The Chinese Communist Movement
By Brigadier General P. E. Peabody US Government Printing Office, 1952. 146pp.
When the volume under review was submitted by General Peabody to the United States Assistant Chief of Staff in July 1945, it was classified "SECRET." On August 23, 1949, it became "unclassified," under authority of the Director of Intelligence. Considering the fact that the preparation of the book took place before the end of World War II and that it "involved the examination of over 2,500 reports, pamphlets and books," the document could be taken as the most authoritative study of the problem at the time.
Written essentially as a report to the Chief of Staff, the document carefully analyzed and described the organization, training, strength, distribution, tactics, weapons, equipment and logistics of the Chinese Communist armies. Although comprising only 146 pages, it was surprisingly comprehensive from the political point of view. It analysed the character of the Chinese Communists, outlined the history and organization of the Communist movement in China, and described in detail the problems of education, economic policy, agriculture, trade, industry, arms production, transportation, currency and finance in the Communist-controlled areas.
On the very first page, the most important conclusions of the report were summarized as follows: "(1) The 'democracy' of the Chinese Communists is Soviet democracy; (2) The Chinese Communist movement is part of the international Communist movement, sponsored and guided by Moscow; (3) There is reason to believe that Soviet Russia plans to create Russian-dominated areas in Manchuria, Korea and probably North China; (4) A strong and stable China cannot exist without the natural resources of Manchuria and North China; (5) In order to prevent the separation of Manchuria and North China from China, it is essential that, if Soviet Russia should participate in the war, China should not be divided (like Europe) into American-British and Russian zones of military operations."
It is found that nearly all statements given in this 1945 report were securely based on facts and have since been further substantiated by event s of the past seven years. Certain observations, not apparent from a mere glance at the fundamental conclusions quoted in the preceding paragraph, have also the ring of prophecy, and deserve to be quoted.
1. "The Chinese Communists are Communists. They are the most effectively organized group in China. The 'democracy which the Chinese Communists espouse represents 'democracy' in the pattern of the Soviet Union rather than democracy in the Anglo-American sense. It is a 'democracy' more rigidly controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) than is the so-called 'one-party dictatorship' of the Chungking Government by the Kuomintang."
2. "While the Kuomintang armies, in obedience to orders from the Supreme Command, kept within their assigned defense zones, the Communist armies insisted on being granted entry into any Kuomintang defense zone that they desired to enter. ... Whenever they (the Kuomintang troops) refused to permit the Communists to set up, in Kuomintang areas, their own separate civil administration...the Communists called the Kuomintang troops 'anti-democratic' and 'experts in dissension'."
3. "They (the Chinese Communist leaders) themselves do not agree with the contention of some of our observers that they are not 'real' Communists. In his booklet New Democracy, published in January 1941, Mao Tse-tung has given a frank and accurate outline of the tenets and policies d the Chinese Communist Party. ... 'China's revolution is part of the world revolution.' ... 'We Chinese Communists must not neglect establishing a united front with the Chinese bourgeoisie. ... But it must be remembered the bourgeoisie, even in the process of revolution, is never willing to break with the imperialist completely, nor to overthrow imperialism and feudalism thoroughly."
4. "The tactics of guerilla warfare as developed by Chu Teh and Mao Tse-tung became standard for the Red Army. It was based on four principles: (1) When the enemy advances, we retreat. (2) When the enemy halts and encamps, we trouble them. (3) When the enemy seeks to avoid battle, we attack. (4) When the enemy retreats, we pursue."
5. "A number of former dissident leaders were given positions in the Kuomintang, the Government, and the Central Army. Several Communist leaders, including Mau Tse-tung, Chu Teh, Chou En-lai, Lin Tsu-han and Peng Te-huai were 'reinstated' in the Kuomintang. Chou En-lai was appointed Deputy Director of the Political Training Department of the National Military Council, and the famous Communist guerilla fighter, General Yeh Chien-ying was appointed to the guerilla school which Chiang Kai-shek established in Hankow"… "Non-Communist parties are permitted to exist if they conform to the policies of the CCP as carried out through the Communist-controlled Border Governments. Thus the Kuomintang is permitted to function in the Border Regions. But it cannot establish itself as a party competing with the CCP."
6. "Soviet Russian aid vastly surpassed that of any other country. Soviet planes were delivered to China in considerable quantities, and Soviet aviators served in the Chinese army in a 'private' capacity as volunteers. ... During these first years of the war, Soviet Russian loans to China, in the form of barter agreements, were also considerably greater than those of any other country… Although the Chinese were anxious to cultivate friendly relations with Britain and America and made several appeals to these two nations and to the League of Nations for greater support, the response from these quarters was small compared with that from the Soviet Union."
7. "No matter how justified the Communists may have been in these contentions it was inevitable that they would antagonize the Government, which had no interest in any 'process of national democratization' (sic) and which saw in the expansion of the Communist influence only an attempt on their part to use the united front and the war against Japan as a means of increasing and consolidating their power."
8. "Because the Communist troops usually retreated before the Japanese, few actual battles were fought during these campaigns. It was not the Communist armies that suffered so much as the people who were left a prey to Japanese vengeance. The Chungking armies, when faced with these Japanese annihilation campaigns, usually tried to defend their cities and areas. And as a result, the Chungking armies also suffered far greater casualties than the Communist armies."
9. "Throughout their history the Chinese Communists have consistently followed the Soviet Russian party line. In the course of the present war (the war against Japan) they have upheld every action of the Soviet Union, even at times it has appeared difficult to reconcile these actions with the interests of China. But when the United States and Great Britain took somewhat similar action, the Chinese Communists never failed to make their displeasure known. Thus they denounced the 'capitalist nations' in 1938 for shipping 'great quantities of munitions and war materials' to Japan. But they saw nothing wrong in Soviet Russia concluding a Neutrality Pact with Japan in 1941. (Moreover,) when the Soviet Russian-German Non-Aggression Pact was concluded in August 1939, Mao Tse-tung said that it 'strengthens the confidence of the whole of mankind in the possibility of winning freedom'."
10. "A former American observer in China with close contacts with Chinese Communist leaders stated in November 1944 that the United States is the greatest hope and the greatest fear of the Chinese Communists, because they recognize that if they receive American aid, even if only on equal basis with Chiang Kai-shek, they can quickly establish control over most if not all of China… The conclusion from this observation is that the Chinese Communists, if given aid by the United States, will use this aid to oust the Kuomintang from power and unify China under their control."
"The result of such a development as far as America is concerned depends much on the attitude of the Chinese Communists towards Soviet Russia… Should the Communists get the upper hand in China, … there will be a united front that will challenge the world, under orders from Moscow, as soon as the Red Armies have sufficiently recovered from their losses in the present war."
The Chinese Communist Movement, as submitted by General Peabody to the United States Chief of Staff in 1945, was and remains a well-written and well-balanced document, the work of an un-prejudiced and detached group with a clean-cut and scientific approach. It is to be regretted that only 110 copies of the manuscripts were made at the time, with only 15 copies and 3 copies being sent to the White House and to the State Department respectively. Since it became "unclassified" in August 1949, other branches of the United States Government have found the document accessible. And now that the United States Government Printing Office has had it published, it should be widely publicized so that as many people as possible may have a true and correct picture of what the Communists had been doing in China and the Far East.
In reading the volume under review, one is immensely impressed with the versatility of the Government of the United States of America. While the Department of State was writing the Government of the Republic of China off in August, 1949, through the publication of the White Paper, the Military Intelligence Service unclassified almost simultaneously the report under review to exactly the opposite effect. — Wai Yuan
Witness By Whittaker Chambers Random House, 808 pp. $5.00
When Alger Hiss was accused of being a Communist and a traitor in 1948 before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, few people were inclined to doubt his words when he said with righteous indignation, "It is inconceivable that there could have been on my part, during 15 years or marc in public office…any departure from the highest rectitude…anything except the highest adherence to duty and honor."
Whittaker Chambers, the other actor in the spy drama, who freely admitted being "a liar, spy and traitor," as he was called by Alger Hiss, further confessed to being "an erring, inadequate man, capable of folly, sin and fear...I only sought prayerfully to know and to do God's purpose with me."
Of himself and his break from Communism, Chambers said, "Out of my weakness and folly, I committed the characteristic crimes of my century...when a decisive part of the most articulate section of mankind has not merely ceased to believe in God, but has deliberately rejected God…
"Until 1937, I had been in this respect a typical modern man, living without God… In 1938, there seemed no possibility that I would not continue to live out my life as such a man... I had been for 13 years a Communist; and in Communism could be read, more clearly with each passing year, the future of mankind, as, with each passing year, the free world shrank in power and faith… Yet, in 1938, I gave a different ending to that life… "This book is about what happened - translated into the raw, painful, ugly, crumpled, confused, tormented, pitiful acts of life."
As a boy, Chambers ran away from his unhappy home. Later, he managed to gain admission to Columbia University. Following a trip to Germany in 1923, he became a Communist. To Chambers, Communism represented what "nothing else in the dying world had power to offer at the same intensity - faith and a vision, something for which to live and something for which to die."
In the late twenties, Chambers worked on the New York Daily Worker. The pay was so meager and intermittent that he had to supplement his earnings by hack writing and translation work. In 1931, he married Esther Schmitz, whom he had met on a newspaper assignment.
In June, 1932, Chambers was picked for the Communist underground in New York. He expressed surprise that "there existed a concealed party which functioned so smoothly that in seven years as a Communist I had not suspected it..." It was during this time that Chambers was initiated into the trade secrets of the Communist underground - the use of invisible ink, the conveyance of secret documents, the developing of microfilms, etc.
Chambers was next assigned to work in Washington under a Hungarian Communist by the name of J. Peters. Of this period, Chambers said, "In the 1930s, the revolutionary mood had become so acute…that the Communist Party could recruit its agents, not here and there, but by scores within the Government of the US… Between the years 1930 and 1948, a group of almost unknown men and women, Communists or fellow travelers, or their dupes, working for the US Government, ...affected the future of every American now alive… Their names, with half a dozen exceptions, still mean little or nothing to the mass of Americans. But their activities, if only in promoting the triumph of Communism in China, have decisively changed the history of Asia, of the US, and therefore, of the world… That group may claim a part in history such as it is seldom given any men to play, particularly so few and such obscure men. One of them was Alger Hiss."
As to what went on in the minds of those Americans, all highly educated men, that made it possible for them to betray their country, Chambers ventured the answer that such men "regard any government that is not Communist, including their own, merely as the political machine of a class whose power they have organized expressly to overthrow by all means, including violence. Therefore, ultimately, the problem of espionage never presents itself to them as a problem of conscience, but as a problem of operations."
Chambers' disenchantment with Communism came with the Great Purge of 1936-38. "The Purge," said Chambers, "like the Communist-Nazi pact later on, was the true measure of Stalin as a revolutionary statesman. That was the horror of the Purge - that acting as a Communist, Stalin had acted rightly. In that fact lay the evidence that Communism is absolutely evil."
Chambers tried to wean some of his associates, including Hiss, away from Communism too. Of his lack of success, he said, "All of the ex-Communists who cooperated with the Government had broken with the party entirely as a result of their own conscience years before the Hiss case began. It is worth noting that not one Communist was moved to break with Communism under the pressure of the Hiss case. Let those who wonder about Communism and the power of its faith, ponder upon that fact."
After his break with Communism, Chambers again had to take up translation work to keep himself and his family going. In 1939, he was offered a job with Time at $100 a week. Within a few years, he became senior editor of the magazine, making some $30,000 a year. About his association with Time, Chambers said, "My debt and gratitude to Time cannot be measured. At a critical moment, Time gave me back my life. It gave me my voice. It gave me sanctuary, professional respect, peace and time in which to mature my changed view of the world and man's destiny, and mine, in it. I went to Time a fugitive; I left it a citizen."
Chambers now owns a farm, bought in his second year at Time, and works on it. Besides farming, he is presently engaged in writing a series of biographies of various saints in collaboration with several other writers.
Although Witness is very long, those who skip the more familiar parts of the case, such as the House hearings, will find it even more engrossing than detective fiction. For students of psychology and of the Communist espionage operations, Witness is a book that should be studied in its entirety. — L. C. His