The Yalta Sellout

We turn now to the Pacific side of the recent global war and an examination of General Marshall's behavior in that vast theater.

First, we must consider what went on at Yalta. If, as Hanson Baldwin observes, we lost the peace because of great political mistakes in World War II, then it is clear that those mistakes culminated in the controlling decisions made at the conferences of Teheran and Yalta, It is my judgment that we lost the peace in Europe at Teheran. It is even clearer that we lost the peace in Asia at Yalta. At Teheran, Marshall's will prevailed in concert with that of Stalin regarding the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe. At Yalta, Marshall's will prevailed, with that of Stalin, regarding Russia's entry into the far Eastern war as a full-fledged partner entitled to the spoils of such participation.

Yalta is a former resort of the Romanoff Czars on the shores of the Black Sea. Yalta is where Roosevelt, already suffering from the enfeeblement that brought his death four months later, went to meet again with the bloody autocrat of all the Russians and the Churchill with whom he had signally differed at Teheran.

The President, bearing the marks of his approaching dissolution, traveled the thousands of weary miles by plane, by ship, and, at the end, by motorcar, to treat with the tyrant, to seek accord with him, and to make the bargains over Poland and China that today plague and shame us all. The principal, the most utterly damaging, of these bargains contained the bribe he paid to Stalin for his eleventh-hour participation in the war against Japan.

Manchuria is the richest part of China. In terms of area and natural resources it may be described as the Texas of China. But Manchuria has not been China's to enjoy for many years. It must be recalled, and this is a key to much of China's fearful history during the last generation, that the age-old empire of China came to its end in the years before World War I. The causes of that event need not take up too much of our time. The imperial court, presided over by the aged dowager empress, was beset by western ideas, western-trained Chinese reformers, notably Dr. Sun Yat-sen, by the incompetence of the empress' advisers and by the conflicting and greedy claims of the Great Powers. And so it fell, and for a generation China has known neither peace nor freedom from foreign invasion.

Manchuria itself has been the scene and occasion of wars for more than half a century. Japan and Russia alike have fought for its mastery since the Sino-Japanese War of 1894. When, after that war, the Japanese were prevented by the European powers from enjoying the fruits of victory in Manchuria, Russia lunged down from the Maritime Provinces of Siberia to fill that vacuum.

By the year 1904, Japan felt strong enough to challenge Russia over Manchuria. That was what the Russo-Japanese War was about, a war in which Theodore Roosevelt backed Japan by deed and sentiment, out of fear of the growing might of Russia in eastern Asia. Theodore Roosevelt was solely pursuing American interests, and when he saw that Japan, if it won too conclusive a victory, might succeed to Russia's mantle and advance farther into China, Roosevelt intervened. He brought the Japanese and Russians together at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to negotiate a peace which checked Japanese ambitions even as it also ended Russian sway in Manchuria.

The intervening years saw a steady encroachment by Japan over Manchuria, an encroachment viewed with alarm by the single-minded Americans who then conducted our foreign policies, until the climax was reached in 1937 when Japan launched full-scale war against China for undisputed control of Manchuria and northern China. Korea, which is a geographical dependency of Manchuria, had, of course, been sacrificed to Japan's imperial ambitions along the route and had long since been integrated into the empire of Nippon.

The historic route of the invaders of China has been from the north. During many centuries, China has mounted guard on its northern frontiers against the peoples of Manchuria, Mongolia, and Siberia, who have, for as many centuries, been regarded as barbarians by the civilized Chinese. Manchuria has been the key to the security of China since the Manchu conquest nearly four centuries ago. This fact we should remember and consider, as we remember Yalta.

It was a rich, highly developed Manchuria that was at stake at Yalta. It was Manchuria which Franklin D. Roosevelt thrust upon the Russians; it was, moreover, conferred upon the new barbarians with full understanding that the United States was thereby satisfying an old imperialistic design of the Kremlin. The very language of the secret protocol which sealed the bargain at Yalta recognized this fact. What Roosevelt ceded to Stalin at Yalta, without the knowledge or consent of the Chinese, whose sovereignty there we always had upheld, was, and I quote from the work of Edward R. Stettinius, Jr., Roosevelt and the Russians, page 93, in restoration of "the former rights of Russia violated by the treacherous attack of Japan in 1904." The testimony before the Russell Committee shows that Chiang Kai-shek was not invited to the Yalta Conference and that the terms of the agreement selling out Chinese interests were kept secret from him. At the Cairo Conference, however, it was solemnly agreed with him that China's rights in Manchuria would be fully respected and protected. When Wedemeyer appeared before the Russell Committee, he testified that when Ambassador Hurley informed Chiang Kai-shek of the Yalta agreement which sealed the doom of the Republic of China, Chiang was so shocked that he asked Hurley to repeat it before he could believe it.

The project was not disguised. It was a nakedly imperialistic aggression over the prostrate body of China. What Roosevelt sealed and delivered in the protocol agreed upon by him and Stalin in a secret parley consuming only eleven minutes, and thereafter kept locked away in a White House safe for many months, were the historic levers of power over China—the ports of Darien and Port Arthur and the Chinese Eastern and South Manchurian railways. It was through these ports and along those railways, with their armed guards and command of all the communications, including the telegraph lines, that first Russia, then Japan, and now again Russia, with her satellite, exercised mastery over Manchuria.

According to the terms of the bribe, drawn up in Moscow by that elusive statesman of the half world in which our relations with Russia dwell, Averell Harriman, Dairen was to be "internationalized," the preeminent interests of the Soviet Union being safeguarded, and "the lease of Port Arthur as a naval base of the U.S.S.R. restored." I have quoted from the protocol as published by Stettinius. I again quote:

"The Chinese Eastern Railroad and the South Manchurian Railroad, which provides an outlet to Dairen, shall be jointly operated by the establishment of a joint Soviet-Chinese company, it being understood that the preeminent interests of the Soviet Union shall be safeguarded and that China shall retain full sovereignty in Manchuria."

There were other provisions. Russia's long-standing protectorate over Outer Mongolia was ratified, the southern end of Sakhalin, of which Russia was deprived by the treaty of Portsmouth, was restored to her, and, as if to boot, the Kuriles were handed her. The Kuriles had been Japanese, never Russian,

What shall we say of Roosevelt's cynical submission to Russian imperialism in that deal? This was the Roosevelt, mark you, who is represented to us in Sumner Welles's book Seven Decisions That Shaped History, as the high-principled opponent of imperialism in Hong Kong and India. This is the Roosevelt who steadfastly through the war sought to persuade Churchill to get out of India and surrender the British leasehold of Hong Kong. This was the Roosevelt who proposed to Stalin at Yalta—and I find this in Sherwood on page 66—that Hong Kong be handed to the Chinese or internationalized and that colony turned over to a United Nations trusteeship. This was the Roosevelt who suggested that French Indochina be placed under a trusteeship. He broached this idea to Sumner Welles.

What does this whole sordid transaction teach us about the good faith of the advisers of Roosevelt and the assorted liberals, Communists, Communist sympathizers, and agents of the Kremlin—the Achesons, the Lattimores, the Phillip Jessups, and the Institute of Pacific Relations—who have for so long been insincerely befuddling the people with talk of imperialism and people's rights in Asia?

Why, merely this, that in their minds the imperialism of the west, that decaying instrument of European expansion, is wicked and must be opposed. The imperialism of Russia is not only commendable but must be advanced by every means of diplomacy and war at whatever cost to the United States.

That is the liberal-leftist doctrine on imperialism. Have we heard one liberal voice raised in the Senate or elsewhere in condemnation of Roosevelt's surrender to Russian imperialism at Yalta? This is the test, and by it we may measure the monstrous hypocrisy of the liberal elements in Congress and in the country which have assisted in and applauded the surrender of all China to Russia without the firing of a single Russian shot.

The apologists for Mr. Roosevelt have attempted to palliate his offense. Robert Sherwood suggests that Roosevelt was enfeebled. I quote him: "Had it not been that the Yalta Conference was almost at an end and he was tired and anxious to avoid further argument," Roosevelt, in his opinion, might have refused to sign the protocol, This is on page 867 of Roosevelt and Hopkins. Yet on the preceding page he nullifies the argument of fatigue by conceding:

"It is quite clear that Roosevelt had been prepared even before the Teheran conference in 1943 to agree to the legitimacy of most if not all of the Soviet claims in the Far East, for they involved the restoration of possessions and privileges taken by the Japanese from the Russians in the war of 1904."

And Sherwood elsewhere reports Roosevelt offering Stalin the "warm water port" of Dairen as early as Teheran. Mr. Sherwood is known as a fervent and practicing "liberal." He sees nothing wrong in restoring the imperialistic "possessions and privileges" which had been wrested from a dying Chinese empire by the forces of Czarism. The insincerity, the speciousness, the nonlogical workings of the liberal mind when it comes to Russian ambitions are clearly manifested by Mr. Sherwood. Mr. Welles presents a better case. He, too, is a "liberal," but with a higher sense of responsibility to history. I need not introduce Mr. Welles to the reader. He served in the Department of State until the fall of 1943, when his long-standing feud with Cordell Hull brought about the termination of his public service. Mr. Welles was Under Secretary of State when dismissed. His book Seven Decisions That Shaped History is an apologia for his late chief, Roosevelt, and a justification for certain events in his own career.

Mr. Welles insists that Roosevelt's betrayal of China and the United States at Yalta is excusable. On what ground? The ground of military necessity. When Roosevelt acted, according to Welles, he did so because he believed that we must entice Stalin into committing what we see as a plain act of self-interest, namely, getting into the war against Japan before it was too late. The President made that judgment because he had been advised by his military advisers, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that we had a long, hard row to hoe with the Japanese and that without Russia's help we might not achieve victory.

That is the Welles doctrine. It is likewise the Marshall-Acheson-State Department line. Where Welles differs is that he exposes that the military advice upon which Roosevelt acted was false and misleading. And where does the pursuit of this rationalization lead us?

As we might suppose—to Marshall.

It was Marshall who stood at Roosevelt's elbow at Yalta, urging the grim necessity of bribing Stalin to get into the war. It was Marshall who submitted intelligence reports to support his argument, suppressing more truthful estimates, according to Hanson Baldwin on page 81, and keeping from the stricken Roosevelt knowledge that the Japanese were even then feeling for peace in acknowledgment of defeat.

Was this a sincere endeavor by the master of global strategy to advance American interest? Did we sorely need Russian assistance? Or was it another in the baffling pattern of General Marshall's interventions in the course of the great war which conduced to the well-being of the Kremlin?

The desire to have Russia's help in the Far East arose with Marshall and was embodied, as we know, in the fateful appeasement memorandum of the first Quebec conference in August of 1943; the document which charted our course, at Teheran and Yalta and thereafter. The desire to entice Russia into the Japanese war was officially embodied in a combined Chiefs of Staff doctrine which I have previously discussed and which was presented at second Quebec, in September of 1944. Back in the fall of 1943 the President sent Averell Harriman to Moscow as his Ambassador and Marshall sent General Deane, their "prime objective," as Deane describes it on page 23 of his book, being "to induce Soviet participation in the war with Japan."

Were inducements necessary? Was it in the Kremlin's interest to become a full-fledged combatant in the war in the Far East, to take part in the defeat of Japan and have a seat at the peace table where the spoils of war would be divided? Was it to the Kremlin's interest to march its armies into Manchuria, from which they had been barred since 1905 by the Kwantung army, and to be in possession there when the war ended? If some Americans did not grasp the strategic importance of Manchuria, there is certainly abundant evidence that the Kremlin, faithful to Lenin's dictum that "he who controls China controls the world," never lost sight of it. To ask these questions is to answer them, even if we lacked the indications of Stalin's determination to be in at the Far Eastern kill, which we have. Any intelligent American, after giving the matter sufficient thought, would know that the aim of Roosevelt and Marshall at Yalta should have been not how to get the Russians in, but how to keep them out.

I have evidence of four occasions before Yalta on which Stalin indicated to American officials his desires in this respect. The first such suggestion was made to Averell Harriman when, in August of 1942, he went to Moscow with Churchill to deliver the word that the operations in North Africa had been substituted for the second front now so exigently demanded by Stalin and Marshall. The occasion is reported by General Deane on page 226 of his book:

"Stalin told Harriman then that Japan was the historic enemy of Russia and that her eventual defeat was essential to Russian interests. He implied that while the Soviet Union's military position at that time would not permit her participation, eventually she would come in."

Roosevelt knew of this: so, presumably, did Marshall. It should be noted that Stalin ascribed Russian interests as his motive for fighting Japan.

The Red Czar next informed General Patrick J. Hurley of his intentions. And in April of 1943 Hurley so reported to Admiral Leahy. The reference is on page 147 of Leahy's book, and I quote him:

"Hurley saw Stalin . . . and the Marshal told him that after Germany was defeated, he would assist America in the war against Japan. . . . The [our] army, in its plans for the defeat of Japan, was anxious to have the help of Russia. It was my opinion that we could defeat Japan without Russian assistance."

The stout-hearted old sea dog Leahy held to that opinion throughout, being overborne always by Marshall. The history of the war in the Far East and our postwar loss of China, with the resultant war in Korea, would have been far different had Leahy been, as his rank prescribed, the principal military adviser to Roosevelt. That was not to be. The iron will of Marshall prevailed over Leahy, as it did over Roosevelt and, after the invasion of Italy, over Churchill.

I digress to report the substance of Leahy's opposition to asking the Russians in, because it bears so pertinently on the issue and because Leahy's qualifications were so high, his reasoning so soundly American. In the record of World War II, where Leahy occupies an honorable place, no question can arise at any time as to where his loyalties lie,

In the strategical discussions about how to end the war with Japan, Marshall urged that a land invasion was necessary; an invasion beginning in the southern islands of the Japanese homelands and proceeding north; an invasion requiring upward of 2,000,000 riflemen and entailing, according to Marshall's estimates, casualties of half a million.

Leahy reports a conference at the White House on the 10th of July, 1944. This is on page 243 of his book. Wrote Leahy:

"It was my opinion, and I urged it strongly on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that no major land invasion of the Japanese mainland was necessary to win the war."

Far more impelling even than Leahy's own judgment was the agreement he reported, page 251, between General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz at Honolulu on that point. Leahy accompanied Roosevelt, it will be recalled, on that excursion, which coincided with the Democratic National Convention of 1944. He attended the conversations at which the President and the Army and Navy commanders in the Pacific projected victory over Japan. These—Nimitz and MacArthur—were the true experts on the Pacific. Let us have their judgment and Leahy's conclusions thereon:

"The agreement on fundamental strategy to be employed in defeating Japan and the President's familiarity with the situation acquired at this conference were to be of great value in preventing an unnecessary invasion of Japan which the planning staffs of the Joint Chiefs and the War Department were advocating, regardless of the loss of life chat would result from an attack on Japan's ground forces in their own country. MacArthur and Nimitz were now in agreement that the Philippines should be recovered with ground and air power then available in the western Pacific and that Japan could be forced to accept our terms of surrender by the use of sea and air power without an invasion of the Japanese homeland."

There we have the strategy of MacArthur, Nimitz, and Leahy for winning the war in the Pacific—but not Marshall's. Who was right?

Yet, despite this expert advice, Marshall persisted. At the staff discussions before second Quebec, two months later, Leahy had this to report on page 259:

"By the beginning of September, Japan was almost defeated through a practically complete sea and air blockade. However, a proposal was made by the Army to force a surrender of Japan by an amphibious invasion of the main islands through the island of Kyushu. . . . The Army did not appear to be able to understand that the Navy, with some Army air assistance, already had defeated Japan. The Army not only was planning a huge land invasion of Japan, but was convinced that we needed Russian assistance as well to bring the war against Japan to a successful conclusion."

So much for the strategy of the matter.

I return to the indications of Russia's intentions in the Far East. Cordell Hull was the unexpected and extremely gratified recipient of the third such proffer of help in the Far East. The venerable Secretary of State, an upright and proud man, although he did not wholly understand the currents of high policy that swirled about him, went to Moscow in October of 1943 to attend a conference of the Allied foreign ministers. It was a momentous occasion for Mr. Hull, the crowning accomplishment of a lifetime devoted to public service. At that time Mr. Hull suffered from the current credulity about Russia's good faith in the highest American circles. He was insisting, to the annoyance of subtler minds, that Russia was one nation, Britain another, equal in merit as in menace, and that we must treat them with equal and exact consideration. A fair-spoken man himself, Mr. Hull assumed that he was dealing with men of like scruple.

On the final night of his stay in Moscow, Mr. Hull attended the usual state banquet with which the master of the Kremlin regales his visitors. The banquet took place in the Hall of Catherine the Great at the Kremlin. They dined upon the gold plate and drank innumerable toasts from heavy crystal.

Mr. Hull felt himself honored at being on the right of the prime author of world misfortune. After having suitably flattered Stalin, Hull was "astonished and delighted" when the Marshall turned to him and said, as recorded on page 1309 of Mr. Hull's Memoirs:

"[Marshall said] clearly and unequivocally that when the Allies had succeeded in defeating Germany, the Soviet Union would then join in defeating Japan. Stalin had brought up this subject entirely on his own. . . . He finished by saying that I could inform President Roosevelt of this in the strictest confidence. I thanked him heartily."

The Secretary of State lost no time in cabling the promise to Roosevelt, using both the Army and Navy ciphers in the hope of keeping the news from the British. It was Mr. Hull's belief, a belief too often verified, that the Foreign Office in London leaked secrets.

In his reflections over Yalta—Hull had by then resigned—he seemed to think it passing strange that Roosevelt had had to acquire Stalin's assistance by means of "numerous territorial concessions." He added, "When Stalin made his promise to me it had no strings attached to it."

The fourth assurance from Stalin regarding the Far East came at Teheran, where he observed that, once peace came in Europe, "by our common front we shall win" in that quarter. But by that time, recognizing that Harriman and Deane had come to Moscow to ply him for assistance, Stalin was, quite naturally, thinking of his price. The price was not cheap. In October of 1944, during Churchill's second visit to Moscow, Harriman got Stalin on the subject of the war against Japan. Deane noted, page 247 of his book, that Stalin agreed that:

"The Soviet Union would take the offensive after Germany's defeat, provided the United States would insist on building up the necessary reserve supplies (for 60 divisions in Siberia) and provided the political aspects of Russia's participation had been clarified. His latter proviso referred to the recognition by China of Russian claims against Japan in the Far East."

At this sitting Stalin agreed that the United States Navy might have Perropavlosk on the Pacific as a naval base and our air forces the sites for heavy bomber bases in the Maritime Provinces, but denied us use of the Trans-Siberian railroad to haul in supplies.

Thus was the gun pointed at Roosevelt's head. If we wanted Russia in, we had to supply her armies and force Chiang Kai-shek to accept the loss of Manchuria, which had been solemnly promised him by Roosevelt and Churchill at Cairo. Marshall insisted, again beyond the call of duty, that we needed Russia. Roosevelt believed him. The cost of supplies was fairly heavy, the Russians stipulating what amounted to 860,410 tons of dry cargo, 206,000 tons of liquid cargo. All this in addition to the supplies for the war in Europe called for under the fourth protocol. The Russians got 80 percent of their Far Eastern requirements. One item was 25,000 tons of canned meat. That would provide at least 50,000,000 meat courses, at a pound each, for the Red soldiers.

I return to Yalta, where Stalin got his price in full, the conference which is described by Hanson Baldwin as "the saddest chapter in the long history of political futility which the war recorded."

What was the war situation in the Pacific in January of 1945? Leyte was ours, the Japanese fleet was defeated, Manila fell during the Yalta Conference, Okinawa lay ahead, but the Air Force was daily raining destruction and fire on Japanese cities. General William J. Donovan's Office of Strategic Services was reporting from China that the Kwantung army had been dissipated and depleted. In any case, said the OSS, what was left could not be moved to the Japanese home islands because of the lack of shipping. Nor could the Japanese troops in China be moved. Everywhere the story was the same. The Japanese merchant marine was beneath the sea. The blockade was strangling Japan. Admiral Leahy wrote on page 293 of his book concerning his own views of the situation at this time:

"I was of the firm opinion that our war against Japan had progressed to the point where her defeat was only a matter of time and attrition. Therefore, we did not need Stalin's help to defeat our enemy in the Pacific. The Army did not agree with me and Roosevelt was prepared to bargain with Stalin."

Hanson Baldwin, writing after the event, endorsed Leahy's conclusions, saying, on page 79 of his book:

"At the time of Yalta, Japan was already beaten—nor by the atomic bomb which had not yet been perfected, not by conventional bombing then just starting, but by attrition and blockade."

Yet, at Yalta, General Marshall redoubled his endeavors for Russia's entrance with all the indomitable persistence he had applied to the "second front now" and to blocking Mark Clark and the British over the eastern European strategy. The late Edward Stettinius, who, as Secretary of State, played a hand at Yalta, recalled on page 90 of Roosevelt and the Russians:

"I knew at Yalta . . . of the immense pressure put on the President by our military leaders to bring Russia into the far-eastern war."

Before Stettinius left Washington he saw a memorandum from the Joint Chiefs to the State Department which said: "We desire Russia's entry at the earliest possible date."

In support of his urgent demand, Marshall used what Baldwin calls on page 30 of his book "a pessimistic intelligence estimate," which placed the strength of the Kwantung army in Manchuria at 700,000, a total of 2,000,000 Japanese forces on the Asiatic mainland—"all first-rate troops and well trained," according to Marshall. Far worse than this, Baldwin exposes the fact that more realistic intelligence estimates, corresponding to the facts as brought out after the war and held at that time by Leahy and others, "never reached the top echelon at Yalta."

Even the Washington Post, that pillar of leftism and scuttle in Asia, felt moved on September 9, 1948, to declare that the Chiefs of Staff "made a blunder, to advise Roosevelt and Churchill at Yalta that Japan would last 18 months after VE-day."

Nor is this the end of this dismal story.

Rear Admiral E. M. Zacharias, in his book Behind Closed Doors, declares that a Japanese peace feeler had been received and transmitted to Washington by General MacArthur before Roosevelt departed for Yalta. So at the time we sold out China to Russia to induce Russia to come into the Japanese war, we already had Japan suing for peace, according to Admiral Zacharias. The peace overtures were to come thick and fast from Japanese sources after Yalta, and by the time of Potsdam they were so authentic that the Declaration of Potsdam was put forward to answer them.

Yet, late in April of 1945 Marshall was still intent upon wooing the Russians into the Far Eastern war. As Stettinius reports it on page 97:

"At a top-level policy meeting in the White House just before the San Francisco conference opened on April 25, President Truman, the military leaders and I discussed the failure of the Soviet Union to abide by the Yalta agreement on the Balkans. At this meeting the United States military representatives pleaded for patience with the Soviet Union because they feared that a crack-down would endanger Russian entry into the far-eastern war."

Who advised patience with Russia? Marshall? At Potsdam, in July, Marshall's determination to have the Red Army equipped by us and moved into Asia had not abated. Stettinius reports with some perplexity on page 98:

"Even as late as the Potsdam conference, after the first atomic bomb had exploded at Los Alamos on July 16, the military insisted that the Soviet Union had to be brought into the far-eastern war."

In his endeavor to exculpate Roosevelt of blame for the shame of Yalta, Welles saddles the blame on the combined Chiefs of Staff. We know that it was Marshall who formed and carried through those decisions. Welles attributed Marshall's desire to have Russia in to "a basic misapprehension of existing facts." This appears on page 153 of his book.

Is that the answer? Or was Marshall's insistence that Russia should be allowed to serve her own interest—not ours—in eastern Asia a part of that pattern which has been emerging with ever greater clarity as we trace his career: a pattern which finds his decisions, maintained with great stubbornness and skill, always and invariably serving the world policy of the Kremlin?

The President had another adviser at Yalta, Alger Hiss. Was it upon the advice of Hiss, who served on the Far Eastern desks and was deep in the China plot, that Roosevelt, chatting companionably with Stalin, assured him that:

"Blame for the breach [in China] lay more with the Comintern and the Kuomintang than the rank and file of the so-called Communists?"

The quotation is from page 868 of Sherwood's revelatory book. It will be noted that the Communists, the Kremlin lackeys who sent their armies against our own in Korea, were to Roosevelt only "so-called" Communists, and pretty good fellows at that, more reasonable, the President may have gone on to say, than Chiang Kai-shek's bunch or even your own fellows, Generalissimo, in Moscow! We shall encounter that view of the Chinese Reds as agreeable innocents again when we examine Marshall's mission to China.

Let me assume for the moment that Marshall's judgment in World War II was clouded by no ulterior objective, no hidden thread of purpose which could not reach the light of day. What kind of a "master of global strategy" would have made the mistake of Yalta? What kind of strategic genius does that display? The whole array of Marshall's strategical endeavors, from Sledgehammer, or the "second front now," through his timidity over invading Algiers by way of the Mediterranean, to his downright insistence upon invading southern France two months after D-day in Normandy, is unreassuring. We inevitably contrast Marshall's competence with MacArthur's during MacArthur's grand march from New Guinea to Tokyo. In the circumstances, how could we take Marshall's word on strategy? If he so overestimated the Japanese as to believe they could fight on for a year and half after the Germans quit in Europe, how can we place any reliance upon his estimate of the strength of the Russian empire and its Chinese satellite in eastern Asia at this moment?

So the A-bombs fell on Japan and the war was over, although so careful a military critic as Hanson Baldwin believes that the bombs hastened the end of the war, if at all, by only one day. Japan's fate had been determined long, long before. And with the end of the war Yalta's chickens came promptly home to roost. The Red Army after a bloodless campaign of six days took over all Manchuria; it stood also in North China. The Reds were there by right, ceded them at Yalta.

And so we come to the question of Korea. Who divided that unhappy land at the thirty-eighth parallel, ordering that Russia should receive the surrender of Japanese forces above that line, the United States below it? Here we have one of the major mysteries of that time. At Yalta, Stalin had agreed with Roosevelt on a four-power trusteeship for Korea, the powers to be the United States, China, Russia, and Britain; a decision which he ratified when Harry Hopkins visited Moscow in the late spring of 1945. The trusteeship called for a unified administration of all Korea with a government of Koreans to be freely elected and governing the whole peninsula. What happened to the trusteeship? When Japan quit, there arose the problem of accepting the surrender of the forces in the field.

Welles covers the situation on page 167 of his book Seven Decisions That Shaped History:

"Some subordinate officers in the Pentagon hastily recommended that the Russians accept the Japanese surrender north of the thirty-eighth parallel in Korea, while the American troops would accept it south of that line.

"I am told that this line was fixed because it was convenient. Certainly it was fixed by officials with no knowledge of what they were doing, and without consulting any responsible members of the administration who might have had some regard for the political and economic considerations which the decision so lamentably ignores."

There the matter rested until Senator Brewster of Maine brought to light the fact that the thirty-eighth parallel has historic significance. I had wondered why the War Department in August of 1945 chose to divide Korea for purposes, as was said, of receiving the Japanese surrender, along the thirty-eighth parallel. Why not the thirty-seventh, or the thirty-ninth parallel? Why had it to be the thirty-eighth parallel?

The Senator from Maine, in delving into United States Relations, which is the continuing history of American foreign affairs as published periodically by the Department of State, found that the Russians had fixed the thirty-eighth parallel, nearly a half century ago, as the dividing line. They were negotiating with Japan over the division of Korea between the two imperial systems. So the Czar's diplomats proposed to those of the Emperor of Japan that the thirty-eighth parallel be the border between the two empires.

I refer to the testimony before the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees on June 8, 1951, when Secretary Acheson was being questioned by Senator Brewster on this point. Acheson disclosed that the decision was taken not by "some subordinate officers" but by the Secretary of War, was approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by the State, Army, Navy, Air Force Coordinating Committee, and by the President. This was a high-level decision, initiated by the Secretary of War. Who was, in effect, the Secretary of War during the later incumbency of Mr. Stimson? I think no one who was in touch with the inner workings of those adjoining offices at the Pentagon, who has read the late Secretary's explicit memoirs, who knows the inner relationships between the two men, can doubt that in matters of this sort it was Marshall who made the decisions, Stimson who rubber-stamped them.

It was Marshall who selected the line for the division of Korea which was chosen by the Russian Foreign Office and General Staff nearly fifty years ago. It was Marshall who restored Russia's pre-1904 claims on North Korea in August of 1945,

I refer you particularly to this colloquy, the Senator from Maine asking, Secretary Acheson answering the questions:

"Senator Brewster: Isn't it rather interesting to note the thirty-eighth parallel in Korea was proposed 45 years earlier by Russia as a means of dividing the spheres of influence of Russia and Japan incident to the episodes around the Russo-Japanese War?"

"Secretary Acheson: I am not familiar with that, Senator."

I content myself with noting that a Secretary of State unfamiliar with the complex of imperial ambitions in the Far Ease during the days when the United States was playing a humane, a creditable and an American part in those affairs can scarcely qualify as an expert on the diplomacy of the Far East.

The war was over. Millions of Americans, mistakenly thinking that their international troubles were over too, had a 24-hour celebration only to awaken before long to find that, even as we were spending vast amounts of flesh and blood and steel to win the war, there was being conducted what appeared to be a planned loss of the peace.