Political theory and practice

A superbly researched and written study of Chinese and American relations during World War II told through the experiences and career of Joseph Stilwell, who first went to China in 1911 and left in 1944. He was a twenty-eight year old lieutenant when he arrived and a sixty year old four star general when he left. The book is detailed in its 530 pages of text and supplemented with nearly a hundred more pages of appendices and notes. Tuchman wears her scholarship lightly and the book reads itself. There is far too much to summarize so I offer a few conclusions.

First as to China, the inescapable fact is that Chiang Kai-Shek was a warlord who pretended to be the national government, and credulous and desperate Americans accepted that claim. The credulous spoke no Chinese and did not venture beyond Chiang’s court. They included diplomats, journalists, missionaries, business men, and soldiers. The desperate wanted to keep China in the war to hold down the Japanese occupation force estimated at one million men who would not then be fought in the Philippines or Malaya. They included FDR and George Marshall. FDR long nursed the hope that China would emerge as a friendly great power in Asia after the war, and was willing to pay an enormous price toward that end until even this great optimist gave up on Chiang.
What distinguished Chiang from the other warlords who ruled fiefdoms when the dynasty decayed and collapsed was his pretentious claim to the nation (over the corpse of Sun Yat-Sen) and Madame May Chiang, a Wellesley graduate, who acted as his press agent to good effect. They affected Western ways and talked airly of sovereignty and democracy while their death squads reduced the competition. Think of Ann Coulter with a Uzi.
What Chiang wanted was to stay out of the war and let the barbarians fight each other, the barbarians being Japan and the Allies (Britain, USA, and Holland). Invaders come, the Manchu, the Mongol, but then they go. Insofar as he had a strategy it was to retreat and retreat until that happened, and then to reassert his authority by being on the winning side.
To reassert his power he needed the material wealth of American Lend-Lease which he took as a gift and offered no lease in return. Rather he cached this wealth for inevitable conflict with the Communist Chinese in the distant north. The Communist being Chinese were the real threat. To secure American largesse and protection to some degree, Chiang went through the motions of fighting the Japanese. At times this took the form of press statements describing gigantic battles in which the noble Chinese defeated, against all odds, the Japanese. The credulous took these press releases at face value. Stilwell did not.
Stilwell went to the alleged battlefields to see for himself, and he knew the lies for what they were. But because of the desperation to keep Chiang, read China, in the war, Washington did nothing, and there was probably nothing that could be done.
Turning then to the man: Stilwell loved and hated China. He had a facility and interest in languages before he went to China, and there he learned Chinese and became fluent. He was a driven man, restless, energetic, determined, smart, and over the years very knowledgeable of China and Chinese. He was also tactless and volatile, and Chiang was a ready catalyst. Stilwell came to despise Chiang and to see the Kuomintang regime as a nearly impotent fascist dictatorship – a message no one wanted to receive in Washington. True to his calling Stilwell as a soldier tried to make the best of the bad marriage, often by staying as far away from Chiang as possible, in Burma.
He did try to paper over the cracks for the sake of the war effort. Witness this picture, three people who hated each other smiling for the camera, which certainly does lie. (I say it this way because one infers from Tuchman’s pages that there was little love-lost between Madame Chiang and her husband; it was a family alliance.)

In Burma Stilwell did the impossible. He built the Burma Road over impossible terrain after having been told by British colonial officials it was impossible, technically, politically, and militarily. He created an army out of the rejects Chiang let him have, hoping that he would fail and be recalled to be replaced by a more compliant officer. This army defeated the Japanese and drove them out of Burma again after being told it was impossible by the British, whose principal interest was to retain the colonies after the war, not to fight Japanese.
Stilwell found the Chinese soldier cheerful, durable, quick to learn, and responsive to leadership. A hopeless generalization of course: ‘the Chinese soldier.‘ Stilwell respected Chinese people as much as he despised the warlords who misruled them. And that respect is part of what kept him in China. He could have left at nearly anytime by asking to be relieved.
Stilwell was a leader, of that there is no doubt. He was creative and resourceful, using what he had, starting where he was, and doing what he could. If the Chinese troops were untrained he would train them, and he did that sometimes personally, lying on the rifle range with recruits showing the action of the rifle. If they were hungry he would find food for them. If they were wounded he would supply doctors, nurses, and medicine. If they were low on ammunition he would get it somewhere, somehow. The miracles were daily.
Perhaps the most famous example is the best. When defeated by the Japanese the first time, he led his headquarters staff of 114 on a walk out of the northern Burmese jungles. He was a gruelling task master on the walk at 105 paces a minute. He was a tyrant over the food and water, and all but assaulted stragglers. As the Commander-in-Chief he was expected to fly out and direct the retreat from India, but Stilwell wanted to show to his defeated troops that he was one of them, one with them and so he walked just like they did. Their fate was his fate.
On he went at 105 paces a minute, at the end of the walk most of the 114 men hated him, and that was a tribute to Stilwell, because all 114 of them survived. Not one was lost on the two weeks in the circle of hell through which they walked. Rain, jungle, no road, no maps, dehydration, no local guides, no porters, Japanese planes, out of touch, occasional rifle fire from Japanese patrols, exhaustion, wildlife, malnutrition, and disease; the list goes on.
Stilwell ate with his men, ate what they ate. He stood in line at the mess tent for food or for the barber’s chair. He wore one set of clothes until they rotted away. He seldom wore the stars of his rank. When he did it was to show the soldiers that their general was there with them. When he went to Chiang’s court he borrowed a uniform because he had none. He carried a rifle in Burma and used it more than once. When he sent men on forced marches through terrible terrain, he went with them to see for himself what it was like. He accepted the promotions and medals that came without ceremony, no photographers present to immortalize his genius recognized. The only medal he valued was the Combat Infantry Man’s Badge, the only general to earn this medal. He was holding it when he died about a year after he left China.
The warlord generals, including Chiang, were not like this. In defeat Stilwell became something of a legend in the minds of many Chinese solders and this made him all the more frightening to Chiang. After that first encounter with the Japanese, Stilwell publicly admitted defeat and silently vowed to return, which he did without the histrionics of Douglas MacArthur.
The puzzle of Chinese politics gave the red baiters in post-war American politics much with which to play. Stilwell was duly blamed for not giving Chiang enough support (material) and for concentrating on fighting the Japanese rather than heading off the Communists, etc. Such hindsight as is given to the gods. All drivel to be sure, but it happened, as much drivel still does. Check the news today.
George Marshall figures in much of this story and as always seems to be both a pillar of strength and a sage. I single him out since I reviewed a biography of him earlier on this blog.
John Stuart Mill said one man with an idea can do a lot. Stilwell was such a man. His idea was that the Chinese deserve better than Chiang and his kind. His example also shows what one person with enormous energy and good will cannot do: the impossible.
His story has parallels with others. In the Peloponesian War Sparta sent one man, the general Brasidas, to northern Greece and he, too, very nearly won the war. Stilwell was that Spartan.

Pat Conroy, The Cookbook: Recipes and Stories (2004).

Another title read in anticipation of visiting Charleston, South Carolina. Like K-Paul Prudhomme’s and Diane Kennedy’s cookbooks it is as much an insight into the people and places as the food and recipes. While K-Paul and Kennedy are each rooted to one place, NOLA for him and Mexico for her, Conroy’s book is also travelogue, recounting experiences from his travels as an aspiring and then successful writer.

It has the features of all of the Conroy books I have read: a wry humour, self-deprecating, modesty, a sharp eye for detail, well-turned phrases that lift the mundane to a higher level, and, of course, the burning fires of his dad-hatred. Give that last a rest, Pat!

The travels are domestic as well as international. There are stories from markets and restaurants in France and Italy, as well as such exotic places as Atlanta.

In the course of these travels, at one point Conroy said this, and I almost forgave him for his Oedipus complex. He knows whereof he writes because he was a school teacher for a time.

‘Because their impact cannot be measured, the teachers of the world drift through their praiseless days unaware of the impact and majesty of their influence. I want to fall on my knees in gratitude whenever I conjure the faces of the men and women who spent their finest days coaxing and urging me to discover the best part of myself in the pure sunshine of learning. Because the country dishonors its teachers and humiliates them with lousy pay and a mortifying deficiency of prestige among other professions, they do not receive the gifts of gratitude that brims over in men and women like me when we remember their patient, generous shaping of us into ourselves’ (p. 77).
Amen, brother.

Allow me to add that the humiliation is not limited to money but also to the easy social opprobrium that falls on school teachers. For example, ‘those who can’t, teach‘ and the assumption that the work begins when the students arrive and ends when they leave. Even we jumped up school teachers in universities cop this, too. Long ago I gave up resisting these lazy stereotypes from those satisfied with lazy stereotypes.

Pat Conroy, My Losing Season: A Memoir (2002).
I liked The Lords of Discipline so much I wanted more Conroy. This book appealed to me because it was about basketball. First the good, then the not so good.

The modesty is disarming. The description of the atmosphere of games is intoxicating. The account of plays is exhilarating. The attributes ascribed to other players, especially opponents (which made me think of Jerry Nicholarson, Mike Aspen, and Fred Hare – an honour to mix with them) are graceful and generous. The unity and division of the team through the season is moving. It started as a band of individuals but through the season often played like a team where the whole is greater than its parts. The descriptions of hot and cold players is right. The figures of speech and turns of phrase are easy and, at times, elevating. The recitation of the responsibilities of the point guard is informative, and that made me think of Captain Leo. The accounts of talented athletes who threw it away reminded me of Bob Krebsbach.
The effort in the last chapter to sum up the book from the point of view of a point guard, however, is not based on those responsibilities, and so occasions more dad-hating. The modesty becomes repetitive and even cloying.
Mel, the one-dimensional toxic coach, who never has a good word to say, who thinks screaming is motivation, who seems to have nothing to offer but the above is cardboard I am afraid. It is only at about 300 pages of chronicle of Mel’s malice is it implied that he taught Conroy some things about the game.
Dad-hatred piled high and deep enough for a PhD in the Oedipus complex, though there is nothing complex about it. (I also bought his cookbook, and guess what, dad-hatred is to be found there, too.)
Ditto his love-hate relationship with The Citadel. He just cannot say it often enough, well yes he can say it too often.
It is a gym rat’s adage. Only leave the gym when you have made your last shot. Never leave the gym on a miss. Superstition perhaps. But more practice never hurts.

Recommended for adults.
In anticipation of going to a conference in Charleston, South Carolina later this year I sought out novels set there. I found a couple and I started with this one. Now that I have read it I am too drained to go on to the next one right away. It is a wringing experience to follow these lords of discipline.
To say that the novel is an account of the education of four students at a college is true but without texture or meaning. The four are boys from 18 – 21 years old. The college is a military school. It is in Charleston.

The major characters, in addiiton to the four room-mates, are the president of the college, the dean of students, the family of one of the boys in the room, and a love interest for the narrator. But the major character is Charleston itself, its foliage, its seasons, its smells, its beaches, its grass, its insects, its social conventions, its colonial origins, its Confederate past, its slave past, its caste system. As a book to read before visiting Charleston it is exactly right. (Though it did not tell me why that 1920s dance is called ‘Charleston.’)
What happens? The boys learn a lot and our protagonist grows up. The novel is rich with incident and offers a flavour of that all male environment where brutality taken and brutality given is the road to manhood. To list all of the examples would make it seem a litany of violence and blasphemy, and it is not. Though there is plenty of both.
Conroy alternates very deftly between the systematic beastiality of some events at the school with lyrical descriptions of the coastal wind, or tiered reflections on love and life by the boy becoming a man. Conroy’s judgment in measuring for the reader doses of pain with relief from it is sure. He guides the reader through the distasteful parts by providing oases before moving on.
Throughout the prose is beautiful, elegiac for lost youth.
None of the characters are cardboard. Even the president, a thinly disguised representation of Douglas MacArthur, and the many who imitated him, is developed. He has his reasons, convoluted and self-serving though they be, but they are not idiosyncratic or synthetic. He is not simply a plot device. The same goes for the Dean of Students, the Commandant. He is not honest but he is trying to do what is best.
Of course the most well developed character is the narrator who tells some of this in retrospect. His inner confusions, contradictions, volte faces, his mistakes, his blunders, are very touching as he recovers from romantic rejection, deals with social ostracism, copes with responsibilities shoved onto him, is rocked by betrayal, weighs the demands of friendship…. Life is complicated at any age but the more so for youth.
The other three room-mates are also developed personalities, though we see them only in relation to the narrator. The other cadets, even the sadists, are presented as human beings, despicable though some are, and not merely as plot devices. It is a great talent that can do that. Conroy seems to be in complete control and command of the novel; he is no child prodigy but a mature observer and a seasoned ponderer on the human comedy.
All of this is played out against the times in the United States in the 1960s. Civil rights and integration of this school, and the Vietnam War in which many of the graduates of the school have already served. But always more important than these externalities is the school itself and its very Charleston cosmology.
There is enough violence, profanity, stupidity, and prejudice in the book to interest a Hollywood film producer in turning it all into slam-bang cardboard. Read the book, skip the film is my advice.
Conroy has written much else, like The Great Santini, and I will read more some time. I also plan to re-read another book about a military school. It will be Calder Willingham’s End as a Man (1947). His most arresting character was not the victim but the vicious bully.
Having finished the book and before gathering my own thoughts I looked for reviews but all I could find were hundreds of comments on Good Reads and Amazon, and those I scanned were as inane as most comments on Trip Advisor. Most are about that fascinating subject, the writer of the comment, and not about the book. These are no doubt the same twits who FaceBook their every meal. I am sure there are measured and informative reviews available but they are overgrown with the obscuring and choking vines of the Twitterati. I am left to my own devices.