportunity of meeting so many representative women of India is alone sufficient reason for me to join my husband in coming to this great country. Mrs. Pandit some time ago invited me to visit India, but owing to my work I did not feel that I ought to leave China just then. The inward urge that I should come has been, however, latent for a long time. Therefore, when the Generalissimo decided to take this trip, this urge became crystallized into action. Now that I am here and stand in the midst of the women leaders of India, who like their Chinese sisters are making immense contributions to their beloved hand in this hour of trials and tribulations, I am happy.
Your chairman has referred tot he long and traditional relationship between our two countries, and to a renewal of those ancient bonds of culture. I wish to reciprocate this sentiment in full measure. The Chinese have always regarded the people of India as their brothers. Our two countries have had long religious associations. Indeed, China and India are two pillars which today are supporting the economic and industrial edifice of Asia. We are proud of the important part which we are playing together in helping to make the word safe for democracy.
Mrs. Pandit has paid me a tribute for my share in the war of resistance to aggression. While appreciating this, may I have your permission to share the tribute with my fellow countrywomen. In the past four years and a half, every section of Chinese life has been called upon to give its utmost for the nation; and among those who have responded nobly to the needs of the crisis have been the women. The war, with its
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multitude of problems, has brought forth a large number of new organizations concerned with refugee aid, war relief, increase of production enterprises and care of ware orphans.
Our Chinese women are doing their tasks willingly and cheerfully because one cannot live in China and feel and think without being moved to action. The fact that a Japanese bombing raid kills 4,000 people in a single day mean nothing to peoples living in a great distance away from the scene but when one sees flames roar, hears bombs thud, and witnesses the horrid outcome of the meeting if human flesh and steel shrapnel, then the realities of war become very real. Chinese women were the first to face such suffering and misery, and also they have been in the forefront in carrying out measures for their relief.
The desperation of the enemy - now also your enemy - caused by the failure to make military advances at will has led him to pursue a policy of slaughter of innocent people, men and women, of violence, of destruction of property, and of indiscriminate bombing in the hope of terrorizing those lining in the interior of China. Such Japanese barbarism has not only failed to terrorize our Chinese but has impelled them to work all the harder for the rescue of the injured, the safeguarding of homeless children and refugees, and their evacuation to safer localities.
Under the auspices of our Women's Advisory Council, women have been encouraged to work on the farms in place of their men who have joined the army. For those women who are unsuited for farm work, factories have been established to give them employment. The Women's Advisory Council also sees to it that, while their mothers are working either on the farms or in the factories, the older children are cared for in homes and the younger ones sent to day nurseries. In the broad sweep of the war work carried on by the women of China, devotion and accomplishment have become commonplaces.
The poet Holmes once said: ""It is the province of knowledge to speak, and the privilege of wisdom to listen." I would much prefer to hear what my Indian sisters have to tell me about their aspirations, their problems and their achievements, because of all this they possess an abundance of knowledge.. While listening to what you are going to tell me, I have no claim to wisdom, but I am deeply interested in your problems and have come here to learn.
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Madame Chairman, in concluding, I wish to thank you and the members of the Conference once more for the sincere and moving welcome that you one and all have been showing me during my short stay in India.
After the formal reply Madame Chiang delivered the following extemporaneous address to the gathering of Indian women.
First of all, I want to tell you what you are up against, and I think you would want to know. I believe you are realists, for in spite of thousands of years of our common heritage enriched by the development of the most profound systems of philosophy yet evolved by any people in the world, the people of China and India are realists. You may have to fight against a foe full of treachery. During the last five years I have repeatedly pointed out what sort of people the Japanese are and what they have been doing to China, but because the Western world was too engrossed in other affairs, they branded my admonitions as propaganda. Now that the word has had a taste of Japanese methods at Singapore and Manila, they are realizing that what I said was not a figment of war-torn imagination but bare facts.
In 1932 at Shanghai, when the Chinese and Japanese had agreed in principle on certain conditions and were on the eve of signing an agreement, that very night the Japanese bombed and set fire to the sleeping suburb of Chapei and tens of thousands of people were killed and wounded. Just before the outbreak of the present Pacific hostilities, while the Japanese Ambassador in America and Kurusu were carrying on conversations with Mr. Hull, the Japanese similarly without warning struck at Pearl Harbor.
A nation which has treachery as its chosen policy in international dealings can never be trusted. The Japanese are already at your door. They have already struck at China and Burma. Who knows what will happen when they strike India? They will say to you: "We come to liberate you." But that is a lie.
Do you know what happened in Nanking? After our troops had withdrawn, the Japanese rounded up every able-bodied man they could find there, tied them wrist to writs, made them walk out of the town, beat them and bayoneted them. Later on the Japanese did not even take the
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trouble to bayonet or shoot them but made them dig their own graves and buried them alive.
What did they do to our children? They captured them and took their blood for the purpose of blood transfusion. They also sent boatloads of our children to be trained as traitors to their own country. We have found many little spies who told us that they had been trained by the Japanese to work against us. This happened especially after the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1932, when these children were carried off in thousands and specially drilled to work against their fatherland.
When the Japanese occupy and seize a city they are not only out to loot everything but they try to kill the very soul of the people, they do everything to deaden the body and soul. In cases when some of the surviving population were employed as laborers by the Japanese they received as part payment injections of opium and heroin. The Japanese are an incredibly cruel and inhumanely callous enemy.
We did everything we could at first to stave off the Japanese because we needed time in which to prepare ourselves. But when at last we knew the ruthlessness of the enemy we had to take up arms, ill-prepared as we were, for we realized that however terrible suffering and death may be, there was a worse thing - slavery of body and slavery of soul.
China today is an acknowledged ally of the Democracies, but we have only earned this name by fighting mostly with bare flesh and inferior arms, and by destroying everything of value which might fall into the hands of the enemy as we withdrew into the interior. We have burnt our fields; we have destroyed our houses and property in order to prevent the enemy from gaining them. We have had this courage because we know that in order to save our national life we must have the fortitude to sacrifice our individual life.
As soon as the war started, we women of China formed ourselves into a Women's council, a national body. In each province we formed a provincial committee and in each district a smaller branch. We followed a definite program to help win the war. We trained, and are continuing to train, thousands of young women to go to every part of the country to tell the people what the war is about. In India today there must be many people who still do not understand what the war is about, and who must be told. Many women from schools and colleges ran away
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to join our war effort because they said they could not study while their nation was in jeopardy. I have trained such women personally. Among other lines of work after their training, they go behind the army and do liaison work between the army and the people.
At first the authorities asked how could girls go and work in the large hospitals where the men are so rough? Who would protect them? Do you know that when the girls went there the men called them army officers and saluted them as such! Now we receive hundreds of telegrams asking for more and more women nurses and workers for the hospitals. For not only are the girls appreciated for their nursing ability but also for the fact that they provide wholesome and inspiriting entertainment for the soldiers during their stay in the hospitals. As in India, there are many illiterate people in China, and our women are also working against illiteracy. The soldiers are learning to read and write while convalescing.
Many of our factories and industries have been destroyed. So we have had to return to hand industries. These are organized in production centers and we can show you the success of these by mentioning that not only has the standard of the people's livelihood gone up in districts where these centers exist, but also by the fact that by the employment of women in the centers, their men have been able to join the army. You cannot expect a man to fight in the trenches and leave his family unless he knows that his wife is self-supporting and can look after their children.
The spirit of the new China is one for all and all for one. We are united by suffering, and victory will crown our efforts. In every worthwhile enterprise there must be people who are willing to sacrifice everything they have for what they hold most dead if that is to be a success. We in China have those people. I do not mean the Generalissimo. I do not mean myself. I mean the people of China, the unsung heroes.
Like India, China's roots are deep. In our fertile soil which is now soaked in the blood of our partriots, both soldiers and civilians, we shall grow fruit for the future. Thus runs a Chinese proverb: "Think only of sowing; think not of reaping." We of this generation shall not reap the full benefits of what we have sown, but the generations to come will reap the fruits of our sacrifice. And as we today are reaping the fruits of labor of our ancestors, so must we be willing to sow for our children and our children's children.
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(third installment)(fifth installment)
