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NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1942 
Chiang Kai-shek Opposes Regional Blocs as Preventing International Co-operation

China's Leader Asks Place In Changed World 
(Continued from page one)

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Herald Tribune-Frank
READS CHIANG'S MESSAGE-
Liu Chieh, the Chinese Minister

which means no more or less than it is a government dedicated to attaining these other two objectives.
Insisting on national independence for all people's, Dr. Sun's vision transcends the problem of China and seeks equality for all peoples, East and West alike. China not only fights for her own independence, but also for the liberation of every oppressed nation. For us the Atlantic Charter and President Roosevelt's proclamation of the four freedoms for all peoples are cornerstones of our fighting faith.
For many centuries Chinese society has been free of class distinctions such as are found even in advanced democracies. At the core of our political thought is our traditional maxim "The people form the foundation of the country." We Chinese are instinctively democratic, and Dr. Sun's objective of universal suffrage evokes from all Chinese a ready and unhesitating response. But the processes and forms by which the will of the people is made manifest, and the complex machinery of modern democratic government cannot, I know to my cost, be created overnight, especially under the constant menace and attack of Japanese militarism. 
During the last years of his life Dr. Sun devoted much of his forward thinking to the economic reconstruction of China, and nothing, I believe, so marked his greatness as his insistence that the coming tremendous economic reconstruction of China should benefit not the privileged few but the entire nation.
The absence of a strong central government capable of directing economic development, the bondage of unequal treaties trying to keep China as a semi-colony for others, and above all the jealous machinations of Japan, all these greatly retarded the economic reconstruction to which the national revolution of China is dedicated. 
But the end of the present war will find China freed of her bondage, with a vigorous government and a people ardent with desire to rebuild their country. I feel the forces of this desire as a tidal wave which will not only absorb t he energies of our people for a century but will also bring lasting benefits to the entire world. 

Asks World Co-operation 
But the bright promise of the future, which, has done much to sustain us during our grim struggle with Japan, will cruelly vanish if after paying the price this second time we do not achieve the reality of world co-operation.
I hear that my American friends have confidence in the experience of men who has "come up the hard way." My long struggles as a soldier of the Chinese Revolution have forced me to realized the necessity of facing hard facts. There will be neither peace, nor hope. nor future for any of us unless we honestly aim at political, social and economic justice for all peoples of the world, great and small. But I feel confident that we of the United Nations can achieve that aim only by starting at once to organize an international order embracing all peoples to enforce peace and justice among them. To make that start we must begin today and not tomorrow to apply these principles among ourselves, even at some sacrifice to the absolute powers of our individual countries. We should bear in mid once of the most inspiring utterances of the last world war, that of Edith Cavell: "Standing at the brink of grave, I feel that patriotism along is no enough."
We Chinese are not so blind as to believe that the new international order will usher in the millennium. But we do not look upon it as visionary. The idea of universal brotherhood is innate in the catholic nature of Chinese thought: it was the dominant concept of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, whom events have proved time and again to be not a visionary but one of the world's greatest realist.

Desires No Leader Role
Among our friends there has been recently some talk of China emerging as a leader of Asia, as if China wished the mantle of an unworthy Japan to fall on her shoulders. Having herself been a victim of exploitation, China has infinite sympathy for the submerged nations of Asia. and toward them China feels she has only responsibilities -- not rights. We repudiate the idea of leadership of Asia because the "Fuehrer principle" has been synonymous for domination and exploitation, precisely as the so-called "East Asia co-prosperity sphere" has stood for a race of mythical supermen lording over groveling subject race.
China has no desire to replace Western imperialism in Asia with an Oriental imperialism or isolationism of its own or of any one else. We hold that we must advance from the narrow idea of exclusive alliances and regional blocs, which in the end makes for bigger and better wars, to effective organization of world unity. Unless real world co-operation replaces both isolationism and imperialism of whatever from in the new interdependent world of free nations, there will be no lasting security for you and for us.

Who Is Who at the Forum
Chiang, Symbol of New China, Once Officer in Japan's Army
Before he was eighteen years old, Chiang Kai-Shek cut off his queue, which in the Manchu-dominated China of those days was regarded as a sign of "dangerous thoughts," and his teachers shook their heads and predicted the boy would come to no good end. Now, at the age of fifty-five, Generalissimo Chiang is the embodiment of the hopes of China's millions; he has led his country through a frightful physical and spiritual ordeal to self-reliance and self-respect, and there is no despair in him or in his people.
In attaining this stature, ranking him with the other great leaders in the world, Chiang has passed through long and dreary years of violence, frustration, exile and victory, carried onward by the singleness of purpose to which he has dedicated himself, the liberation of China. It is a piece of irony which the Japanese do not appreciate that Chiang learned the military art in Japan, where he went to study as a youth, and it was there also that he made the acquaintance of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, China's revolutionary leader. It was a meeting which set the course of Chiang's life. "That man," Dr. Sun is reported to have said, "will be the hero of our revolution." It was a prophesy which was fulfilled, but no one, observing the routine of Chiang's existence today and knowing nothing else about him, would be apt to identify him as the moulder of modern China.
He leads an almost ascetic existence. He is lean and hard, as a soldier ought to be. His uniforms are simple and inexpensive and he eschews decorations except when ceremony demands them. He is a devout Christian, and passes half an hour each morning and half an hour each night in prayer. His day begins at 5 o'clock in the morning and ends at 11 o'clock at night. He neither smokes nor drinks, and guests at his table who expect sumptuous banquets are certain to be disappointed; they are likely, even, to rise from the table a little hungry.

By his side constantly, helping him in his thoughts and his decisions, is his American-educated wife, the former Mei-ling Soong, whose intelligence and devotion have been of incalculable assistance to the generalissimo, and whose advice he continually seeks.
The influence of Mme. Chiang and her mother Mme. H. H. Kung, is credited with converting Generalissimo Chiang to Christianity, which he embraced on Oct. 23, 1930, saying "I feel the need of a God such as Jesus Christ." Before arriving at this spiritual decision the generalissimo had studied the Bible earnestly; it was no spur-of-the-moment impulse that led him to accept the doctrines of his new faith. 
In many ways Mme. Chiang has been of inestimable help to her husband. He has traveled little outside his country, he has led a hard soldier's life, and Western ways have been strange to him. Mme. Chiang's educational background-she is a graduate of Wellesley College -- made her an ideal interpreter of Western customs and Western thought. She has served as a kind of super-liaison officer between cultures of the West and East.
Generalissimo Chiang was born Oct. 31, 1887, in a village between Ningpo and Hangchow in Chekiang Province. After his father's death in his early boyhood he was placed in the care of relatives who sent him to a military school. At the age of eighteen he went to Japan to continue his military studies.
When the October revolution of 1911 erupted, Chiang was in Japan, an officer of the Japanese Army. With two other Chinese cadets, Chiang went to Tokio [[Tokyo]], bought civilian clothing, eluded the police and escaped to China. Within a month he was fighting, leading a band of revolutionists against the Manchu stronghold of Hangchow. The city was taken.
This, at the age of twenty-three, was Chiang's baptism of fire and the beginning of his career. He became one of the chief officers of Dr. Sun, who has been called the Chinese George Washington, and after Dr. Sun's death in 1925 Chiang came to have more and more influence. A visit to Moscow in behalf of Dr. Sun had led to his acquaintance with Dr. Vassily Bluecher, then known as Galen.
The two men planned and executed the northern march of 1926, which tied together the north and south of China for the first time in fifteen years. It was a brilliant military exploit which led to the occupation of Hankow, Nanking and Shanghai. By 1927 Chiang had established a national government in Nanking, the first unified central government since the revolution began many years before.
More campaigns followed, extending the power of Chiang to Peking. In 1928 he became President of the Chinese Republic, and three years later was made commander in chief of all its armed forces. He had broken with the Chinese and Russian Communists in 1927, and since that time was acknowledged leader of the Kuomingtang, China's Nationalist party.
Revolts inspired by the war lords and civil uprisings rose continuously in the next few years to impede Chiang's efforts to create a unified China. The Japanese occupation of Manchuria was a severe blow to his prestige, but one that he withstood as he withstood many others. Yet, the unified China which Chiang so much desired was made possible largely through the Japanese themselves, with the "Chinese incident" that led to the undeclared Japanese war in 1937.
Japanese generals had expected that China would fall apart, but Japanese oppression and Japanese brutality had the opposite effect. Factional disputes were forgotten in this hour of grave danger from without and out of it arose a magnificent, united courageous nation, with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek at its head.