艾格尼絲‧史沫特萊 ( Agnes Smedley) ，美國著名記者、作家和社會活動家，一個杰出的与眾不同的女性。美國人，生于密蘇里州。曾在《紐約呼聲報》任職。
1918年因聲援印度獨立運動而被捕入獄6個月。
1919年起僑居柏林8年，積极投身印度民族解放運動，曾在柏林會見尼赫魯。史沫特萊1928年底來華，在中國一呆就是12 年。
抗戰初、中期，她目睹日本對中國侵略，向世界發出了正義的聲音。 她的《中國紅軍在前進》、《中國人民的命運》、《中國在反擊》、《中國的戰歌》等專著，向世界宣傳了中國的革命斗爭，成為不朽之作。
她親自護理傷員，組織醫療活動，用行動喚醒有良知的人們。
她訪遍了中國華北、華中的大部分地區，用熱情召喚更多的國際友人，一同為中國抗戰出力。
史沫特萊，中國人民的朋友，在生命的最后20年中，她以全部的精力投入到中國人民的革命斗爭。
深愛八路軍
1937年7月7日，盧溝橋事變爆發。8月，紅軍改編為八路軍，開赴華北前線抗擊日本侵略者。史沫特萊在准備隨部隊開赴前線時，不慎從馬背上摔了下來，背部受傷，推遲了行期。10月，史沫特萊養好了傷，隨身攜帶了打字机、照相机和簡單的行李，赴八路軍抗敵前線采訪。她很快赶上了駐扎在太原的八路軍，然后到達北部山區的八路軍總司令部，成為八路軍中第一個隨軍外國記者。
隨八路軍總部轉戰各地，史沫特萊与八路軍戰士同吃同住，她關心普通士兵的生活，增進了与他們的感情。
史沫特萊与八路軍相處不到半年，便深深的愛上了這支部隊。用她的話說：“离開你們，就是要我去死，或者等于去死。”
傷兵之母 1938年1月，史沫特萊到了漢口，以英國《曼徹斯特衛報》記者和中國紅十字會工作人員的身份，一面救護傷員和難民，一面報道中國抗戰，并向世界性組織呼吁救援。
史沫特萊以她火熱的心吸引著來華的外國人士，這些人雖然身份不同，政見不同，但都在史沫特萊的帶動下，積极地為中國抗戰出力。
在漢口，史沫特萊多次訪問美國大使館，向大使和武官介紹八路軍的活動。她多次接触約翰•戴維斯、佛蘭克多恩、史迪威和陳納德,這些人后來成為影響美國制定對華政策的重要人物。
史沫特萊把大部分時間和精力用在為中國紅十字會募捐上，宣傳中國傷兵的英勇事跡和所處困境上。
在漢口，美國和英國大使館、標准石油公司、國民党的高級官員，都曾在她的動員下提供過捐助。
史沫特萊最成功的一次募捐是在一個午餐會上，她使財政部長宋子文感到羞愧，捐出1万元中國法幣支持她的工作。
還有一次，在行政院長孔祥熙的晚宴上，她從這位共產党人的死敵手里，拿走了一張捐給山西游擊隊的巨額支票。
史沫特萊從抗戰初期就為救助傷員奔走呼吁，1938年3月，包括白求恩在內的印度援華醫療隊來華，都是史沫特萊奔走呼吁的結果。
1938年11月，史沫特萊在云岭新四軍軍部，名義上是起草一份給紅十會的詳細報告，但她認為自己的真正使命，是向上海和香港宣傳新四軍醫療隊。
她為上海的《密勒氏評論報》寫了一系列文章，后由《曼徹斯特衛報》轉載，詳細報道了新四軍的處境和對藥品的需求。
她私下還求助于一些英國朋友，以及美國紅十字分會。到了春天，可觀的援助從英國和紅十字會紛至沓來，在史沫特萊的中國同事眼里，她簡直是一位女英雄。
西安經歷
1929年史沫特萊作為外國駐華記者來到中國。1936年，在中共地下党員劉鼎的安排下，史沫特萊到達西安，等待被邀請前往延安。在這期間，駐守西安的張學良、楊虎城將軍扣留了前來部署“剿共”的蔣介石，發動了震惊中外的西安事變。
事變發生5天以后，周恩來率中共代表團到達西安，史沫特萊在与周恩來進行了簡短的交談之后，開始每晚在張學良的司令部進行40分鍾的英語廣播。概述當天西安事態的發展，并報道与這場事變有關的內容。她的報道在上海引起了不小的騷動。
西安的廣播，使史沫特萊成了一個國際人物，并永久地被貼上了中國共產党的辯護人的標簽。
當時住在中國的外國人中，由于政治觀點不同，有人認為她是英雄，有人認為她是無賴。美國報紙說：“她背后有龐大的軍隊”，“美國姑娘，赤色危險人物”，“美國婦女幫助中國人叛亂”。美聯社在一篇很長的背景介紹中，說史沫特萊“從前的一個美國農村姑娘將成為千万黃皮膚人的實際上的‘白膚女皇’”。
延安生活
[史沫特萊在延安]
1937年1月初，史沫特萊正式接到共產党的邀請訪問延安。她的公開身份是到前線去做戰地救護工作。 在延安，史沫特萊与毛澤東、朱德、周恩來和彭德怀等人進行了多次交談，她的手提式打字机一直響到深夜。她給予毛澤東以高度評价：每個人都可以与古今中外社會歷史人物相提并論，但無人能比得上毛澤東。他的著作已經成為中國革命思想中的里程碑。她評价周恩來：是一位學識淵博，閱歷深廣，見解精辟，襟怀坦白，不存門戶之見，毫不計較個人的安福尊榮、權利地位的卓越領導人。她還与朱德總司令頻繁接触，并征得朱德的同意——撰寫朱德平生。
史沫特萊并不局限于采訪和寫作。她還是一個精力充沛的圖書管理員，負責擴展延安窯洞圖書館外文書籍。她努力工作吸引外國記者到延安來。她發動了一場滅鼠運動，對扑滅延安鼠害發揮了作用。她甚至為延安引進了一种新的娛樂方式——西方式的交誼舞。 延安使她興奮，延安使她看到了中國革命的希望。她強烈要求加入中國共產党。毛澤東、朱德、周恩來告訴她，她應該留在党外，以便在外面和國外做更多的工作。她听后感到极為痛苦和傷心，放聲大哭起來。馬海德和她談了許多夜晚，也未能減輕她的悲傷，直到過了很長一段時間，她才理解毛澤東、朱德和周恩來對她說的那些話。
廣州被捕
一九三0年夏，史沫特萊由上海來到廣州，打算實地考察廣東繅絲業及蚕農和繅絲女工情況。在廣州，她匆匆走訪了廣州軍政界長官，德國駐廣州領事館及文化界名流，即前往廣東繅絲工業中心南海、順德、三水一帶考察。一個多月后，當她重返廣州于旅館剛住下，國民党廣州市警察局來人向她展示了逮捕證，罪證是：根据上海英國警務局提供的公文認定，史沫特萊是一名持美國假護照的俄國布爾什維克。
警察揚言要驅逐她出境，最后抄走了她的美國護照。這對史沫特萊來說，失去護照即意味著失去人身自由。
對于上海英國警務局莫須有的指控和廣州警察局的所作所為，史沫特萊十分憤慨，隨即設法報告德國駐廣州總領事和美國駐廣州總領事，要求他們出面干預這一案件。國民党廣州警察局給德國、美國總領事看了上海租界英國警務局的秘密公函，得知罪證的依据為：史沫特萊在英國曾与印度革命領袖維云德拉納什•喬托巴底亞亞結婚（實為同居），已成為英國公民，因而她應持有英國護照；其次她是于一九二八年底從蘇聯進入中國東北的，因而斷定她執行著蘇聯的特殊使命,史沫特萊向廣州警察局解釋說：她与維云根本沒有結婚，僅僅是同居，她的“丈夫” 已經有一個當天主教修女的妻子；她由蘇聯來中國僅僅是路過，但警察們對她的說明絲毫不感興趣。她一下意識到這后面隱藏著复雜的原因，她得罪了不少中國人和外國人，他們的目的決不在于弄清事實，而在于赶她出中國。她不禁啞然失笑起來。史沫特萊只得向美國總領事要求赶快查證她的美國公民資格。總領事十分熱心，答應一定去函美國查詢，但又說“這需要一段時間。在這期間，你是不是把你熟悉的中國友人的姓名一一開出來給我”，史沫特萊斷然地拒絕了他。并明确告訴他：“我以我記者的身份這樣做是不道德的，你以你領事的身份這樣要求也是不道德的”。總領事十分惱火，悻悻地走了。
史沫特萊被軟禁了起來。在她的下榻處廣州警察局的几名警察人員成天盯著她隨意出入她的住處。她要上街走動，他們則跟著，總遭來一群不三不四，竊竊私語的人跟在后面瞧熱鬧。史沫特萊的內心十分沉悶。
宋慶齡給王明的信
2007年，中共党史出版社出版的《聯共（布）、共產國際与中國蘇維埃運動（1931—1937）》第十五卷公布了一封塵封70年的密函，引出了一段鮮為人知的陳年往事。這是一封宋慶齡寫給王明的信函。這封信直陳史沫特萊的背景是共產國際派來的要人，但史沫特萊在西安事變中沒有征得中共領導同意就擅自發表蔣介石和周恩來的密約，給國共雙方都造成很大被動，加上此人多次組織左翼人士和地下党聚會被警方盯梢，客觀上她的工作方法給党的安全造成很大威脅，所以宋慶齡希望王明加以重視。當時宋子文直接找宋慶齡告狀，促使宋慶齡寫了這封針對史沫特萊的信。
信件原文如下：
親愛的同志：
我必須向您報告以下情況，這些情況有可能威脅我的工作和損害我將來在中國可能与之有聯系的任何運動。我提出這些情況供您研究，希望您能著眼于業已發生的情況，給我提供關于今后行為方式的建議。
一段時間以前，作為對毛澤東同志請求幫助提供資金的來信的答复，我在三個月前給他寄去了一筆款項，此事在這里只有一個人知道，他起了聯絡人作用，通過他，我收到了來信和轉寄了錢款。
几周前，宋子文得到釋放蔣介石的保證從西安回來后，想与我見面。他對我說，蔣介石獲釋有一些明确的條件，這些條件經商定是嚴格保密的，并且蔣介石在過一段時間是要履行的。但是他說，共產党人出乎意料地通過西安電台公布了這些條件，而其英譯稿也經史沫特萊報道出去了。史沫特萊小姐以自己的名義公開證實了這些消息的真實性，并補充說，周恩來同蔣介石、宋子文進行了談判，等等。宋子文說，我們說好了，所有這些事情要絕對保密。
蔣介石對“共產党人違背諾言和缺乏誠信”非常惱火，決定不再受這些諾言的約束, 也不履行任何條件。他對宋子文說，別指望同這些人合作，“他們沒有起碼的誠實”等等。這使宋子文极為不安，因為他知道不可能再保持其《西安協議》保證人的地位。
我自然為我們的同志們辯護，我說，這种背信棄義的事應該是楊虎城干的，還說, 無論如何史沫特萊不是在為共產党做工作，而是一個同情中國民族解放運動的自由派作家和新聞記者。
當時宋子文問我：“要是我告訴您，周恩來曾告訴我，不久前您給他們寄去了5万美元，您還會否認您的同志出賣了您嗎？并且他還對我們兩個人（我和宋美齡）說，我們可以通過您同紅軍的代表取得聯系。”
至于史沫特萊小姐，我想說，她不顧不止一次的指示，繼續保持著不好的關系，向他們提供資助，然后就要求党來補償那些由她提議花費的款項。實際上這里的人認為她是共產國際的代表。她把《工人通訊》的出版者、工會書記、“中共上海中央局”特科的工作人員和其他許多人帶到同情我們的外國人的一個住所，結果這個用于重要目的的特殊住所遭到破坏。雖然她無疑是出于好意，但她的工作方法給我們的利益造成了損失。
我轉達了您把她孤立起來的指示，但我不明白，為什么我們的同志讓她在西安工作，給我們造成了麻煩和困難。或許他們認為這只是我個人的看法。
忠實您的宋慶齡（親筆簽字）
1937年1月26日于上海
這封信中提及蔣介石在被拘留西安期間承諾的條件，主要是指周恩來同蔣介石單獨進行談判時達成的相關內容。
1980年《周恩來選集》上卷的出版，其中刊載了蔣介石當時對周恩來的三點承諾, “子、停止剿共，聯紅抗日，統一中國，受他指揮。丑、由宋、宋、張全權代表他与我解決一切（所談如前）。寅、他回南京后，我可直接去談判。”
事情發生后的稍后不久，艾格妮絲•史沫特萊在西安廣播電台接連用英語和德語發表了講話，披露了蔣介石在西安事變中允諾的條件。
魂歸中華
1941年5月，因病回到美國的史沫特萊，仍然表現出對中國抗戰事業的忠誠。她到處講演，撰寫文章，介紹中國抗戰的真實情況，為中國的抗戰募捐。
她在《中國的戰歌》一書出版后，又開始寫作朱德的傳記——《偉大的道路——朱德的生平和時代》1945年8月，在美國舊金山出席聯合國成立大會的董必武拜訪了她，并帶給她撰寫朱德傳記所需要的材料。史沫特萊繼續在貧困交加和政治迫害中奮筆疾書。
1949年11月，她准備取道英國來華，在英國，她把完成朱德傳記當作首要任務。不久, 她的健康因患胃潰瘍出血而惡化，僅靠牛奶維持生命，可她仍不肯放下《偉大的道路》書稿的修訂工作。
1950年4月，她在致友人的信中寫到：“由我的著作而獲得的全部收入，不論來自何處，全歸中國人民解放軍總司令朱德將軍所有，由他按照他的愿望處理——那就是說，建設一個強大和自由的中國。——如果中國大使館來到了，如果能為我的遺体只唱一首歌，中國的國歌——‘起來’，我將不胜感激。
由于我的心靈在這個世界上除了中國任何地方都未能找到安宁，我希望我的骨灰能和死去的中國革命者同在。”
1950年5月6日，史沫特萊在倫敦病逝，終年58歲。次年5月6日，在北京為她舉行了追悼大會和隆重的葬禮。她的骨灰安放在北京八寶山中國烈士陵園的蒼松翠柏間，一塊大理石墓碑上用金字鐫刻著朱德寫的碑文：“中國人民之友美國革命作家史沫特萊女士之墓”。
http://baike.baidu.com/view/46300.htm
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Agnes Smedley, the daughter of a labourer, was born in Osgood, Missouri, on 23rd February, 1892. Ten years later the family moved to the mining town of Trinidad, Colorado. Her father, Charles Smedley, deserted the family in 1903 and at the age of fourteen. Agnes now found work as a domestic servant in order to help to support her mother and her younger brothers and sisters.
In 1908 Smedley passed the New Mexico teacher's examination and although only sixteen years old, started work as a teacher in Terico. However, she was soon forced to return to Osgood to look after her younger brothers and sisters on the death of her mother, Sara Smedley, of a ruptured appendix.
In September 1911 Smedley obtained a place at Tempe College. She immediately got involved in student politics and in March 1912 was appointed as editor of the campus newspaper. While at college she met Ernest Brundin who she married in 1912. The following year she moved to a teacher's college in San Diego.
Smedley became increasingly involved in politics and invited leading radicals such as Emma Goldman, Upton Sinclair and Eugene Debs to speak at the college. In 1916 she joined the Socialist Party of America. In December of that year she was dismissed from San Diego College for her socialist beliefs.
In 1917 Smedley and her husband divorced and she moved to New York City. In 1918 she was arrested and charged under the Espionage Act for attempting to stir up rebellion against British rule in India. Smedley was also charged with disseminating birth control information. While in prison Margaret Sanger and John Haynes Holmes led the campaign for her release.
In prison Smedley met two other radicals, Mollie Steimer and Kitty Marion. Steimer had been imprisoned for circulating leaflets in opposition to United States intervention in the Russian Civil War. Marion, who had just returned from England where she had been a leading member of the Women Social & Political Union, was serving a 30-day sentence for distributing pamphlets on birth control. She also met Roger Baldwin who had been imprisoned for his public support of conscientious objectors in the First World War.
After being released from prison Smedley began writing for New York Call and the Birth Control Review, a journal run by Margaret Sanger. Smedley also published Cell Mates, a collection of stories inspired by women she met in prison. In March 1919 Smedley joined with Robert Morss Lovett, Norman Thomas and Roger Baldwin to form the Friends of Freedom for India. Although a close friend of Robert Minor, Smedley refused his invitation to join the American Communist Party.
In 1920 Smedley moved to Germany with the Indian revolutionary leader, Virendranath Chattopadhyaya and set up Berlin's first birth-control clinic. Although they did not marry, they lived as man and wife. The following year she went to Russia but she was soon disillusioned with the lack of freedom in the country. She was especially upset to hear that old friends, Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, had been imprisoned for their political beliefs.
Smedley wrote about events in Weimar Germany for The Nation and the New Masses. She was critical of both the Freikorps and the Communist Party. In one letter Smedley claimed that on occasions she "could see no difference between the two." While in Germany she became a close friend of the left-wing artist, Kathe Kollwitz.
In 1928 Smedley went to China and over the next few years wrote for the Manchester Guardian and the China Weekly Review. The following year her autobiographical novel, Daughter of Earth was published in the United States and Germany. It received good reviews and The Nation described it as "America's first feminist-proletarian novel".
In 1930 Smedley began a relationship with Richard Sorge, a German journalist working for the Frankfurter Zeitung. While in China Smedley spent a great deal of time with the communist forces and wrote several books including Chinese Destinies: Sketches of Present-Day China (1933), China's Red Army Marches (1934) and China Fights Back (1938).
Smedley also became a close friends with Joseph Stilwell and Evans Carlson. Stilwell was commander of the United States Army in China whereas Carson was President Roosevelt's personal adviser in the country. While in China Smedley reported on the Japanese Army invasion in 1937 for the Manchester Guardian.
Smedley returned to the United States in May 1941 and went on a nationwide lecture tour where she gave talks on her experiences in China. Her book, Battle Hymn of China, was published in 1943, and is considered to be one of the best works of war reporting that came out of the Second World War.
On a tour of the Deep South in 1942 she was appalled by the Jim Crow laws. Smedley caused a stir when she gave an interview to the Los Angeles Tribune where she complained "we can't treat men like dogs and expect them to act like men." As a result of this outburst, J. Edgar Hoover instructed FBI agents to investigate her political past. John S. Gibson of Georgia raised the issue of Smedley's comments in the House of Representatives and accused her of being the "author of many books which portray the glory of the Communist Party."
The FBI interviewed Whittaker Chambers in May 1945. Chambers, a former communist spy, claimed wrongly that Smedley was a secret member of the American Communist Party. This was untrue, in fact Smedley had been a strong opponent of the party since the 1920s. As a libertarian socialist she had appalled by the way the party had supported the repressive policies of Joseph Stalin and his communist government in the Soviet Union.
Smedley continued to lecture on world politics. These speeches were monitored by the FBI and the agents became increasingly concerned with Smedley's attacks on the US government's support for totalitarian regimes. In July 1946 the FBI put Smedley on its Security Watch List.
In 1947 the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), chaired by J. Parnell Thomas, began an investigation into the Hollywood Motion Picture Industry. The HUAC interviewed 41 people who were working in Hollywood. These people attended voluntarily and became known as "friendly witnesses". During their interviews they named nineteen people who they accused of holding left-wing views.
One of those named, Bertolt Brecht, an emigrant playwright, gave evidence and then left for East Germany. Ten others: Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Albert Maltz, Adrian Scott, Samuel Ornitz,, Dalton Trumbo, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson and Alvah Bessie refused to answer any questions.
Known as the Hollywood Ten, they claimed that the 1st Amendment of the United States Constitution gave them the right to do this. The House of Un-American Activities Committee and the courts during appeals disagreed and all were found guilty of contempt of congress and each was sentenced to between six and twelve months in prison.
Smedley responded to these events by helping to form the Progressive Citizens of America, a civil rights group that was committed to defending Hollywood writers, directors and producers who had been named as communists or communist sympathizers by the HUAC.
On 1st January 1948, the Chicago Tribune carried a story claiming that Smedley was being investigated as part of communist espionage ring based in Japan during the 1930s. The article claimed that Smedley was working with the German journalist, Richard Sorge, who was spying on the Japanese government on behalf of the Soviet Union.
Sorge was indeed a spy and had been the first to supply evidence to the west about the proposed attack on Pearl Harbour. Sorge had been arrested by the Japanese authorities in October 1941 and was executed three years later. Although Smedley had been a close friend of Sorge when he had been in China in 1930, she was not involved in his spying activities and despite the article no charges were ever brought against Smedley.
Harold Ickes, secretary of the interior for ten years under Franklin D. Roosevelt, bravely wrote an article in the New York Post, arguing that there was no truth in the claim that the United States government knew that Smedley was a communist spy. However, America was now entering the period of McCarthyism and this was the first of many smear stories circulated about Smedley.
Depressed by the smear stories and the early deaths of her close friends, Joseph Stilwell and Evans Carlson, Smedley decided to move to England in November 1949. Agnes Smedley went to live in Oxford but was now in poor health and she died of acute circulatory failure on 6th May, 1950.
(1) Agnes Smedley, letter to Florence Lennon (1st April 1924)
When I was a girl, the West was still young, and the law of force, of physical force, was dominant. Women were desired, of course, but the rough-and-ready woman made her place, and often the women of the West, the mothers of large families, etc., were big, strong, dominant women. A woman who was not that was scorned, because the West had no use for "ladies." And the woman who could win the respect of man was often the woman who could knock him down with her bare fists and sit on him until he yelled for help. At least this was so in my class, which was the working class. Of course my mother, being frail, quiet, and gentle, died at the age of 38, of no particular disease, but from great weariness, loneliness of spirit, and unendurable suffering and hunger. She wasn't big enough to hammer my father when he didn't bring home the wages, and so we starved, and she starved the most of all so that we children might have a little food. And my father, a man of tremendous imagination - a Peer Gynt - lived in a world of dreams; the minute he had a little money, he went on a huge carouse in which reality played no part, in which he dreamed of himself as a great hero achieving the impossible, etc.
Now, being a girl, I was ashamed of my body and my lack of strength. So I tried to be a man. I shot, rode, jumped, and took part in all the fights of the boys. I didn't like it, but it was the proper thing to do. So I forced myself into it, I scorned all weak womanly things. Like all my family and class, I considered it a sign of weakness to show affection; to have been caught kissing my mother would have been a disgrace, and to have shown affection for my father would have been a disaster. So I remember having kissed my mother only when she went on a visit to another town to see a relative; and I kissed my father but twice - once when he was drunk, because I read in a book that once a girl kissed her drunken father and reformed him and he never drank again!
(2) In her book, Daughters of the Earth, Agnes Smedley wrote about the political opinions of her parents when she was a child.
My mother listened to all the news from the camp during the strike. She said little, especially when my father or the men who worked for him were about I remember her instinctive and unhesitating sympathy for the miners. She hated rich or powerful people or institutions. Through the years she had been transformed from a poor farming woman into an unskilled proletarian. But my father was less clear. As a "native American" himself, with hopes of becoming an employer, he tried to identify himself with the sheriff and the officials of the camp against the strikers, who were foreigners. Still he was unclear; he had men working for him and yet he was an ignorant working man himself, and however hard he worked he seemed to remain miserably poor. He was too unknowing to understand how or why it all happened. But he like my mother, had certainly come to know that those who work the most do not make the most money. It was the fault of the rich, it seemed, but just how he did not know. He drowned his unclearness and disappointment in drink, or let poker absorb his resentment.
(3) Agnes Smedley, Daughters of the Earth, (1929)
About me at that time (1916) were small Socialist groups who knew little more than I did. We often met in a little dark room to discuss the war and to study various problems and Socialist ideas. The room was over a pool room and led into a larger square room with a splintery floor; in the, corner stood a sad looking piano. In the little hall leading to it was a rack holding various Socialist or radical newspapers, tracts, and pamphlets in very small print and on very bad paper. The subjects treated were technical Marxist theories. Now and then some Party member would announce a study circle, and I would join it, along with some ten or twelve working men and women.
I joined another circle and the leader gave us a little leaflet in very small print, asking us to read it carefully and then come prepared to ask questions. It was a technical Marxist subject and I did not understand it nor did I know what questions to ask.
Once or twice a month our Socialist local would announce a dance and try to draw young workers into it. Twenty or thirty of us would gather in the square, dingy room with splintery floor. The Socialist lawyer of the city came, with his wife and daughter. They were very intelligent and kindly people upon whose shoulders most of the Socialist work in town rested. The wife had baked a cake for the occasion and her daughter, a student, played a cornet. While the piano rattled away and the cornet blared, we circled about the room, trying to be gay.
(4) Agnes Smedley, letter to Florence Lennon (November 1921)
Much that we read of Russia is imagination and desire only. And no person is safe from intrigues and the danger of prison. The prisons are jammed with anarchists and syndicalists who fought in the revolution. Emma Goldman and Berkman are out only because of their international reputations. And they are under house arrest; they expect to go to prison any day, and may be there now for all I know. Any Communist who excuses such things is a scoundrel and a blaggard. Yet they do excuse it - and defend it. If I'm not expelled or locked up or something, I'll raise a small-sized hell. Everybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never feel safe.
(5) Agnes Smedley, letter to Florence Lennon (31st December 1921)
Germany is in terrible condition this year. This is particularly true of the working masses, who are so undernourished that tuberculosis is having a rich harvest, particularly of adolescent children. Gambling in the mark has been the great indoor sport of the capitalists for months, and consequently food has increased by 25 to 100 per cent. I have lived in the homes of workers; they live on boiled potatoes, black bread with lard spread on it instead of butter, and rotten beer. In one hotel, the maid who built the fire fainted in our room. Exhaustion was the cause. We talked with her later and learned that she worked 17 hours a day and makes 95 marks a month - about 50 cents. She lives in the hotel, sleeping in one room with all the other maids - a tiny, dirty little place. They receive their food also - clothing they buy themselves - out of the 95 marks a month! This means they all become prostitutes and haunt the streets whenever they have time. Or they pick up "clients" in the hotel.
There are prominent Germans here who say they wonder how long it will be until anti-English propaganda of any sort, whether carried on by Germans or by foreigners, will be forbidden. All hopes of a revolution are dwindling, and the German working class seems to be entering that phase of "Indiaization" which leads to physical and intellectual slavery. For months it seemed that a revolution was certain. But instead, slavery seems more likely now. The working class no longer has the physical resistance for a revolution, and the Entente is too strong, and Russia is too weak. More and more do I see that only a successful revolution in India can break England's back forever and free Europe itself. It is not a national question concerning India any longer; it is purely international.
(6) Agnes Smedley, letter to Florence Lennon about Virendranath Chattopadhyaya (4th June, 1923)
I've married an artist, revolutionary in a dozen different ways, a man of truly "fine frenzy", nervous as a cat, always moving, never at rest, indefatigable energy a hundred fold more than I ever had, a thin man with much hair, a tongue like a razor and a brain like hell on fire. What a couple. I'm consumed into ashes. And he's always raking up the ashes and setting them on fire again. Suspicious as hell of every man near me - and of all men or women from America. My nervous collapse quieted him much. I told him once when I was on the verge of unconsciousness: "Leave me in peace; leave me alone personally; if I can't have complete freedom I shall die before your eyes." But he is ever now and then blazing up again. And he is always smouldering. I feel like a person living on the brink of a volcano crater. Yet it is awful to love a person who is a torture to you. And a fascinating person who loves you and won't hear of anything but your loving him and living right by his side through all eternity! We make a merry hell for each other, I assure you. He is rapidly growing grey, under my influence, I fear. And that tortures me.
(7) Emma Goldman wrote about Agnes Smedley and Virendranath Chattopadhyaya in her book Living My Life (1931)
Agnes Smedley was a striking girl, an earnest and true rebel, who seemed to have no interest in life except the cause of the oppressed people in India. Chatto was intellectual and witty, but he impressed me as a somewhat crafty individual. He called himself an anarchist, though it was evident that it was Hindu nationalism to which he devoted himself entirely.
(8) Agnes Smedley, letter to Florence Lennon (12th November 1923)
I have no objection to a man being a man, however masculine that may be. I hate female men. But I see no reason why a woman should not grow and develop in all those outlets which are suited to her nature, it matters not at all what they may be. No one yet knows what a man's province is, and how far that province, as conceived of today, is artificial. There are many men - such as those often to be found among the Indians - who are refined until they have qualities often attributed to the female sex. Yet they are men, and strong ones. I am not willing to accept our present social standards of woman's place or man's place, because I do not think that present society is rational or normal, either as regards men or women or the classes. I bow to nature, but I don't bow to a social system which has its foundation in the desires of a dominant class for power. That system perverts the very source of life, starting with the home and the schools. Thousands of women are crushed and made inarticulate by that system and never develop as their natures would force them to develop were they in a decent environment.
(9) Mao Dun meet Agnes Smedley while she was in China.
Agnes Smedley was an unforgettable person, whether you liked her or not, and we Chinese liked her very much. She was the most thoroughgoing internationalist I have ever met. There also was absolutely no smack of feudalism in her. And to us Chinese, this is so rare a quality that it made her just that more attractive. She radiated a kind of nobility that is unforgettable - a mixture of incisiveness (at times akin to abrasiveness), alienation from worldliness (at times akin to novelty-seeking), and hatred for evil (at times akin to a lack of forbearance), as well as devotion to others (at times akin to self-denial).
(10) Malcolm Cowley met Agnes Smedley in 1934. He wrote about her in his book, Dream of Golden Mountain (1980)
Agnes Smedley is fanatical. Her hair grows thinly above an immense forehead. When she talks about people who betrayed the Chinese rebels, her mouth becomes a thin scar and her eyes bulge and glint with hatred. If this coal miner's daughter ever had urbanity, she would have lost it forever in Shanghai when her comrades were dragged off one by one for execution. .This evening I'm drawing back. I don't wait to hear Agnes Smedley give her speech, which will be more convincing than the others, as if each phrase of it were dyed in the blood of her Chinese friends.
(11) Agnes Smedley, letter to Randall Gould (19th May 1937)
For the first week of the Sian events I was a first aid worker in the streets of Sian. I had plenty to do, and the foreign hospital gave me bandages, lint, gave me some instruction in first aid whenever I was up against a problem, and took me through the wards to show and demonstrate the care of wounded. The hotel manager gave me cognac in small bottles, and I bought alcohol, iodine, and other first aid medicines. I once took care of thirty Yang Hucheng soldiers in the streets where an accident had killed eighteen on the spot, and wounded the rest. I found myself battering down the doors of merchants to get water. The merchants are as a rule rotters when something uncomfortable happens on their door steps. Then, when the four hundred political prisoners were released (all of them Red Army men, women and children), I became the only medical attendant. One hundred of the three - hundred men were wounded—some with untended old wounds that would soon kill them, some with wounds that festered along, some with leg ulcers, and many with the big, hard, bare feet of peasants - feet swollen and bloody from marching and fighting in the winter's snow. I washed the feet of these men, disinfected their wounds, bandaged them - and returned to the missionary hospital to ask for instructions about certain wounds.
So I had to be the doctor to these wounded men until we could remove them to the hospital. There were fifty-four women and forty little boys with the Red Army prisoners, and I went daily to take care of them also. Nearly all were poor peasants, and some had been slaves. I felt always that I was walking down one of the most tragic and terrible corridors in human history when I worked with them. The sight of poor peasants or slaves who had known nothing but brute labor all their lives, lying there with no covering, no bed, on stone floors, with untended and unhealed wounds, with big, hard, bloody feet - no, I shall never forget that, and shall carry that with me to my grave. I have written for years of the Red Army, yet my first living contact with it was with these peasants. They did not understand me. I was the first foreigner they had seen, most certainly; I wore wool dresses, a fur coat and hat, warm stockings, and leather shoes. I could not talk with them. Those men watched me with hostile eyes at first, many standing back and scowling at me. I do not know what they thought when I washed their feet and tended their wounds. Perhaps they thought me an insane "foreign devil".
(12) The journalist Freda Utterly met Agnes Smedley in China in 1938. She later wrote about her in her autobiography, Odyssey of a Liberal (1970).
Agnes was one of the few people of whom one can truly say that her character had given beauty to her face, which was both boyish and feminine, rugged and yet attractive. She was one of the few spiritually great people I have ever met, with that burning sympathy for the misery and wrongs of mankind which some of the saints and some of the revolutionaries have possessed. For her the wounded soldiers of China, the starving peasants and the overworked coolies, were brothers in a real sense. She was acutely, vividly aware of their misery and could not rest for trying to alleviate it. Unlike those doctrinaire revolutionaries who love the masses in the abstract but are cold to the sufferings of individuals, Agnes Smedley spent much of her time, energy, and scant earnings in helping a multitude of individuals. My first sight of her had been on the Bund of Hankou, where she was putting into rickshaws and transporting to the hospital, at her own expense, some of those wretched wounded soldiers, the sight of whom was so common in Hankou, but whom others never thought of helping. Such was her influence over "simple" men as well as over intellectuals that she soon had a group of rickshaw coolies who would perform this service for the wounded without payment.
(13) Agnes Smedley, letter to Malcolm Cowley (24th July 1941)
I was dumbfounded at the Communist Press before the U.S.S.R. was attacked. In a series of small audiences where I spoke just after I landed. Communists challenged my knowledge by stating that Roosevelt had ordered the Chinese government to wipe out the Communist armies, otherwise they could not get the American loan! That was a lie. Time and again in my small lectures Communists came up to me, pointed a finger at me, and called Roosevelt a dozen kinds of names. Of course, I have not been sitting in New York in Party headquarters, dispensing wisdom. I have only been at the Chinese fronts and in the enemy rear, and in Chongqing.
The truth is that the Chinese Communist Party represents the most democratic force in China, that they fight for their country and people, that they have considered any peace talks with Japan as national treason. But they are not the only progressive force, and their armies are not the only fighting armies of China. I used to think that they were. I support them for their social policy - bringing China out of feudalism to elementary democracy.
This viewpoint infuriates the American Communist Party for they have the theory that once you refuse to follow their Party line, you go right over into the ranks of the moneylenders. But I am what I always was - a real American democrat of the original brand of democracy, yet demanding that it be extended to economic democracy. I will watch and study the American Communist Party program, sympathize with any progressive thinking they undertake, any line which seems to me the right one. My mind may not be the right kind of mind, but it is all I have to go by, and I have not yet been convinced that it can be handed over to the Party to play with as they wish.
(14) Agnes Smedley, letter to Aino Taylor (October, 1942)
My respect for the men of my country mounts daily. The soldiers are educated men on the whole and seem intelligent. They lack international information, but they are a fine lot of men and I'm proud. I like so many things about my countrymen - their informality. Everybody talks with everybody else, every one makes jokes about each other. A very respectable woman with me, one of the lousy rich Mellons, became my chum. She was about my own age and fine looking and before long she dropped all her high-nosed attitude and joined in with the soldiers. She and I just prowled about talking with them, arguing and debating about this and that, and we were soon joined by a serious, handsome WAAC woman about 30 years of age returning to her camp in Des Moines. A Negro girl joined us - the wife of a Negro soldier - so we were four. One night we started singing folk songs in a group and soon we had the whole lounge car, and groups of soldiers who came in, singing at the top of their voices. We sang our way right through the history of America. When we awoke one early morning passing through Wyoming we found snow lying in deep drifts and Cheyenne was completely covered. Farmers, as big as the side of a barn, got on the train in Nebraska. They were fully 6 ft. 6 in. tall and broad shouldered as oxes and wore checkered shirts. They looked worn out from labor. The soldiers looked like gentlemen of leisure in comparison.
(15) Agnes Smedley, Battle Hymn (1943)
On September 3 (1939), before crossing the Yangzi, we took our last rest in a deserted temple high in the mountains. Before going to sleep we ran up the highest peak and looked down on the gleaming river, ten miles away. We saw the black bulk of what seemed to be a cruiser nosing its way up river. To the west we could see a pall of smoke over the Japanese-occupied river port of Tikang. Feng Dafei (the commander) pointed to two towns lying on the plain below us, about five miles from the shore of the Yangzi. "Those are the enemy garrison points," he said. "Tonight we will pass directly between them."
Nearing the mighty Yangzi, we came out on top of the high earthen dikes that hold back the river during the floods. Dark lagoons slumbered on either hand - breeding places of the malarial mosquito. Then a traitor appeared: the red half-moon rose like a balloon over the mountains behind us and cast its ruddy glow across the white dikes and the dark lagoons. I could see a part of the long column in front of me. We cursed under our breath and began to hurry and even run. Our carriers dropped into a slow, rhythmical dog trot, breathing heavily.
Upon reaching a junk at the water's edge many of our people were exhausted and two women nurses had been sick for hours with a malarial attack. Ignoring the danger, they all fell flat on the deck, closed their eyes, and slept like the dead. The great oar at the stern of our junk began to creak and we saw that we were pushing off. Soon we came out on the broad bosom of the Yangzi, blanketed in a silvery haze. A rolling and mighty river, it stretched before us like an ocean. At this point it was five miles wide as the crow flies, but actually seventy li (about twenty-three miles) from our place of embarkation to the village where we were to land.
We anxiously peered at the dark shore and disappearing buildings behind us. The half-moon was now high above, casting a long silvery path over the waters. Flaky clouds floated across its face. The wind blew strong and fresh, and we cried out in joy as it bellied out the great ragged sails and sent us leaping forward. Our eyes scanned the mist, watchful for enemy gunboats; and we strained our ears for any sound of firing.
(16) Agnes Smedley, Battle Hymn (1943)
On July 28 enemy naval planes made a special detour to bomb the Red Cross headquarters and the medical center. After that raid - when doctors had to operate on wounded men injured a second time and convalescent soldiers had to help prepare temporary shelters for the night - Dr. Lin began plans to decentralize and scatter the wards, a layout which would make medical work still more difficult. That evening Dr. Lin brought in a huge bomb fragment and, looking at it speculatively, said, "I've half a mind to make special medals of it and confer them on American firms that sell war material to Japan."
(17) Agnes Smedley, letter to Aino Taylor (7th December, 1942)
The treatment of Negroes in the south has humiliated and shamed me so deeply that my blood runs cold in my veins. Traveling by bus, with the rain pouring, the driver ordered a dozen Negroes to step back and let two handsome white women aboard first. They came on, then the driver saw they had Negro blood in their veins - perhaps their hair showed it. The driver slapped his leg and bawled with laughter and said to the white passengers: "Now ain't that a joke! I thought they was white and they are Niggers." The faces of t he two women and of all the colored passengers were frozen. Mine froze too. Some of the white passengers broke into a laugh at the joke.
I saw a northern white soldier ask a colored soldier to sit down by him and the latter did so; then the bus driver stopped the bus and said: "Stand up. Nigger!" The colored soldier stood up. The white soldier said: "Aw hell!" and stood up also. But had that white soldier not been in uniform, I don't know what would have happened.
Now when I heard this, I should have stood up and killed the driver. But I sat there petrified, sat there like a traitor to the human race. I kept thinking of what Jesus would have done, and knew that he would perhaps have allowed Himself to be killed. I didn't. I didn't do a thing for many reasons: because I was warned a dozen times by white people that if I did anything it would be the colored people who suffered for it. The whole south whispers if the least thing breaks out. In one town in Georgia a fight started in the colored section of the town. So great is the tension that the minute it started, the railway engine on the train began to toot, the air-raid sirens went off as if there was an air raid, police cars and motorcycles roared through the street, and I heard the firing of guns. A street fight starts such a night alarm.
(18) John S. Gibson of Georgia, House of Representatives (August 1944)
Earlier I brought to the attention of the House a very ugly attack made on the South by an Agnes Smedley. She is the author of many books which portray the glory of the Communist Party and its great cause. She is the author of China's Red Army Marches in which she described in glowing language how the Reds with people other than whites had overcome whites in revolution. She pictures the great benefits received from Communist revolutions.
(19) J. Edgar Hoover, memo to the FBI Albany office (24th October 1944)
It is respectfully requested that Agnes Smedley, of Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, New York, be placed on the regular Censorship Watch List, and submissions of all communications and telephone conversations to, from, or regarding her be forwarded to the Bureau.
Purpose: Agnes Smedley is recognized as one of the principal propagandists for the Soviets writing in the English language. Agnes Smedley is considered an authority on Communist activity in the Far East, and as the operations of the United States Army and Navy come closer to the Asiatic Mainland and the Japanese home islands. Communist activity in those areas will be of increasing importance to the Bureau.
(20) Agnes Smedley, letter to Karin Michaelis (April, 1945)
It is a satisfaction to know that the Red Army took Berlin. It was of the utmost importance that the Russians give the warning to all Fascists throughout the world of what will happen to anyone who tries to emulate Hitler. May they take warning - though I do not think they will. This is not the last war. So long as the capitalist system exists, it will try to smash any cooperative country that dares lift its head. We have so many American Fascists who would much rather have joined with the Nazis against the USSRThey will bide their time - and they will engineer another world war. You and I will not be on this earth by that time, but I am convinced that that will be the last world war and that a socialist system of society will thereafter rule the earth. I do not think that ruling classes learn anything from history.
(21) On 10th May 1945 the FBI interviewed Whittaker Chambers on Agnes Smedley. Details of the interview was added to Smedley's FBI file.
Chambers was asked whether he had any evidence of Communist affiliation of Smedley and he pointed out that he did not have any actual evidence but that everyone knows she is a Communist. He stated, "there is absolutely no question about it."
(22) Agnes Smedley, letter to Anna Wang about a lecture on China she had given in Chicago (5th February, 1946)
The audience was tremendously enthusiastic. I was amazed with their response. There was only one hostile question - from a very finely dressed man student, who reminded me that Marshall says the Chinese Communists may advocate democracy today but they have a totalitarian Marxist goal. That is the one reactionary cry in this country today, and it is very important. Speaking to the young man who asked the question, I asked:
"Have you ever studied Marxism?"
"No," he said.
"Neither have I, very much," I replied. "I am an American in that, I fear; and it is a weakness. For the majority of people [in the world] today are inspired by Marxist principles. I have read here and there, from the works of Marx and those that came after him. But not thoroughly. From what I have read, however, I have learned that human societies take on the coloring of their background - from the history and culture of specific countries. Chinese Communists are Chinese, rooted in the soil of their country. They have used Marxism as a method of understanding their history and culture. They indeed aim at a socialist system of society, but this does not mean that they will follow Soviet Russia, or America, or any other country. All they think and do is, and will be, influenced by their own history, culture, and needs. If they are forced, by a combination of Chinese and American reactionaries, to create a totalitarian system that denies civil rights to people, that will not be their fault. They may be forced to fight for their lives and the lives of their people, against all opposition. But from what I know of them, they would prefer it otherwise. They have believed in the power of persuasion. They have believed that they could convince even landlords to advance with them toward more progressive forms of government. During the war I saw them in action. I was often more "leftist" than they, for I could not believe that feudal landlords would surrender their stranglehold on the peasants without violence."
"When we Americans say we fear totalitarianism I question them because, if we feared totalitarianism, we would not support the totalitarian regime of Chiang Kai-shek. Yet we have supported that regime for the past twenty years, and we have done the same with Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco. We found nothing wrong with them, though they violated every aspect of democracy, denied civil rights to the people, and ruled by totalitarian violence. It is dishonest for our government to speak of totalitarianism of the Chinese Communists in some distant future while supporting Guomindang totalitarianism today."
(23) Agnes Smedley, letter to Edgar Snow (9th January, 1950)
Day before yesterday I saw the Italian movie 'Bicycle Thief.' I went alone and stood in a queue for two solid hours to buy a ticket. It was worth it. That little child sits enthroned in my heart. God of gods, but the human animal is savage! On every hand, everywhere, the human being can look on the most appalling injustice, the most blatant poverty due to the ownership of the earth by a few, without rising in their wrath. I can never understand that, and it fills me with despair.
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAsmedleyA.htm
Photographs of Agnes Smedley:Foreign Correspondent
in China
During the 1930s Agnes Smedley was a foreign correspondent in China's battlefields. Traveling with the 8th Route and New Fourth Armies she documented the Communist Revolution for the "Frankfurter Zeitung" and later the "Manchester Guardian." The following photographs were taken of Agnes Smedley during her coverage of the revolution in China.
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 史沫特萊与裁判官黃 ﹖左，少將﹖常平副 第7軍上將在湖北北省Smedley with magistrate of Hwang chwan left, and Major General Uang Chang-ping vice admiral of the 7th army in N. Hupeh Province 1930s Agnes Smedley Collection Acc. #93-1116 |
 "Ching-li---lisiao Kwei" - orderly, Yeh Fan Kwei, my translator, Agnes Smedley and Ann Wang" [LilyWu and Anna Wang] 1937 Agnes Smedley Collection MSS-122 Vol. 42 |
Agnes Smedley(far right) with her friends Mao Tsetung(left) and general Chu Teh in Yenan guerilla base.1937 Photographer: Helen Foster Snow Magnum
Acc# 93-1116
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 中國軍隊和鐵路男在撕毀了自己的鐵路，以防止日本利用鐵路進攻，然后鐵路男 拿鋼軌和大梁和焊接成的大劍的給戰士和游擊隊抗擊他們的敵人"Chinese armies and railway men tore up their railways to prevent the Japanese from using them. Then the railway men carried away the steel rails and girders and welded them into big swords for soldiers and guerrillas to fight the enemy. This is a Chinese railway worker, member of a group of 60 railway workers who banded together to form a cooperative. They use blacksmith forges and bellows to melt and weld the steel rails, then hammer them into swords for use against the enemy." 1930s Photographer: Agnes Smedley Agnes Smedley Collection Volume 38, MSS 122 |
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