Good piece, but I'm going to play the Devil's Advocate....
Bethune followed his conscience and provided much needed medical help to the soldiers of both the Spanish Civil War and the Chinese rebellion. Okay, so that makes him a man of principle.........no argument there.
But one should remember that the revolutionary group he aided in China DID take power 10 years later.....and became the worst bunch of mass-murderers in the entire blood-soaked history of humanity.
Would we consider him a hero if he had been treating Nazis before World War II/
Or Stalinist Russian soldiers in Finland?
You get my drift.......I don't think the mere fact he was a man of principle makes him any kind of Canadian icon......
You might not be aware of this, but the CPC changed considerably after taking power. Prior to taking power, China had already been attacked twice by the British in the Opium Wars because China refused to open its borders to the opim trade even though opium was already prohibited in the UK. The UK, France, the US, Russia, and Japan had already forced extraterritoriality treaties on a humiliated China. Essentially, China was worse than a colony; it was just plain being ransacked by every country that wanted a piece of the action.
When the Japanese then decided to occupy China and established Manchuria, the Chinese revolted. Communism became attractive to many owing to its anti-imperialism, and so the Communist Party was born and grew quickly. At that time, anti-imperialism was its main tenet. Various groups across China, including the Kuomintang government and the CPC, arose against the Japanese. At first, the Communist Party offered to fight alongside the Kuomintang, but the Kuomintang insisted on fighting a two-front war agains the Japanese and the Communists. This is one reason for the Long March. The Communist Party figured that it was just disrupting things by staying on the front lines, and so left them. This helped the Communist Party on a number of fronts:
1. It could build rapor with the local population in various areas and had strict codes of discipline. A soldier coud be shot for pillaging, and conscrition was strictly prohibited. The Kuomintang did both.
2. Being off the front lines for awhile, the Communist Party was preserving its strength, not to mention it had a valid excuse to do so, to help foruc on a war against Japan and not against compatriots. The even won friends and allies among non-Communists.
After the war with Japan, the Kuomintang turned against the Communist Party, but again, the Communist Party knew how to use propaganda effectively. As soon as it was realised that the Kuomintang was receiving funding from the US, the Communist Party made sure the public knew about it. Needless to say that after a generation of being pillaged, the Chinese didn't take too kindly to any foreign intervention in their internal struggles, and so this helped to marr the Kuomintang as a sell-out.
Looking at it that way, there are many valid reasons why the Communists gained so much support and respect, while the Kuomintan ran to Taiwan. Sure the Party became corrupt afterwards, but not at the time of Bethune. In his time, it truly was a national party of integrity wiling to work with others to free itself from foreign domination.
What has become of the Communist Party since has nothing to do with Bethune, and he should be judged according to what he'd done in his time not according to what his party has done since.
