Goodbye to Old Peking: The Wartime Letters of U.S. Marine Captain John Seymour Letcher, 1937-1939 (review)

Reviews 151© 1999 by University ofHawai'i Press (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), p. vii, wherein it is stated: "Many Western thinkers posit an essential antagonism between a state and its people, with government little more than an armed truce between them, whereas one strand ofChinese thought holds that state and society complete each other; that they do not ultimately conflict; that rule is beneficial. There are also negative views, less novel to Westerners, which find the state to be hostile to the aspirations ofits people, or aspiration itselfto be absurd. These streams of thought and the variants meet and interact to form the rich tradition ofChinese philosophy." 2.Herbert Fingarette, Confucius: The Secular as Sacred (New York: Harper and Row, 1972). 3.Ivanhoe does offer a rationalization based on the ethical principle ofuniversalizability. But, to me at least, this argument is not wholly convincing. See Ivanhoe, Confucian Moral Self Cultivation, pp. 87, 89-91, 93, 97. 4.One component ofthis argument is the characterization ofDai Zhen as "rather bookish." But, after all, was not Zhu Xi "rather bookish"? See ibid., pp. 84, 87. Roger B. Jeans and Katie Letcher LyIe, editors. Goodbye to Old Peking: The Wartime Letters of U.S. Marine Captain John Seymour Letcher, 1937-1939. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1998. 187 pp. Hardcover, isbn 08214 -1228-0. In late February 1937, yet another American couple, Captain John Seymour Letcher and his wife, Elizabeth, arrived in China, knowing little of the country. They journeyed by ship, train, and finally rickshaw to Peking (Beijing) where Captain Letcher would command Company B ofthe U.S. Embassy Marine Guard for the next two and a halfyears. With a keen eye for detail, he chronicled his Peking experience in letters to his parents in Virginia. Through his eyes we experience wartime Peking in the twilight of a golden age that had spanned five centuries. Dynastic China had gasped its last breath, and Communist rule was only a decade away. These letters home provide a unique record ofan era largely overlooked by military historians and modern China specialists. In his steady stream ofletters, Letcher offers valuable insights in three areas in particular: the lives ofU.S. Marines assigned to China garrison duty in the late 1930s, the impact of the Sino-Japanese War, and the privileged existence ofWesterners in Peking. To the Chinese, the American military were protectors of China and of American interests, similar to a police force: the higher the visibility, the less real work needed to be done. Consequendy Letcher's duties were light: drilling his men and holding target practice. Athletic events were equally important—not only to keep the troops occupied and in good physical condition, but also to ward 152 China Review International: Vol. 6, No. ?, Spring 1999 offthe twin curses ofvenereal disease and alcoholism. Each company fielded a basketball, softball, track, and swimming team for intercompany competition. The captain was an enthusiastic participant. Letcher seldom worked more than half a day and could get away from duty for days at a time. He spent his considerable amount offree time with his wife Betty either combing shops for Chinese antiques, sightseeing and dining on exotic fare, or hunting game with friends. The letters record in detail his obsession with hunting. In his pursuit ofwild boar, duck, deer, or pheasant, Letcher traveled widely in China. He was even permitted to enter Japanese-occupied Manchuria and the region west of Peking to what is known today as Outer Mongolia. Game was much smarter in China for, with no game laws, animals were hunted everywhere and dius became exceedingly wary. All attempts to deceive the ducks, for example, by wearing gray garments to look like a horse, failed dismally. While Letcher ate fried boar fat with relish, catching boar met with failure. Despite his complaints about the bitterly cold Peking winters, he stoically endured temperatures of 49 degrees below zero in Manchuria for a chance to bag elusive prey. As the captain went about his military duties, pursued off-hours pleasures, and, with Betty, indulged in the intoxicating social schedule offoreign officials who served in Peking, the Sino-Japanese War slowly unfolded before him yet scarcely interfered...