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: