The globe-independent. (Hagerstown, Md.) 1943-19??, 1946-12-05

Whe en- l was
happily reminis-
cling, should have been holding
forth on Thanksgiving, which would
have caused me to hit that happy
day practically on the nose This
week, when l would like to deliver
my pent-up thoughts on John L..
| Lewis, / can't because he has just
gone to trial and anything 1 might
say today would probably be deader
than mackrel come next Thurs
day.
l will therefore say a few words
about China, since the Chinese scene
changes less Unfortunately than
any other
Recently I've had the good for
tune to talk to two people fresh
from China. Though their exper-
fences and their services were wide
ly different, their conclusions were
similar enough to warrant consid-
eration-and since / belong to the
school of thought that holds to the
idea that what happens today in
Chunking reverberates in Hagers-
town, here goes.
Sergeant Jeff Scott, of the Marin
es, recently spent some time with
us en- route from Tsientsien to his
home in Philadelphia He had been
in China for some months as a
radio correspondent, out of General
Marshall's headquarters, and had
been assigned to a cease fire team
in the field
From Scott got not only the COM
plete operation of a cease fire team
in Jehol province, backed up with
some of the best hitherto unpub-
lished art, snapped on the spot, that
I've seen out of China, but | got his
own reactions to the tragic situation
now existing in the Orient.
asked him how General Mar
shall was doing and Scott rumbled
YEARLY, 'The best he can - but
Marshall in China might as well be
written off as another failure of
mission
The opinion of all those on the
China station had been, according
to Scott, that the Communists had
done better job fighting the Japs
than had the Nationalists-a job
done almost entirely with captured
Jap arms and with no help from the
Generalissimo. Chang and his
government are most unpopular,
Scott averred, since the whole crew
are notorious as squeeze artists
squeeze" being the Eastern term
for racket.
Chang, as everyone knows, will
have no part of coalition govern
ment Though he may have changed
his mind by next Thursday, so the
weary struggle goes on with the
Chinese people suffering and starry
ing in the middle, American sup
port goes to Chang, and the
Communists (who from all accounts
are not too eager to deal with the
Russians, are aware of only one
thing-that they are being killed by
American weapons.
The rich Chinese are waxing rich
er by the day on squeeze and the
poor are getting hungrier and poor
er, in the brave new world.
Thus Scott.
Last week, visiting friends in Bal
timore, I met friend of theirs who
dropped in to call. He was a per-
sonable man who started the war in
1.-THE Army and ended as Command
er in Naval Intelligence.
Having had no time to check on
how far the long arm of Naval
Intelligence might reach-or what
sort of warrant it might have in its
I1dllO-lI SGGIIlS DGtLSI 1OI LIE OK
commander to remain anonymous.
So We'll call him Bobby" since that
isn't his name.
Learning that Bobby had been in
Chunking brought the conservation
around to Thunder Out of China"
the new book by Annalee Jacoby
and Teddy White, both of whom
Bobby knows. I had been able to
read only snatches of the book be-
fore my daughter seized it and refus-
ed to give, but I had been impressed
by the prologue got all the way
through that-and the few bits
had absorbed in scanning.
Bobby hadn't even seen the book
yet, but out of his own experience,
which was wide and varied, he was
pretty annoyed with White, Jacoby
and most of the press as represented
by the crew that infested the fam
tastic press hostel in Chunking.
| Thunder Out of China" is an out
- y e Il. Il