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RED
BLIGHT
Order Extra Copies From
_CHRISTIAN NATIONALIST
CRUSADE_
P. O. Box D-4
St. Louis 1, Missouri
To
_Everyone everywhere who would help to make the “lure” of freedom
so irresistible that the false promises of security, made by the
Communists, will be seen for what they are—a delusion and a fraud._
RED
BLIGHT
by
MARY LAMAR KNIGHT
[Illustration: Star symbol]
LORRIN L. MORRISON
_Publisher
Los Angeles_
COPYRIGHT, 1951
BY
MARY LAMAR KNIGHT
FIRST PRINTING
IN TWO EDITIONS:
_Paper Bound, June, 1951_
_Cloth Bound, June, 1951_
Printed in the United States of America by
LORRIN L. MORRISON, _Printing and Publishing_
1915 So. Western Ave., Los Angeles 18, Calif.
All rights reserved, including the rights of reproduction,
in whole or in part, in any form.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The opinions expressed in this book represent only one individual’s
point of view. They are based upon what I, myself, have seen and
heard and are subject, therefore, to human error, preferences and
prejudices. I ask only that they be considered in this light, and
hope that they may serve to stimulate independent thinking and
inquiry.
What I am reporting I have experienced personally or learned from the
most reliable sources at my command. If I succeed only in a small
measure in conveying my thoughts and opinions, it is, nonetheless, a
load off my chest, and I shall sleep more easily for having made a
sincere, if limited, contribution toward a better understanding of
our present disheartening dilemma.
MARY LAMAR KNIGHT
_Table of Contents_
_Introduction_ 1
_Chapter I—Incompetence or Treachery?_ 7
_Chapter II—Yenan Interlude_ 29
_Chapter III—Communist Personalities_ 45
_Chapter IV—Communism’s Forebears_ 70
_Chapter V—Communist Propaganda_ 82
_Chapter VI—Manchuria, the Prize_ 94
_Chapter VII—The Tragedy of the Generalissimo_ 102
_Chapter VIII—Behind the Red Curtain_ 117
_Chapter IX—Quo Vadis?_ 131
_Appendix_ 151
_Bibliography_ 189
_Index_ 193
_About the Author_ 199
_Introduction_
The “lure” of Communism is the same in every country—the promise of
security and a richer life for all, with less pain and effort to
the individual from the cradle to the grave. We have only to think
clearly, however, to realize that such promises are impossible of
fulfillment in a Communist State. Never has progress been made in
that direction except where there was personal freedom, initiative
and enterprise, for these are the qualities that take civilization
forward _toward_ Perfection, instead of backward _into_ Chaos.
The theories of Marx and Engels have been used and misused by the
Soviets. As far as their present laws are concerned, the “Yassa” of
Genghis Khan would have served the purpose, had it been as well known
in the Twentieth Century as it was in the Thirteenth.
In studying the historical backgrounds of those great movements
which, at various times in the past, have churned up the quietude
of the earth, I found that they were always propelled or motivated
by extreme fanaticism. A distinctive feature of all of them seems
to be the desire to change the established order by revolution and
intrigue, as well as by military conquest. These movements are
opposed not only by the diehards, but by the believers in evolution
and slow change; not only by the wealthy and comfortable, but by the
practical men of affairs. All of this has been happening since the
beginning of history. Believers in the established order of things
always are on the defensive. Only open and direct attack stirs them
to the offensive. This last is true of the United States, and it is
also true of China. It is difficult for the rulers of peace-loving
nations to create or inspire prolonged hatred in those who must do
their bidding. This fact has been one of Stalin’s major worries with
respect to the Chinese Communists. His predecessor, Trotsky, gave
them up as impossible. “The Chinese have no capacity for sustained
mass indignation,” Trotsky has been quoted as saying. “As Communists
they are hopeless.”
Everyone who has lived in China learns to respect and to love the
Chinese people. No nation on earth has left a greater endowment
in wealth of artistic accomplishment or evolved a more workable
philosophy than has China. Even the poorest coolie is acquainted with
some of the simple lessons contained in the Classics.
As a correspondent in China for the United Press Associations, I
learned to admire the people deeply. When in 1946 I was invited
by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration to
spend six months there as a consultant, without compensation, I was
delighted at the opportunity to return. Each time, I increased my
knowledge and improved my understanding of the country and made an
earnest effort to comprehend the divergent forces underlying modern
China and to gauge their effect upon the peace of the world.
The red blight, as everyone knows, is world wide, but I have focused
my attention on China because it is the part of the world I know
best. I saw the blight spread over this area with sickening rapidity
in 1936, and again in 1946.
On both my trips, I travelled slowly from Singapore through most of
the major cities to Manchuria, where I remained for a considerable
length of time. Manchuria in 1946 had changed radically from
Manchuria in 1936. The Russians had supplanted the Japanese, and two
wars in the brief span of ten years had left their tragic imprint.
The more I travelled, and the more I read and studied, the more
aware I became of the pattern underlying the great upheavals, not
only in China but throughout Eurasia. Each eruption had moved in
a cycle from tribal communism to communistic imperialism, and
then to a dictatorship so despotic that its tyranny lasted in
some instances for generations. Invariably, the dictatorship fell
into dissolution and decline, followed by desolation and chaos.
The despots engineering these movements were all nurtured on the
vast steppe-lands, and they never attempted the invasion of their
more civilized neighbors until their own strength was such that no
opposing army could match them.
Stalin, the latest of these despots, is as barbaric as his
predecessors. Certainly, no one could intimate that his methods are
even remotely civilized. He has “refined” and “distilled” their
characteristic brutality to an exacting degree. It took him fifteen
years to turn his own people from the techniques of Lenin to those of
his own fiendish thuggery. He has “conquered, bamboozled, outsmarted
and trapped” more than nine hundred million people into “political
and moral paralysis.”
Are we also going to fall victims to the machinations of this
latest of these world shakers? Will we be sucked in through fear or
blandishment? Or have we the common sense, the spiritual development
and the _will_ to save ourselves? Human nature has changed little
during the history of mankind. Our challenge now is to try to develop
our spiritual growth so that it will be commensurate with our
fantastic material growth.
A strong Nationalism made us great, as it has all nations that have
risen to world power. To maintain this power, however, requires the
intelligence and wisdom of our Founding Fathers, who, by their use of
initiative, ingenuity, enterprise and prayerful determination, made
us the Historic United States. Is it possible that recent generations
of American men and women have lost these qualities and have failed
to achieve complete maturity?
I keep asking myself: Is “civilized” man intelligent enough, in the
light of his own past experience, to stop this human tragedy now, and
perhaps for a foreseeable future? Or, will he become hopelessly and
irrevocably lost in the futile contemplation of an idyllic dream that
is ages old, but that never has become a reality, and never will.
PROLOGUE
_Oh Man, thou feeble tenant of an hour,
Debased by slavery, debauched by power;
Thy love is lust; thy friendship a cheat;
Hypocrisy thy smile; thy word deceit—
Thy nature ennobled but by name,
The very beasts might bid thee blush for shame._
LORD BYRON
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?