Australian Mandarin

Manawatu Times, Volume 62, Issue 5, 7 January 1937, Page 9

Australian Mandarin

REPORTER WHO BECAME CONFIDANT OP WAR LORDS ADVENTURES OF BILL DONALD Bill Donald, who figures in the background of every thrust. for power in China, was a bright young reporter on Sydney’s old-time Daily Telegraph. Like all star newspaper men, he began on police rounds, covering the crime stories of a city, states the writer of a article in an Australian journal. (During tho recent episode involving the capture of Marshall Chiang KaiShek by General Chang Hsuch Hiang it was Soong Donald who conducted the negotiations for his subsequent release. It was even rumoured that he might take Chiang’s place). Melbourne’s Argus, then the Mecca of pressmen, bid for Donald, and he joined its reporting staff. I remember pounding a typewriter at the same table at which he was doing his whacking in the .old Argus office in Collis street. The year was 1902.

Donald was handed a letter by _ a copy boy. He read it and tossed it across. It was an offer of a job as subeditor of The China Mail, Hong-Kong. ‘‘Adventure! Take it," I said. Donald had been but a few weeks on The Argus before he was off to the Orient, eventually to become a maker of history. He was a Lithgow, N.S.W., boy, and bright as a new shilling. He was small and wiry, with the light of keen intelligence in sharp eyes that missed nothing. Older men in the newspaper game marked him down as a youth of imagination and action —and that before he left Australia in his twenties.

News of him drifted back. Travellers to the East met him at Hong-Kong, where he was a personage. From them it became known in Sydney that Gordon Bennett, the wealthy owner of the New York Herald, and visited HongKong in his yacht. He was jealous of tho scoops “Chinese" Morrison—another Australian—was scoring for The London Times. Donald’s initiative attracted him, and Bennett appointed him correspondent in China for his paper at a princely salary and an open go with expenses. Danger His Lure Quickly Donald made an International reputation as an authority on China. American concessionaires saw openings in China, and started to buy their way into soft pickings. Donald developed a talent as a negotiator with mandarins and rulers of great provinces. About this time, it was rumoured that he had become fabulously wealthy. But Donald was never interested in money for himself. Danger was his lure, and the excitement of being in the centre of hair-raising politics. He never learned the Chinese language, but where power was, there Donald was handy. Once or twice he backed the wrong war lord, but wheD the bandit of to-day was the war lord of to-morrow, little error of judgment is excusable. Donald was financial adviser to Dr. Sun Yat Sen, president of the Chinese Republic; but after his death government has been with him who could enforce his will by tho strength and loyalty of his army. Chinese armies were; for a period, apt to melt away where better pay seduced them/Japan’s generals found war lords ready to retreat—at a price. Hence the occupation of great slices-of territory. Donald attached himself to Marshall Chiang-Kai-Shek, dictator and leader of tho National People’s Party in the revolution of 1926. With his army. Chiang effected the conquest of all China. His chief-of-staff was* Borodin, now commander of the Soviet armies in tho Fur East. Borodin was “General i Galen" in China, and to-day he is “General Blucher." Chiang, in 1931, broke with Moscow, and has 'since visited Japan, where he was originally trained, at the Tokio Military Academy. His achievements in unifying and modernising China have been amazingly rapid, and his organising powers have been responsible for an effective check upoa Japan. Chiang’s capture by the rebels brought Donald again into the spotlight. Cables related that he was the “goodwill" agent of the Central Government to ransom tho kidnapped “Ningpo Napoleon." Donald, now sixty, and white-haired, went to Sianfu, and effected the rescue.