The Marshall Policy for China

Who really created the China policy, the policy which has consistently been administered to run down the United States flag in the Far East and surrender China to the Kremlin? We have a new and most significant clue in a report of General Wedemeyer to Chiang Kai-shek made on the 10th of November 1945 upon his return from an official mission to Washington. I do not believe that this report has ever before seen the light of day. General Wedemeyer was the chief of staff to the Generalissimo and, in effect, the commander-in-chief of all the Chinese Government forces, as he was supreme commander of American forces in that theater. Wearing these two hats, he had the duty of mediating between the Generalissimo and the American authorities.

It was his duty also to report in detail upon the American official attitude toward the crisis in China. This he did, and I quote first the section of his report dealing with what he learned in what he described as his "consultations with the President." Wedemeyer wrote, and I quote in paraphrase: (a) The President wanted me to convey his greetings. (b) He was well satisfied with the accomplishments of this theater. (c) He emphasized the necessity of the early withdrawal of American Army, Navy, and Air Forces from China, stating the pressure on this point, the withdrawal of American personnel from China, is strong.

From whence did this pressure arise? Was it from the great peaceable masses of the American people, eager to have the war over and peacetime conditions reestablished, eager to have their sons, husbands, and brothers back home but in no wise eager to have our forces out of China? The answer came from the friends of the Soviet Empire in America.

The message of the President to the Generalissimo was not discouraging. It remained for the Secretary of State and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which of course meant Marshall, to deliver the coup de grace to Chiang Kai-shek's hopes for American support, moral, economic, and military, in putting down what Leahy had called the rebellion in China. It was evident from the Wedemeyer report on his talks with Secretary Byrnes that the China policy had already been set: no help to the Government of China in case it undertook to put down the Reds. The State Department made it clear to Wedemeyer

"that the United States would not permit herself to be involved in the conflict between Chinese forces, and that she would also not facilitate the activities of the central government vis-a-vis the rebellious forces within Chinese territory."

The Joint Chiefs—again meaning Marshall—were more explicit and disheartening. It remained for Marshall to state the larger policy: not only would we view a suppression of the rebellion adversely, withdrawing our aid in case Chiang Kai-shek proceeded forcibly, but we would demand a government of unity in China. Chiang must bring the Communists into his government. Already we had the example of Poland and of Rumania before us. We were now embarking on that same disastrous road in China. But we were going further in opposition to the Republic of China. The Joint Chiefs, and I quote the Wedemeyer report,

"solemnly declared that American forces could not be involved in the civil war in China and that the United States would remain aloof in relations between the Chinese Government and Britain, France, the Soviet Union, or any other country."

Who was this, declaring diplomatic policy? The President, the Secretary of State? No. It was the Chief of Staff of the Army. I digress to explain the significance of that utterance. At the end of the war this Government had brought its overwhelming influence to bear to induce Chiang Kai-shek to yield to the betrayal at Yalta. Chiang had, therefore, a treaty with the Kremlin respecting the sovereignty of Manchuria, a treaty which the Russians had steadily violated from the day of the Japanese surrender, stripping Manchuria of what Edward Pauley, the Reparations Commissioner,—estimated was at least $800,000,000 of movable assets under the specious claim that it was "war booty." "War booty" from a bloodless, six-day war.

The declaration I have quoted from the Wedemeyer report to the Generalissimo served notice in unmistakable language that the United States, having coerced China into accepting the sellout at Yalta, was washing its hands of China's relations with Russia. We were abandoning the lamb to the lion. I doubt if the history of nations exhibits another such cynical declaration or one which made the intentions of its author clearer. And who was the author of it? Not the President or the Secretary of State, who constitutionally speak for the United States in such matters—but the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a term which, it is abundantly clear, was merely a euphemism for George Catlett Marshall.

I continue with this incredible document:

"The Joint Chiefs of Staff clearly stated that American military aid to China would immediately terminate if the United States Government became convinced by facts that the Chinese forces benefiting from American aid were serving a government unacceptable to the United States, were engaged in civil war, or were employed for aggressive purposes. The degree of political security obtained under a unified government completely representative of the people would be regarded as a fundamental condition for the consideration of American economic, military, and other forms of aid to China. The United States Government would consider the above mentioned condition, i.e., a unified government, as the criterion in determining whether or not to continue such aid."

There you have it spelled out in all its blunt and terrifying implications: the China policy, which ever since that date has operated to deliver China into the hands of the Kremlin, the China policy that inhibited Chiang at every turn from suppressing the Reds, setting his country in order, and proceeding with the great internal reforms to which he was committed and which he has always given every indication of pursuing in entire good faith. There it is: the China policy that brought about the war in Korea and turned 450,000,000 friends of America into 450,000,000 foes.

And who was the author of it?

Had this directive to Wedemeyer been dictated by the master strategists of the Kremlin themselves, it could not more accurately have represented their will and wish. And where does this China policy leave the vital interests of the United States in the Far East, interests which we had just vindicated at the end of a four-year war fought in good faith with the aid of our Chinese allies and at the cost of many thousands of lives and uncountable treasure? What of the men who died in the air and over the waters and islands of the Pacific to sustain American honor and support American interest in Asia? Every mother's son of them was betrayed by this policy as surely as were our Chinese Allies.

I have established by means of the Wedemeyer report to Chiang Kai-shek that Marshall is an important author of our China policy. What bearing does this revelation have, you may ask, upon Marshall's testimony before the Armed Services Committee on September 19, 1950, when, by what I take to have been a deliberate equivocation, he contrived to give the impression that he had not participated in drafting the instructions he bore when he departed on his mission to China. He was being questioned by Senator Millard F. Tydings of Maryland, chairman of that committee at that time.

This is General Marshall replying to a question which had been asked in a very friendly fashion by the chairman:

"While I was in this room for a week undergoing the Pearl Harbor investigation, the policy of the United States was being drawn up in the State Department, and that was issued while I was on the ocean, going over there."

This was, mark you, in September 1950. The war which Marshall had helped to produce was being fought and he was under the scrutiny of the Armed Services Committee with reference to his nomination as Secretary of Defense. The China policy was not as popular as it had been. The people had been awakened by the events in Korea to a livelier interest in the factors that had brought on the war. Marshall was eager to get that job.

And so he indulged in that piece of barefaced, if indirect, prevarication. For a few days he was believed, for a time sufficient to have his nomination confirmed in what was one of the most monumental blunders ever committed by the Senate of the United States. This prevarication was even too strong for the stomach of the Washington Post, which has a strong stomach where the betrayal of American interest in the Far East is concerned, and it took the Secretary to task for it. I shall not dwell further upon this disgraceful episode, General Marshall's veracity, or lack of it, would be apropos; the incident would brand him as unworthy of high office under ordinary circumstances. However, the issues with which we are now dealing far transcend the question of his truthfulness,

The questions now before us concern his share in a series of events which go to the very heart of our existence as a free, self-governing people. Our survival is at stake in the Far East and what shall grow out of it, and upon the wisdom and the loyalty of the men at the head of our Government depend decisions of life and death. We are now concerned with reviewing the record of General Marshall with a view to ascertaining his trustworthiness in that larger sense.

There were, of course, other authors of the China policy. From the testimony taken by the Russell Committee, it is clear that Marshall, drafting the instructions that he took to China, had the assistance of Acheson and John Carter Vincent.

What do we know of the third man, John Carter Vincent? We know much. Suffice to say that he has been repeatedly named as one of those who are always found helping to do the planning where disaster struck America and success came to Soviet Russia. Vincent it was who, with Owen Lattimore, guided Wallace on his mission through China. At the conclusion of this trip, Wallace made a report to the State Department in which he recommended the torpedoing of Chiang Kai-shek.

In his hook Soviet Asia Mission Wallace states [page 172] that while he, Lattimore and John Carter Vincent were traveling through China, Sergei Godlize, a high Soviet official—president of the executive committee of the Siberian territory, where they were—and an intimate friend of Stalin's, toasted Owen Lattimore and John Carter Vincent at a dinner as the men on whom rested the responsibility for the future of China.

There are other straws in the wind bearing us evidence upon the auspices and intent of the China policy. On the 2nd of December, two weeks before Marshall departed for China, William Z. Foster, the chairman of the Communist Party in the United States, assured a meeting of the American Politburo in New York of what had been for long a truism of Communist world strategy. He put it in a new time frame, however, saying, "The civil war in China is the key to all problems on the international front." The problems of Europe, in other words, depended upon the issue in China. The next great expansive moves in the Kremlin's plan for world conquest waited upon victory in China. Those were the plain meanings of his words.

Two weeks earlier, on the 14th of November, Dean Acheson gave an explanation of why he and Marshall were determined that Russia must have China. I believe that he intended it as an official assurance to the Kremlin and its friends in America concerning our intentions in China, Acheson was speaking—he was Under Secretary of State—on the platform with the Red Dean of Canterbury, Dr. Hewlitt Johnson, with Corliss Lamont, the prospective quisling, with Paul Robeson and Joseph E. Davies, who assisted as much as any American in the corruption of the American mind regarding Russia and the nature of the Kremlin during World War II.

First Acheson indulged in some dishonest history, saying that American and Russian interests never had clashed anywhere in the globe; forgetting in his zeal for Mother Russia the fears of Russian designs on the west coast of North America that helped to occasion the Monroe Doctrine and forgetting also how this Government under Theodore Roosevelt gave aid and comfort to Japan in the war of 1904-05 because the President thought Russian aggressions upon China were harmful to our interests in Asia.

At the moment the Red armies were giving every manifestation that they intended to treat Manchuria not as a part of China but as their own colony, which they have in truth done to this day, to the utter ruin of the Open Door Policy of John Hay. They were showing every sign of annexing Northern Korea to their Manchurian colony. They were violating spirit and text of the treaty we had extorted in their interest from Chiang Kai-shek.

Yet the Under Secretary of State, abasing himself before Russian imperial power, found no objective reason to suppose that we ever would have a clash of interest with what, with infinite hypocrisy, he called the Soviet peoples, identifying the subjected masses of Russia, the first victims of bolshevism, the faceless serfs of the Kremlin, with the tyrants themselves. We find that utterly fraudulent identification throughout the public utterances of Acheson. He added, while Dean Hewlitt Johnson, Corliss Lamont, Robeson, and Davies applauded, "We understand and agree with them—the Soviet peoples—that to have friendly governments along her borders is essential both for the security of the Soviet Union and the peace of the world."

The peace of the world. That was the specious moral reason given by President Truman for insisting upon Chiang Kai-shek's capitulation to the Chinese Reds.

I think it is clear what Acheson was signaling to Moscow. He was saying, "You have seen that we delivered Manchuria and Northern Korea to you. That task is completed. You have set us another task, to see that you have a friendly government on your Manchurian and Mongolian borders. Never fear, rest assured, we will see to that, too. Only give us time and you will have a friendly Asia and then we can have world peace."

It could not have been spelled out more explicitly. And, as we shall see, Acheson and Marshall performed up to the very limit of their capacity, stinting nothing, withholding nothing of their country's interest, brooking no opposition to see that the Kremlin had a friendly government in China and we had a bloody and pointless war in Korea.

So Marshall's instructions were put into final shape by Marshall and Acheson and John Carter Vincent and, no doubt, by Alger Hiss, who was by then in the Far Eastern Division and who was then, as now, the trusted friend of Acheson. Marshall has recanted his false testimony of September 1950 wherein he sought to make it appear that he had no hand in the China policy and was a mere messenger of the President's. He has acknowledged the truth which was staring him in the face from the pages of James F. Byrnes's book Speaking Frankly, where Byrnes writes on page 226:

"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 that subsequently was approved by the President and released to the public on December 15.

"Thereafter, the President made no change in that policy except upon the recommendation of General Marshall or with his approval."

We know, too, from Acheson's testimony before the Russell Committee (for what it is worth) that Marshall, upon being shown a State Department draft of his instructions, notified Byrnes that he would like to "try my hand at it," and he did.

In this connection it should be remembered that Millard Tydings wrote Marshall asking about the part that Lattimore had played in the formulation of the State Department's Far Eastern policy. Marshall answered that he had never met Lattimore. It developed, however, that Lattimore had attended a three-day round-table discussion called by the State Department on Far Eastern policy. Some of those who attended have since pointed out that Lattimore sat next to Marshall for three days and engaged in a rather constant interchange of ideas with Marshall.

There is an interesting footnote to this situation, recounted in all innocence by Byrnes in his discussion of the ill-fated mission to Moscow which he was undertaking at the same time that Marshall went to China. On page 228 of Speaking Frankly, Byrnes draws aside the curtain upon a talk with Stalin at the Kremlin regarding the China matter. I quote Byrnes:

"He [Stalin] paid a compliment to General Marshall, saying that if anyone could settle the situation in China he [Marshall] could. As Stalin might have added with entire accuracy, settled it to my satisfaction."

This was a few days after the stormy scene at the White House described only sketchily in Jonathan Daniels's hero-worshiping biography of Truman The Man of Independence. Marshall had appeared to get Truman's approval of his policy, and Admiral Leahy, who was present, emphatically admonished him that his China policy was wholly at variance with President Roosevelt's attitude toward China and the Far East. The discussion became acrimonious and resulted in a permanent breach of the friendship between Leahy and Marshall.

Daniels quotes Leahy, page 317, saying:

"I was present when Marshall was going to China. He said he was going to tell Chiang that he had to get on with the Communists or without help from us. He said the same thing when he got back.

"I thought he was wrong both times."

The admiral refers only obliquely in his own memoirs to this passage, which took place in the uncomprehending presence of the Chief Executive and which disposes of President Truman's claims to having administered Roosevelt's world policies as a faithful heir. Concerning this, Leahy wrote on page 104 of I Was There:

"In the postwar period, General Marshall and I disagreed sharply on some aspects of our foreign policy."

I pass over the moral aspects of the Marshall policy for China, a mere statement of which should bring the blush of shame to every conscientious American. I turn to the clear and easily understood question of our national interest. What was our interest in China in the fall of 1945? What was the stake as between the United States and the Russian empire? Which was to have sway and influence over China? That is the kernel of the situation which we describe as the China question.

It is not necessary to outline where we would stand if Russian controlled all the Pacific shores of Asia and the islands pertaining thereto—Japan, Formosa, the Philippines, and the rest.

Our flank would be most grievously exposed. Not only would Hawaii be rendered extremely insecure and our Pacific coast brought into danger, but, most significant of all, the road to Alaska and northern Canada would be open to the air forces of the Russians, who have been for so long perfecting the arts of Arctic warfare. The Russians can reach Alaska over their own land mass. Given command of the western Pacific, they can supply and refresh their forces in Eastern Siberia by sea and ward off our attempts to interdict their supply. And from Alaska, as I have said, Pittsburgh—to say nothing of the West Coast, with its enormous war plants—is brought within range of Soviet long-range bombing and guided missiles.

The command of the coast of Asia is part of the stake for which Russia was playing at Yalta and before. That may be called the oceanic aspect of the strategic problem. There is also the continental—and this bears upon Russia's defense from us in case of war. I do not profess to be expert on this subject and so I turn to one more proficient. I summon as a witness General Chennault, an airman, who, besides distinguishing himself in command of air forces during the war in China, has had long service in the leadership of civil aviation in Asia. I quote from General Chennault's book Way of a Fighter, in his foreword:

"China is the key to the Pacific . . . The United States' attitude toward China should be based on a thoroughly realistic appraisal of China's value to the United States."

And again:

"The Russians understand the role of China."

I again quote:

"I seriously question that Russia will make anything more than probing skirmishes in Europe until her Asiatic flank is secure."

Chennault goes on to explain why this is so:

"From air bases built for America during the last war at Chengtu, Sian, and Lanchow in northwest China, all of the vast Russian industry east of the Ural mountains is open to air attack. From these same bases and dozens of others in northern China the slender thread of Russian communications between eastern and western Siberia could be snapped by even a small air force."

Chennault published all this in 1949 before our China policy had finally borne its bitter fruit, but what he says remains true, I quote:

"If China remains friendly to the United States, the Russians will not dare move deeper into Europe, leaving their vitals exposed on their Asiatic flank. If the Asiatic flank is secure and American airpower is pushed out beyond critical range, then the way will be open for new and more powerful ventures in Europe."

I commend those observations regarding our strategical problem in the Far East and its relationship to the security of Europe to the baffled but arrogant statesmen of Westminster and the deluded gentlemen of this administration who say, whatever they may believe, that what happens in Korea is of no concern to the safety of Europe.

I had often wondered, until I read the Wedemeyer report, why General Marshall, a man of advancing years, undertook the ardors and discomforts of a sojourn in wintry, war-ravaged China at the behest of the President in December of 1945. His laurels were fresh and undimmed. As one of the leaders of the sweeping allied victory he had world-wide prestige. So far as the public knew, he deserved the respect of his countrymen and the honor due an old soldier who had apparently fulfilled one of the greatest duties ever entrusted to an American. To go to China, to enter into that vexed and complicated situation as a mere emissary of the President, would he a thankless task. Furthermore, it represented a come-down in status. It was a good bit like sending Churchill to govern India, if India had still remained subject to the Crown.

I think it is now transparently clear why Marshall went to China. Having, with the Acheson-Vincent crowd, framed the China policy, he was intent on executing it down to its last dreadful clause and syllable, and it is, I think, significant that he tarried in China for thirteen arduous months, and when he left it was obvious to all beholders that China must fall to the Russian Empire. What was his mission?

First. To restrain the Government of China from subduing the Red forces which were sworn to bring all China within the orbit of Moscow.

Second. To deny the Chinese Government American assistance if it attempted to master the Communist minority by force.

Third. To insist at all times, in defiance of the lessons of Europe and the plain evidences of Russian imperial ambitions in Asia, that Chiang Kai-shek must accept the Communists into his government.

The surrender of Yalta had to be concluded and perfected.

But there was a final act to perform, an act calculated to put the quietus on the only sane, sensible formula for settling the civil war in China that came out of this whole deplorable period. General Wedemeyer had sent such a formula to the War Department, whence the plan was circulated through the Navy and State Departments. It was so simple and workable, so in conformity with American interest and all the ideals which had been uttered by the late President, that we can only conclude that it was an evil genius that thwarted and frustrated it.

What General Wedemeyer proposed was that the Government of China, with the backing of the United States forces under his command, offer the Chinese Communist leaders full political rights and full status as a national political party. The rights and security of their leaders and the status of their party were to be underwritten by the United States and its forces, providing only that the Communists disarm and surrender their arms. The Wedemeyer proposal included the promise of national elections to be supervised by the forces of the United States, to be held soon, with full electioneering rights to be guaranteed. Further, General Wedemeyer proposed that if the Communist leaders refused this offer, which rested on the good faith of the United States, the forces under his command would then forcibly disarm them and return their troops to civilian status. In that case, however, the full political rights of the Communist leaders and party would still be safeguarded as in the former case and their security guaranteed by the United States.

The Reds, we may be sure, would not have accepted the offer. They did not want peaceful collaboration but unrest, guerrilla warfare, and finally conquest backed by their neighbor in Manchuria and deviously abetted by the United States Government. And that was what they got.

What fairer solution could have been found? What better solution in the interest of the United States? We professed to want a unified China operating under democratic procedures. But did our Government want that? General Wedemeyer's plan died in the files of the executive agencies concerned.

And so General Marshall departed for China. His instructions, as we have seen, were written by himself and by other enemies of our friend and longtime ally, the Republic of China. I beg leave to express doubt that President Truman understood what the instructions were all about. He perhaps thought he was furthering a pious object. I beg leave to doubt that Secretary Byrnes, then departing on a fruitless errand of quasi-appeasement to Moscow, fathomed the purport of the China project.

Why was it so impossible for the Marshall mission to reach any conclusion that served the interests of China and the United States? To begin with, we had served notice on Chiang Kai-shek, in Wedemeyer's report of November 10, that we would oppose and obstruct any attempt by him to come to realistic terms with the rebels who were in arms against him. We were, under all the verbiage, in the rebels' corner.

Nor must we lose sight of the overwhelming influence of the surrender to Russia at Yalta in the subsequent history of China. In his letter transmitting the White Paper on China to the President, Secretary Acheson perpetrates two astonishing untruths. The first is his denial that the refusal of ammunition to the Republic of China by the United States from August 1946 to August 1947 helped bring about the downfall of the Republic.

The second falsehood is less tangible. It deals with speculative matters. Dean Acheson is a master of the half-truth. There is a sinuosity to Acheson's public utterances which makes it always advisable to place them under close analysis. He excused the demoralizing effects of Yalta on China's postwar circumstances by suggesting that, in any case, Russia could have moved into Manchuria and accomplished what she did in the way of turning that treasure house over to the Chinese Communists. Acheson repeated this barefaced fraud in his Russell Committee testimony. That is plainly not true. When the deal was made at Yalta, the Russians had something like thirty divisions in eastern Siberia, according to General Deane's report. For these they lacked equipment. They were not prepared for offensive operations. Under the terms of the bribe negotiated by Harriman and Deane at Moscow, we gave the Russians 800,000 tons of equipment for their Far Eastern forces. They moved a number of divisions from the west into Siberia, and when they opened their bloodless march across Manchuria, at our invitation, they were a well-equipped army.

Suppose, and this is a reasonable supposition, we had not implored Russia to enter the war in the Far East, had not equipped her army, had not given her the right to take Manchuria—where would the sudden collapse of Japan on the 10th of August, 1945, have found the Russians? Certainly not established in force throughout Manchuria and the northern provinces of China. Had we followed the advice of Admiral Leahy, instead of Marshall, the war with Japan would no doubt have come to its abrupt end with the Kremlin dickering with us for the bribe which they obtained with such miraculous ease at Yalta. The situation in the Far East—then and today—would have in that case looked something like this:

The surrender of the Japanese Kwantung army in Manchuria would have been made to the Americans and Chinese. The Americans would have held Manchuria—and all Korea for the Koreans—until the armies of the Republic of China would have been moved unimpeded there to take over. There were no Communists in Manchuria on VJ-Day except for secret agents. The Japanese had refused to allow such enemies within their lines. Given a peaceable transfer of Manchurian sovereignty from Japan to China, the great industrial plant of Manchuria would have remained intact instead of being looted and wrecked by the Russians; the surplus agricultural products of Manchuria could have been organized for relief of hunger in China proper, and the problems that aggrieved the Republic of China from 1945 to its fall in 1949—military and economic—would have been well on their road to solution. With the Red army of Russia confined behind the Siberian-Manchurian border, the threat of Russian assistance to the Yenan Communists would have been negligible.

I ask this question of the reader:

Given the immense strength the United States dispersed in the Far East in August 1945, do you believe the Soviet Union would have ventured to fight its way into Manchuria once we and our Chinese allies had accepted the surrender of the Kwantung army? The answer is self-evident.

If we had wanted to keep Russia out of Manchuria in August 1945, all hell couldn't have blasted her in. We didn't want to keep Russia out. We invited her in, and recently Secretary Acheson had the nerve to insult the intelligence and the knowledge of two senior committees of the Senate of the United States by repeating that pernicious tissue of falsehoods regarding Yalta.

Given an uncontaminatedly American policy in Washington, we could have applied the same rule we were to apply to Greece—arming the government which we recognized, affording it military guidance to put down a Communist rebellion. Had we followed Leahy with respect to Yalta, and Wedemeyer in the immediate aftermath of VJ-Day, China would have become a progressive, hopeful, democratic society instead of a slave state in subjection to Moscow, and 140,000 young Americans would not have been called upon to expiate Yalta and the Marshall mission in Korea.

I have emphasized the overshadowing importance of Yalta in what is to follow because Manchuria was the rock upon which China broke in the postwar years. It was Chiang Kai-shek's effort to claim Manchuria against the will of the Russians and their Chinese stooges and against the restraints imposed by Marshall that first cracked the great military machine which he had on VJ-Day.

Chiang was also beset by the monetary and inflation difficulties which were partly the result of a lengthy war, but to at least some extent planned for him in the United States.

The campaigns in Manchuria, added to the harassing and vexatious necessity of fighting the guerrilla warfare of the Communist Chinese in North China, strained the logistics of the Republic unendurably, as General Wedemeyer had predicted they would when, in his November 10 report to the Generalissimo, he advised deferring the attempt to subdue Manchuria until North China had been pacified,

That advice, Chiang Kai-shek was unable to accept. The sentiment of his people reminded him that the eight-year war with Japan had been over Manchuria. Manchuria was his nominally by a treaty which he hoped, in spite of all examples to the contrary, Russia would honor. Furthermore, and this was a clinching fact, Manchuria, the workshop of Asia, contained—until looted by Russia—four times the industrial capacity of China proper, three times its power capacity, and four times its railroad mileage in proportion to area. The great plains of Manchuria, moreover, were and are the granary of the Far East.

What was the diplomatic situation when Marshall began his mission? The August treaty bound Russia "to render to China moral support and aid to be given entirely to the National Government as the Central Government of China." You will remember that this treaty pledged to recognize Chinese sovereignty over Manchuria. Did Russia live up to this treaty? The question answers itself. Did Bolshevik Russia ever live up to a commitment made with the world outside its hostile battlements? General Wedemeyer reported to the War Department as early as the 20th of November, 1945, and noted on page 131 of the White Paper, and I quote:

"Russia is in effect creating favorable conditions for the realization of Chinese Communists', and possibly their own plans in North China and Manchuria. These activities are in violation of the recent Sino-Russian treaty and related agreements."

Wedemeyer added a warning with reference to the fatuous policy of attempting a Nationalist-Red coalition in China. He said:

"It appears remote that a satisfactory understanding will be reached between the Chinese Communists and the National Government."

As Wedemeyer reported this in November of 1945, the State Department was daily receiving advice from its embassies and legations in Eastern Europe to the effect that collaboration with Communists in the succession governments of those States was an evil dream, impossible to maintain in good faith, conducive only to the conquest of those lands by Moscow.

But getting back to China, the White Paper further records, on page 136, that:

"The National Government is convinced that the U.S.S.R. had obstructed the efforts of the National Government to assume control over Manchuria in spite of the provisions of the Sino-Soviet Treaty of August 1945, and that the Chinese Communists were tools of the U.S.S.R."

And again, on page 147, allow me to submit this further evidence:

"The entry of Chinese Government forces [into Manchuria] had . . . been seriously impeded by Russian refusal to permit their use of Dairen as a port of entry . . . and by delay in Russian withdrawal. This delay also had the effect of giving the Chinese Communists time to build up their forces in Manchuria, which had apparently been reinforced by the movement of hastily organized or reinforced units from Chahar and Jehol provinces."

What had the Russians done to implement their treaty of friendship and alliance with China? A treaty, mind you, to which we were a part, for, and I am reading from page 116 of the White Paper:

"At the outset [of the T. V. Soong negotiations for the treaty in Moscow] the United States informed the participants that it expected to be consulted prior to the signing of any Sino-Soviet agreements in view of its role at Yalta."

Not only did we compel the Chinese to make this treaty; we declared, for that is what the diplomatic language means, that we were a party at interest in it.

What did the Russians do? First, they closed the principal port of Manchuria—Dairen—to the shipping of all nations, including the Chinese, whose sovereignty over it they had just sworn to uphold. Did we protest this flagrant violation of the treaty and our rights? The White Paper fails to record it if we did. Next they clamped a rigid control over the railroads, denying them as it pleased them to the forces of the Republic of China even though the ink was scarcely dry on their solemn word that the railroads were to be administered jointly by Russia and China.

The Russians welcomed the Chinese Communists to Manchuria. They had enormous stores of arms surrendered by the Japanese—their ammunition dumps, their reserve weapons, etc. Those they gave to the Chinese Communists. They supplied staff direction, training officers and camps for the conscript of the Chinese Reds. They stiffened them with Japanese from the Kwantung armies and finally they turned them loose in 1948—a disciplined army, well armed and well led—to defeat the war-weary, under-supplied forces of the Chinese Republic.

That is the story. It is an old story, familiar to all. Does anyone doubt it? On the 2nd of November, 1945, Chinese Reds, who had already seized the port of Yingkow in Manchuria with Russian Red assistance, warned Vice Admiral Barbey, of the United States Navy, to withdraw his command from that port to avoid a collision. Barbey was also compelled to pull out of the Manchurian port of Hulutoo after Chinese Communist soldiers fired on his launch.

Did our State Department protest this unfriendly action? I remind you that at about the time the United States Navy was being humiliated in Manchurian waters, General Marshall was admonishing Chiang Kai-shek that he could expect no diplomatic assistance from us vis-a-vis Russia. Protect Chinese interests? We would not even protect our own.

What was the situation when General Marshall arrived? Economically, seeding to the White Paper, page 127:

"Despite the brutal and devastating effect of 8 years of war, [it was] surprisingly good and contained many elements of hope. In China proper, although there had been serious wartime disruptions in certain sectors of the economy, the productive potential of agriculture, mining and industry in most of the area taken from the Japanese was not substantially different from that of 1937. The expulsion of the Japanese from Manchuria and Formosa promised to increase several-fold the national industrial plane and to contribute to the achievement of national self-sufficiency in food."

The Chinese Republic, as we have seen, never got Manchuria. China had unprecedentedly large gold and United States dollar exchange, estimated at $900,000,000, with half that much again in private hands. Politically, the prospect was equally promising, except for the rebellion. Civil rights had been restored, including the right to a free press, and Chiang Kai-sheck was genuinely trying to implement the reforms which had been interrupted by the outbreak of the war with Japan in 1937.

As always, he was committed to the Sun Yat-sen program, which all parties, including the Communists, embraced in principle; he thus was willing to go half way with the Reds on a new political regime which would end the one-party rule of the Kuomintang. He had shown his good faith—as he was to do again and again in the negotiations with the Yenan Reds—in the matter of the political consultative conference,

I notice a curious aspect of the White Paper. I find nowhere in its hundreds of pages any reflection upon the character and integrity of Chiang Kai-shek. His character was proof against the busy justifiers who compiled that record under the editorial oversight of Philip Jessup. It is my opinion that when the historians of the future come to enumerate the foremost men of the age in which we live, they will place Chiang Kai-shek high on that roster. I say this in spite of all the high-pitched screaming and squealing of the Lattimores, the Jessups, and the camp-following bleeding hearts of press and radio.

In a military sense, the Republic of China was in a position to meet any problem confronting it except the subversion of its will and the failure of supply from outside. Had China been Greece, had 1945 been 1947, there would have been no problem of pacification ar all. I turn again to the White Paper, page 311, for the story of the military situation:

"The Government . . . possessed an estimated 5 to 1 superiority in combat troops and rifles [over the Reds], a practical monopoly of heavy equipment and transport, and an unopposed air arm."

General Wedemeyer had promptly ferried armies to Shanghai, Peiping, and Nanking by air from the west. He subsequently transported up to a half million troops to new positions. He finished equipping the thirty-nine divisions which had been trained by the United States forces and supplied large quantities of military supplies earmarked under wartime lend-lease. This was the only material assistance given the Republic of China in any bulk after the war until the aid-to-China bill of 1948 began to operate—the operation of which was thoroughly sabotaged by the Commerce and State Departments. It should have been more. Over the hump in India, the United States military authorities were detonating large stores of ammunition and dumping 120,000 tons of war supplies in the Bay of Bengal—much of it undelivered to China but charged to her wartime lend-lease account.