The Wilmington morning star., 1946-11-10

The News
BY j. M. ROBERTS, JR.
AP Foreign Affairs Analvs,

The Nationalist cease fire.
der In China is obviously a victoa
for General George c. MarsbsM|
his efforts to get Chang Kaj.SbaH
to go half way in seeking an agr,
ment with the Communists. # .Is,
Is a very shrewd move fro'
Chiang's own standpoint. In. !.
really goes farther than thar.
America has hoped all along =.
course, to work out the factioc9i
differences in China and tberob,
diminish the chances thai Nort,
China and Manchuria would row..
under the Soviet sway as has on.os
Mongolia.
The Nationalist, however Inv.
also been hoping to conouer t,s
Communists first so that the 1a.,as
would have less on which to trs5a
In the reorganized government
This sounds simple, but there -.
numerous important ~undertones 7,
is not as though the U. S. had boo,
merely supporting the estabis bos
government of an ally in s~et.1;ns
a postwar problem. Despite all thu
talk about the great battle for Do.
mocracy put up by Chiang's forces
during the war, the Nationalist gov.
eminent has been accepted by ,,o
United States only, as Roosevelt
himself put it, because he saw M
alternative. Throughout the war
American officers and emmisssrip,
actually we're constantly tryin9 N
"get China to fight the Japareso
while Chiang's men seemed AZ
much or more interested il. cheek.
mating the Communists and co,.
solldatlng for the postwar struggle.
Chiang's political methods. fra.
quently remlndful of EuroDear
practices which we were fighting
to eliminate, often were embarrae.
sing-to put it mildly. Postwar rev.
Citations indicate that Roosevelt was
probably less worried about Russia
than he was about China. To n5+
it bluntly, some of Chiaag's meth.
DDS smacked of Fascism. Manv #
his critics challenged his claim
that they were intended only for
Chiaa's emergency years, and that
true Democracy would be evolved
The complete story of the book he
wrote in 1913, which was removed
from sale and placed under the
strictest censorship almost imme-
diately after Allied governments re.
ceived their copies, has never been
told. But the uneasiness CAUSED by
his statement that, in the postwar
period, every Chinese boy must be-
come a soldier or an airmaa, has
never been forgotten.
One Result
That's why a part Of the Amer.
can job has been to get Chang to
clear his own skirts. The cease
fire order is one result of that
But it also may prove to be the
point of showdown as 10 actual no
tees On the Communist side.
AS dispatches from Marking re-
port, it is a shreWd move to force
the Communists to enter the gov
eminent or accept responsibility for
continued civil war. The question
of whether the Communists are
acting entirely on their own, or
have come to be an implement Of
Russian policy, is at stake. There
have been doubts that they ever
intended to come to terms regard
less of Nationalist concessions.
There have been fears that they
intended to perpetuate the cleaV'
age while working toward an auton-
omous government; and that such
a government would inevitably fall
within the Russian sphere.
The Communists have maintain
ed that it was impossible to con-
duct real peace negotiations while
Chiang's armies pressed an lnva'
sion of Communicated territory
Now that barrier has been renoV'
ed. If the Communists improylse
some other barrier now, the pof,
tents for China, and for the rest Of
the world, will hook grim indeed