HOW THE FAR EAST WAS LOST
American Policy and the Creation of
Communist China, 1941-1949
By Anthony Kubeck
Henry Regnery Company, Chicago.
449 Pages. US$8.75.
Reviewed by Geraldine Fitch
When one realizes that in the crucial World War II days, a specific set of publications by the Communist-infiltrated Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) "sold over a million copies in three and a half years" and that IPR pamphlets were placed "on the adopted list of reading materials in more than thirteen hundred school systems in various parts of the United States", one might wish that Professor Kubek's book could be a "must" in all those same school systems—even this long after. During the same period, the Troop Training Orientation Program of the U.S. Army had a list of 39 books recommended for troops as basic training. Twenty-two of these were published by the IPR and distributed by the army throughout the world. Would that the U.S. Army could be compelled to send every living man who served during WW II a copy of How the Far East Was Lost by this professor of political science at the University of Dallas (Texas).
For Prof. Kubek has done his homework and come up with the most thoroughly documented and detailed study that has yet been written on how departments and agencies of the U.S. Government were infiltrated by Communists and fellow-travelers to the end that the traditional U.S. policy of the Open Door in China, and preservation of China's territorial integrity, was changed to a policy of vilification of the recognized government of the Republic of China and of aid (direct and indirect) to the armed Chinese Communists in rebellion. It hardly seems possible that anything more comprehensive can ever be written, though the author states that a large portion of the most important material of the Teheran and Yalta documents never has been released. He adds: "We may never get complete uncensored editions of the Teheran and Yalta documents".
A statement made to this reviewer by Korea's Foreign Minister in 1952 is Kubek's thesis in a nutshell. Y.T. Pyun said: "The greatest victory of Soviet Russia to date was not the conquest of Czechoslovakia or Poland—not even of China—it was their propaganda victory in the United States which made Americans feel that Nationalist China was not worth saving." How this disastrous and diabolical purpose was accomplished is the substance of this book.
The author gives us this picture of the Far East at the end of World War II:
"In 1945 the United States was the dominant military power in the Pacific. We had crushed the military might of the Japanese Empire ... Our military position was unchallenged, and our diplomats were in a most excellent situation to prevent the expansion of Communism in Asia. Our Chinese allies on the mainland had begun to hammer at the Communist forces in the civil war within their own land. They were making considerable headway late in 1946 ... when General George C. Marshall intervened and helped destroy the balance of power that had long favored the Nationalist forces. In 14 months he helped wreck what had been the basic U.S. policy since 1900—to preserve the 'territorial and administrative integrity of China'."
This reviewer cannot go along with the author's first chapter excusing Japan for its invasion of Manchuria by saying: "Japan understood the Communist threat in the Far East far better than any other nation could have," and "To the Japanese, expansion in Manchuria was a national imperative." China was well aware of the Soviet menace, and if the Japanese were equally aware, they might have cooperated with China in resisting Communist expansion. But Manchuria did not belong to Japan, and she had no right to take it from China by force. Nor is it true that there had been "sixty years of chaos" in China. The Republic was established in China in 1911, and the Chiang Kai-shek government from 1928 to the date of the Japanese invasion gave China the best government it had ever had. Dr. Arthur Young, financial advisor to China before the war, says that is why Japan attacked. The author seems to blame Secretary Stimson for his "non-recognition" policy of territories taken by force, more than he does Japan for invading and taking over Manchuria. This same defense is raised by pro-Russian sympathizers when they say Russia noted Japan's aggression and "had to move". The whole thesis is immoral.
Prof. Kubek is on much more solid ground about China. Since we learn little from history, and are still hopeful of coexistence with Russia and test ban treaties, a footnote (credited to James M. Gillis) seems especially apropos: "To defend democracy with the help of Stalin is like calling on Jesse James or John Dillinger to maintain law and order." It is hard now to believe that a U.S. president (FDR) could have been so naive about Communism as to say Martin Dies, whose committee was exposing Reds in government: "Several of the best friends I've got are Communists. You're all wrong about this thing." As a token of the thaw of that day, Roosevelt pardoned Earl Browder, head of the Communist Party in the United States, (sentenced for passport fraud) as a contribution to "national unity."
Roosevelt fell in with the policy of giving Stalin everything he asked for, instructing all U.S. agencies in 1942 that he wanted all material promised Russia shipped immediately, regardless of the effect on any other part of the war program. Harry Hopkins was his personal representative to Russia, and Molotov soon saw that "Hopkins will demand no concessions ... his desire is to ask nothing and give everything." General Deane said this "was the beginning of a policy of appeasement of Russia from which we have never fully recovered and from which we are still suffering." Not only 15 million tons of Lend-Lease goods, including hundreds of trucks, motorcycles and combat vehicles, industrial goods and food, but also all electronic inventions, atomic bomb materials, and (as Kubek puts it) "Everything—from the blueprints of the B-36 Superfortress to photostats of our confidential reports" was speeded on to the U.S.S.R.
Hopkins presented the plan of getting Russia into the war against Japan—with its "unconditional surrender" called by Hanson Baldwin "Perhaps the biggest political mistake of the war". Getting Russia in became Gen. Marshall's fixed obsession, even when almost everyone else knew Japan was licked. Before Truman left for Potsdam he knew the Japanese wanted to enter surrender negotiations through the King of Sweden. They tried over and over again to have Russia act as mediator. The Russians were in the war against Japan just six days but by the concessions made to them at Teheran and Yalta (which tied the hands of the Nationalists) in a position to dominate much of Asia, and to arm the Chinese Communists with all the arms and ammunition left by the Japanese in Manahuria and to supply more from the arsenals there. This coincided with the 10-month period when Marshall's embargo kept the Nationalists from getting arms or ammunition or even replacements for the wornout parts of the U.S. weapons with which they had been equipped.
The pro-Chinese Communist sympathizers in the State Department were able to bring about the change of China policy which they favored. Ambassador William D. Pawley (who had recruited the Flying Tigers) said to a Congressional committee, "It is my judgment, and I was in the State Department at the time, that this whole fiasco, the loss of China and the subsequent difficulties with which the U.S. has been faced, was the result of the mistaken policy of Dean Acheson, Phil Jessup, Lattimore, John Carter Vincent, John Service, John Davies, ... Clubb, and others." General MacArthur summarized results accurately when he said that the greatest mistake in 100 years of American diplomacy was allowing the Communists to gain power in China adding: "It happened because those who wanted it that way were able to gain the upper hand in our government and in our media of information." To this must be added: breaking the promises of the Cairo conference at Teheran and Yalta, the Marshall mission with its truce teams (which made Chiang withdraw his troops wherever he had the Communists checked); the embargo (which tied the hands of the Nationalists while the Communists had the Japanese arms of Manchuria); and the policy of forcing a coalition government on China. The Chinese Communists were an armed rebellion. They themselves admitted that during the war 70 per cent of their efforts were in their own interests of expansion. Instead of helping Chiang defeat this armed rebellion, Marshall's directive was to make Chiang take them into his government. Marshall should have seen that it would not work, but he seems to have been both obtuse and stubborn.
Infiltration of Communists and fellow-travelers into U.S. government departments and agencies was easy during the war because Russia was our ally. In the Treasury was Harry Dexter White, a Soviet agent; Frank Coe, and Dr. Harold Glasser (all members of the Party). They could have stabilized the China currency; they deliberately debauched it and helped the inflation to skyrocket. Pawley named some of the friends of the Chinese Communists in the State Department. Then in the Department of Commerce, controlling export licenses for China were Michael Lee and others; in the White House itself, Lachlin Currie; and in the influential, IPR a horde of conscious tools of the Communist Party who produced and successfully distributed through the U.S. armed forces and educational systems of the country the millions of copies of pamphlets and booklets which won Russia's propaganda victory for her in the United States of America.
Footnotes to Kubek's book are copious. His bibliography alone takes twelve and a half pages. It makes a most impressive and convincing appraisal. Here is one paragraph in conclusion:
"Roosevelt went off to Yalta, there to buy Stalin's entry into the war we had already won. We are still paying the price. The needless and bloody battles on Iwo Jima and Okinawa were immediate costs. The dropping of atomic bombs on Asiatic civilian populations—acts which have prejudiced the U.S. in the eyes of Asian people—was another. Sovietization of China, and the Korean War, were still others. And the end is not yet in sight."
THE RED CHINA LOBBY
By Robert Hunter and Forrest Davis
Fleet Publishing Corporation, New York,
287 pp. $4.95
Reviewed by Samuel Ling
This book by Robert Hunter and Forrest Davis, both recently deceased, presents a strong case against those Americans who favor the recognition of the Chinese Communist regime as well as the U.S. policy of containment in the face of Communist expansion in Asia. Since the Communist threat to Asia was plain for all to see even before the end of World War II, one wonders why the authors did not bring out this book long ago.
Because of the time lapse between the events described in the book and the date of publication, the reader gets the impression that he is reading the book for the second or third time. Nevertheless, reviewing some of the events which took place as late as 1949, one cannot help but wonder at the policy of drift pursued by the United States at the time.
On November 16, for instance, Secretary of State Acheson protested against the Nationalist Chinese firing on the Flying Cloud, an American vessel taking supplies to the Communists. On November 29, Philip Jessup told Admiral Charles M. Cooke of the Seventh Fleet that the United States would furnish no more munitions to the Nationalists. On December 3, Acheson stated that the United States did not recognize the legality of the Nationalist Chinese blockade. On December 23, the State Department sent a memorandum to Foreign Service personnel minimizing the importance of Taiwan.
On January 5, 1950, President Truman announced that the United States had no intention of providing military aid to Taiwan. To top it all, he expressed the opinion that Taiwan should be returned to "China" in accordance with the Cairo agreement. If the Chinese Communists had not intervened in the Korean War and if they had not leveled germ warfare charges against the United States, the United States probably would have extended recognition to the Communist Peiping regime and most of the Asian countries would doubtless have fallen into the Communist orbit.
That the Institute of Pacific Relations exercised a tremendous impact on U.S. policy-making is borne out by the following findings of the Senate Judiciary Committee after its Internal Security Subcommittee's year-long inquiry into the activities of the IPR in 1952:
"The IPR has been considered by the American Communist Party and by Soviet officials as an instrument of Communist policy, propaganda and military intelligence.
"The IPR disseminated and sought to popularize false information, including information originating from Soviet and Communist source.
"A small core of officials and staff members, either Communist or pro-Communist, carried the main burden of IPR activities and directed its administration and policies ....
"IPR activities were made possible largely through the financial support of American industrialists, corporations and foundations, the majority of whom were not familiar with the inner workings of the organization.
"Owen Lattimore was, from some time beginning in the 1930s, a conscious, articulate instrument of the Soviet conspiracy. Owen Lattimore testified falsely before the Subcommittee with reference to at least five separate matters....
"Over a period of years, John Carter Vincent was the principal fulcrum of IPR pressures and influence in the State Department. The IPR possessed close organic relations with the State Department through interchange of personnel, attendance of State Department officials at IPR conferences, constant exchange of information and social contacts.
"A group of persons operating within and about the Institute of Pacific Relations exerted a tremendous influence on U.S. Far East policy. Owen Lattimore and John Carter Vincent were influential in bringing about a change in 1945 favorable to the Chinese Communists.
"During the period 1945-49, persons associated with the IPR were instrumental in keeping United States policy on a course favorable to Communist objectives in China. Persons associated with the IPR were influential in 1949 in giving United States Far Eastern policy a direction that furthered Communist purposes."
For good reason, the authors single out Dean Acheson as the chief architect and arch villain of the U.S. China policy of writing off Taiwan as an anti-Communist bastion in the Far East. Among his policy statements on China, the following, despite the passage of years, still retain much of their shock value:
"The Republic of China is manifestly not 'China'."
"Its preservation is a costly drain on our resources."
"The islands are not strategically valuable to the United States."
"The Republic of China's economy cannot be made viable."
"We have no reason to believe that the provincial Taiwanese prefer the Kuomintang Government to mainland Communism."
"Our defense of Taiwan and its island dependencies creates so incendiary a situation that a spark at any time could spark a blaze, and the blaze might sweep beyond the control of anyone."
"Our alliance with the Kuomintang has isolated us from our Allies in Asia and the Pacific and lacks the support of the Western alliance. "
One can only hope that, with the benefit of hindsight, Mr. Acheson has become a wiser man.
The book contains a number of minor errors and inaccuracies. Excoriating those among the Americans who favor the recognition of the Chinese Communists, the authors have this to say: "Applying this (Jefferson) policy on recognition, how can it honestly be urged that this monstrous regime rests on the will of the people when it has eliminated some 40 million of its own people and consigned multiplied millions more to forced labor detention?" Nobody knows the exact number of people who have met death at the hands of the Chinese Communists. It is unfortunate that the authors did not see fit to give the source of their estimate, which is twice as high as the 20 million usually quoted by those who have access to such figures.
Among the errors and inaccuracies are the following: Wu Hsiu-chuan is spelled Wu Hieu Chuan. Park Chung Hee is spelled Pak Chung Hi. Mekong is spelled Mecong. Mauritania is spelled Mauretania and Kwangtung Province is spelled Kwantung Province. George Yeh, who became Ambassador to the United States in 1958, is described by the authors having been given the appointment in 1960. General William C. Chase, chief of the Military Assistance Advisory Group, is described as chief of the U.S. Military Advisory Commission of Taiwan. These minor errors could have been avoided with better editing.