893.00/14869
Memorandum by the Adviser on Political Relations (Hornbeck)6
The news of yesterday and today from China is bad, but worse than this news is knowledge that we have had for sometime of the factual situation and potentialities to which this news serves at the moment to call attention.
Reports from our own sources in China, sent from or through Chungking, have breathed a sense of frustration and defeatism. The feeling of our officials and officers reflects in some measure the feeling of the Chinese circles in which they move. The Chinese have seen the United States and Great Britain sustaining military defeats. They have seen the Japanese gaining victories elsewhere and closing in on China; they have seen the failure of the Cripps mission in India and they have sensed the ineptitude of British military and political operations in the Far Eastern theater and the Indian Ocean area; they have heard and have rejoiced in American promises that we would get goods into China and they have seen that the goods do not arrive; they are now hearing that the goods do not arrive because we cannot send them and that we cannot send them because (a) high mountains are an obstacle and (b) we and the British need for other fronts (British and Russian) all planes available and therefore cannot spare more than a [Page 50] couple dozen (three dozen at the outside) transport planes for traffic into and out of Chungking.
As I understand it, the President has been liberal and positive in promising to the Chinese a substantial number of adequate planes; but somewhere, somehow, orders become modified, allocations are pared down, diversions are made, planes en route are held at intermediate points, and the net is that the transport service upon which the Chinese have relied as a sort of last hope does not materialize.
On May 8 we had from Gauss at Chungking a confidential report7 of information given him in confidence that General Chiang in an address on May 6 to his military council had pointed out that during the next few months the situation for China would be very serious; that Chiang said that if the Japanese did not attack the Soviet Union they probably would resume military operations in and against China; but that he believed that America would give China all possible assistance and he emphasized assistance in the field of aviation.
Although Japan may yet attack the Soviet Union, best military estimates at present are that that operation is not at the top of the list among Japan’s present intentions. The logic of movements during recent weeks has pointed toward probable intensification of Japanese operations in and against Chungking. And now the spot news points to Chinese expectation that such operations are Japan’s present preoccupation.
The Chinese are ill prepared militarily and psychologically to prevent the Japanese from making great gains and the Japanese are well prepared to make great gains in operations which the Japanese might now undertake. China has no air force, is woefully lacking in artillery and anti-aircraft, is short on machine guns and has no large reserves of small arms and ammunition. Chinese morale has been preserved for many months past by expectation of aid from the United States and Great Britain and assurances that she shall have aid by the United States. So long as the Chinese remain confident that such aid is going to reach them, there is fair chance of their morale holding up and their resistance continuing. But let once the point be reached, at which they reach a conclusion that aid cannot or will not reach them, that their hope and confidence evaporate—at and from that point there will be no reason for them not to say to themselves that the chance of the United Nations defeating Hitler and Japan is certainly not better than fifty-fifty and the sensible course for them to follow is to make with Japan the best compromise possible. The sequel would be: China no longer in the war, China’s soil no longer available to the United Nations for operations against Japan; China’s natural resources and man power available to Japan for operations [Page 51] against Japan’s remaining enemies (Great Britain and the United States).
From now on there is only one way by which we can make sure of maintaining China’s confidence: we must deliver goods. Deliveries can be made and an artery of communication between China and us can be maintained if we will but put into the job of creating and maintaining an air transport service such courage, such ingenuity and such effort as we have been and are putting into a variety of operations in other places and other contexts. The best informed among my contacts are confident that this thing can be done and that it need not be very expensive.
If we fail to do this, whether because of high mountains or because of a view that planes devoted to this task and thus subtracted from the numbers devoted to tasks on the British and Russian fronts are planes better invested, we stand a good chance of losing the best strategic bet that is offered us in eastern Asia. China can be kept in the ranks of the United Nations. There is no guarantee that Russia can be kept in those ranks. There is even a chance that Australia might be taken out of those ranks. But it is a good bet that the Chinese will “stick” as long as they have reason to believe that we can and we will keep contact with them and give them some aid.
The number of planes needed for doing this job is ridiculously small in comparison with the relatively huge numbers that we are sending to other fronts. Is there not something wrong about a strategy—I am not saying that such a strategy definitely has been adopted—which in theory or in practice would call for investing everything in several scattered theaters and investing absolutely nothing in a theater which, if occupied by the enemy, would mean the loss of a useful ally and the acquisition by the enemy of that prize which has been the major objective of political and military operations on his part for a period of nearly fifty years.
What we most need to do at this moment is to get an air transport service into operation on a fair scale—and to do it now.