CHINA’S FIRST LADY

Southland Times, Issue 23308, 18 September 1937, Page 17

CHINA’S FIRST LADY

PotOerful Influence Of Mme. Chiang Kai-shek

The alert woman pictured below is probably the most powerful woman in the world today. She wears a diamond and platinum ring on the third finger of her left hand, and it means that she is the wife of China’s Premier and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. She belongs to China’s ruling house of Soong, and her name is Mei-ling, meaning “beautiful mood.” Mme Chiang could probably be termed as China’s Prime Minister. Only she knows her husband’s secrets which are cloaked in secrecy by China’s censor —Mme Chiang. Not only is she China’s censor, but also she is secre-tary-general of its air force, chief of the women’s division of the semi-re-ligious New Life Movement of China and a leader of the Red Cross. A GREAT DYNASTY In 1886 a resolute woman, known until her death in 1931 as “The mother-

in-law of the Chinese revolution,” married a self-made trader-teacher

called Charlie Jones Soong. Both adopted the ways and religion of the Occident, and their Christian children now rule China. The eldest, Ai-ling (“loving mood”) married H. H. Kung, 75th lineal descendent of Confucius and China’s Minister of Finance. The second, Ching-ling (“happy mood”) married the great Sun Yat-Sen, who is worshipped as the founder of the Chinese Republic. The third, a son, T. V. Soong, is known as China’s financial wizard and is now out of office, having relinquished it to his brother-in-law, H. H. Kung. The fourth, Mei-ling, married power— Chiang Kai-shek, the Chinese Republic’s Roosevelt. The two youngest are sons, one is a financier, and the other is head of China’s Salt Monopoly.

This is the dynasty of China in whose hands the future of their country lies. WESTERN EDUCATION The progress of the adolescent Meiling to the wife of China’s head man is interesting. Born in Shanghai on March 25, 1898, she was sent by her family at the age of ten to a Wesleyan College in Georgia, America. There she was privately tutored for four years. In. 1913 she went to a university in Massachusetts where she charmed her American classmates with her Georgia accent, beautiful complexion and graceful liveliness. In 1917 she graduated and returned to China where she again came under the influence of her mother’s strict methodism. Twelve years later she defied that dynastic matriarch and made world news by marrying Chiang Kaishek, who had two Buddhist wives and three sons. He spoke no English, but was China’s head man. Under his wife’s influence he became a Christian in 1935, and by that time by their efforts they had fairly united China.

ACME OF LEADERSHIP Mme Chiang accompanies her husband on every important journey connected with State business, more often than not travelling by air and piloting the plane herself. She takes part in all conferences with Government and army leaders at Nanking and carries their secrets with her. Last month she addressed the women of China, calling them to “fight Japan according to your ability. Our final victory will erase forever the days of humiliation which have crowded our calendar, and remove the sorrow which has rent our hearts and bowed our heads.”

At the beginning of this week a cable message was published which stated that when broadcasting Mme Chiang expressed bewilderment at the silence of the Western nations on the subject of the war. She added: — If the Western world deliberately abandons its treaties the Chinese,

who for years have been stigmatized as cowards, will fight until they win or are beaten to broken knees, even

if their good earth is steeped with blood, drenched with fire and destroyed. All treaties out-lawing war and regulating its conduct seem to have crumbled, and we have a reversion to savagery. The Japanese militarists are determined to wreck and eradicate all foreign influences in China and they must regard the Occidental reception of the situation

as delightfully encouraging, deducing from it that they have at last been able to make a clean sweep of Western prestige. The massacres are bound to extend because the Japanese have prepared aerodromes in Shanghai We depend on the wisdom and justice of the nations to save the world and China from the consequences of daily Japanese falsehoods.

What better example could be found of the leadership of a well-educated, deep-thinking woman?