893.00/15125
The Secretary of War (Stimson) to the Secretary of State
[Received September 21.]
Dear Mr. Secretary: Your letter of August 26th, calling attention to the article by Mr. Hanson W. Baldwin in the August issue of the Reader’s Digest entitled “Too Much Wishful Thinking About China,” and to comments by Mr. Rodney Gilbert which this article inspired in the New York Herald Tribune on August 16th, has had my close study.
You will appreciate my grave concern at the closing paragraph of your letter in which you express your own belief “that there may be some basis of fact” in Mr. Gilbert’s assertion that Mr. Baldwin’s derogatory opinion of China as an effective military force was inspired by high-ranking officers in Washington.
I am unwilling to believe that high-ranking officers have made such statements to Mr. Baldwin, but I shall immediately investigate the matter in order that I may be certain that if such errors have been made in the past they shall in no event continue in the future, and that there shall be no such further cause for embarrassment to this country’s relations with China.
I can readily understand the distress which Mr. Baldwin’s opinions should have caused in Chungking. But I am confident that such resentment as is held will be directed toward Mr. Baldwin and not [Page 127] against the War Department, whose policy of mutual respect and cooperation is too well known to responsible Chinese leaders to be placed in jeopardy by the statement, however disturbing, of a single commentator.
Sincerely yours,