THE CHINA DEBACLE

...5. The Chinese have seen in the re* peated failures of Congressional groups to elicit an admission from Truman that China's fall to the Communists woulU be disastrous for us, a sentence of execution...

...iHow do you suppose our press* absurd twitterings about the likelihood of T/toiam in China—fed from Washington—have affected the Chinese...

...The petty officials, who have complicated the problems of the Nationalists by fleeing before the Reds, are fed up...

...Secondly, China not only needed American aid, but sincerely valued American friendship...

...Now that the debacle seems all but completer what next...

...That, at any, rate, seems to be the real heart of what Dean, Acheson .has told worried Congressmen...

...Broadening the government's base meant only one thing—creation of a Communist-Kuomintang coalition on Communist terms...

...returned home to become Secretary of State and to demonstrate through studied indifference that,"to him, the nttesshe had left behind was a pain in the neck...

...But FDR thought it could be fixed.' * At Yalta, therefore, Stalin .turned up with the...

...To facilitate matters, General Marshall persuaded the Nationalists to open the Kalgan pass to the Communists...

...It may develop into widespread ; guerrilla warfare,, with i formidable re - volts n>ring up here and there...

...But the Communists meanwhile heavily indoctrinated'their own forces and tried sub* verting those of Nanking...

...So, General Marshall was permitted ' to, render the Communists a series of inestimable'favors...

...in the end he becomes desperate...

...Upon returning from the Far East in 1929, he became en editorial writer for the New York Herald-Tribune, in which post - be remained.until 1944...

...For three years thereafter Nanking never dared describe, the Communists as Russian stooges, although international Communism was denouncing Nanking ns pn agency...

...imperialism., Nanking, feared, of course, that arousing the Chinese against the Kremlin and its puppets might bring1 down upon China Stalin's wrath, and America's withdrawal...

...Communist sabotage of communications cancelled out the former...

...Resistance will go on, perhaps for years...

...of U.S...

...It launched :a vicious- propaganda campaign against thai U.S.A and Chiang Kai-shek as a "tool, of American imperialism/' THEN GENERAL MARSHALL arrived with "suggestions" from President Truman-'which amounted to an ulti-* matum to the Nationalists to establish peace by reorganizing the government on a broader base, or promised U.S...

...FOR THE:PAST YEAR, while Nationalist defeats, were developing...

...I have been told by several competent military men that had Chiang politely invited Marshall to return home with,his directive, which was an intolerable intrusion upon China's sovereignty, the Communists might have been, defeated within a few months...

...One, of course, was the passionate Chinese craving for peace: the people had to be shown that no chance to negotiate a reasonable peace was being rejected...

...Thirdly", the Chinese feared rebuffing Marshall lest America turn its back: on China and remain indifferent in the event of Russian intervention to save - the Communists...

...The State Department also manages to show distress over possible Communist con* quest of Southern Asia, without wasting a sympathetic word on hundreds of thousands of armed Chinese who have .either died or quit, dying in the service of civilization against latter-da/ Tartarian...

...After more than a year of his truces— when the Communists made it, plain they had no more use for his services ¦--Marshall...

...Gilbert is now a free-lance writer...

...Communist southern sweep could be halted,) have been stressing the hopeless demoralization of China's armies, people and I government, •• A The Nationalist soldiers NWdn't fight, these "experts" have been saying...

...out - second-hand r Muscovite propaganda and smearing everyone.who has suggested that' the...

...The China Debacle By Rodney Gilbert NO PEOPLE so thoroughly deserved peace, Allied esteem, and a chance to rebuild, as did the Chinese after eight years of wartime suffering unparalleled in our time...

...Great bodies of lesser officials in what is still free China, prefer to be used by the conquering Reds than risk exile, and are easily persuaded that if the raging fire, can be extinguished by sacrificing obstinate men like Chiang Kai-shek, they...

...At Teheran, however, FDR asked Stalin if he would not like to recover for Russia those rights in Manchuria which Czarism had surrendered to Japan in 1905, afttt which Stalin had sold to Manchukuo following, Japanese alienation of Manchuria (Hopkins Papers...

...3. INFLATION had a ruinous effect on confidence in the government...

...The Chinese are shrewd observers...

...But, so far as the world's relations With China are concerned, the Red conquest Will probably be complete enough' to make China as much*a Kremlin satellite as Poland or Czechoslovakia, and to transform it into a base for the subversion of East Asia...

...They overstayed their time to/ enable Chinese Communists to appropriate the supplies and .weapons of Japan's bestequipped, army, "and to organize them* selves...

...military and economic aid would be withheld...

...THERE IS NO ESCAPING the impression that since Marshall took to China bitter Joe StilwelTs unbalanced notion of how to bully the Chinese, and failed dismally in its implementation (to Stalin's great...

...Demoralization does exist, but it cart be accounted for by these factors: > 1. At Cairo, Franklin D. Roosevelt had promised Chiang unconditional • restitution qf Manchuria...

...above demand, and stipulated that news of the agreement was to be withheld from China until Moscow was ready to disclose it...

...FDR agreed, without British concurrence...

...Unless you have lived under runaway inflation, you can have no conception of what it does to one's integrity and morale...

...Kong or the Philippines...

...Meanwhile, Mao Tse-tung's native Communist regime was making exorbitant, demands, including'surrender to it of a belt of provinces across North Chinas It i provoked armed clashes to consolidate itsi holdings...

...They abandon their equipment and scatter, or desert to the enemy wholesale...

...On the eve of her victory over Japan, China finally received word of this deal, as a result of which heir confidence in America was shattered...

...Chiang and* his advisors swallowed their pride, to satisfy Marshall, for several reasons...

...He had the Chinese army's political education department abolished, cutting off the only official medium through which it could be told why it was fighting Communism...

...Rodney Gilbert, who has been a newspaperman for forty years, spent seventeen - of - tttam in China and neighboring countries...

...Once the Communists had compelled Nanking to spend 90 percent of its hard-metal and foreign exchange on warfare—while they obtained Japanese supplies gratis...

...No one believed the latter would be satisfied with less than the conquest dt all China, But the Communists were then weak militarily, and it was imagined that, to establish contact with those in power, they would respect democratic- processes...

...should be bound and delivered to the enemy...

...The possibility that civil war would deny -them, these rewards was a thought so repugnant to responsible men in Chungking in August, 1945, that they could not bring themselves to contemplate it, much less discuss it...

...This rather frail hope was devastated when the Red Army rolled down through Manchuria, and the terms of the Russo-Chinese treaty negotiated by Stalin and Roosevelt at Yalta were made known...

...The Unequipped Nationalist armies— trained 4n India, Burma and the southwest--were : going through' Manchuria like wildfire, Mao Tse-tung's small and poorly-supplied army, was confined to the northwest by Fu Tso-yi's veteran force,, then well-equipped...

...The people, over whose ¦ fields and homes war machines have so often rolled, and who don't understand why they are rolling again, weep for peace or curse whatever force tramples them down...

...Delivery of repair -parts was stopped, so Jhat disabled Nationalist planes, guns and trucks coujd not be repaired except by what is known as "cannibalism" [Gl jargon for removing usable pieces of wrecked or worn equipment for repair purposes—Ed...

...For the only other "partners" could be the Democratic League—a fellow-traveling group—and the Socialist and Young China parties, which were debating societies with microscopic memberships...

...4. Wide acceptance here of Commu* nist propaganda — bad enough whila 'America Was dedicated to appeasing Russia, but for worse after the painful awakening—convinced China that Kremlin attacks on the "corrupt, reactionary and incapable Chiang KaU shek" were music in our government's ears...

...advantage), nothing can be done until events have liquidated stlffrnecked ^Chiang ,Kai-shek, whoso obsUnancy contained1,500,000 Japanese troops,while GFs fought their way to bases .from which to defeat Japan...

...His former enemy, ,L1 Li-san (now Li Ming-jan—"the naturally effulgent"), is Stalin's satrap and storekeeper in Manchuria., And without Manchuria, any Tltocsquc gesture by Mao Tsc-tung would be a flash in the pan...

...Batthat did not happen—even after Marshall* demonstrated his bargaining power.in the Stil well manner by with - holding ;tho, 1500,000,000 loan that yhad been promised China...

...The man who finds his hardearned money melting away like a snowball is ready to believe the worst about the government that prints the worthless green stuff...

...into the current great debacle, American "experts" who have been feverishly d o 1 i n g...

...They also refused the Nationalists access, to Manchuria's only fully developed ports, Rairen and Port Arthur...

...Whatever it may cost ,the anti-Communist world in the future, nothing must be done until Chiang's dust is blown sky high...

...Marshall the latter...

...Stalin thought the Chinese might disagree...

...He held up the Manchurian campaign until the Reds had recruited, and trained hf the use of Japanese arms, a horde of ex-puppet troops, ex-bandits, Soviet-schooled Koreans and Mongols, and Chinese Reds who had trekked from west China across Inner Mongolia...

...But a look about Washington will reveal the degree to which we.have.been responsible for this demoralization...

...MaoTse-tung will remain an instrument of Kremlin policy, or he will go under...

...During the war he served in China with the Office of Strategic Services...

...No one placed faith in the sweet reasonableness of the Communists...

...Has' it demoralized them?' Indeed, yes...

...The .Russiansjooted Manchuria thoroughly not only removing vast stores of food but dismantling all factories in China's most industrialized provinces...

...2. I have said that political education was abolished in the Nationalist armies at Marshall's "request...

...In one of Marshall's references to the Far, East as Secretary of State, he contrived to.leap from Korea to Indonesia without noticing, the holocaust in China, or the heat refracted on Japan, Okinawa, Formosa.' Hong...

...and their firing squads made their paper negotiable—only two possible c)j£cks on currency collapse remained: exports that would bring in good money, and American loans...

...Yet President Truman has since asserted that such a Communist-Kuomintang coalition was not his goal...