Soong May-ling - Alleged Tryst With Wendell Willkie

Alleged Tryst With Wendell Willkie

After losing to President Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940 US election, Republican candidate Wendell Willkie set out to travel the world in service to the US. During his visit to China, Madame Chiang Kai-Shek and Willkie took an interest in each other.

According to recollections by publisher Gardner Cowles, Willkie's visit to China involved an episode where Soong May-ling seduced Willkie and took him to one of her hideaway apartments in Chungking. At 4am, Cowles noted

"a very buoyant Willkie appeared, cocky as a young college student after a successful night with a girl. After giving me a play-by-play account of what had happened between him and Madame, he concluded that he had invited Madame to return to Washington with us."

But the next day, Willkie had Cowles tell Madame that she could not travel to Washington with him after all. "She reached up and scratched her long fingernails down both my cheeks so deeply that I had marks for about a week,” Cowles wrote.

Soong May-ling wasn’t deterred for long, making it to the United States the next year. While in her suite at the Waldorf, she said to Cowles: “You know, Mike, if Wendell could be elected, then he and I would rule the world. I would rule the Orient and Wendell would rule the Western world.” She asked that he use whatever means necessary to secure the Republican nomination for Willkie, even if it required using China's wealth.

Cowles’s account “raises questions.” wrote Jay Taylor in his biography of Chiang. Many Chinese in gossip hungry Chungking would have known of their time alone and rumors would have spread quickly. In 1974, when a shorter version of the story appeared, a suit was brought on behalf of Mayling, and Cowles testified (perhaps to protect Wilkie) that the affair was “impossible.” Taylor speculates that Willkie, who had several drinks when he talked to Cowles, had exaggerated or misled his young friend who had imagined the rest. In any case, none of the biographies mention even rumors of other sexual indiscretions.