AUTHOR’S NOTE
The opinions expressed in this book represent only one individual’s point of view. They are based upon what I, myself, have seen and heard and are subject, therefore, to human error, preferences and prejudices. I ask only that they be considered in this light, and hope that they may serve to stimulate independent thinking and inquiry.
What I am reporting I have experienced personally or learned from the most reliable sources at my command. If I succeed only in a small measure in conveying my thoughts and opinions, it is, nonetheless, a load off my chest, and I shall sleep more easily for having made a sincere, if limited, contribution toward a better understanding of our present disheartening dilemma.
Mary Lamar Knight
Table of Contents
| Introduction | [1] |
| Chapter I—Incompetence or Treachery? | [7] |
| Chapter II—Yenan Interlude | [29] |
| Chapter III—Communist Personalities | [45] |
| Chapter IV—Communism’s Forebears | [70] |
| Chapter V—Communist Propaganda | [82] |
| Chapter VI—Manchuria, the Prize | [94] |
| Chapter VII—The Tragedy of the Generalissimo | [102] |
| Chapter VIII—Behind the Red Curtain | [117] |
| Chapter IX—Quo Vadis? | [131] |
| Appendix | [151] |
| Bibliography | [189] |
| Index | [193] |
| About the Author | [199] |
Introduction
The “lure” of Communism is the same in every country—the promise of security and a richer life for all, with less pain and effort to the individual from the cradle to the grave. We have only to think clearly, however, to realize that such promises are impossible of fulfillment in a Communist State. Never has progress been made in that direction except where there was personal freedom, initiative and enterprise, for these are the qualities that take civilization forward toward Perfection, instead of backward into Chaos. The theories of Marx and Engels have been used and misused by the Soviets. As far as their present laws are concerned, the “Yassa” of Genghis Khan would have served the purpose, had it been as well known in the Twentieth Century as it was in the Thirteenth.
In studying the historical backgrounds of those great movements which, at various times in the past, have churned up the quietude of the earth, I found that they were always propelled or motivated by extreme fanaticism. A distinctive feature of all of them seems to be the desire to change the established order by revolution and intrigue, as well as by military conquest. These movements are opposed not only by the diehards, but by the believers in evolution and slow change; not only by the wealthy and comfortable, but by the practical men of affairs. All of this has been happening since the beginning of history. Believers in the established order of things always are on the defensive. Only open and direct attack stirs them to the offensive. This last is true of the United States, and it is also true of China. It is difficult for the rulers of peace-loving nations to create or inspire prolonged hatred in those who must do their bidding. This fact has been one of Stalin’s major worries with respect to the Chinese Communists. His predecessor, Trotsky, gave them up as impossible. “The Chinese have no capacity for sustained mass indignation,” Trotsky has been quoted as saying. “As Communists they are hopeless.”
Everyone who has lived in China learns to respect and to love the Chinese people. No nation on earth has left a greater endowment in wealth of artistic accomplishment or evolved a more workable philosophy than has China. Even the poorest coolie is acquainted with some of the simple lessons contained in the Classics.
As a correspondent in China for the United Press Associations, I learned to admire the people deeply. When in 1946 I was invited by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration to spend six months there as a consultant, without compensation, I was delighted at the opportunity to return. Each time, I increased my knowledge and improved my understanding of the country and made an earnest effort to comprehend the divergent forces underlying modern China and to gauge their effect upon the peace of the world.
The red blight, as everyone knows, is world wide, but I have focused my attention on China because it is the part of the world I know best. I saw the blight spread over this area with sickening rapidity in 1936, and again in 1946.
On both my trips, I travelled slowly from Singapore through most of the major cities to Manchuria, where I remained for a considerable length of time. Manchuria in 1946 had changed radically from Manchuria in 1936. The Russians had supplanted the Japanese, and two wars in the brief span of ten years had left their tragic imprint.
The more I travelled, and the more I read and studied, the more aware I became of the pattern underlying the great upheavals, not only in China but throughout Eurasia. Each eruption had moved in a cycle from tribal communism to communistic imperialism, and then to a dictatorship so despotic that its tyranny lasted in some instances for generations. Invariably, the dictatorship fell into dissolution and decline, followed by desolation and chaos. The despots engineering these movements were all nurtured on the vast steppe-lands, and they never attempted the invasion of their more civilized neighbors until their own strength was such that no opposing army could match them.
Stalin, the latest of these despots, is as barbaric as his predecessors. Certainly, no one could intimate that his methods are even remotely civilized. He has “refined” and “distilled” their characteristic brutality to an exacting degree. It took him fifteen years to turn his own people from the techniques of Lenin to those of his own fiendish thuggery. He has “conquered, bamboozled, outsmarted and trapped” more than nine hundred million people into “political and moral paralysis.”
Are we also going to fall victims to the machinations of this latest of these world shakers? Will we be sucked in through fear or blandishment? Or have we the common sense, the spiritual development and the will to save ourselves? Human nature has changed little during the history of mankind. Our challenge now is to try to develop our spiritual growth so that it will be commensurate with our fantastic material growth.
A strong Nationalism made us great, as it has all nations that have risen to world power. To maintain this power, however, requires the intelligence and wisdom of our Founding Fathers, who, by their use of initiative, ingenuity, enterprise and prayerful determination, made us the Historic United States. Is it possible that recent generations of American men and women have lost these qualities and have failed to achieve complete maturity?
I keep asking myself: Is “civilized” man intelligent enough, in the light of his own past experience, to stop this human tragedy now, and perhaps for a foreseeable future? Or, will he become hopelessly and irrevocably lost in the futile contemplation of an idyllic dream that is ages old, but that never has become a reality, and never will.