War & Hope

A fortnight after China's Nationalists and Communists had parted in incomplete agreement (TIME, Oct. 22), a Communist spokesman in Chungking said:

"This is civil war. If there is fighting there is war. [But] this war isn't general; it is local. The difference between this war and real civil war is that this war can still be stopped. There is still hope."

He referred to battles and clashes in disputed North China (see below), in eleven (by Red count) of China's 28 provinces. In Manchuria, Communist officers bluntly told U.S. newsmen that they intended to keep control of that strategic region after the Russians moved out. Clearly the Communists were on the defensive as the Central Government moved to re-establish its authority north of the Yangtze. Their alarums amounted to a final plea to the U.S. to save them by ceasing to help Generalissimo Chiang regain all China.

U.S. Marines had accepted the Japanese surrender in most of North China's key ports and cities. U.S. air forces had then flown in Central Government troops to take over from the Marines, had flown other armies to cities held by surrendered Japs and threatened by the Communists. The U.S. Navy had been a big help, too.

In North China, where the great stake was the railway system, a solution was proposed by Chungking's Information Minister K. C. Wu: 1) the Communists should withdraw from the railways; 2 ) the Central Government would accept their local administration beyond the right of way, pending a final political solution. Yenan answered: "Until a political settlement is reached, occupation of railways is dangerous...."

At the Threshold. In Shanghai, on U.S. Navy Day, Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid, whose Seventh Fleet is transporting Central Government forces to Manchuria, declared:

"We are proud to make a minor contribution to the re-establishment of peace in this great country. We are conscious of being present at the rebirth of a nation. . . . We hope that our present congenial relations are the forerunner of long years of mutually beneficial cooperation between our two countries."

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