OUR ALLY CHINA

Of all Americans occupying elective office, the man who knows most about the Far East is almost certainly Congressman Walter H. Judd (Republican) of Minnesota. On March 15, in the House of Representatives, he made the most comprehensive speech yet made on the subject. As the U.S. war effort in the Pacific gains momentum, his speech gains, if anything, in timeliness. Therefore TIME publishes extensive excerpts from it:

We got into this war through Asia; and if America gets into another war, almost certainly it will also be through Asia.

[But] there are few subjects about which American thinking is more confused today than it is about China. During 1938, 1939, and 1940, when I was going up & down the country reporting what I had seen in China in the preceding years, including a period of five months under the Japanese Army, and trying to awaken my fellow citizens to the dangers of Japan's and our own policies at that time, most people were inclined to say "Oh, don't worry about the Japanese. You are unduly alarmed. After all, the Japanese can't even lick the Chinese, and of course the Chinese can't fight, so what could the Japanese do to us?"

Then one morning Japan gave us the worst defeat in our whole 168 years of independent history. We woke up with a start and said: "Why, those Japanese are good. And if they can do that to us, how in the world have the Chinese been able to hold out against them for four and a half years? The Chinese must be good, too." Our estimate of the Chinese began to soar.

Idealization, Disillusion. Then Madam Chiang came to this country and she captured American imagination as few foreigners ever had, and certainly as no Asiatic ever had. Our estimate of the Chinese soared still higher--too high. To hear many Americans talk, including commentators and columnists, practically every Chinese was wholly selfless in his devotion to his country, patriotically sacrificing everything for freedom and his nation's welfare, and so forth. We who had lived there were concerned, and Chinese leaders were even more disturbed, because we and they knew that it was not a true picture of the situation in China or in any country, and that such over-idealization would inevitably lead to a swing-back into over-disillusionment. We are in the midst of that swing-back now. Those who a year ago could hardly find words good enough with which to describe our Chinese allies now can hardly find words bad enough. To hear them talk now, all Chinese are lazy, are crooks, and grafters, are obstructionists, antiforeign, hopelessly inefficient, split up into political factions interested more in preserving themselves than in defeating Japan, expecting us to do all the fighting, and so forth, and so forth. Between those two extremes, where is the truth? Some of you have asked me that question. I thought if you were going to ask my views, I ought to have a fresh look at the situation. I had been home for six years and I wanted to get the feel of things as they are in China today. So I went out to China last fall for that purpose.

I had worked there ten years as a medical missionary, one year in Nanking, five years in south China, and four years in north China. I was able to talk in their own language with many Chinese whom I had known well in the past, doctors with whom I had worked, nurses we had trained in our hospitals, principals and teachers and students from our schools, presidents and deans of universities, businessmen. I did not talk to high Chinese Government officials until the last two days. I talked with Chinese people. It is on the basis of such observations that I want to present some of the highlights, if I can.

Desperate Conditions. Some of you have traveled in the Orient and you remember your first glimpse of it. The poverty, the overcrowding, the dirt, the squalor, the disease were all right out there in full view; and your first reaction was: "Why, these people are living almost like animals. Their condition is hopeless." It was just about all you could take under ordinary circumstances, wasn't it? How much worse after almost eight years of war and invasion ?

In former years most reports on China came from Americans who went out as missionaries, or as teachers, or as businessmen, or as long-term reporters or students. They soon observed also the tapestries and cloisonnes, and porcelains, the literary achievements, the mature wisdom, the basic goodness and friendliness of the people. They wanted to live their lives happily there, so they looked for and found the best. They learned what the Chinese have long known, that the loveliest flower of all, the lotus, frequently grows in the most uninviting surroundings.

But thousands of Americans are there today who are not interested in China's culture. They did not go because they wanted to go. They went because they were sent, by their newspaper or by Uncle Sam. They frequently see only the external things, almost all unprepossessing, and they do not like it. I find our boys abroad do not like any country except one, and that is the United States of America. They want only to get back to it. They write home to their families about the filth and the cruelties and the antiquated methods and what seem to be lackadaisical attitudes and all the rest. The fathers and mothers read it, and then they know all about China because their boy, John, well, he is there and he saw and he knows.

Likewise most reporters--they do not want to be sent to that assignment and they do not like it. Understandably, these Americans tend to judge China, not in terms of China's own past but in terms of the West. They assume the bad conditions are the result of the present Government's failures, when in reality conditions became not worse, but very much better under that Government in the years prior to the war.

The second fact which many fail to appreciate fully is that China was still in the midst of a great revolution when she was plunged into this war against her wishes. Revolutions are almost always disorderly and long-drawn-out affairs. It took the French 80 years to get through their revolution. It took us 90 years, including a great Civil War, before we got straightened out after our revolution. You will remember that when our Republic was older than China's is, conditions in this country in the latter part of the War of 1812 were so bad, the corruption and factionalism were so rampant in the Government, inefficiencies in the Army were so notorious, and the administration of affairs was so bad that representatives of the people of New England met in Hartford, Conn, and solemnly voted to secede. They were giving up as hopeless the attempt to get internal unity and stability in this struggling Republic. Their problem was child's play compared to China's.

In addition to her internal difficulties, she was undergoing constant interference from without. It was only four years after the revolution began in 1911 that Japan tried to force on China the 21 demands which would have made China a vassal state. Four years later a group of four white men sitting at Versailles took Shantung, the sacred province of China, and tried to award it to Japan. Japan invaded that province again in 1927, took Manchuria in 1931, and bit off three other pieces of Chinese territory in the next six years before starting full-scale war in 1937. In addition, several other nations were meddling in China's affairs, trying to prevent her achieving real unity and strength. Naturally the Chinese were not able to get their revolution completed and a modern, efficient, unified, and democratic government set up.

Diseases of Defeat. Superimposed on the inevitable difficulties involved in carrying through a revolution, getting a new type of government established and the people organized and unified, is a third factor. China is suffering acutely from what Mr. Churchill has well called "the diseases of defeat."

Mr. Churchill and Mr. Roosevelt made the basic decision, right after Pearl Harbor, to hold defensively in the Pacific while disposing of Germany and Italy in Europe. The fundamental strategy was to concentrate on beating Hitler first. So we poured over 98% of our supplies into Europe, and sent less than 2% to east Asia and less than 10% of that went to the Chinese. Up until a few months ago when we finally began to consider the Chinese armies of sufficient importance to make an all-out effort to get more assistance to them, they had had only two-tenths of 1% of all the supplies that we sent abroad to our allies.

We and our Western allies made a decision which gave brilliant results in Europe. But that decision inevitably led to almost disastrous results in Asia. If we take the credit for good results in Europe, there is no way we can escape some of the responsibility for the bad results in Asia.

China lost her major railroads in the first few months of the war. She lost control of the Yangtze River Valley, which is far more important to her transportation than the whole Mississippi River Valley is to us. These things made it impossible to shift troops rapidly or to get food from the areas of plenty to those of acute deficiency.

You have read of Chinese soldiers foraging on the common people, and of Chinese peasants rising up against their own armies. You probably thought, "What kind of troops are these that take food from .their own citizens? What kind of allies are these that will not support their own armies?" But the soldiers simply have to live off the land at times, or starve. And I would remind you that the same thing happened in our Revolution. George Washington's men had to live off the land at times and they were royally hated and resisted by some of the Colonists because of that fact.

What are the diseases of defeat? First, there is physical deterioration. I was shocked last fall by the appearance of many Chinese, particularly among the soldiers. I had seen famine refugees in times past, and thought I was used to malnutrition, but this was even worse. The Chinese soldiers will have to have just plain good food for at least six months before anyone can possibly expect them to have the strength and vigor and stamina to start a counteroffensive.

We Americans, if we believe all the advertisements we read, have to take a vitamin pill or two every day to get through that little letdown we are said to have in the middle of the afternoon, and most of us are pretty well supplied with vitamins in our regular diet. But the Chinese haven't had enough vitamins for years and years, and they are more jittery and irritable and restless than ordinarily, and they are tired. They are anemic, they are full of parasites and malaria and tuberculosis and dysentery. They have got to have adequate food and medical care.

Economic Deterioration. Then there is economic deterioration. China was able to keep her economy in surprisingly good balance until a complete blockade was slapped upon her in 1942, and that was not her fault. We and the British controlled the seas, but we could not keep the sea lanes open to China and the British could not hold Burma and so China was completely cut off. The blockade had the same effect on her as it had on our South in the War between the States. The South was not industrialized, as China is not industrialized. The South had to get supplies and equipment and machinery and munitions from abroad, just as China did. The South had to sell its cotton and other products abroad in order to get foreign exchange to keep its currency stable, just as China did. When the blockade shut off trade the South had to resort to the printing press and inflation resulted. It was this economic breakdown and lack of supplies as a result of the blockade which led to the weakening and defeat of the South more than any other single factor.

Then there is moral deterioration--graft, corruption, profiteering, black market. These things develop in any country in war, and especially in defeat. But there are several things to say about the graft in China. First, while it is bad, it is not nearly as bad as I expected to find, considering the circumstances. Second, there has always been in China the "squeeze" system, which we consider graft, but they do not. Any Chinese who handles a transaction for you takes 10%. If he takes 20%, he is dishonest; but, if he does not take 10%, he is not considered honest, he is just dumb. The Chinese say that dishonesty consists in leaving somebody with the wrong impression. So it is not graft from the Chinese point of view, because everybody knows perfectly well it is being done. It is "old custom," has always been done, and everybody understands it.

When Chinese come to this country and do business with us, they have to do it on our terms. And, when we do business with them in their country, we have got to do it on their terms, that is, if we want to get much accomplished.

Political Deterioration. Then there is political deterioration. In any country the "outs" want to get in, and, when the "ins" have almost nothing but defeats to show, the outs inevitably increase their opposition. The surprising thing is not that there has been and is opposition in China to Chiang Kaishek. The miracle is that after seven years of almost unending defeats he still has the confidence of an overwhelming majority of the Chinese people, that he is still in the ring--a little wobbly, to be sure, but not on the ropes--and that he is still slugging away on our side. We ought to be thanking God that he is still able to divert much of Japan's strength from ourselves, instead of complaining too bitterly because he has not been able in the midst of all his disasters to carry out a lot of internal reforms, desirable and important as they are. Where is our sense of proportion?

England, the mother of parliaments and the oldest democracy, has not dared risk an election for ten years in a time of trouble. Yet you have heard Chiang Kai-shek cursed up & down because he has not held an election in the midst of a cruel war for sheer survival and in a country which has never before held an election in its 4,000 years of history, and half of which is occupied by an enemy and 80% of whose people cannot read & write. It is ridiculous.

The established democracies all restrict their people's freedoms in war, even in victory; but Chiang is supposed to extend freedoms in his country even in the midst of defeat. It is an absurd counsel of perfection.

Then there is deterioration of morale, one more of the diseases of defeat. You can hold on indefinitely as long as you have hope, or can see a turn in the road ahead; but if you begin to lose faith in the ultimate objectives of some of your allies, then something goes out of you. That is what is happening in China's heart and therefore to morale. Under Chiang's leadership they have done their best to hold the line against Japan so that we in the West could concentrate on beating Hitler first. They have tried to do their part loyally according to the strategy which we determined. They did not wholly like that strategy because it put them last, though they had been fighting tyranny first, but they accepted it without complaining. But now there is a mounting fear that, no matter how great their efforts and their sacrifices, they are not going to be given a chance to become really strong, free and independent in their own right. They wonder whether they may not be sold down the river in the peacemaking.

Defeats from one's enemy are bad enough; verbal attacks and pressures from one's allies are even worse. They are the straw which has threatened to break the back of China's resistance.

Imperialist Propaganda. For over a year there has been in this country a concerted propaganda campaign against the Central Government of China and the Generalissimo. There are three main sources. One is some of the imperialists of Europe. They know the foundation stone of the whole colonial system in Asia is people's continuing to believe that all Orientals are congenitally incapable of governing themselves as democracies. If China gets on her feet and moves along progressively under her own power, that fallacy is automatically exploded and the foundation of the empires begins to collapse.

When Mr. Churchill got back from Quebec, he said in his first speech in Parliament that "after all the lavish aid which America has given to China, these defeats in China are most disappointing and vexatious."

England did not do so well in Belgium and France. Did we jump on her? No. She had some rather "disappointing and vexatious" defeats in Greece and Crete and Tobruk and in Burma. Did we spend our time pointing them out? No--we redoubled our efforts to help hold her up. And she had had really lavish aid--millions of tons and billions of dollars worth of supplies. How much had China had?

The Chinese had never complained publicly about the smallness of the assistance they had received but after that statement by Mr. Churchill, a Chinese official spokesman in Chungking called in the newspaper reporters the next day, not to complain even then, but merely to set the record straight. He told them just how much aid the Chinese had received from America. It was the amount required to keep one American division in the field for one week.

Communist Propaganda. The second source of the propaganda against the Government of China and against the Chiangs personally is the Communist group in China, and the Communists in America. I want to be careful not to be misunderstood at this point because, to many Americans, the word "Communist" automatically means Russia. One of the things I wanted to find out in China was how much, if any, is the Kremlin behind the Communists in China. Russia's official conduct with regard to the Chinese Communists since they made a pact with Chiang in September 1937 has been perfectly correct and circumspect. There was no evidence that I could find or hear about that Moscow has been backing or supplying, either with materials or with guidance, the Communist government in China during the last seven years.

So I am not making charges against the Russians. But I am charging that the Communists in China and the Communists and fellow travelers in this country are working primarily in terms of what they believe will best serve Russia's future policies and interests. I am increasingly convinced the Chinese Communists are first Communist and second Chinese, just as we know American Communists are first Communists and second Americans. In the case of the Chinese Communists this is a reluctant reversal of the opinion I held some years ago. I, too, was taken in for a time by the talk of their being just agrarian reformers, just Chinese patriots struggling only for the freedom of China and for democracy. I am convinced now the primary allegiance of the Chinese Communists is to Russia, whether Russia wants it that way or not, and their purpose is to make Russia overwhelmingly the strongest power in Asia as well as in Europe, which I think would be as bad in the long run for Russia as it would for Asia and for ourselves, requiring enormous armaments and constant tensions and suspicions which I hope profoundly will not have to be in the postwar world.

How can the Chinese Government be asked to furnish arms to a rebel government whose primary allegiance it has every reason to believe is to a foreign power? No government in the world could be rightly expected to do that. The Communists cannot be given full recognition in China until they are willing to give up their separate army. That they have never been, and, I think, never will be, willing to do.

Beginning in 1927, the Communists tried to win in China by bloody revolution. For eight months, May to December in 1930, I was in an area under their control down in south China. I saw firsthand their utterly ruthless purges and slaughterings of anyone who crossed their will. But they could not win converts by that method because the Chinese are basically too peace-loving and orderly a people. When the Communists in China had reached the end of their rope they shifted to another method. They adopted a great propaganda program to sell to the world the belief that they are merely downtrodden patriots, seeking to escape the tyranny and oppressions of Chiang Kai-shek in order to get freedom and establish democracy--just like our forefathers were in 1776. By talking about freedom and democracy and unity and so forth, and by calling all who disagree with them fascists and dictators, they have succeeded in selling to millions of Americans one of the greatest hoaxes any unsuspecting people ever bought in all history. I spent more time and effort in China on this than on any other subject, including a morning discussing it with Mr. Lin Tsu-han, the chairman of their soviet government, the so-called border region government, and I can assure you that their propaganda is a gigantic fraud. They know, like Hitler, that if a big claim is made often enough, a lot of people will come to believe it is the truth.

Disloyal Opposition. The Communists have said, first of all, that Chiang Kai-shek and his Government will not unite with them in the fight against Japan. Now is it not to our country's interest to have China united? Therefore, must we not insist that Chiang Kai-shek and the established Government of China cooperate with the Communists?

But is it not strange that no one ever insists that the Communists cooperate with the Government?

Their argument is given credence by some Americans on the naive assumption that the Communists are just a political faction, a minority or an opposition and in war we need cooperation, even a coalition, of all parties. We ask: why will not Chiang take in the Communists as Roosevelt takes a few Republicans into his Cabinet? But there is a very considerable difference. We Republicans do not maintain a private army exercising arbitrary armed control over whole sections of the country because we do not like some New Deal policies. But the Communists do have a private army and a separate government. They are not just a political party. They are an armed rebellion.

Perhaps you recall seeing this three-quarter-page advertisement by the Communists last summer in papers all over the country, in which Earl Browder says: "The time is more than ripe for the United States to insist that the Chungking Government shall put its house in order with a real, not a .formal, unification of all Chinese fighting forces."

The word "unity" means one, not two; one government, not two; and one army, not two. Chiang has said from the beginning and during all these seven years, and reiterated the offer last month, that he will accept them in a coalition government immediately if they will become just a political party--that is, will give up their separate army and their separate government. For us to insist that Chiang Kai-shek reconcile himself to a splitting of his own country and send military supplies to an armed rebellion is to ask him to be a traitor. Of course, he has not been willing to do it, and will not, unless the Communists will, first of all, give up their separate government and army. There is no law or logic whereby the head of a legitimate government can be asked to recognize, let alone assist, a wholly independent sovereignty within his own country.

The Communists are selling us a gold brick when they try to make us think that they must maintain their army or be destroyed. They maintain their separate army because they want to seize power after Chiang has armed them with American supplies under the pretext of unity.

The other main Communist argument for foreign consumption is that they are doing the bulk of the fighting against

Japan and therefore we should support them, just as we supported Tito rather than Mihailovich, because Tito was allegedly doing most of the fighting against Germany. Mihailovich was said to be a collaborationist, and therefore we should not support him. But no one can accuse Chiang of being a collaborationist. As a matter of painful fact, we were the collaborationists with Japan--for four and a half years; and I fear might still be today if Japan had not been so stupid as to attack us. Chiang is the one political leader among the Big Four who has not been a collaborationist, whose record is completely clear on that point.

What are the facts on this matter of fighting the Japanese? There have been hundreds of skirmishes between the Communists and the Japanese, especially when the latter sent out expeditions to seize or destroy the crops. But no neutral observer has seen anything that could be called a battle between the Communists and the Japanese since September 1937. On the other hand, they have witnessed a dozen terrific battles between Chiang's troops and the Japanese, several in the last year.

The Japanese have made no serious effort to destroy the bases of the Communists who are alleged to be the real anti-Japanese elements, but the Japanese have launched repeated campaigns to destroy Chiang Kai-shek's bases and his armies, which are said not to be fighting the Japanese. Is that not odd?

Japan's Secret Weapon. The definite answer to this argument that the Communists are doing most of the fighting can readily be determined from observing the behavior of the Japanese. Let me make it concrete. I was working in our hospital in Fenchow, Shansi Province, when the Japanese finally captured the city on Feb. 17, 1938. In the next two weeks they pushed on west 75 miles to the Yellow River, which separates us from the Communist province of Shensi. There the Japanese have been within 100 miles of the Communist capital, Yenan, for just over seven years, and have not made a single major effort to get that Communist capital. I wish somebody would explain that. Have the Japanese ever allowed grass to grow under their feet when there was a real threat to them? When we got air bases in south China last summer that threatened the Japanese, they drove down a thousand miles at terrific cost and captured those bases. No reasonable person can come to any other conclusion than that the Japanese have been shrewd enough to see that since it had proved most difficult to knock the Chinese out by direct assault, then the best way to weaken China is to allow the Communists to continue their work of disrupting and disunifying and discrediting the Government of China, breaking it down from within. The real "secret weapon" of the Japanese against China, and therefore against us, has been the Communists of China, ably assisted by some of our own people, sincere, but in my judgment grievously misguided.

What I want to ask is, whom do such Americans think they are hurting by their propaganda for the Communists? Surely our own country most of all. That means it involves the life of every American boy fighting against Japan.

I dislike even more to mention the third main source of the propaganda against the Government of China. A lot of it is approved, even inspired, by persons in our own War and State Departments. There are several reasons for this sorry spectacle. There has been a fundamental difference of opinion from the beginning between Chiang Kai-shek and some of our leaders as to the best way to fight the war. Chiang Kai-shek maintained we could not beat the Japanese from the air or from the sea; they must be beaten on the mainland of Asia.

Chiang said when the war began that there would be three stages: first, the stage of strategic retreat, trading space for time; second, the stage of stalemate in which China has been for almost three years; and third, the stage of counteroffensive to drive the Japanese out of China. He will not start the third until he is ready, any more than we would.

Three-Group Struggle. All these complicated factors have led to a great struggle in China between three main groups, although not as acute now perhaps as it was last fall--I think we may be around the corner. First is a group of Chinese who are completely disillusioned regarding the white man. Some of them are in the Japanese puppet governments. They do not consider themselves traitors. They consider themselves the hard-headed patriots and Chiang a misguided fool for trusting the West.

There is a second group, led by the Chinese Communists. Their argument goes like this: "Why not build up trade and markets for Russia, rather than for America and England? In cooperation with Russia, we Chinese can build in Central Asia the greatest industrial bloc in the world, in the midst of the greatest land and population bloc on the earth." That, too, is a rather potent argument, is it not? Would it be in America's interest? And yet some sincere but mistaken Americans vigorously support the Chinese Communist program.

And then there is the third group, the Central Government of China led by Chiang Kai-shek and men who are mostly Western-trained students, from America and England. There are unquestionably some who have been in power too long, are reactionary, even corrupt. But on the whole they have been loyal to the ideas and ideals they learned here and have tried their best under enormous difficulties to make China a sister republic in Asia.

What can we do to help? First, we have got to cut out this irresponsible, unbalanced criticism of the Chinese for things that do not exist or are not their fault or would be present in any country after comparable disasters. We have got to stop trying to force the Chinese to do what we think is best. They are an eminently reasonable people, but they cannot be browbeaten or coerced.

Second, we have got to make constructive the criticisms that are justified, of things that are bad, sometimes very bad indeed. I want to pay tribute to General [Patrick] Hurley* and Donald Nelson/- in this respect. They got off to a wonderful start because they have been sympathetic and constructive as well as critical. Their approach was not, "Now, China, you are our problem. What shall we do with you?" But rather, "China, you have some problems. How can we help you with the problems? How can we help each other most?" There is a world of difference.

Third, we have got to get more material assistance, more supplies to China, quickly. I know it seems impossible. It was impossible for China to hold out seven years, but she has. It was impossible for the British to hold out in the summer and fall of 1940, but they did. It was impossible for the Russians to hold at Leningrad and Moscow and Stalingrad, but they did. Now, we have got to perform a miracle, too.

Fourth, we have got to get more political assistance to the Chinese, more spiritual, assistance. They can and will fight on valiantly and with increasing effectiveness if we will make it clear to them that this is a war for their freedom, too. That will save a good many American divisions and billions of dollars.

* U.S. Ambassador at Chungking.

/- Who visited China as President Roosevelt's personal representative last fall, helped to establish the Chinese War Production Board.

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