Friendship Needed

The U.S. last week abandoned its tattered, outdated policy in China. It made ready to dissolve the moribund Executive Headquarters in Peiping, which had organized the unsuccessful truce teams. It would call home its 9,000 marines. The operation would be completed within 90 days.

By that time the only U.S. troops left in China would be a 750-man military mission, a few soldiers guarding surplus-property dumps, and the marines and sailors of the Seventh Fleet base at Tsingtao --who would stay on, with China's consent, as long as the U.S. is legally at war with Japan.

The move was announced by Secretary of State Marshall in Washington. What did it mean?

One immediate result was clear. With the marines' withdrawal, the U.S. would be in a better moral position than ever before to insist that its only aim is to encourage a united, democratic China. It would yank the rug from under vociferous U.S. and foreign Communists who had been loudly shouting "U.S. imperialism" (and whose first, triumphant approval last week seemed to contradict their reputation for shrewdness). It would also quash the slightly ridiculous charge that a few thousand marines were intended as a show of force against the massive Russian Far Eastern armies.

It meant that U.S. tactics were shifting with events. The abortive efforts to mediate between irreconcilable forces had not only failed. They had been twisted into a convenient target for anti-U.S. propaganda, inspired to a large extent by the Left (see below). Having thus abandoned one impassable road to peace in China, the U.S. now looked to both Kuomintang and Communists to find their own.

Yenan promptly chose war. Said a Communist spokesman: "There is no more mediation. The only way out is to fight." General Chiang had long held similar views. As an old hand at China's cowboy-&-Indian style warfare, he was sure he could defeat the Communists in an all-out drive.

But increased violence was not inevitable. The U.S. was not abandoning its grave concern for China's peaceful, stable future. It still held a powerful inducement to peace with the economic assistance it could offer and which China desperately needed. Above all, China needed U.S. friendship--as the U.S. needed China's.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.