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Section C–Page Six       Portland Sunday Telegram And Sunday Press Herald–Portland, Maine–Sunday, March 29, 1942

China's First Woman Flyer Tells Thrilling Tale And Great Need Of United China Relief

Country Has Faith In United Nations
By Richard Hallet

Miss Lee Ya Ching, first Chinese woman to win a pilot's license in her own country, has been making flights through the United States on behalf of United China Relief.

Miss Lee is a very cosmopolitan woman, and certainly a very charming one, with a tip-of-the-finger touch for the solution of these pressing problems of the new China. At Bowdoin lately she said that while she had taken her first flight in Switzerland, she had really completed her instruction in California.

Drifting In Space
"At one time I was 2000 feet in the air," Miss Ya Ching smiled, "and my instructor was doing a very nice barrell roll, when suddenly I found myself at loose ends. Yes, to my surprise, I saw that the plane was somewhere else. It was not really in my neighborhood at all. I had been very silly, and had fallen out of it when it was upside down. I said to myself, 'What shall I do now?'"
A natural question for a young woman to pose, who finds herself accountably at a distance from her plane, and flying through space with nothing better for support than Sir Isaac Newton's melancholy laws of gravitation.
"What shall I do? I asked myself. I had a parachute of course. Well, then, pull the rip-cord. Nothing is to be gained by just dallying in the air, And I have been told that the parachute company guarantees money refunded if the 'chute fails to open. And yet, silly me, I had not tried to open it. I think perhaps I was a little absent-minded, and besides, I saw something dropping towards me out of heaven. Do you know what it was?" Miss Lee laugh charmingly, "it was one of my shoes. Ah, poor little shoe, trying to catch up with me.
"It never could of course, so long as my parachute was closed. So I pulled the cord, and opened it, and then the shoe fell past me, plump into the ocean. Yes, we were over salt water at the time, and I remembered that I cannot swim. Still, when I fell smack, I did not hit the water very hard. I pushed the parachute away from me, and floated on my back, hoping that my good friend in the sky would miss me after another barrell-roll or two. He might look back of him to ask his pupil how she was [[enjoying?]] so much over-and-over, and then of course he would understand my situation. He would know my very great loss. He would see that I had lost the plane.
"So I floated on my back, waiting for him, and oh, I was so angry with myself for being so reckless as to fall out of an airplane in that foolish way. I said to myself, 'I have sacrificed my life for nothing. I am not like all my friends in China who have died for a great cause. They have set aside their lives for war and death, to make China free, and that is so very much worth while. That is the salvation of China and no sacrifice of lives is too great to save China.'... And so I prayed that I might be allowed to lose my life more nobly than just to fall out of the skies, and my prayer was answered. My aviator came and picked my up."
Will Continue To Fight
No sacrifice of lives is too great to save China. That is what Admiral Yates Stirling meant when he said here recently that in a war, lives don't count. Nothing but objectives count.
"You are sure that China will go on fighting?" Miss Lee was asked.
"I am very sure," she smiled. "You see she has been fighting very hard for years, against great odds. For five years. Well, our soldiers were often hungry and in rags; sometimes they had no guns, no bullets; we had only a few old planes that Russia gaves us. So the sky was our enemy, just as it was the enemy of the English over Malaya and Singapore; but the Chinese were pushed back only very slowly.
"There are no better soldiers in the world than ours. They are trained to war; fighting is the habit of their lives, and if they give ground, well, it is only a little at a time. So, having fought all those years alone, why should we give up now, with 26 nations behind us, and some of them, like you in the United States, at our side.
"But we must have money for so many things besides the actual war. Your Government have kindly loaned us 500 million for the war itself; but there are other undertakings. It is not all war, even in China, and not all the sufferings are soldiers' sufferings.

earth will be theirs tomorrow. And so everything is made so that it can be taken down and forced to go on wheels or possibly on coolie-back. Schools are like that; yet even with such handicaps, education has increased. In the last five years, 90,000,000 people have been taught to read and write.
"And that is well. China has manpower enough for anything; but she must have enlightened men for leaders. She keeps her young men and young women studying even when they must study by the light of a confined glow-worm--that is, very cautiously--or perhaps even by the light of cannon-flashes.
"We have guerilla soldiers, but we have guerilla students too. They attack learning, while the soldiers attack the Japanese. Students everywhere are encouraged to continue in their studies. There will be war enough waiting for them when they are ready.
"Education, then, is helped by United China Relief, and so is industry. We have the Chinese Industrial Co-operatives that fight an industrial battle behind the front lines. Well it can be a very savage battle too, perhaps as hard as soldiers' battles. Any industry can be moved into new quarters overnight. The Japanese had German-advised planes, and they came and bombed our aircraft factory at Canton.
"In all China there were only two factories for making aircraft; we could not lose this one. So the 2000 workers of the factory took its tools and machines piece-meal on their backs, and crept away North, by night. They hid daytimes under trees and bushes. They lay very still, they and their wives and children, and smeared mud on the bright parts to keep them from twinkling. They were very patient. They did finally move that 
whole factory a distance of 80 miles, and set it up again. 
"But then the Japanese came after awhile and smashed it again. Now there are no airplane factories in China. But we have still a few planes, and our pilots are very brave-they are braver than the Japanese," Miss Lee Ya Chang(Ching) says with a proud smile. 
"The Chinese spirit is very great. Our people fight a war with one hand, and build a new China with the other. When we retreat, we leave nothing behind us but ashes and the dead. Sometimes the Japanese will take a city; but it is only a ruin of a city, and they cannot venture five miles outside its limits without a danger of Chinese guerillas springing at their throats. 
"The Japanese wake up in the morning, and find perhaps that a whole railroad has been spirited away. For two years they have been stopped in their tracks: soon we shall begin to push them back. 
"It is true, the Japanese came in their fast planes at 300 miles an hour, and bombed Chungking. Well, so the Chinese lost houses, but the Japanese lost valuable bombs. These were wasted on the houses; because next day the Chinese thrust up a new city at them. 'Here is another bomb-catcher for you' they said. 
"Chungking has done very great service as a bomb-catcher. 
"But of course all this makes orphans. Madame Chiang Kai Chek is head of the American Committee for Chinese War Orphans. There are 2,000,000 among the 50,000,000 refugees. The Japanese are trying to make slaves out of our children. They are taking Chinese children to Japan by ship-loads. And so now we are trying to get children out of occupied China into free China, where they can be taken care of in orphanages for $20 a year apiece. You see for how long $20.00 in American money will stay with one child.
Vest Pocket Factories
"Some of the relief money goes to the Chinese Industrial Cooperatives. These little societies-as few as seven can start one-build vest-pocket factories, tuck them away in a cave in the hills, or lose them in a patch of jungle. Anywhere out of the sight of the sky. These factories make candles, shoes, clothes, weavings of one kind or another. It is really surprising what you can put together in a cave. 
These seven or more refugees, just as they stand, may have nothing, not even shoes to start with, and perhaps lack a leg or an arm, but they have some skill or remnant of skill. Through Indusco's revolving fund, it is possible to capitalize on this skill. These men and women are able to live and work and hope while soldiers fight. They borrow money from the fund, and as soon as they can, they pay it back, and it is let out to others. 
"Some part of the money collected by United China Relief goes to these societies: some of it, under the American Bureau of Medical Aid to China, goes for ambulances, supplies, and the training of doctors; some for China's Christian colleges, and perhaps 10% of all for research tending to improve diet. Now we are able to make milk as good as cows' milk, from soybeans."

"There is education, for one thing. Even in a war, perhaps most of all in the war, education must not stop. It is from the colleges that so many of our leaders come. Even when guns are flashing and bombs are dropping, colleges must have their classes. So part of the money contributes to the United China Relief goes to Chinese colleges. But the Japanese knew where they were. They came and bombed them all, to make an end of Chinese culture.
"But a college is something more, you will agree, than just the bricks in its walls, and the tiles in its laboratories. A college is the spirit of its teaching, and that doesn't die so easily. A college shifts in the night from one province to another, and lives on, in its books and students and professors. I know one Chinese college that has gone 2600 miles into the interior, taking with it, over rocky trails, across rivers, and through mountain gorges, as many of its books and students as it could. Yes, indeed, a good many thousand cart-loads of learning have gone up the Yanktse Valley.
"And the medical schools. Of course those must be kept going. At the start of the war, China's 400,000,000 people had only 10,000 good doctors. And so the army had so very few. You will find out yourselves what a lack of surgeons mean. Often, after a bloody battle, one poor doctor would find himself with a thousand wounded men on his hands. Single-handed, how could he take care of all? Yet he must take care of them. Often he must operate without antiseptics, with bamboo for operating tables, with clay pots for receptables, and even with cast-iron surgical instruments. Amputation is too likely to mean death, but it is not the doctor's fault; he does what he can with such tools as may be given him.

Floating Population
"You must remember that in China 50,000,000 people-over one-third the population of the United States-are refugees. They cannot stay fixed. They can't be sure what part of the (end)

((Image))
 Lee Ya Ching, first Chinese woman to win a pilot's license in her country, has made many flights throughout the United States to help raise funds for war-stricken China. As aviatrix, actress and speaker, Miss Lee is lending her abilities to the United China Relief in its current $5,000,000 campaign.

Transcription Notes:
Ended at end of second column Ended at the end of third column (joan lee) Ended at end of 4th column