Ocean Devil: The life and legend of George Hogg. James MacManus
what would happen if the Japanese penetrated the defences of the city, whose population had swollen to 750,000.
In this doom-laden atmosphere Hogg and other journalists formed a ‘Last Ditchers Club’ which met regularly at ‘Rosie’s Dine, Dance and Romance Restaurant’. In every city at war the press always finds or creates a ‘Rosie’s Restaurant’. There would be farewell dinners for the ‘deserters’ who were leaving town, and bets were placed on who would hold out the longest. As it happened, UPI’s young English correspondent would be among the small group who did hold out the longest.
While in Hankow, Mao’s chief representative, Chou En-lai, took great care to cultivate the Western press. He met journalists regularly at the Communist Party’s headquarters, and encouraged his aides to be as helpful as possible with briefings. Chou was always careful not to criticise the nationalist government, and to stick to the united front policy positions. Throughout his life the one principle from which he never wavered was the party line, and his slavish obedience made him the ideal apparatchik in Mao’s eyes. To the Western press he was a charming and skilful spokesman for the communist cause. To Mao he was an invaluable organiser and enforcer.
Chiang Kai-shek, on the other hand, tended to regard most of the Western press corps as dangerous subversives. And in his terms he was not wrong. The collective sentiment in the foreign press corps when the war started was anti-Japanese; as the conflict continued and the united front began to crumble, so the bulk of the foreign press became more openly hostile to the nationalist government, and more sympathetic to the communists and their guerrilla armies.
While Chou En-lai received the more important correspondents, especially the Americans, Chiang Kai-shek saw only favoured visitors such as the proprietor of Time and Life magazines, Henry Luce. The government’s trump card as far as the media was concerned was the Generalissimo’s wife, Meiling. She spoke perfect English, and became skilled at presenting the government’s case to the American public; in turn she became the subject of admiring interviews.
In June, before the Japanese closed in on Hankow, Hogg managed to make a train journey north to Xian, and thence by truck to the new communist headquarters at Yenan. It was here that Mao Tse-tung had retreated with his forces after the Long March in 1934–35. Agnes Smedley set the journey up for him, but Hogg delayed his departure for days, torn between his desire to see the communist base and his reluctance to leave his friends and colleagues in the beleaguered city.
Expressing these concerns in a letter home on 3 June, he also gave his parents their first view of his new friend Smedley. With schoolboy enthusiasm he wrote:
This Smedley is a real revolutionary. She has given every penny more or less to those projects I told you of (refugee organisations), has collected thousands of dollars for them but made no provision for herself. She is known as a communist by the foreigners so they won’t have much to do with her. She cannot have Red army status because they don’t have any foreigners except doctors. Because she is known to be connected to them she cannot even get a job with the Russian embassy who are scared of getting into bad odour with other consular and ambassadorial staffs. Her new American passport which she got after great trouble from the American officials was stolen on delivery by Chinese fascist detectives…if the Japanese come they will undoubtedly kill her.
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