7 David Ben-Gurion 7

of office, he initiated several plans for secret talks with

Arab leaders with a view to establishing peace in the

Middle East. The talks were unsuccessful.

In June 1963 Ben-Gurion unexpectedly resigned from

the government for unnamed “personal reasons.” His

move apparently resulted in part from the bitter internal

controversy between his supporters and his rivals in the

party. Ben-Gurion left Mapai in 1965 with a number of his

supporters and established a small opposition party, Rafi.

In 1970 Ben-Gurion retired from the Knesset and

from all political activity, devoting himself to the writing

of his memoirs in Sde-Boqer, a kibbutz in the Negev. He

published a number of books, mostly collections of

speeches and essays. Through most of his life he had also

engaged in researches into the history of the Jewish com-

munity in Palestine and in the study of the Bible.

Chiang Kai-shek

(b. Oct. 31, 1887, Chekiang Province, China—d. April 5, 1975,

Taipei, Taiwan)

C

hiang Kai-shek was a soldier and statesman who was

head of the Nationalist government in China from 1928

to 1949 and subsequently head of the Chinese Nationalist

government in exile on Taiwan.

Chiang was born into a moderately prosperous mer-

chant and farmer family in the coastal province of

Chekiang. He prepared for a military career first at the

Paoting Military Academy in North China and subse-

quently in Japan. From 1909 to 1911, he served in the

Japanese army, whose Spartan ideals he admired and

adopted. More influential were the youthful compatriots

he met in Tokyo, who wanted to overthrow the Qing

(Manchu) dynasty—a group that had controlled China