Stressing that the vital importance to the mainland Chinese of the existence of the Republic of China should be understood from the experience of Hungary that no people under Communism's iron heel could successfully rebel without outside help, Freda Utley observed in a letter to the N.Y. Times on November 1:
"A decade ago China was pushed behind the Iron Curtain, thanks mainly to the influence in the West of those who believed that the Chinese Communists were not 'real' Communists, but liberal 'agrarian reformers' independent of Moscow, and more worthy of American support than the allegedly 'corrupt' 'fascist' or reactionary Government of Chiang Kai-shek.
"Today many of the same people whose mistaken views persuaded the United States in 1946-47 to withhold arms, ammunition and political support from the Nationalist Government, in order to compel it to share power with the Communists in a 'coalition government' are telling us that the Chinese Communists are such very real Communists that they can count on all-out Soviet support and that we should therefore appease them. Some whose letters you have published used to regard the 'Yenan way' as the road to progress and democracy for China. Today they are pressuring us to repeat the errors of the past for the sake of 'peace in our time.'
"The mud flung a decade ago on Chiang Kai-shek and the Koumintang has stuck, in spite of the demonstrated untruth of the favorable view of the Chinese Communists propagated by the mud-slingers. The convincing evidence of the clean administration, economic progress, land reform and other social improvements which have made Formosa one of the most prosperous and best administered territories in Asia, is ignored.
"The superior morale of the Nationalist forces who stood firm on Quemoy in face of the terrific bombardment of the Communists, and in spite of our insistence that there should be no air bombardment of the mainland batteries, is attested to by United States reporters and official observers. The poor showing of the Communist attackers indicates that the Chinese people are so bitterly disillusioned that they can no longer be counted upon to fight enthusiastically for their Communist masters. The situation as compared to ten years ago has obviously been reversed. It is now the Nationalist forces which are displaying high morale."
"The experience of Hungary," stressed Utly, "has shown that no people under Communism's iron heel can successfully rebel without outside help and support. Hence the vital importance to the mainland Chinese of the existence of the Chinese Nationalist armed forces.
"Two Chinese from Manchuria told me that during the Korean War the people there, hoping that American forces would cross the Yalu, were saying: 'Better to die under American bombs than live under Communist tyranny.' The majority of the escapees I talked to had been opposed to, or extremely critical of, the Nationalist Government. But, they said, today their quarrel with Chiang Kai-shek was unimportant as compared with the struggle against Communism."
"In Formosa", continued Utley, "I talked to many soldiers, sailors and airmen, and to civilians from the mainland living an austere life on meager salaries. All of them worked and endured in the belief that eventually they would return to the mainland, lift the Communist yoke from their countrymen and be reunited with their families. Should America convince them that their great expectations have no possibility of realization as our allies they will lose heart. We should not expect them to accept the role of mercenaries defending the security of the United States in the Pacific.
"This is the real issue, not the real estate value of the offshore islands, nor the fate of Chiang Kai-shek. The choice which confronts us is whether or not we shall sound the death knell of hope among the enslaved and voiceless Chinese people by demonstrating that we are so afraid of their masters in Peiping and Moscow that we dare not set up a standard to which men desiring to be free can repair."
Intermittent Red Bombardment of Kinmen
Commenting on the Chinese Communists' off-and-on bombardment of Kinmen, the Detroit News observed on November 5:
"More than 36,000 shells fell on the Quemoy islands on November 3. Damages and casualties are not reported. But whatever the statistics, the reader thinks of the picture of a little Chinese girl lying unconscious from an earlier bombardment and he knows that the suffering is great. One would like to know why.
"The Chinese Reds have an answer. November 3 was an odd-numbered day, and there fore a day to shoot in accord with the rules of their new game announced October 25... "
"This is not war," charged the News, "but playful murder. It is ultimate cynicism of which a responsible government could be guilty, for it makes the inhumanity of war not a means but the end of policy. Like a cat playing with a beetle, the Reds apparently seek to keep the islanders alive as long as possible to be taught the despair of being at the mercy of those who have no mercy...
"One could be almost grateful to the Chinese Communists for unmasking once more the true Communist face, which is not Marxist at all, and not specifically Chinese or Russian, but barbarian."
On the seemingly dwindled Communist shelling at Kinmen, Hanson W. Baldwin of the N. Y. Times stated on November 9:
"The firm stand of the United States and the Chinese Nationalists in defense of Quemoy and the offshore islands has resulted in a definite check to Communist aggression.
"This view, widely held in the Pentagon, can be the only interpretation of the strange off-again, on-again shelling of Quemoy by the Chinese Communists—a tactic that is plainly not military but psychological and political.
"After more than two months of crisis Peiping appears to have sought a face-saving means of easing a crisis of its own creation."
"The easing of the Quemoy crisis does not mean," warned the military analyst of the Times, "any permanent solution of the problem. The Communists know no deadline for conquest, and their tactics have always been opportunistic-pushing and aggressive when the advantage seemed to be theirs, but ready to face the realistic facts of power when the blance was against them."
"The world can expect more ebb and flow at Quemoy and the offshore islands," predicted the analyst, "they will remain a point of friction in the global conflict.
"Nevertheless, the Nationalists, with United States support, have won a defensive victory, even though it is incomplete and the campaign is not finished.
"The strengthening of Nationalist defense on Quemoy with United States eight-inch howitzers, which are capable of firing nuclear shells; the ineffectiveness of the Communist artillery fire, the Nationalist ability to supply the islands under fire and the establishment by the Nationalists of a clear-cut qualitative air superiority were fundamental factors in that victory.
"More important was the firm line taken by President Eisenhower. The islands, far from being indefensible," the analyst pointed out, "could be defended... The Chinese Communist military machine revealed its weakness, and the United States, by its strength and determination, belied the Peiping appellation of paper tiger....
"The basic issue as these crises arise cannot be localized, or reduced to the common denominator of material values. The basic issue is, and must be, whether the United States is to yield to the threat of aggression, as President Eisenhower put it during the Quemoy crisis."
Another Black Lie
On the Communist charge on November 4 that the Chinese Government defenders on Quemoy had fired poison gas shells, the Oakland Tribune called it a familiar Red propaganda trick to turn attention away from the villainous Communist destruction of life and property on the offshore islands. The Tribune observed on November 5:
"The Chinese Communists.... are accusing the Free Chinese of firing poison gas shells, made in the United States, against the mainland. The charge is as preposterous as the accusation the U.N. forces used germ warfare in Korea. But it is loaded with as much potential progaganda as it is with falsity.
"The Free Chinese were alarmed that the Reds were employing one of their standard tricks, that of making such an accusation as a groundwork for using it themselves. That is not beyond possibility, but it is more likely that having seen their germ warfare allegations receive such wide distribution they are now using poison gas as the medium for turning attention away from their own villainous destruction of life and property on the offshore islands.
"The Chinese Reds are in need of a new propaganda weapon at this stage of the Formosa Strait situation. They have been maneuvered by the determination of both the United States and the Free Chinese into a defensive position with respect to facing the world that lies outside the Communist orbit.
"It also is entirely possible the Communists sense the need of tightening the strangle-hold on the Chinese people too, and the poison gas lie is being used as an attempted means to divert their thoughts from the possibilities inherent in Chiang Kai-shek's placing confidence in the promotion of democratic principles as the principal weapon against the Reds."
The N. T. Herald Tribune remarked:
"The Chinese Reds have again demonstrated extreme effrontery of their propaganda poison gas.
"The same lie was employed by the Communists during the Korean War, along with the allegation that the United States had resorted to germ warfare. The latter charge was backed with elaborately faked 'evidence' and the testimony of pliant fellow-traveling scientists.
"This time the Reds assert that fourteen of their troops were 'affected' by the so-called gas, and that their army 'expressed the greatest anger over this crime of the United States and the Koumintang groups'. The Americans were brought into the affair by the Red propagandists through a not very ingeneous trick of logic: 'This new military proveocation by the Koumintang troops took place after the Chiang-Dulles talks and the supply of large amounts of ammunition by the United States to the Chiang troops. Therefore, it is an extremely serious incident.'…"
"In any case, the charge is false," accused the Tribune, "and one that only the most credulous could. The rest of the world may view it as an example of the Red's technique of attempting to lie their way to their ends when shooting fails. Fraud and force—those are the instruments of Communist policy."
Pasternak's "Apology"
Commenting on Nobel Prize-winning novelist Boris Pasternak's letter of apology which "Pravda" has published above his name, the N.Y. Tribune stated on November 7:
"People close to me know well that nothing on earth can prevent my being perfectly straightforward or to act against my conscience."
"This passage, which perfectly describes Boris Pasternak, lends credibility to a long letter which 'Pravda' has published above his name. It is a public apology, apparently required of him as the price of avoiding the exile his fellow writers have demanded and of staying in Russia 'to which I am tied by my birth, life and work.'
"Whether or not Pasternak wrote it," wondered the Tribune, "here are the concessions dutifully made in the letter over his name:
" .... Had he been able to withdraw the book (Doctor Zhivago) from the Italian publishers, 'I should perhaps have been able to have corrected it, at least in part.'
"He dutifully states that he has not been persecuted, his life has not been endangered, his freedom imperiled, and that 'nobody has forced me to do anything and that I am making this statement of my own will.' ...
These are clearly the words of a man whom 'nothing on earth' could compel to act against his conscience. Since this is so, he could have written-whether or not he has signed—the abject confession that 'Pravda' has now printed. But even if he had, the letter would still reveal what 'Pravda' is seeking to cover up, that no man can write freely where the state is' both editor, publisher, censor, critic and vendor of books."
Cooperating With Taiwan
Warning that Communist manipulation could eventually split the friendship between the United States and the free Chinese, John K. Fairbank wrote in a letter to the N. Y. Times on November 9:
"We are determined to avoid war with Communist China if possible but to defend Taiwan in any case. By continued military aid we can hope to maintain a military stalemate in the Strait of Formosa.
"But maintenance of an independent Taiwan is a great deal more than a military, an economic, or any kind of material problem. It is a problem in political and cultural relations with allies who are under extraordinary cultural-psychological pressures from within the ethnocentric Chinese world of which they are a part.
"Because our allies on Taiwan are part of this Chinese world, we need their help quite as much as they need ours. Taiwan is our main foreseeable hope for friendly cooperation in trying to understand the Chinese world and its quarter of mankind. We need Taiwan's help, for example, to defend ourselves in the ideological cold war. Peiping's massive documentation and reinterpreting of history labels us 'imperialist aggressors' throughout our modern century of contact. Our missionaries and educators are described in detail as 'cultural imperialists.'
"Without the cooperation of Taiwan scholars," the Harvard professor asserted, the small corps of American Sinologists can never catch up with Communist distortions and get the record straightened out objectively, much less make it available in Chinese to a Chinese-reading public. Our survival in the same world with Communist China may hinge on how much non-Communist Chinese help we can get-not material help but intellectual help.
"To preserve our Taiwan alliance we must make a more than material effort. Unless we grow as a people in sensibility and understanding," warned the professor, "Communist manipulation can eventually split us from our Chinese allies. For example, we must rid ourselves of the original missionary idea that we are saving 'the Chinese' or doing them a favor. The salvation and the favors will be mutual."