By Geraldine Fitch
Henry Regnery Company, Chicago, 1953
267 pages, US$3.50
As is noticed by students of international relations, the United States China policy is undergoing a gradual revision of the abandonment of China which constituted the kernel of the historic White Paper released in 1949. Undue over-optimism, however, is not countenanced by the Chinese at the present moment, as they have learned from their old saying that as the force of righteousness developed, the force of evil will emerge ten times more powerful.
In the midst of Free China's whole-hearted welcome of United States Vice-President Richard Nixon and the enthusiastic expressions of Sino-American friendship, the news from Washington quoting Secretary of Stare John Foster Dulles as saying on November 9 that the Eisenhower administration had never said that it should be forever opposed to the recognition of a Communist government as the government of China, was a great shock to the Free Chinese in Taiwan and elsewhere in the world. Vice-President Nixon's statement of November 11, which was meant to clarify the remarks made by Dulles, did not remove the bewilderment deep in the heart of the Chinese people.
While the United States has begun to realize that a Free China is essential to a free world, the appeasers are exerting their utmost to sway the free world from its right course. It appears, that the spirit of Munich is again gathering momentum. The free world should, watch carefully the embers lest it should revive and lead to another terrible conflagration.
The author, Geraldine Fitch, is a noted newspaperwoman, lecturer and writer who has spent half her life in China and the Far East and is sometimes called a woman or three countries, the United States, China and Korea. She is reputed to be one the best writers who is capable of presenting the problem of this part of the world with her firsthand knowledge and experience.
Her book answers practically all the important questions as to whether the Free Chinese will eventually be able to regain their lost mainland and whether the Generalissimo is in a position to rally the whole nation overthrow the cruel Communist tyranny. The book is an effective refutation of the White Paper, which wrote off the Republic of China at a moment when she most needed American help.
The Communist conquest of the Chinese mainland is attributed by the author to the fact that the United States destroyed China's morale and will to fight while the Communists and their fellow travelers were engaged in a relentless campaign against the Central Government.
The author makes an excellent comparison between the so-called landlords on the mainland and the happy farmers in Taiwan. Vice-President Nixon, while visiting a typical Taiwan farm, talked with the owner, Chen Kuon-shung, who had recently come to own two hectares of land through the government land-to-the-tiller program. He told Chen that the Communist land reform program on the mainland was exceedingly cruel and exhorted him to learn more about it. Those Americans who used to regard the Chinese Communists as “agrarian reformers” must have regretted their past mistakes.
According to the author, accusations and slanders made against the so-called “remnant clique of the Kuomintang" are untrue and unfair. The Generalissimo has suffered all vilifications in silence, persevered in devotion to his people, and stood ready to lead the crusade for freedom which must come unless Asia is to be lost to Communist enslavement.
A fine job has been done by the author in presenting to the readers two schools of thought on China: the Lattimore-Institute of Pacific Relations-Amerasia school and the other school consisting of such distinguished persons as General Mac Arthur, Senator Knowland, Mr. & Mrs. Henry Luce, Congressman Walter Judd and many others, who understand the real problems and who advocate a traditional Open Door policy in China.
The author points out that if there is a China Lobby, it must be a Red one which does the biddings of Peiping. The so-called China Lobby working for Free China does not exist at all.
It is the belief of the author that the United States is not safe unless she has a will to win the struggle for freedom. She must convince the rest of the free world that she fights to stop aggression and that she will never stop to work for peace and justice and freedom for all. She should not forget that appeasement can never buy peace on a lasting basis, but only on ever shorter terms at ever higher prices. If the United States should again let China down, as she did when the White Paper was released, history will repeat itself and the outcome will be terrible.
The author, after three visits to Taiwan, is fully aware that the Free Chinese definitely deserve American military aid for the reopening of the closed door of Continental China. She was deeply impressed by the untiring efforts made by the Chinese government and people against heavy odds. She points out that nowhere else in Asia has so much been accomplished with so little outside help.
We agree with the author when she writes: "Taiwan is to-day the beacon, Chiang Kai-shek the symbol, which keep hope alive for the millions on the mainland of China…Those who discredit this man, who spread the vilifying propaganda of the enemies, hurt the faith that his people place in him, and weaken their will to recover their homeland. If the morale is again broken, it may not rise or be restored in our generation." (page 234)
It is evident that the Chinese on Formosa are looking forward to the day when they can recover the mainland. They will undoubtedly be helped by their brethren on the mainland in this tremendous task. Thus the author states that since the overwhelming majority of the mainland Chinese are waiting, watching and praying for the return of Chiang Kai-shek, the co-operation they can afford the well-trained, integral Chinese troops from Formosa will make the liberation crusade snowball from South China to Manchuria. This co-operation from the people will be powerful enough to defeat the Communists. If the United States will furnish the necessary equipment, the job will be done. Mr. Thomas, Dewey has well said, "No law of God or man can prohibit any nation or people from trying to recover their homeland."
-WANG HONG
THE STRANGE CASE OF ALGER HISS
By the Earl Jowitt of Stevenage
London Edition: Hodder and Stoughton, April, 1953, 256 pages
New York Edition: Doubleday & Co., July, 1953, 388 pages
On May 8, 1953, telegrams were received by book reviewers and bookstores throughout the Unites States from Doubleday and Company requesting the return of some 5,000 review and advance-order copies of a book. They were also informed that the publication date, scheduled for May 21, was to be postponed. It was not a publicity stunt. When the expurgated American edition of "The Strange Case of Alger Hiss" was finally published in July 1953, the book was purged of many misquotations and misrepresentations of the earlier British edition. All such improvements notwithstanding, it is still a controversial book.
Lord Jowitt, an English lawyer, politician, former Lord Chancellor and Attorney General of Great Britain, writes in the preface that he "desires merely to review the evidence which was presented in the course of the trial." He says that he has studied the proceedings record of the House Committee, the printed record of the second trial, and the books published since the trial, especially Whittaker Chambers' "Witness." Lord Jowitt claims that he has access to some information that was not available to the defense counsel, the judges and the jury. The conclusion of his book is that Hiss was unjustly convicted.
Lord Jowitt claims his purpose is "to review the evidence from the detached view of a lawyer." Lord Jowitt has done it as a lawyer all right, but only as a lawyer for the defense. The American publisher is much more candid when he says on the dust jacket that the book "is an adroit interpretation by a man who makes no pretense of being wholly objective about it."
Considerations of space compel the reviewer to discuss only some of the points made by Lord Jowitt:
(1) Lord Jowitt insists that since Alger Hiss had such an imposing group of character witnesses, he necessarily "belongs to a category of people who are not likely to commit dishonorable or discreditable acts." The author goes so far as to ask: "Is it to be seriously suggested that the burden of proof should be precisely the same in the case of a man of proved integrity as it would be in the case of an unmitigated rascal?" The Attorney General of Great Britain here challenges a fundamental legal attitude of common law.
(2) A theory is advanced by Lord Jowitt to explain how those important documents in Hiss’ own handwriting reaches the hands of Chambers. As a matter of fact, it is the same as that adopted by the defense counsel during the trials: That Hiss had made such summaries for the purpose of assisting him in the preparation of reports, that he had later thrown them in the wastebasket, that they had been stolen and made available to Chambers.
But this theory is full of loopholes. Assistant Secretary of State John Peurifoy testified that the making of such handwritten summaries was a "very unusual procedure." Secondly, Hiss should have taken steps to safeguard or to dispose of such summaries which were as highly classified material as the originals. Thirdly, as the prosecution had already pointed out during the trials, such documents were neatly folded when finally produced, bearing no impression of having ever been crumpled. Even Lord Jowitt worries about this point and ventures to suggest that they were probably stolen from "some outgoing tray." I wonder how credulous. Lord Jowitt expects the readers of his book to be.
(3) Frequently, Lord Jowitt criticizes criminal procedures in the United States from the standpoint of the English system of judicial procedure. To this, Mr. Clark S. Ryan, the prosecutor in the second Hiss trial, replied that "the practice of submitting our trials to the review of an English appellate judge ceased in 1776."
In this connection, Lord Jowitt charges that the press reports after the first trial might "make it difficult to achieve that calm attitude of mind which is so essential if the jury system is to work at its best." He says that in England it would not be possible to publish an expression of opinion concerning a pending case. In fact, most papers in the United States made fun of Chambers for his hiding certain films in the hollow of a pumpkin. Many famous personages, including two Justices of the United States Supreme Court, testified for Hiss as character witnesses. Many news stories compared the Hiss of the hoi aristoi with Chambers, the self-confessed ex-Communist. If press opinion has had any effect on the jury's mind, it must have been equally detrimental to Chambers and Hiss.
(4) Hiss could not have been a spy, asserts Lord Jowitt: "I feel bound to point out that it seems to me a most extraordinary thing that a man engaging in such infamous conduct as that attributed to Hiss should have been such a fool as to hand over documents in his own handwriting." For a lawyer to maintain such a perfectionist view of a convicted criminal speaks highly of Lord Jowitt's good nature, though not necessarily of his legal acumen. There never was an accusation that Alger Hiss was a flawless spy.
(5) Another argument of the author is that the fact of Hiss having brought a libel suit against Chambers was adequate indication of his innocence; It will be recollected that Hiss had known, before his confrontation with Chambers, only the fact that Chambers had testified against him, but he had not been cognizant of the fact that the latter still possessed any documentary evidence to prove his having been a spy. On the ground that Chambers mentioned nothing about espionage. Hiss assumed that such documents were no longer available to Chambers. So he took the well calculated risk of threatening a libel suit, realizing that was the only chance open to hi m. The gamble was lost.
(6) Lord Jowitt also makes his book ad hominem against Chambers, and questions the mental conditions of the latter. If Chambers was "psychopathetic," then his charges could be laughed out of court. While on this line of attack, Lord Jowitt exposes his most vulnerable weakness. He strives to picture Chambers as a mental invalid, but he also admits that the evidence of the psychiatrists hired by the defense could not be accepted in an English court. In another place, he quite frankly laments that the defense counsel did not have the book "Witness" available for his psychiatrists. In this connection, the author has misquoted a date upon which he bases an entire argument. He claims that according to the book "Witness," Chambers contemplated suicide prior to November 17, 1948, when he turned the documents over to the court. This the author has done both to throw doubt on the mental condition of Chambers, and to make the insinuation that Chambers, in the desperation which drove him even to attempt suicide, forged such documents. The book ''Witness,'' however, cannot substantiate it. Concerning the period mentioned by Lord Jowitt, Chambers writes: "More and more there settled upon me like a burden for which I slowly stooped, a sense that the weight of God's purpose laid upon me was that I must not destroy myself." The suicide attempt exploited by Lord Jowitt took place in December, which was about a month after, the turning over of the documents.
(7) One whole chapter of the book is devoted to the study of discrepancies among Chambers testimony at different hearings. But the subject in question is merely the number of times that. Chambers had collected party member fees from Hiss. With ten eventful years intervening, a slight lapse on such a small matter should be well understandable to any fair-minded observer.
(8) The author attempts further to prove that Chambers forged the documents to incriminate Hiss. Chambers mentions in his "Witness" that he planned at the time of his break with the Communist Party to provide himself with a "life preserver," in case an attempt was made by the Communists to liquidate him. Lord Jowitt pounces on the passage and interprets it to mean that Chambers used the forged documents to blackmail Hiss, so that Hiss would "use his authority to call off the Communist murder gang." This is tantamount to admitting that Hiss was a member of the Communist party.
Furthermore, this argument is irrelevant. Lord Jowitt has missed the point of "life preserver" entirely. Unless the documents were genuine, Chambers could hold no threat against anyone in the Communist spy ring. And unless Hiss was a spy, Chambers could not intimidate him with documents, genuine or forged.
(9) Lord Jowitt further advances the thesis that Chambers had access to Hiss' typewriter "in some way unrevealed at present" and typed the incriminatory documents. As preternatural causes are seldom, if ever, admitted in court, this explanation does not hold water.
"The Strange Case of Alger Hiss" proposes but one new theory which, on a closer look, contradicts quite a few of the author's other arguments. He claims that Chambers, an extreme and over-emotional anti-Communist, knew Hiss as a Leftist, or even as one who had joined the Communist study groups, but never as a spy. Out of his fervent opposition to Communism, he considered all leftists as his mortal enemies who must be removed effectively. Therefore he, framed Hiss and, perhaps even without any sense of guilt, bore false witness against him. Lord Jowitt persuades his readers to believe that Chambers, out of hatred, forged before 1938 the documents which be cached away. In point of fact, it was only in August, 1948, when he was subpoenaed before the House Committee, that he accused Hiss of being a Communist. It was only when he appeared in a libel suit as defendant that he produced such documents in his own defense.
The author evades discussion of the fact that Alger Hiss and his wife lied about the whereabouts of the Woodstock typewriter and that Alger Hiss was a member of the Communist underground in 1935.
"The Strange Case of Alger Hiss" is actually the strange case of the Earl Jowitt of Stevenage, a paradigm of the ideologically confused, an intellectual shunning reality, who goes so far as to say, "It may well be, and I do not pretend to know, that Communists desire the success of Russia and its satellites above that of their own land."
This book is laborious in style and unconvincing.
-WU PING-CHUNG
CHINISE COMMUNISM AND THE RISE OF MAO
By Benjamin I. Schwartz
Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts
1951, 258 pages
When this book was first published in1951, I gave it a cursory reading and gained the impression that it was too obviously biased in favor of Chinese Communism to deserve a serious review. Now the ideas of this book have become the theme of another work of even greater magnitude: A DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF CHINESE COMMUNISM. It would, therefore, not be meaningless to make some comments on this volume in addition to my review of the other book which appeared in our October issue. My views on the other book are also applicable to this one and will not be repeated here for the sake of brevity.
One idea permeates this book: as Marxism has undergone a slow but steady decomposition in its movement eastward, that process, in which Lenin and Stalin had already played a role, has been carried forward yet another step by Mao Tse-tung who has used the peasantry rather than the proletariat as the mass basis of revolution.
Apparently the author was impressed by Mao's triumph on the mainland of China when his book was written. He was trying to find out the causes of the triumph in terms of its ideological frame of reference. Like many others, he decided that the Chinese Reds has risen to power by addressing themselves to the needs and aspirations of the masses of the people. Nothing can be further from the truth. I do not want here to repeat my previous argument that the importance of the peasantry in Oriental revolutionary movements was not first detected by Mao. Asia is full of peasants and the simple truth is that they do not need Mao to discover them--they are there all the time. Lenin and Stalin had realized this long ago.
What I wish to point out in this connection is the fact that the Chinese Communists, like the Communists in all other countries, have actually no mass basis at all. This may sound strange, but it is a fact. I am one of those who believe that with the Communists, at any rate in action, power serves as the "foundation," while all other phenomena including economy as the "superstructure"--a total reversal of the well-known Marxist formula. Power lies at the basis of the Communist state. Power is used to compel obedience, carry out the redistribution of land and enforce slave labor. The assertion that, Chinese Communism has its mass basis is true in the sense that millions of people are compelled by sheer force to bow before the Red rulers and do their biddings through fear and brutality. It is not true in the sense that the people act of their own free will as if there were really "an elemental upsurge of the masses," as the author would have us believe. A case in point is provided by the anti-Communist POW's in Korea: so far not more than 3% of them have chosen to return to Communism. This can safely be used as a yardstick to determine the real intentions of the people living under Communism. Such being the case, the very foundation of the theory of this book is shaken.
It seems clear that the author has a predilection for thinking in terms of differences rather than similarities between the Soviet brand of Communism and what is known as Maoism. The analytical method is useful and oftentimes desirable. But care must be taken not to use it at the sacrifice of the other equally important method of synthesis which has the merit of placing things in their proper perspective. To emphasize the differences of things without giving due consideration to their similarities is at once dangerous and unscientific. It would appear that the vital error of the book under review lies in its very point of departure-the undue overemphasis on the decomposition of Marxism. We certainly admit that the various types of Communism have vast distinctions among themselves, which sometimes assume such proportions as to make the individual Red regimes look like different things. As a matter of fact, however, whatever the differences may be, they cannot change the fundamental characteristics of Communism which are common to all lands behind the Iron Curtain. For example, all Communist regimes are totalitarian states under which all freedoms known to a democracy are suppressed. Without exception, violence is employed to liquidate opposition and "class" enemies to bring about social transformations and the' redistribution of land. In all Communist countries, the individuals are instruments of the state, the masses tools of the Communist Party, and the party leaders the ruling class with unlimited powers and special privileges.
The Korean War has unmistakably shown that the Chinese Communist regime is simply an instrument of Soviet foreign policy. This should have been clear evidence to dispel all wishful thinking that Mao might become another Tito. As we know, appeasement is derived from Munich, not from Tito. The Munich deal of September 29, 1938 was made without producing a Tito, while Tito broke off his ties to the Kremlin without involving appeasement. The Britons are notorious appeasers. They may continue to appease aggression, but they can never hope to have another Tito.
I would be unfair, if I did not point out that there are not lacking isolated passages in the book that are at once thoughtful and thought-provoking. For example, the author writes on page 198: "The Chinese Communist Party under the leadership of Mao Tse-tung has not been the party of the industrial proletariat nor has it been the party of the peasantry in the Marxist-Leninist sense. It has rather been an elite corps of politically articulate leaders organized along Leninist lines but drawn on its top levels from various strata of Chinese society." This is absolutely true. This serves to correct all interpretations of Chinese Communism which are based on Marxist theories by giving the Chinese Communist Party a class basis, be it the working class or the peasantry or both. It is strange that while people in the free world are supposed to reject Marxist theories, they have become incredibly Marxian in explaining Communism as well as many other social phenomena.
HSIAO TSO-LIANG
The Unchanging Stream
Of all that has happened in the last one and a half millenia, only the roaring rapids remain as of old.
Lines from Lu Fang-won.
No check, no stay, this Streamlet fears;
How merrily it goes!
'Twill murmur on a thousand years
And flow as it now flows.
Stanza from The Fountain
by William Wordsworth