Dushiqiao

Saturday, 17 February

I felt rather upset for the whole day because of the forceful behavior of brother Jincheng. But I thought that as the matter has developed like this and Jincheng’s character is like this, it is useless to be upset. What I can do is forgive him.  As for mother and others, as I made trouble for them it is useless to be sad. What I could do was to cheer myself up to work harder in the future so I can mend my mistake in the future.

Lou Tongsun came. He said he saw Deputy President Ye Chucang yesterday. Ye talked to him about the constitution issue, as well as to whether the power of the National Congress would be implemented by this National Congress which passed the constitution.  In other words, the issue was whether we should abolish Party rule. Ye thought that for whatever reasons we should oppose the abolition of Party rule at this moment. Lou Tongsun asked what the Generalissimo thought about it. Ye said within the KMT there was a small section of people like Zhang Qun, Wang Shijie and others who advocated strongly for this, but for whatever circumstances, even if General Chiang was convinced, he would still oppose it personally. He was not alone in this. Many military men are also opposed to it. So if this is carried out with no regard to the overall situation, he is afraid it will lead to ‘revolution’. Lou Tongsun was extremely scared and immediately came to Mo Qingxiang (毛慶祥) and talked to him about General Chiang’s real opinion. Mo said General Chiang was still not very forthcoming. They happened to touch on Sun Fo. Mo said that in the past two and a half years Sun Fo was determined to resist Japan and unite with the Soviet Union because Wang Jingwei was pro-Japanese. Sun’s attitude was extremely optimistic which gave substantial support to General Chiang. But now Wang has gone and the Party inside has unified, Sun Fo could go two ways. Firstly, to hold an independent view. When General Chiang makes mistakes he could point them out frankly. Given Sun Fo’s status, General Chiang would regard his opinion highly. Secondly, as the Party inside has unified, Sun Fo should first think of General Chiang in all matters, and should be in unison with him. Sun Fo should be closer to Chiang and his associates, he should not be in a rush to express his opinion when things happen.

Lou Tongsun said that such opinion should not originate from such an insignificant person like Mo, it should be the opinion from a much more important person than Mo. Certainly he wanted Sun Fo to take the second path. Mo also said that when Hu Hanmin was in charge of the Legislative Yuan, Hu’s attitude was to make it a gathering place of various talents. So when a person was needed for a certain issue, Hu would recommend the legislative committee take the job. So the legislative committees could show their talents and the Legislative Yuan was elevated to the highest place, and because of this, the political status of Mr. Hu was elevated to the highest place too. But now, on the one hand, Mr. Sun never cared for the legislative committee’s choices (Mo listed the names of Lin Gengbai, Ling Jidong, Ye Xiasheng (葉夏聲)[1] and others), and on the other hand he enthusiastically recommended legislative committees to take all kinds of jobs. In other words, legislative committees could not show all their talents while the status of the Legislative Yuan was increasingly declining. This, in return, tarnished the political status of Mr. Sun. From now on, Sun Fo might have to change his method of doing things. Mo also said when Sun Fo returned from abroad to Hankow, General Chiang had treated him quite well and discussed matters large and small with him. Nevertheless, recently General Chiang could not discuss matters on many aspects with Sun Fo. I thought with regard to the criticisms of the work of the Legislative Yuan he was quite right. But as for the suggestion that Sun Fo should have more contact with General Chiang, I thought the problem was with Chiang not Sun. If Sun Fo was much more toady to Chiang’s side against his own wishes, it would tarnish his integrity and would not be helpful for the overall situation. It might, on the contrary, make General Chiang look down on him. Also, whether General Chiang was close to Sun Fo or not, it depended on whether he felt it was necessary or not. Chiang’s grace was something that Sun Fo could not and should not ask for. I thought Sun Fo’s attitude was recently quite appropriate as he now believed General Chiang would fight to the end. With this in mind all other things become unimportant and he could give in to Chiang and support him by all means. Even though Sun Fo felt that Chiang did something wrong he only expressed his disagreement gently. If Chiang did not listen Sun simply just let it be and did not protest strongly. Sun Fo also took the flexible line and would never compete for jobs with others. If the Party and the state needed him he would try his best. Lou Tongsun strongly agreed with what I said.

[1]Ye Xiasheng (1882-1956) was a Cantonese veteran revolutionary leader.