Yahoo!

Big, jovial Major General Patrick Jay Hurley, who has been coal miner, cowboy, mule skinner, lawyer to the Choctaws, buck private and presidential envoy extraordinary, began his newest job: U.S. Ambassador to China. His letters of credence had not arrived from Washington, but Chungking waved aside such formalities. In the American Embassy Pat Hurley held his first press conference, told reporters how he had taken part in parleys between Chiang Kai-shek's Government and the Chinese Communists. It was a strangely unself-conscious tale.

Mission to Yenan. Last October General Hurley sat in on go-between talks in Chungking. Then in November he boarded a U.S. Army C-47, flew north to Yenan, capital of Communist China, prepared to loose his legendary diplomatic charm.

Pat Hurley sent ahead no advance notices. As his transport circled Yenan's airport, the hinterland city of 40,000 went into a dither. First to greet the visitor was U.S. Army Observer Colonel David Dean Barrett, an old China hand, who was dressed in a faded, padded blue-cotton greatcoat over his woolen olive drab. General Hurley wore correct two-star uniform, complete with three rows of campaign ribbons, Mexican Aztec Eagle, White Eagle of Yugoslavia, D.S.C. (for gallantry in World War I) and U.S. Distinguished Service Medal with oakleaf cluster. Cracked the Colonel: "General, you have got a ribbon there for everything but Shays's Rebellion."

Meeting in Yenan. A rush phone call had summoned Yenan's Big Four--Communist Party Secretary Mao Tse-tung, Generals Chou Enlai, Chu Teh and Yeh Chien-ying. They sped to the airport in Mao's private car (a converted ambulance), ran pell-mell across the field to greet their American guest. As he had with the Russians in 1942, 1943 and 1944, Pat Hurley hailed them like long-lost friends.

They lined up for photographs. Pat Hurley reviewed a hastily assembled guard of honor. Bugles blared. General Hurley snapped to attention, saluted. Then he gave China's Communists the greeting that had wowed the Russians--the Choctaw war whoop he taught Red Army men at Stalingrad: "Yahoo!"

Riding into the city in Mao's car, Pat Hurley unlimbered some of his best anecdotes. Colonel Barrett translated with idiomatic gusto. As the car forded the shallow Yen River, General Hurley cracked: "It reminds me of my old home in Oklahoma. There you could tell when a school of fish was swimming upriver by the cloud of dust it raised."

That night there was a great banquet, not only to toast the American but also to celebrate the anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Again, with telling effect, Pat Hurley bellowed his "Yahoo!"

Impasse. Having thus shattered the ice in a way more formalized diplomats would have disdained (or perhaps have been unable) to do, General Hurley hitched up his chair and took an earnest part in the serious talks that followed. Few days later he brought Chou En-lai south for more parleys in Chungking. Fortnight ago Chou returned to Yenan with a proposal from Chiang Kai-shek for a Chinese united front (TIME, Dec. 18). For all Pat Hurley's war whoops, his easy jokes, his readiness to act as an intermediary, the gulf between the Communists and the Central Government was still unbridged.

Last week over the Yenan radio Mao Tse-tung angrily spurned the Generalissimo's offer. Cried Mao: The Chungking Government is "defeatist . . . obstinate in holding to a one-party dictatorship." Recent parleys, he said, had not "attained the least result." China was still cleft.

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