Marshall Mission Files, Lot 54–D270: Telegram
Colonel George V. Underwood to General Marshall 99
1937. I showed 19341 to Doctor Stuart. He considered Chen Li-fu’s statement as unnecessary proof of his fanatical hatred of the Communists. He imagined that Chen Li-fu wrote with relish, hoping that the statement would be widely published. He did not regard the statement as indication of a rift between Chen Li-fu and the Generalissimo, but rather as evidence of the Generalissimo’s long-standing difficulty in controlling hard-headed members of the party.
Doctor Stuart felt that the combination of the Generalissimo’s interview (19322) and the Chen Li-fu statement would practically destroy all hopes for a Government peace delegation to Yenan. He, however, had never expected the Yenan Peace Mission to materialize.
Governor Chang Chun3 has just returned from Shanghai where he sought to line up the minority parties for participation in the reorganized Government. Future Government moves will probably await Generalissimo’s reaction to Chang Chun’s report and an answer from Yenan to Minister Peng’s statement (106).4
[Page 703]General Chou En-lai is to make an important radio broadcast from Yenan tomorrow, 14 January, on your statement and events of the year following the Political Consultative Conference. Full text of the broadcast will be sent to you soonest.
- Forwarded by General Marshall in Hawaii to Colonel Carter in Washington.↩
- See footnote 98 above.↩
- January 12, not printed; it reported an interview on January 11 between President Chiang and the correspondents of Newsweek, the New York Times, and Time when the Generalissimo firmly stated his point of view that the Chinese Communist Party was alone responsible for the 1946 negotiations being broken off and for repeated violations of cease-fire agreements which General Marshall had assisted in negotiating.↩
- Formerly Governor of Szechuan, Chinese Government representative in negotiating cease-fire agreements.↩
- January 10, not printed.↩