Turning Point

"Hitler was a baby compared with this gang," said ECAdministrator Paul Hoffman last week, in language that was tough even in an era of tough talk. "I don't think the American people have this world conflict in focus . . . Let's talk about it for what it is--an attempt by the gang in the Politburo to take over the world . . . If you have been out in Asia ... it gives you the heebie-jeebies."

Relatively few Americans had been out to Asia, and few had the heebie-jeebies over it. The new Truman budget (see above) cut the China aid program to ribbons. Last week one man did speak out firmly, and he spoke out firmly even if many Americans regarded the whole subject of China as something to be swept beneath the rug and ignored.

Tenacious William C. Bullitt, Franklin Roosevelt's onetime ambassador to Moscow and Paris, had been sent to China by a congressional committee to check on U.S. aid to China. He applauded ECA's China mission, headed by San Francisco's ex-Mayor Roger Lapham, "for the excellent work it has done." But Bullitt was firmly convinced that U.S. economic and military aid would delay, but not prevent further Communist advances.

Wanted: A Fighting General. Was there still time to save China? Yes, said Bill Bullitt, if the U.S. really wanted to, and really went at it, i.e., if the U.S. were actually to take over the war against the Chinese Communists.

The Chinese soldier, when well-trained, well-fed and well-led, is as good as any, Bullitt reported. But, he said, many of the top-ranking officers are both incompetent and dishonest. Therefore, to turn the tide of the war in China, Bullitt said, requires American direction and control, exercised by "a fighting general of the highest qualities, with an adequate staff of able officers." He thought that General Douglas MacArthur could do the job quickest. But he also mentioned as prospects, General Mark W. Clark, and Lieut. Generals Albert C. Wedemeyer and J. Lawton Collins. He called for the revival of the volunteer "Flying Tigers," and urged Congress to appropriate $800,000,000 for China, chiefly in military aid.

If the Dike Falls. Concluded Bullitt: "The dike which today prevents the Communist flood from sweeping southward to the Indian Ocean is the line of the Yangtze River in China. It is a formidable obstacle ... If the dike of the Yangtze falls, we shall let in upon ourselves a sea of troubles in comparison with which our present problems in the Far East will seem a mere unpleasant puddle . . . We do have to recognize that we are at one of the turning points of human history, and that we cannot afford to be wrong in our decisions, since the stake may be not only the independence of China but also the independence of the United States."

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