52
PARTISAN REVIEW
And if ·it was the author's intention to depict primarily the relation
between whites and Negroes, why should he have limited himself to
elemental Negroes and diseased, sophisticated or queer and sex-starved
white rich ladies?
What about the relation between white and black workers? What
about the relation between Negro and white sharecroppers fighting hand
in hand in the South?
LEON DENNE:'II'
CHINESE EPIC
CHINA's RED
ARMY MARCHES,
by Agnes Smedley. lnternaJio nal Pub–
Lishers.
$1.60.
Miss Smedley's book almost makes th;: office of criticism superfluous.
Her material is so momentous, and her rendering of thi3 material is so
straightforward, that the book becomes a
fact.
Here is the story of the
building up of the Chinese Soviet Republic and the Chinese Red Army–
the epic of six years' revolution against the bloodiest suppression of the
foreign imperialists, and their agent, the traitorous Kuomintang. One
sees this army-"half army, half partisan"- marching ragged and bare–
foot and famished over snow-covered mountains. One sees it camping at
night, and overhears the conversation of the peasants, artisans, and workers
who form the ranks. It marches forth to an engagement, outnumbered
three to one, armed only with spears, bamboo clubs and hoes, facing the
machine guns and cannon of the imperialist forces. "The Chinese Red
Army does not have one gun from Soviet Russia. All of its weapons have
been captured from the Kuomintang armies sent to suppress it; all bear
the stamp of munition dealers of foreign· capitalist powers." The partisans
give a life for a gun, or, as frequently happens, the White troops, peasants
and workers themselves, go over wholesale to the Red Army, deserting
their imperialist leaders and surrendering their munitions. The Red
Army fights with propaganda as well as with bullets. At night, or in
the lull of battle, it shouts to the White troops : "Brothers of the White
Troops, why do you fight for the capitalists and imperialists? Land to
the peasants and soldiers! Eight hour day for the workers!" For the
Red Army as a whole it is a record of superhuman heroism and endurance
for the individual partisan. And as one reads, one has hardly the feeling of
seeing all this through the eyes of another person. The epic seems to unfold
directly, as if there were not the agency of an observer between the events
and the reader.
This impression, of witnessing the events first hand, comes from the
quality of Miss Smedley's reporting. Her reporting is objective, pruned
of all non-essentials, innocent of all striving for effect; and it is informed
with a political realism that lifts it above the sort of journalism which
