893.00/14611: Telegram
The Consul General at Hong Kong (Southard) to the Secretary of State
[Received December 23—8:18 a.m.]
497. Well-known American political commentators recently returned from Chungking where they talked to leaders of both Central Government and Communist factions state that they regard civil war as imminent. Communist armies believe they are being ordered into famine-ridden garrison areas away from their own strongholds in order to weaken or destroy them, while Central Government insists on execution of order as a matter of discipline. The order is widely attributed to Generals Ho and Pai,21 and it has been suggested that the situation could be saved by intervention of Generalissimo.
Evidencing the effect of the present impasse on Chinese morale, it is now being said among local Chinese of unquestioned patriotism that thousands of the young Chinese who have attempted to join the Communist armies in the last year are in Central Government concentration camps in the interior, and it is even predicted that if some solution is not found “there will have to be another Sian”.22
Sent to the Department. Repeated to Chungking and Peiping.
- Gen. Ho Ying-chin and Gen. Pai Chung-hsi, Chief of Staff and Deputy Chief of Staff, respectively.↩
- Chiang Kai-shek was seized and held in detention at Sian December 12–25, 1936; see Foreign Relations, 1936, vol. iv, pp. 414–455, passim.↩