Chapter I
Incompetence or Treachery?
“The greatest single mistake made in China, leading to our present debacle, was the withdrawal of United States forces from the Peking, Tientsin, Chingwangtao triangle in 1947.” This was done obviously at the direction of President Truman, General George Marshall and the State Department.
This statement comes from Major General William Arthur Worton, Chief of Staff, Third Amphibious Corps, U. S. Marines in China, 1945-1946, but with twelve years prior experience there. He adds: “Twenty-five thousand men easily could have maintained this important triangle—Peking, Tientsin, Chingwangtao—which would have kept the Chinese Communists from moving South of the Great Wall. They were not strong at that time, and a display of American strength in Nationalist China would have served as a deterrent to them.”
Instead, our withdrawal of U. S. forces from this strategic area was the first show of American weakness that gave the lie to both Nationalist and Communist Chinese, if not to the whole of Eurasia. The Russians constantly had complained that the Americans were occupying sovereign territory of China, but the request for us to do so had been made in 1945 by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Government for the purpose of disarming the Japanese and of stabilizing the country.
General Worton, with five officers and a handful of men first moved into the area in August, 1945, turning the civil government of China over to the Nationalists. A month later, a force of sixty-five thousand U. S. Marines moved in and occupied the area, and from then on to 1947, there was relative peace and quiet.
In view of the testimony of General George C. Marshall before the joint houses of Congress on the hypothetical issue that if we permit Chiang’s forces to attack South China, we will be starting a global war, I would like to quote General Worton on a similar issue.
“The occupation of Peking was not specifically in my orders,” he says, “but I was to occupy whatever strategic territory I deemed necessary. In the triangle previously referred to, was located the important mining area of Kailan at Tang Shan, which supplied the coal output of 150,000 tons per month, and the Nan Yuan, Pei Yuan Airfields. When I determined that the Communists would go into Peking if I did not, I decided to occupy Peking. At eleven o’clock one evening, Chou En-lai’s agent in Tientsin informed me that if I moved on Peking, the lives of every American Marine would be the price. I told him I was going into Peking, just when and where our forces would enter, and that he had better have as strong a force as I intended to have, and that I would also be supported by an air cover. We followed our blueprint, and not one of our men was scratched. We had no opposition whatsoever.”
With the withdrawal of U. S. forces from this area the coal output, supplying power as far south as Shanghai, dropped to 30,000 tons.
In Worton’s opinion, “as small a force as 15,000 troops, officered by men acquainted with China, could have kept the Reds from crossing into the coveted triangle.”
But Marshall was determined to withdraw our forces. “The State Department to this day,” says Worton, “has never asked the opinion, as far I can ascertain, of any qualified military men who spent any length of time in China, on this subject.” He adds, “Manchuria should have been occupied and we should have insisted on a joint occupation force there with our allies. Any study of China and the Far East must be predicated upon a study of our relations with China since 1784. We have consistently held to the Open Door Policy for China and the Far East. We went to war with Japan because Japan had seized the coastal areas and was controlling the communication lines of China. Many men died across the Pacific to regain China for the free world, and yet, in the course of minutes, as time is known, we have lost China. It is a truism of students of the Far East that, ‘As China goes, so goes the Orient’.”
The U. S. should have taken Dairen, Port Arthur and Cheefoo, while we were at it, and should have insisted on occupying the Kalgan Pass, gateway to Mongolia. These rightfully belonged to the Nationalist Government at the conclusion of the Japanese war, according to Worton. Another disastrous move on the part of the U. S. was the recall of Lieutenant General Albert C. Wedemeyer from the China Theater. “Wedemeyer had the complete admiration and respect of the Chinese,” he says. “Although he had been the Generalissimo’s Chief of Staff for nearly three years during the war, at no time had he subordinated himself to Chiang. Wedemeyer was first, last and always an American, and an officer in the service of his country.”
Others claim that China’s and the world’s present situation can be attributed to any number of mistakes on the part of Chiang Kai-shek, General Marshall and the United States Government. Ignoring the tragedy of Yalta for the moment, one vitally important mistake Chiang made was the decision to fly his troops into Manchuria after the war, against the advice of General Wedemeyer. His mistake was an honest one, because he undoubtedly felt that the United States, having gone so far, would see him through to the end. He knew that if China were to occupy her rightful place in the world, control of the industrial potential of Manchuria was a “must.” In spite of the fateful decision at Yalta, about which Chiang was informed several months later by Ambassador Hurley, he still could not believe that Roosevelt, whom he deeply respected and admired, would slap him in the face by giving away Manchuria.
Truman, inheriting Roosevelt’s policy of appeasement toward Russia, sent General Marshall to China in 1946 on the impossible mission of forcing the Generalissimo to accept Communists into his Government. Marshall, who at that time had the admiration and respect of the entire United States, undoubtedly had a freer hand than any diplomat in our history. Had he been unbiased in his judgement, the future of China, Asia, and probably the Eurasian Continent would have been different. He had unlimited resources to give, a neat nest egg of $500,000,000, and the decision to spend some, all, or none of it was his, and his alone.
When Marshall arrived in China, the Nationalist Armies were over-extended, that is, their supply lines were stretched so long and so thin that they could not be protected from constant Communist raids. Chiang’s Armies held the main lines of communication, to be sure, and all the large cities of North China and a few in Manchuria. However, these Armies, although many of them were trained and equipped with American arms, had little ammunition, and they were surrounded on all sides by the Soviet-backed Communist Armies. The Communists retained the initiative, could strike when and where they wished, and thus succeeded in keeping their opponents paralyzed. It was not difficult to see that the future of Chiang’s Armies was dependent solely on aid, especially on munitions, and that no country on earth but the United States could supply their requirements. To shut off this aid meant strangulation and death.
Marshall’s first act was to set up a headquarters in Chungking, where he assembled his American experts on China and started a series of conferences with Communist and Nationalist leaders. From the beginning, the Chinese Communists showed, by their every action, that their only interest was in cutting off North China and Manchuria. They had no intention whatever of joining any kind of coalition government, over which they would not have complete control. After a great deal of discussion, these conferences resulted in superficial agreement on a few points of the controversy.
Prior to his return to Washington, the General decided to make a hasty trip to Yenan, probably out of curiosity. He must have wanted a closer look at these people whose propaganda he appeared to have accepted as fact during the entire war. Whether this was emotional caprice or political expediency only history can tell. We cannot assume that he was ignorant, therefore we must assume that he knew what he was doing.
Certainly the utterances of that period indicated that Marshall subscribed to the idea that we were dealing with “agrarian reformers.”
In his testimony before Congress, Marshall stated flatly that he had known all the time that the Chinese Communists were Marxists “because they told me so,” he said. But while he was negotiating with them he certainly gave the impression to others that he did not think they were the same brand of Communists as were the Russians. This fact, in itself, makes him doubly culpable, in my opinion. It is an intent to deceive, which makes the deception all the more sinister. If he knew all the time that the Chinese Communists were the same brand of Communists as the Russians, and he still threw the weight of every decision he made in China to them, then he could not possibly have given more aid and comfort to the enemy, Stalin, had he been a member of the Communist Party.
On Marshall’s arrival at the Airport of Yenan, he was greeted with pomp and ceremony by every military unit the Communists could muster. Welcomed enthusiastically by stocky Mao Tse-tung, in his coarse homespun peasant’s garb, suave Chou En-lai, in the snappy uniform of a three-star General, and Chu Teh, wearing a Russian soldier’s fur-lined cape, he accompanied his colorful and grateful hosts on an inspection of the troops. The Cadets from the Communist Military Academy, who had hiked in some fifty or sixty miles in order to form the Guard of Honor, were the best dressed and best outfitted of all the troops in the Communist Army. While spartanly clad in coarse but neat dark blue uniforms, they gave every evidence of superb leadership and discipline. Especially trained and selected, these Cadets became the equivalent, in Communist China, of the Soviet NKVD, or uniformed police troops.
In marked contrast, there was a battalion of Ming Bing, or militia, armed with spears for the occasion and lined up for the General’s inspection. These troops were dressed in everything from long robes to dirty white jackets and vests, and decorated with rings, bracelets and earrings. Their long, rusty spears were topped with flowering pompoms of dried grain. In no respect did they differ from their forbears of two thousand years ago.
The rest of the show consisted of masses of people in the drab dress affected by the Communists. The more colorful costumes of the non-Communist Yenanese were conspicuous by their absence.
Marshall must have been impressed!
For quarters, or hotel accommodations, the General had been assigned the best Yenan cave, boasting all the comforts offered by that archaic type of dwelling. His person was safeguarded during the night by two crack soldiers armed with ancient Chinese broadswords.
Making the most of their distinguished visitor’s sojourn among them, Chairman Mao Tse-tung gave a banquet, followed by a Chinese Opera. The dinner was staged in a large bare room with cracking plaster walls. The table consisted of rough hewn boards, contrasting strangely with the lavishness of the food. Dozens of southern style delicacies were imported for the occasion: crisp, roasted Peking duck; succulent sweet and sour pork; thousand-year-old eggs—the whole washed down with copious draughts of sweet local wine. Formal speeches of mutual friendship were followed by cries of “Gambei!” or “Bottoms up!”
After the banquet, the entire party crossed the river to attend the Opera. The Communists had improvised a crude bridge over which their esteemed guest might ride, but it was so wobbly that Marshall preferred to get out and follow his car across.
The Opera was performed in an unheated, barnlike structure. It was so cold that the audience kept on their heavy coats and were provided, in addition, with blankets to wrap around their feet. In spite of the fact that charcoal braziers were placed between the stage and the first row, the temperature in the building was close to freezing, and the breath of the actors as they chanted their lines came out in puffs of smoke. These performers were Spartans indeed, changing their costumes in the draughty, unheated barn, their teeth chattering and their tawny flesh a mass of goose pimples. The costumes, in contrast to those seen on a Peking or a Shanghai stage, were fashioned of rough, drab bits of cast-off apparel, crudely sewn together and patched with whatever pieces of material could be begged, borrowed or stolen.
The show itself, like the Ballet in Moscow, was a superb exhibition of Chinese art, for, when shown to foreigners, it was free from Communist propaganda. The falsetto voices of the actors sing-songed the ancient Chinese poetry, while their bodies swayed to its rhythmic cadence. During the performance, an usher went up and down the aisle tossing hot towels to guests who called shrilly for them. These, wrung out of boiling water, gave the hall a dank, slightly rancid atmosphere, reminiscent of a river in summer. Roasted watermelon seeds were pressed generously upon the honored guest by his Chinese Communist hosts, who were noisily but skillfully cracking them edgewise between their strong front teeth and spitting out the husks.
Not all the visitor’s stay, however, was passed in entertainment. Before leaving Yenan, General Marshall sat behind locked doors with Mao and members of the Politburo. No other American was allowed to be present at this meeting. What was said is not known, but there were rumors in Communist circles that the subject of the conversations had to do with the future of Manchuria, and perhaps all of Asia.
On leaving this capital city of Communist China, Marshall returned to the United States to make his report to President Truman.
When he came back to China, Marshall made his residence in Nanking (the Nationalist capital at that time), but established a Northern Headquarters in Peiping (meaning Northern Peace), in order to work out a truce between Communists and Nationalists. The futility of this endeavor was obvious even to the Chinese GI, who nicknamed the Peiping Headquarters the “Temple of the Thousand Sleeping Colonels,” and to the American GI, who dubbed it “Marshall’s Bird Sanctuary.”
If the soldiers in the lower brackets put their tongues in their cheeks, those in the higher echelons took the mission very seriously. They kept a very sober face, indeed. Shoulder patches were issued and worn by all the members of the Peiping Headquarters and its truce teams. These were called “Ballentine Beer Patches,” due to the three rings in the emblem representing the Nationalists, the Communists and the Americans. No doubt this symbol, to some of the homesick GI’s, was a nostalgic reminder of the good old USA.
Truce teams, made up of one Communist, one Nationalist and one American officer, were sent out into the field, their purpose being to try to bring about agreement between the opposing forces. With the Chinese Communist Army and the Nationalist Army locked in a deadly battle for power, any action on the part of the third member, the United States, would be likely to aid one party only at the expense of the other. With Marshall’s preference for Mao over Chiang Kai-shek, the “truces” forced upon the Nationalist Armies at the most inopportune times, from a military standpoint, acted to the advantage of the Chinese Communist Army. Because of the slowness of their transportation and their lack of modern means of training, the Chinese Communist Armies, as in the days of Genghis Khan, were constantly in need of breathing spells. During these periods they could regroup their forces, move and gather supplies, and train their troops. Such breathing spells, provided in the form of “Cease Fire!” commands to the Nationalist Armies, upon the insistence of Marshall, came almost as a gift from Heaven.
As history has shown, Marshall threw the weight of every decision to the Communists. This, combined with the mistake the Generalissimo made in trying to hold Manchuria without American support, would appear to be at least one of the reasons for the situation in China today. In addition to the fact that Marshall favored the Communists, that he acquiesced in the sellout of Manchuria, if not all of Asia, to the Russians, the final and fatal blow was delivered to the Nationalist Government itself. The expected help in arms, ammunition, money and supplies from the United States was either cut off entirely or reduced to a trickle. Too late did the Nationalist Government recognize its precarious position and force itself to accept the fact that, apparently, we just did not care who won the fight in China, so long as it was not the Generalissimo.
Continued evidence to the above effect appeared from numerous sources. In the summer of 1950, Walter H. Judd, Representative from Minnesota, commented in public:
“Why should the Soviets think that the most important thing for American Communists to do right after the defeat of Japan was to get American assistance to China stopped?” To him, the answer seems to appear obvious, in that without the right kind of outside aid, the Chinese Government could not possibly recover. Only a handful of people appeared to understand that, to a Chinese, the idea of putting his country ahead of family interests, just was not his idea of patriotism. First loyalty, always, in a Chinese family, was to that family.
Marshall asked for patience and generosity for the European countries saying that it had taken the South fifty years to recover from only four years of civil war. But he did not seem to remember that Chiang had been fighting Japan for more than eight years, coupled with a civil war with Communists in his own country for more than twenty years. China, too, needed a little patience and generosity from us, just as much as Italy or Greece or France. And what would England have done without our patience and generosity? By comparison, were not China’s needs embarrassingly small?
One may call the Nationalist Government of China all the names there are, synonymous with corrupt, incompetent, reactionary, undemocratic—but in the light of what is known today about Communism and its stated methods, aims and ambitions, which is the lesser of the two evils—Chinese Nationalism or Soviet Internationalism?
An interesting news item came to light in a press dispatch by International News Service, dated September 19, 1950, as follows: “Marshall’s statement on Far Eastern Policy electrified the jammed committee room (Senate Armed Services Committee) because it had been accepted for years that he had authored the recommendation that peace in China be sought through a coalition government. Before this committee, Marshall repudiated all claims for having had anything to do with it, much less to have authored it by saying that it had been drawn up in the State Department while he was testifying on Capitol Hill in the Pearl Harbor investigation.” According to the same news dispatch: “The author of the Marshall Plan added that the Chinese policy was issued ‘while I was on the ocean going over there’ as President Truman’s personal representative.”
Could Marshall have meant that he had not even been consulted on such an important matter, prior to being sent to implement that policy? Hardly. Former Secretary of State Byrnes, in his memoirs entitled “Speaking Frankly,” spoke thus frankly on this subject:
“As soon as President Truman appointed General Marshall his personal representative in China, I asked the General to study the draft (of policy) so that he could help prepare the final statement for presentation to the President. The Sunday before I left for Moscow, Under Secretary Acheson, General Marshall and members of his staff met in my office. By the end of the morning’s discussion, we had agreed upon the statement of policy. Thereafter the President made no change in that policy except upon the recommendation of General Marshall or with his approval.”
I learned from an intimate source that when Marshall left for China he had in his pocket, documents outlining the policy of enforcing a coalition government on Chiang Kai-shek and also a letter from the President stating flatly:
“I understand that these documents have been shown to you and have received your approval.” What could General Marshall think himself to be, an ostrich with his head in the sand?
Much has happened since 1946, particularly as pertains to the relationship between China and General Marshall. A few excerpts from the September 15th, 1950, issue of the Congressional Record, Volume 96, Number 184, bring the matter further to a head. Senator William E. Jenner from Indiana holds the floor:
“I believe the time has come to expose this whole tragic conspiracy in which we are caught, to hew to the line of truth, and to let the chips fall where they may.... I can assure the Senate there is no pleasure, no pride of authorship, and no sense of personal satisfaction in taking this stand. There is only a growing sense of shame, of outraged decency, and of painful duty as I speak the dictates of my conscience. Even if I have to stand and speak alone, I am both unable and unwilling by my silence to be an accomplice in compounding crimes that have already been committed against my native land. Mr. President, this background is necessary because without it we cannot understand where the appointment of General George C. Marshall as Secretary of Defense fits into the picture. With it, we can help the disillusionment of the American people to run its course by exposing General Marshall as a living symbol of the swindle in which we are caught. The appointment of Marshall at this peculiar juncture in our destiny is a last desperate attempt of this administration to swallow up the treachery of the past in the new treachery they are planning for the future.... Everything he has been a party to during the past ten years has helped to betray his solemn trust and to set the stage for the staggering Soviet victory that is sweeping across the earth....”
Senator Jenner’s full and documented statements cover eighteen pages of the Record but interest here is centered upon those comments bearing on China, which confirm my own first-hand information and knowledge. He goes back to April 26, 1938, when Marshall was appointed a member of the liaison committee created by President Roosevelt for the coordination of policy of common concern to the Departments of State, War and Navy. From then on, Marshall remained one of the top-ranking policy makers in our Government. Truman was aware of the closeness between Marshall and Roosevelt, and of their consultations on matters of vital policy affecting our security and the defending of our interests around the world. Was this, perhaps, a reason for Truman’s wanting Marshall as Secretary of Defense, even as a possible stop-gap in a Democratic political crisis?
“Marshall knew of the deceit and the duplicity that was indulged in by President Roosevelt during the critical years of 1939, 1940 and 1941, by which we were secretly committed to go to war.... He went along with the most criminal and outrageous betrayals of American interests and principles in history that resulted from Teheran, Yalta and Potsdam,” says Jenner. To anyone’s comment: “He was a soldier. He was taking orders,” I feel urged to ask: “Does there not come a time in everyone’s life when he has to decide whether he is first a citizen of integrity? General of the Army Douglas MacArthur made that decision in April, 1951, and made it unflinchingly.
“At Yalta,” Jenner adds, “the President did the age-old thing with regard to Asia and General Marshall knew that at Potsdam, President Truman confirmed the sellout of half the world to the Soviet Union ... this meant that American GI’s were turned into political whipping boys, betrayed by their own Chief of Staff and used for advancing the cause of Communism across the earth.... Marshall lent all of his great prestige and power to the Jessup-Lattimore-Service-Acheson line calling for a cessation of the civil war, paralyzing the Nationalist Government and withholding aid from Chiang, while he knew that the Russians were not only taking over Manchuria and northern China, but were being rearmed with captured Japanese equipment and were preparing for the eventual conquest, not only of China, but of the whole Far East.”
Harold Lamb, historian and authority on Asiatic history, has commented: “Curiously enough, when I began to study the Mongols nearly thirty years ago, I found two studies of the methods of Genghis Khan made by young American Army officers. They were George C. Marshall and Douglas MacArthur.” How differently these two men have interpreted their research, in the light of their subsequent actions!
Let me quote a remark or two from the March, 1951, issue of The American Mercury. I have high regard for the journalistic integrity of Walter Trohan, Washington, D. C., Bureau Manager of The Chicago Tribune, and concur heartily with his comments in an article entitled: “The Tragedy of George Marshall”:
“On March 19, 1950, General Marshall announced that he would not write his memoirs for these remarkable reasons:
“‘To be of any historic importance they have got to be accurate; that is one mustn’t omit, and make it pleasant reading. Now, if you do put it all in, you do irreparable harm. You almost ruin a man, but if you don’t mention that, it is not history’.”
Mr. Trohan states that these are disillusioning words, and imply that “free men must not be told the truth; they indicate that the speaker is in a mental purgatory for hidden sins which he has either observed or committed; and they emphasize the graver tragedy: that an old man who must conceal past errors from his countrymen is still exercising powers of decision.”
Trohan asks, and so do I: “Should free men trust a leader who will not trust them with the truth? By what right does a public servant say to free men: ‘You trusted me with leadership, but I will not give a true accounting because the truth might do irreparable harm’?”
Marshall has ever been quick to blame the people for the ills that may beset them—never the leaders, as warrant a remark he made following the debacle of the Korean war: “The basic error has always been with the American people”—these same American people who cannot be trusted with the truth, lest “irreparable harm” be done.
Other indications as to the stature of the man reveal themselves as isolated vignettes. When Marshall arrived in China and was met by General Albert C. Wedemeyer, even after he had read and suppressed the Wedemeyer Report, he told his junior officer of his intention with regard to forcing Communists on the Generalissimo. Wedemeyer commented in all calmness:
“General, you can’t do it. It is impossible!”
To which Marshall replied in white heat: “I am going to do it, and you are going to help me!”
Marshall’s double-cross of Wedemeyer in appointing the latter Ambassador to China in 1947 is another instance. Secretary of State James Byrnes had told Wedemeyer to go ahead and buy his civilian clothing, which he did, and as Wedemeyer was on the point of severing his last connections from the Army, Marshall learned that the Communists strongly opposed the Wedemeyer appointment and recommended instead, J. Leighton Stuart, President of Yenching University. Without consulting with or informing General Wedemeyer, Marshall immediately appointed Stuart, leaving Wedemeyer to find out through second-hand sources that he was no longer Ambassador-elect to China.
A parallel action of this nature in which Marshall had a direct hand was the midnight dismissal of General MacArthur, who learned of the order when an aide heard it on a radio news broadcast and relayed it to Mrs. MacArthur.
Again, with reference to Marshall’s so-called ignorance of the China policy situation, Jonathan Daniels, in his authorized biography of Truman, quotes Admiral William D. Leahy as saying: “I was present when Marshall was going to China. He said he was going to tell Chiang that he had to get along with the Communists, or get no help from us.”
Before the removal, by Truman, of General of the Army Douglas MacArthur from all of his commands in the Far East—one of the greatest acts of perfidy to go down in American history—few people realized that Marshall was not a West Pointer. This, of course, is in no way to be held against Marshall, but, during World War I, as General Pershing’s aide-de-camp, when Pershing was Chief of Staff, a promotion of Marshall to a Generalship was requested of MacArthur by Pershing.
MacArthur was willing enough, provided his military record merited it. From Walter Trohan’s documented personal files comes information that Marshall’s record lacked sufficient time served with troops. “MacArthur proposed to remedy this,” says Trohan, “by giving him command of the Eighth Regiment at Fort Screven, Ga., one of the finest regiments in the Army.” Marshall was moved up from lieutenant-colonel to colonel, but his way to a general’s stars appeared to be blocked forever when the Inspector General reported that under one year of Marshall’s command the Eighth Regiment had dropped from “one of the best to one of the worst.” It was mandatory, therefore, that MacArthur decline the promotion. Is it any wonder, today, that Truman’s action in removing MacArthur from the military scene should be most pleasing to the Secretary of Defense?
Of course, this is not the whole story, for Pershing was a persevering soldier and had no intention of giving up his determination to see Marshall become a general. In 1936, he bypassed the Army entirely, and went directly to the White House where he succeeded in persuading President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to “appoint” Marshall a general. Later, Marshall had proved himself so “acceptable” to Roosevelt that, over the heads of “twenty senior major generals and fourteen senior brigadier generals, Roosevelt made him Chief of Staff.”
I believe that the “tragedy” implied by Walter Trohan concerning Marshall lies in the current knowledge that Marshall, despite personal bravery, even stoicism, was sadly lacking in vision to match it. Thus, he became a willing tool in the hands of the opposition. He trusted Russia as an ally and, contrary to the Churchill belief, he did not care how much of Europe Stalin took, so long as we sent Russia enough tanks and ammunition to crush the German Army. He was easy prey to the insidious propaganda put out by Hiss, Acheson, Lattimore, Jessup and others who, misguided or otherwise, permitted American lives to be sacrificed to make both Europe and Asia “safe for Communism.”
We know now what was in the Wedemeyer Report. Because it disagreed with Marshall’s ideas he, personally, suppressed it. In contrast to his decision, Wedemeyer had advocated a strong defense against Communism in China, and had gained the Generalissimo’s complete approval for American supervision of all aid, financial, military, psychological—that would have been forthcoming if the report had been approved.
Marshall, as was Pershing, is for an enormous army—for pitting manpower, our most precious commodity, against the enemy, in place of our superb technological and psychological know-how. General MacArthur has shown the absurdity and the tragedy of any such commitment on our part. Should Marshall, with Anna Rosenberg at his side, be allowed to continue with plans to fight the Asiatic hordes thusly, we are, indeed, doomed. May God forbid!
Once again, in retrospect, it appears that American foreign policy had been to support the Generalissimo as long as he fought the Japanese, but to do nothing that might offend the Communists at any time. For the past ten years, or more, our Government seems to have had its bets on Communism in China—if not in all Eurasia—to win. The facts are against any other conclusion, and we must, again, assume that Marshall, the President, and the State Department know what they are doing. And if they know what they are doing, they must be doing it deliberately.
From 1946 through 1948, Marshall ordered destroyed all of the reserves of ammunition earmarked for Chiang Kai-shek. These had been stored in India and could easily have been transferred to China at the end of the war in 1945. Marshall also ordered our military mission to refuse further training and aid to the Nationalist armies.
On leaving China, General Marshall was overheard to remark enthusiastically, “There is a definite liberal group among the Communist Chinese.” This particular group included China’s “Front Man,” Chou En-lai, Communist Foreign Minister since October, 1948, and his assistant, Chiao Kuan-Hua, spokesman for the Communist delegation that was entertained in late 1950 by the United Nations, and which was housed and fed at the Hotel Waldorf-Astoria in New York City.
It is not difficult to see how Marshall contributed to Chiang’s capitulation to the Communists. How can we answer for our refusal to accept the 30,000 Chinese Nationalist troops on Formosa, initially offered by the Generalissimo to the United Nations for combat in Korea or in South China? We accepted units, even token ones, from other members of the U.N., but not from Nationalist China, who is still an official member. Of course, I know the answer is couched in the language of “Peace, peace.” But Stalin will not be provoked into full-scale war until Russia is ready for it, and the danger of letting Chiang attack south China is no more than a blind.
How can we have aided the Russians more, or brought greater tragedy to ourselves than we already have by our own actions?