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"The Daring Young Woman." It was Japan, as it turned out, which chose the time—before China became too strong. With China at war, the demands on Madame were terrific. She was Secretary General of the Aeronautical Commission, and that practically meant being commander in chief of the Chinese Air Force. She tried to build the New Life Movement into a vehicle for women's war work. She sat in on most of the Generalissimo's conferences, and though she was seldom a policymaker and never a strategy-maker, she was often an adviser whose advice was taken. She wrote speeches and articles to try to educate the outside world. She went on innumerable inspection tours.
On Oct. 23, 1937 Madame Chiang and W. H. Donald were driving from Nanking to Shanghai to inspect wounded soldiers. At about 4:30 the high-powered car was running around a steeply banked curve when some Japanese bombers appeared overhead. The panicky driver stepped on the gas. The car flew off the road. The passengers were hurled out.
Donald picked himself up and went over to where Madame lay, crumpled and unconscious, her blue slacks and shirt defiled in a mud puddle. "Come on, wake up," he shouted gruffly, then sang: "She flew through the air with the greatest of ease, the daring young woman. . . ." She stirred, moaned. Donald lifted her to her feet. He walked her to a farmhouse, made her change, put her back in the car, asked her what she wanted to do. "We'll go on to Shanghai," she said.
A few minutes later she said: "I can't breathe. It hurts me to breathe." "Then don't breathe," said Donald callously. They reached Shanghai, inspected the soldiers at 10 p.m., drove back that night. Madame had a broken rib.
Periodically, in the tough years of war since that accident, Madame has felt at the end of her rope. She has usually blamed the way the chauffeur drove that car, but she should have blamed the way she drove herself. As the Government moved from Nanking to Hankow and from Hankow to Chungking, as the Generalissimo, with Madame at his side, moved from mere Generalissimo to become China's leader and symbol, she worked harder & harder.
Warphans. Madame herself never had any children. When Chungking was terribly bombed in 1939, Madame took on herself the job of caring for what she called China's Warphans. After one particularly bad bombing, after she had been on her feet all night going from fire to charnel fire, she drove outside Chungking in a truck to find her evacuated charges. She found the children marching along the road, the older ones leading the younger, urchins carrying infants. Madame commandeered trucks and got the miniature army to shelter.
One of her warphans wrote on a wall:
"Madame is my mother."
The Three Sisters. Although she insisted she was "not one of those people who enjoy ill health," Madame became seriously run down, and in December 1939 she flew to Hong Kong for a rest which was also a reunion. For six weeks the three Soong sisters gossiped, cooked, joked, tried on each other's clothes and were, for the first time in years, truly sisters.